A joyous end

eucatastrophe-a seeming disaster with a joyous end.

This word was coined by J.R.R. Tolkien; it will go before halcyon and serendipity on my list of favorite words.

(It is the perfect word, I think, to describe Our Lord's passion and death. "And I, if I be raised up, will draw all things to Me." Because of His seeming disaster, it is now possible for us all to live happily ever after. Really.)

Joy beyond

"The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially "escapist," nor "fugitive." In its fairy-tale - or otherworld - setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief."

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Mon secret

"Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

("Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.")

--Le Petit Prince de Antoine de Saint-Exupery