Longings of the Heart

I just read a number of beautiful eulogies from former students of Alan Segal and had to share one of the quotes from his book, "Life After Death".

 "Religion's imagining of our hereafter also seems to say the same - our 'immortal longings' are mirrors of what we find of value in our lives. They motivate our moral and artistic lives. Our longing itself deserves a robe and crown, nothing less. If humans can be, in Hamlet's words, 'in apprehension like a god,' do we not deserve his epitaph: 'flights of angels sing us to our rest'?" (p. 731).

I think this is a beautiful quote that resonates within my own heart about the "human value" of valuing and determining. These longing of value deserve a "robe and a crown"! His students described a man who talked of transcending oneself. He obviously found that he could do that through the students he left behind.  Alan must have been an artist in creating his scholarship of early Christian and Judaic communities and using classical literature to defend or support the "human element" of such literature.

After that , what more can be said?