"I take from Einstein the idea that humans are laboring under an 'optical delusion' that each of them is separate from the others, and from the rest of the material world, and from the universe. For me, Christianity is the study of what real love, useful love, consists of - and of what constitutes attention. People think that Christianity is against pleasure, as it sometimes is; but it's very, very pro-joy. You're aiming for joy that will never go away, no matter what kind of pain you're in. But of course you still go through pain. I asked my priest, when I wanted to kill myself, 'What's the purpose of this suffering?' and he said, 'I hate sentences that have the word suffering and the word purpose in them. Suffering is just suffering. But I do think that God is with you in this, though I doubt you can sense him at all.' I asked how I could put something like this in God's hands, and he said, 'There's no "put," Maggie. That's just where it is."
- Maggie Robinson
Photograph taken at abandoned naval academy, 2007 by Matthew Christopher of Abandoned America.
