Beloved Denver Quotes

To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay. The "better life" she believed she and Denver were living was simply not that other one.

Denver picked at her fingernails. ‘If it’s still there, waiting, that must mean that nothing ever dies.’ Sethe looked right in Denver’s face. ‘Nothing ever does,’ she said.

No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you. How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free. DENVER’S SECRETS were sweet.

[...] then there is still more that Paul D could tell me and my brain would go right ahead and take it and never say, No thank you. I don't want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do: worry, for example, about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love. But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.

Sethe, if I’m here with you, with Denver, you can go anywhere you want. Jump, if you want to, ’cause I’ll catch you, girl. I’ll catch you ’fore you fall. Go as far inside as you need to, I’ll hold your ankles. Make sure you get back out. I’m not saying this because I need a place to stay. That’s the last thing I need. I told you, I’m a walking man, but I been heading in this direction for seven years. Walking all around this place. Upstate, downstate, east, west; I been in territory ain’t got no name, never staying nowhere long. But when I got here and sat out there on the porch, waiting for you, well, I knew it wasn’t the place I was heading toward; it was you. We can make a life, girl. A life.

And she did. Sitting there holding a small white tooth in the palm of her smooth smooth hand. Cried the way she wanted to when turtles came out of the water, one behind the other, right after the blood-red bird disappeared back into the leaves. The way she wanted to when Sethe went to him standing in the tub under the stairs. With the tip of her tongue she touched the salt water that slid to the corner of her mouth and hoped Denver’s arm around her shoulders would keep them from falling apart.

We must conform to the truth, the pattern given to us by God in order to be true to our core.

Denver comenzó a comprender lo que estaba diciendo y no solo a oírlo: una esclava de 19 años -apenas un año mayor que ella- atravesando el monte tenebroso para llegar hasta sus hijos, que están muy lejos. Está cansada, tal vez asustada y quizá perdida. Pero sobre todo está sola y en su cuerpo lleva otro bebé en el que también tiene que pensar. Seguida por perros, acaso; por armas, probablemente y, sin duda alguna, por dientes musgosos. En la oscuridad no tiene miedo porque es del color de la noche, pero a la luz del día cada sonido hecho un disparo o la pisada amortiguada de un perseguidor.

•   Solitary setting in the forest, suggesting Eden        •   Contact between him and Deity        •   A conversation between God and man        •   Reference to animal sacrifice        •   A reminder of eternal life and the joy of the saints        •   Bestowal of a new name The

•   Solitary setting        •   Contact with Deity        •   An embrace between God and man        •   Reference to his sinews and loins        •   Bestowal of a new name The

Enos is on a quest. He tells us what his quest involves. He is seeking after “eternal life, and the joy of the saints.” Enos

As Enos succeeds in aligning the things of heaven with the things of earth, the veil dividing these two moves apart. In response to his petition “there came a voice unto me, saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed.” Enos’ wrestle has succeeded. He has come to the veil hiding the pavilion of God, knocked in the proper way, and been admitted. He

These blind guides were unable to see who it was speaking to them. Such is the irony frequently apparent when the religious interact with the Lord’s chosen. James

1st key: Knowledge is the power of salvation. 2nd key: Make your calling and election sure. 3rd key: It is one thing to be on the mount and hear the excellent voice, etc., and another to hear the voice declare to you, You have a part and lot in that kingdom.” (TPJS.)

Meekness means a person voluntarily restrains themselves to exercise the absolute minimum control or authority over others.

We are unworthy. We need fixing. He repairs us so as to make it possible for us to receive an audience with Him.

He gives freely. But unless we are quiet enough, open enough, and prayerful enough to be apart, to be alone, to be in solemn, careful and ponderous thought, we will never receive what is freely given to all.

