Riaan en Kari Doorduin: Sinterklaas

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." -Albert Einstein

"He who cannot draw on 3000 years is living from hand to mouth." -Goethe

"When confronted with a work of art, we have to open our minds to allow it to carry us away. If we seek to relate intimately to another person, we have to be prepared to make ourselves vulnerable.." - Karen Armstrong

I wanted to live everywhere and smell, taste, feel everything. I wanted to go to sea, explore unknown lands, take off in a space rocket, dine only at all-you-can-eat restaurants, be the last to leave parties. What I couldn’t acknowledge then, and hardly now, is that life just isn’t like that for most of us. The quicksands of suburbia were lurking at every step, and those who broke on through to the sunlit uplands couldn’t find their way back, even when the poverty and lack of enthusiasm for climbing means they wanted to come back. It was the dream of an immature young man, which is exactly what I was.
My eyes would be drawn inevitably to the low ridge of purple hills that ringed the east side of Manchester. The weight of the city; of all those people moving on their tiny arcs across its concrete streets, would be lifted for a moment. That place, over there in those hills, was somewhere I could feel alive, where the moment of release could give me the clarity to understand unconsciously that poetry, prophecy, and religion are all one.

- Ed Douglas: Voices from the Summit, 2000