C.S. Lewis

Ever since I was a very little girl, I have always been captivated and completely drawn in by C.S. Lewis's writing. His words speak directly to my soul... even his children's stories are geared for adults to read to thier children and find themselves getting more out of it than their kids. His wording is perfect and always beautiful- with a higher meaning. He spoke on many occasions to groups and societies on many different topics, and by reading snippets of them from books and lectures, I have been amazed by his depth and understanding of Life On a Grander Scale. I would've loved to have met him. His description of Aslan and all his power and glory still sits in the back of my head- and will for all time, I am sure... his writing is now a part of me. My favorite book of his of all time, The Horse and His Boy, has had the greatest impact on my life.
(To give you a little bit of background to this next quote, Shasta is the main character who escaped working for a fisherman as a slave, basically, and has been on a journey with a horse who is able to speak... the two have been separated, but he is riding through very dangerous areas in the mountains... )

"And being very tired and having nothing inside him, he felt so sorry for himself that the tears rolled down his cheeks. What put a stop to all this was a sudden fright. Shasta discovered that someone or somebody was walking beside him. It was pitch dark and he could see nothing. And the thing (or person) was going so quietly that he could hardly hear any footfalls. What he could hear was breathing. His invisible companion seemed to breathe on a very large scale, and Shasta got the impression that it was a very large creature. And he had come to notice this breathing so gradually that he had really no idea how long it had been there. It was a horrible shock."
"It darted into his mind that he had heard long ago that there were giants in these Northern countries. He bit his lip in terror. But now that he really had something to cry about, he stopped crying."
"The Thing (unless it was a Person) went on beside him so very quietly that Shasta began to hope he had only imagined it. But just as he was becoming quite sure of it, there suddenly came a deep, rich sigh out of the darkness beside him. That couldn't be imagination! Anyway, he had felt the hot breath of that sigh on his chilly left hand."
"If the horse had been any good-- or if he had known how to get any good out of the horse-- he would have risked everything on a break away and a wild gallop. But he knew he couldn't make that horse gallop. So he went on at a walking pace and the unseen companion walked and breathed beside him. At last he could bear it no longer."
"Who are you?" he said, scarcely above a whisper.
"One who has waited long for you to speak," said the Thing. Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep.
"Are you-- are you a giant?" asked Shasta.
"You might call me a giant," said the Large Voice. "But I am not like the creatures you call giants.
"I can't see you at all," said Shasta, after staring very hard. Then (for an even more terrible idea had come into his head) he said, almost in a scream, "You're not -- not something dead, are you? Oh please-- please do go away. What harm have I ever done you? Oh, I am the unluckiest person in the whole world."
Once more he felt the warm breath of the Thing on his hand and fact. "There," it said, "that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows."
Shasta was a little reassured by the breath: so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. And then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for thier lives; and of all their dangers in Tashbaan and his night among the Tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. And he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis. And also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat.
"I do not call you unfortunate," said the Large Voice.
"Don't you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?" said Shasta.
"There was only one lion," said the Voice.
"What on earth do you mean? I've just told you there were at least two the first night, and---"
"There was only one: but he was swift of foot."
"How do you know?"
"I was the lion." And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. "I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lionwho drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach Kind Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in whch you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.".......
..."Who are you?" asked Shasta.
"Myself," said the voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again "Myself," loud and clear and gay: and then the third time "Myself," whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.
Shasta was no longer afraid the Voice belonged to something that would eat him, nor that it was the voice of a ghost. But a new and different sort of trembling came over him. Yet he felt glad too. The mist was turing from black to grey and from grey to white. This must have begun to happen some time ago, but while he had been talking to the Thing he had not been noticing anything else. Now, the whiteness around him became a shining whiteness; his eyes began to blink. He knew the night was over at last. He could see the mane and ears and head of his horse quite easily now. A golden light fell on them from the left. He thought it was the sun. He turned and saw, pacing beside him, taller than the horse, a Lion. The horse did not seem to be afraid of it or else could not see it. It was from the Lion that the light came. No one ever saw anything more terrible or beautiful....But after one glance at the Lion's face he slipped out of the saddle and fell at its feet. He couldn't say anything but then he knew he didn't need to say anything.
The High King above all kings stooped towards him. Its mane, and some strange and solemn perfume that hung about the mane, was all around him. He lifted his face and thier eyes met. Then instantly the pale brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared. He was alone with the horse on a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing."
"Was it all a dream?" wondered Shasta. But it couldn't have been a dream for there in the grass before him he saw the deep, large print of the Lion's front right paw. It took one's breath away to think of the weight that could make a footprint like that. But there was something more remarkable than the size about it. As he looked at it, water had already filled the bottom of it. Soon is was full to the brim, and then overflowing, and a little stream was running downhill, past him, over the grass...."

This little excerpt is perfect in every aspect and very dear to me. There is so much symbolism wrapped up in each angle.. but even to read it as it is: as a children's fantasy, it still has great power through it's imagery.
From my first experience with death, not that I remember it, I have been watched over. There have been major tragedies in my life, personally, but, they are the building blocks of who I am today... I know I won't be complete until the day I die, and the things that I am going through now and in the future, will sculpture me into a whole person. All things in life have a purpose and a meaning. I don't believe things are coincidence. We learn things by failure and pain, and are able to have better insight and a clearer view of the world by those lessons. We own the knowledge when things 'happen' in life, and it is a part of us when we participate in pain.

It's not that the bad things that have happened in life are really tragedies.. they are more stepping stones to a destination-- but in ways that we cannot see. For example, we cannot see the 'armies' coming for us, but we do know that we need to get up in the middle of the night and run from the (visible) threat of 'jackals', which in turn we have escaped a bigger threat that could have ended our lives.