“Cabby was saying“someday”… someday Tony would love him. He hoped it mightbe true. Perhaps Cabby knew things that he didn’t”

“You heard and felt the harmonies of light, at leastthe surface of them, but you didn’t notice, did you, that themelody was missing?”It was true, Tony had not heard a melody, just a symphony ofharmonies.“I don’t understand. What’s the missing melody?” he asked.“You, Anthony! You are the melody! You are the reason forthe existence of what you witnessed and consider soimmeasurably awe inspiring. Without you, what you perceivedwould have no meaning and no shape. Without you, it wouldhave simply… fallen apart.”

“Don't ever think that what my Son chose to do didn't cost us dearly. Love always leaves a significant mark," she stated softly and gently. "We were there together." Mack was surprised. "At the cross? Now wait. I thought you left him - you know - 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'" It was a Scripture that had often haunted Mack in The Great Sadness. "You misunderstand the mystery there. Regardless of what he felt at that moment, I never left him." "How can you say that? You abandonded him just like you abandoned me!" "Mackenzie, I never left him, and I have never left you." "That makes no sense to me," he snapped. "I know it doesn't, at least not yet. Will you at least consider this: when all you can see is your pain, perhaps then you lose sight of me?”

“This, Tony, is a living land, not a construction site. This isreal and breathing, not a fabrication that can be bullied intobeing. When you choose technique over relationship andprocess, when you try and shortcut the speed of growingawareness and force understanding and maturity before its time,this”—he pointed down and over the length”

“You do understand," she continued, "that unless I had an object to love -- or, more accurately, a someone to love -- if I did not have such a relationship within myself, then I would not be capable of love at all? You would have a god who could not love. Or maybe worse, you would have a god who, when he chose, could love only as a limitation of his nature.”

“True love never forces.”

“Forgiveness is first for you, the forgiver...to release you from something that will eat you alive; that will destroy your joy and your ability to love fully and openly. Do you think this man cares about the pain and torment you have gone through? If anything, he feeds on that knowledge. Don't you want to cut that off? And in doing so, you'll release him from a burden that he carries whether he knows it or not--acknowledges it or not.”