The Royal Mountain

"To pray is to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live. Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time? Amidst the meditation of mountains, the humility of flowers--wiser than all alphabets--clouds that die constantly for the sake of His glory, we are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly we feel ashamed of our clashes and complaints in the face of the tacit glory in nature. It is so embarrassing to live! How strange we are in the world, and how presumptuous our doings! Only one response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the gift of our unearned right to serve, to adore, and to fulfill. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great." -Abraham Joshua Heschel

"It didn't matter, though; a subtle shift had taken place in his character in the past day or two, one of those subsidences which produce new landmarks and alter the emphasis of the old. What now stood revealed was enjoyment: he realized that he was a human being well fitted to enjoy. Astonishing but true: in all his years of running he had never positively enjoyed a race. He had envied the sprinters, the shot-putters, the jumpers, all those whose event demanded less ascetic discipline than his. Between puts he had seen shot-men reading the paper or chatting with their competitors. And he had felt excluded. Now it occurred to him that he had been excluding himself. But he wasn't excluding himself anymore. And in a flash of intuition he realized why: he had renounced ambition, the tyranny of schedule and stop-watch, the profit-and-loss accounting of his training to date. He said to himself: I solemnly give up all side-considerations, all hopes of gain or celebrity, retaini...

"He made a staggering turn into Exeter Street for the last hundred yards, and the sound of his name beat against his eardrums and he knew, finally, why his father had come back to run for nineteen years, why the others, not the clowns but the good competitors, came out on this day each year. Whether he finished first or fifty-first, each heard, for a little while, the sound of his name, a bit of acclaim to treasure secretly, to set him apart from his fellow man and make brighter an existence that otherwise was humdrum and monotonous; not an easy thing for any man to give up, for there is a need of such tribute in all men of heart and spirit, and each must find his little share in whatever way he can."  -George Harmon Coxe