One of the most pathetic things about us human beings is our
touching belief that there are times when the truth is not good
enough for us; that it can and must be improved upon. We have
to be utterly broken before we can realize that it is impossible
to better the truth. It is the truth that we deny which so tenderly
and forgivingly picks up the fragments and puts them together again.
There must come a winter for every seed. There must come that which protects and shields the seed toward spring, that which indeed gives its life and absorbs the hatred of winter for life, that mysterious essence which is the sacrificial aspect of life. It made the seed possible. It keeps the seed growing in the hidden ways of winter. It takes upon its heart the pangs of Christ-birth, the furor of all the Herods who represent that part of the race which bitterly had died, which had become death incarnate. She understood. He did not speak of such things. They must not be spoken within the seed. But every particle of it must know from within, in the silence.