following the movement of life

a little longer essay
at SlowSonoma.com
that includes this:

quote
is one of many brilliant quotes
that could be "shared" from ,
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's
New Translation of War and Peace

it's from a dream
Pierre, a central character,
who starts the book as a befudled
and "absent minded and ridiculous man,"
and ends the book, still a bit absent minded and
ridiculous, but full of wisdom

in the dream
a voice speaks to him
and says:

" ' Life is everything.
Life is God.
Everything shifts and moves, and this movement is God.
And while there is life, there is delight
in the self-awareness of the divinity.
To love life is to love God.
The hardest and most blessed thing is to love this life
in one's suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering.' "

Page 1064.
you've been through a lot
by the time you get there.
Pierre is suffering
and growing hugely
when he has this dream.

Hint, for Pierre,
though not for everyone,
the book has a "happy ending."