from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when [Aslan] began to tear the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt.

from Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life, by Shauna Niequist

Everything is interim. Everything is a path or a preparation for the next thing, and we never know what the next thing is. Life is like that, of course, twisty and surprising. But life with God is like that exponentially. We can dig in, make plans, write in stone, pretend we're not listening, but the voice of God has a way of being heard. It seeps in like smoke or vapor even when we've barred the door against any last-minute changes, and it moves us to different countries and different emotional territories and different ways of living. It keeps us moving and dancing and watching, and never lets us drop down into a life set on cruise control or a life ruled by remote control. Life with God is a dancing dream, full of flashes and last-minute exits and generally all the things we've said we'll never do. And with the surprises comes great hope.

from The Tempest by William Shakespeare

What's past is prologue.

from Homily XXVII On Numbers, by Origen (cited in Depression, A Stubborn Darkness, by Ed Welch)

"My soul has long been on pilgrimage" (Ps. 119:54). Understand, then, if you can, what the pilgrimages of the soul are, especially when it laments with groaning and grief that it has been on pilgrimage so long. We understand these pilgrimages only dully and darkly so long as the pilgrimage still lasts. But when the soul has returned to its rest, that is, to the homeland of paradise, it will be taught more truly and will understand more truly the meaning of what the pilgrimage was.

from Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

... I had undergone a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple -- or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity -- and that now I was left in my natural element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone; it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquility was no more. My world had, for some years, been Lowood; my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.

from The Path of Celtic Prayer, by Calvin Miller

Call it romantic nonsense if you will, but there are epiphany moments, in which new revelations seem to summon us from a contentment with who we are to new spiritual adventures. These epiphanies enable us to cast off our dull religious comforts in favor of a riskier pilgrimage.