There’s a childish instinct in humanity that makes the proudest among us, if he’s a man and not crazy, long – Blessed Father! – for the paternal hand that would guide us, in whatever shape or form as long as it guides us, through the world’s mystery and confusion. Each of us is a speck of dust that the wind of life lifts up and then drops. We have to depend on a stronger force, to place our small hand in another hand, for today is always uncertain, the sky always far, and life always alien.

Those of us who have risen highest merely have a deeper awareness of how uncertain and empty everything is.

Perhaps we’re guided by an illusion; we’re surely not guided by consciousness.