A Quote by Vanna Bonta
To paraphrase the great poet Dante, the heavens swirl above us and our eyes are still cast to the ground.
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Dante Alighieri was not only a Christian poet or a priest, he was a man. He was a real poet. We can understand that the goal of Divine Comedy is beauty. You don't need also to understand Italian or to know Italian, because when Dante's writing, when we recite Dante out loud, it explodes a cosmos of illumination like to recite music, a symphony.
Dante would not have forgotten: they say that when Dante was a boy, he was asked: Dante what is the best food? to test his memory. Eggs, replied Dante. Years later, when Dante was a grown man, he was asked only: how? and Dante replied: fried.
As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is God's love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.
We need new words for what this is, this hunger entering our loneliness like birds, stunning our eyes into rays of hope. we need the flutter that can save us, something that will swirl across the face of what we have become and bring us grace.
Let us serve Him faithfully as our Master. Let us obey Him loyally as our King. Let us study His teachings as our Prophet. Let us work diligently after Him as our Example. Let us look anxiously for Him as our coming redeemer of body as well as soul. But above all let us prize Him as our Sacrifice, and rest our whole weight on His death as atonement for sin. Let His blood be more precious in our eyes every year we live. Whatever else we glory in about Christ, let us glory above all things in His cross.
God spreads the heavens above us like great wings, And gives a little round of deeds and days.
A picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on.
Let us always keep before our eyes the fact that here on earth we are on a battlefield and that in paradise we shall receive the crown of victory; that this is a testing-ground and the
prize will be awarded up above; that we are now in a land of exile while our true homeland is Heaven to which we must continually aspire.
Were there not these still mirrors to reflect the beauty of the heavens to us, it might be lost to eyes so seldom lifted upwards.
In the middle of this despair [of postwar Germany], my family learned about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the healing message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. This message made all the difference; it lifted us above our daily misery. Life was still thorny and the circumstances still horrible, but the gospel brought light, hope, and joy into our lives. The plain and simple truths of the gospel warmed our hearts and enlightened our minds. They helped us look at ourselves and the world around us with different eyes and from an elevated viewpoint.
But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily?
In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic needs a model and that for Dante to write this great poem he needs someone to come before him and he turns to Virgil's text, especially book six where Aeneas goes down into the underworld. And for me, that's a model of the poet's relationship to previous poetry, to another poetry as calling out for guidance.
Dante himself is open to the suspicion of partiality: it is said, not without apparent ground, that he puts into hell all the enemies of the political cause, which, in his eyes, was that of Italy and God.
It's hard to tell / if we close our eyes or if night / opens in us other starred eyes, / if it burrows into the wall of our dream / till some other door opens. / But the dream is only the flitting costume of one moment, / is spent in one beat / of the darkness, / and falls at our feet, cast off / as the day stirs and sails away with us.
We cannot be fearful all the time; we have to rise above our fear, whatever is to happen to us, however our conditions may challenge us. To be fearless is a decision that one must make. And this fearlessness becomes the fundamental ground of nonviolence.
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