We were born to find the Way

I've been reading Dean Koontz's book "One Door Away From Heaven." It is another fantastic work contrasting the world of good and evil. Here are a few excerpts with my photos added.

p. 228         In the quick, when it counts, you must have no doubt. Spit out all your doubt, breathe it out, pluck it from your heart, tear it loose from your mind, throw it away, be rid of it. We weren't born into this universe to doubt. We were born to hope, to love, to live, to learn, to know joy, to have faith that our lives have meaning ... and to find The Way.

p. 325  Curtis is having an experience of what it is like to be a dog .......

        Spates of shivers build into continuous trembling as Curtis more clearly experiences the dog's profound joy. This isn't simply the joy of running, of springing agilely from log to mossy rock; this isn't the joy of freedom or of being fully alive, but the piercing joy that comes with the awareness of that holy, playful Presence. 

        Running with her in her dreams, Curtis seeks a glimpse of their constant companion, expecting suddenly to see an awesome countenance looking out from the layered fronds of the ferns or gazing down from the cathedral trees. Then the dog's ultimate wisdom, arising from her perfect innocence, is shared with Curtis, and he receives the truth that is simultaneously a revelation and a mystery, both a euphoric exaltation and a profound humbling. 

The boy recognizes the Presence everywhere around him, not confined to one bank of ferns or one pool of shadows, but resonant in all things. He feels what otherwise he has only known through faith and common sense, feels for one sweet devastating moment what only the innocent can feel: the exquisite rightness of creation from shore to shore across the sea of stars, a clear ringing in the heart that chases out all fears and every anger, a sense of belonging, purpose, hope, an awareness of being loved. 

        Mere joy gives way to rapture, and the boy's awe grows deeper, an awe lacking any quality of terror, but so filled with wonder and with liberating humility that his trembling swells into shakes that seem to clang his heart against the bells of his ribs. At the moment when rapture becomes peals of bliss, his shaking wakes the dog.

p.  For those who despair that their lives are without meaning and without purpose, for those who dwell in a loneliness so terrible that it has withered their hearts, for those who hate because they have no recognition of the destiny they share with all humanity, for those who would squander their lives in self-pity and in self-destruction because they have lost the saving wisdom with which they were born, for all these and many more, hope waits in the dreams of a dog, where the sacred nature of life may be clearly experienced without the all blinding filter of human need, desire, greed, envy, and endless fear. And here, in dream woods and fields, along the shores of dream seas, with a profound awareness of the playful Presence abiding in all things, Curtis is able to prove to Leilani what she has thus far only dared to hope is true; that although her mother never loved her, there is One who always has.