Nothing Counts Except Love
One thing has suddenly hit me--that nothing counts except love; that a solitude that is not simply the wide-openness of love and freedom is nothing. Love and solitude are the one ground of true maturity and freedom. Solitude that is just solitude and nothing else (i.e., excludes everything else but solitude) is worthless. True solitude embraces everything, for it is the fullness of love that rejects nothing and no one, and is open to All in All.
After several days of rain the sky is clearing. Afternoons at the hermitage become once again possible. I walked a bit in the woods, under the pines, and again plan work, study, ideas, not to affirm myself but to give to others. Anything I have that is good is worth sharing. What is not worth sharing is not worth bothering about. What is "mine" is tolerated only insofar as I am willing to share it with everybody.
I see this as ambiguous though. It needs qualification.
I have got to be faithful, detached, obedient, concerned not only for my own life as I want to live it, but for God's will, which remains to be realized in and through me. That is all.
April 14, 1966, VI.40
Today's entry is a tall order, but a true one.
ReplyDeleteOn April 13, 2011, I was given a tall order, a Season of Silence. A year has come and gone, with spotty performance in those first few months, but throughout the solitude, love endures.