Spark of the Divine

“And the Lord told me, ‘Look into the eyes of all the other students in this class and see if you can find one face, one set of eyes, in whose visage you cannot see their divine parent, and that spark of divinity they brought with them.

“I looked in the eyes of every student in that class...I couldn’t find a one where I couldn’t still see, how ever dimmed by the world, the spark of their divine sonship or daughterhood....

“I walked the whole campus. I couldn’t find a soul in whose face I couldn’t see that stamp of divinity. Since that experience which was over 25 years ago, whenever I’m in a crowd...I look at faces, all over the world...I have yet to meet a face in whose eyes I can’t say I can see your Father is God. I can see that. If we believe verse 13 we will be different people and we will treat one another in different ways.”

S. Michael Wilcox "The Great Visions of the Pearl of Great Price"

Moses 1:13 And it came to pass that Moses looked upon Satan and said: Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten; and where is thy glory, that I should worship thee? 

"The load, or weight, or burden, of my neighbour's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship....

"There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal, Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit....This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."

C.S. Lewis "The Weight of Glory"