Dear Companion of my day, You are the Holy Mystery I surrender to when I close my eyes. I give You myself, my flaws, the mistakes, the petty self-congratulations. I give You my dear ones: my fondest hopes for them, my worries, and my dark thoughts regarding them. Take my well-constructed separation from me. Hold me in Your truth.
This day is already past. I surrender it. When I think about tomorrow, I surrender it too. Keep me this night. With You and in You I can trust not knowing anything. I can trust incompleteness as a way. Dark with the darkness, silent with the silence, help me dare to be that empty one -- futureless, desireless -- who breathes Your name even in sleep.
~ from Gunilla Norris in CHANGING LIGHT by J. Ruth Gendler thanks to Gay Grissom
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain... they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits along with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
To melt and be like a running brook
That sings its melody to the night.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart
And give thanks for another day of loving.
And in the sweetness of friendship
let there be laughter
and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things
the heart finds its morning
and is refreshed.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love . . . Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
. . . Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech . . . beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness, And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today's dream. And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
