A Day

“How strange, how strange it is,” she said, “that I am living and yet dead.”












She cried tears of flame
They licked down her face
"Come rest your head on my heart" she said.
And what soft, sweet burning He found there,
What soft, sweet burning in that wild thing that He had come to love.

So strange! Today and yesterday I felt such incredible inner turmoil that I became nauseous. During such times I only wait for it to pass and pray because I now know that it is only a time of desolation calling me to turn toward Him in a deeper way than before.
Mass has been so very difficult lately. As if an impenetrable veil lies between me and the Eucharist which I must ignore at every moment because no matter what I feel, I cannot be denied the pleasure of partake in praising Him!
My hair has been falling out for weeks and weeks (probably because of my hypoactive thyroid).
So strange! "Strange as it seems there's been a run of crazy dreams..."

There is an ever-deepening longing and thirst within me.

The heart
It breaks
and overflows
all at once
the longing to love
to be loved
which is greater?
unknowing tugs
first one way, and then the other,
until I am pulled so completely
that the strings of my heart
aren't bouncy or loose anymore,
but taut like a bowstring
and then what sweet, beautiful notes escape!


Yes, my heart is pulled taut. And yet loose too.
The smoky fog of mystery!!! Where will life go? Where shall He take me?
Which is more frightening? To not know? Or to know?
The footloose wanderlust to seize love, to run into the arms of life, of the world!
The enticing peace of self-gift of prayer and raw beauty in the convent!
Yes, the terrifying choice of joy shall lie before me soon and very soon.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and
danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. ~ Tolstoy

We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it’s time to break out necks for home.

There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning, the heart’s slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.

ANNIE DILLARD,

HOLY THE FIRM