When organized into separate personalities, the intelligence changes from the singular to the plural. With this change comes creation (or organization) and as a result, mankind came into being. Joseph further reveals that in order to exist we had to have the freedom to choose. Without that freedom we would not exist at all. We would still be singular, uncreated and without an existence. “All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.” (D&C 93: 30, emphasis added.) There is no existence unless we are free (and able) to choose for ourselves. Our

From this second estate we all gain faith in our separate existence. Some of us will go on to develop faith sufficient to finally become self-existent beings. That is, some few will develop the faith necessary to do as all the gods have done before and to exist in our own right, under the power of our own faith, through the grace shown us by God. Without

Self-existence flows from conforming to the purity of holiness to which all gods conform. If we are unholy, we are unworthy. We cannot contradict the light from which we originated. The great Plan of Happiness, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the commandments, the rites, the ordinances of God (whatever terms you use to describe them) are all designed to teach us the way to conform to the perfect faith and grow in light until the perfect day. They are the path which has been taken by all of the gods.

It is not the importance of the position held by a man, nor the wealth he accumulates, nor the political power held, nor the religious position he attains during his life which makes a life memorable. It is the words of truth,

the testimony of Christ, which persist and make a life significant. It is fidelity to Christ and teaching of Him which makes any of us significant. The

In addition to describing the ancient practices of an apostate people, Enos must have had a prophetic lesson in mind for us. What do we see today as a modern manifestation of these kinds of idolatrous practices? Are there those of us who seize upon traditions rather than upon the Gospel of Christ? Do some of us choose to follow a pattern laid down by traditions while ignoring requirements found in the Gospel? Do some of us practice strange dietary regimens as part of wrongly held religious beliefs? Are there those among us who believe martial arts are a higher form of religious pratice? Who can say Enos isn’t speaking to us about our behavior in leaving this record. It would be a mistake to think he wrote only to preserve strange practices from the past without a concern for us as the future audience of his record. It would also be a mistake not to reconsider your own beliefs and practices to see if Enos was warning you.

The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Rev. 19: 10.) We should encounter many prophets and prophetesses among any group of believers who claim to be Saints. When we do not, it is likely because our claims to sainthood have not been mirrored by living the life of a Saint. Enos

None of us is absolutely captive by our times. We are all free to receive everything God offers. It does not matter if your teachers, your friends, or your culture all fail to live up to the conditions which allow God to reveal Himself to them. Each one of us is still free to walk the path back to the presence of God, just as Enos did. For

Order can often be imposed by using fear, but exaltation springs from love. What motivates you? Enos

These conditions are universal. Reputation, social standing, popularity and success must be burnt on the altar as a sacrifice before any person can learn they have eternal life. Since our lives are going to be lost anyway - and all the world has to offer will be meaningless - the trade is illusory. We are asked to give up what has never been ours to keep. This

This misery is the natural result of disappointment in choosing the world over eternal life.

We cannot find truth apart from Christ. Therefore, if you intend to preach of truth you are inevitably drawn to “the truth which is in Christ.” All truth, as all light, originates from Christ.72

It was through this sacrifice, and this only, that God has ordained that men should enjoy eternal life; and it is through the medium of the sacrifice of all earthly things that men do actually know that they are doing the things that are well pleasing in the sight of God. When a man has offered in sacrifice all that he has for the truth’s sake, not even withholding his life, and believing before God that he has been called to make this sacrifice because he seeks to do his will, he does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept his sacrifice and offering, and that he has not, nor will not seek his face in vain. Under these circumstances, then, he can obtain the faith necessary for him to lay hold on eternal life. 8.

[W]hen the Church lost revelation it had to turn to another source for guidance and so threw itself into the arms of the established schools of learning. The schoolmen, as one of them expresses it, took over the office and function once belonging to the prophets and once in power guarded their authority with jealous care, quickly and violently suppressing any suggestion of a recurrent inspiration.…By its very nature the university is the rival of the Church; its historic mission has been to supply the guiding light which passed away with the loss of revelation, and it can make no concessions to its absolute authority without forfeiting that authority.

Meekness does not vaunt itself, and does not seek to avoid criticism. The meek never confuse their personal pride with the Lord’s will or work.

They never believe themselves to be more than a poor instrument in the hands of an Almighty God.

And carnival or no carnival, Denver preferred the venomous baby to him any day.

In that bower, closed off from the hurt of the hurt world, Denver’s imagination produced its own hunger and its own food, which she badly needed because loneliness wore her out. Wore her out. Veiled and protected by the live green walls, she felt ripe and clear, and salvation was as easy as a wish.