Try it: believe in something until it happens.

after the time comes and goes, i find i will still believe
for the faith is the mere persistence of the spirit within you
and yet i know when it comes to pass, i will scarce believe it

Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky

– The Who

Giorgio de Chirico: The Temple in the Room

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It is a serious thought that the disobedience of the men he had set free from blindness and leprosy should be able to hamper him in his work for his father. But his best friends, his lovers did the same. That he should be crucified was a horror to them; they would have made him a king, and ruined his father’s work. He preferred the cruelty of his enemies to the kindness of his friends. The former with evil intent wrought his father’s will; the latter with good intent would have frustrated it.

In a dream, she says to me, “Have I told you you’re wonderful, today?” But it is just a dream. When I am in my right mind, I am alone, and she is nowhere near. It is of mine, though, to dream that dream; this I have felt in my bones. Somewhere above, there was a command to me: “Try it: believe in something until it comes true.” And it was no easy thing that was laid out before me. At times I felt the doubt slipping in, the despair at the edges of my conscience. Perhaps I buckled at the weight of the uncertainty, once or twice. But I have kept the faith, as best I could, and I believe it still. The dream reminds me just of what I hope for, tells me this is no mere wish fantasy. It has been a long time I have held this, though only in my own eyes; in the eye of destiny, it has only been a blink since this was given to me. So what I must learn from this, may I learn. And keep on.

I believe in prophecy. And I also believe in science. Those who believe the first but not the second, I truly do not know what to say to them: these are those who disbelieve Darwin, and ignore the evidence of true human intelligence. Not to say that human intelligence does not have limits, but there are some things that, despite “just being a theory”, make absolute sense. And then those who believe the second but not the first I can more empathize with, as I once was one of these. A late product of the Enlightenment, when it was high fashion to doubt anything that could not be rationally derived. But as Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. Enough has happened to me that for me not to believe in things of the spirit would be irrational. To any who do not believe, all I can think is that they merely have yet to be called. Not me, however. I was called, and I seek to reconcile the science and the sanctity. I don’t believe it to be a hopeless cause. One wonders, though, how to begin…

It’s love the whole of what exists: the rest is illusion.

hope is a blue gem chilled in whispers
faith the golden glow of tomorrow’s dawn
love is the poetry of the eternal void
in the dreaming, time lost its very meaning
in the dreaming, death dies every night
in the dreaming, i held your gaze forever

...the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
                – Walt Whitman

To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.
                – Allen Ginsberg

By your stumbling, the world is perfected.
                – Sri Aurobindo

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
                – Martin Luther King, Jr.

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
                – Augusten Burroughs

Still a little bit of your taste in my mouth
Still a little bit of you laced with my doubt
Still a little hard to say what’s going on

Still a little bit of your ghost your witness
Still a little bit of your face I haven’t kissed
You step a little closer each day
Still I can’t say what’s going on

– Damien Rice

Max Ernst: Oedipus Rex

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We all want love. It’s as simple as that. When we don’t get enough of it, we try to fill it with other things. Or worse, that we don’t realize that that is what we have always desired, and the things which we distract ourselves with acts as a barrier, a wall we erect around ourselves to protect us from what we in our heart of hearts needs. How sad is someone who has never known love? Perhaps I exaggerate, and it must be true that every human being feels the faintest traces of it, at least — no one is completely devoid of the experience. But one thinks that there is the converse, that there are some broken hearts that never seem to heal, that something opens the would afresh every while that it seems to have scabbed over. The pain is, however, a reminder that love is real. We don’t react to nothing. Maybe to hope against all hope, and to know what this experience is. Such rewards we think little of, thinking instead of what we lack.

The Holy Spirit is … born from Love and is of Love, all its treasures are of love, and if we are to believe our Gospels it is received by love and love only. I am aware that to talk of love vaguely like this is not much help. I know how difficult it is to die to pride and self-concern, to the cowardice of a spiritual apathy that dare not face itself for what it fears to know. I know how difficult it is to remember, and to act as though we knew, that only forgiveness has a Resurrection, resentment has not — all those things that are the great and tormenting enemies to Love and its gracious freedoms.

in the rush to know, in the onslaught of information
the dream sometimes deteriorates with the speed of the doing
to find destiny forms new plans from the ashes of the old

Time is a thief that steals itself.

This is what Paul learned: when you think you are strong, it is then that you are weak. For we tend to overestimate ourselves, I think, when things are going our way. And conversely, when things are falling apart, we feel as if we are the cause for all that goes wrong. We are strong when we think we are weak because in fact, we are handling the hurt somehow, managing the frustration, and it is this fact which actually makes us think we are about to break. The idea about these things is that it is mercy, both of them: that the world does not always pull out the rug from under us when we think we are strong; and that purpose lies behind all that goes wrong, such purpose sometimes not to be achieved in any other way. Of course, it is easier to count it joy when things go our way, but with the eyes of faith, may we learn to look through any pain, too. May we find our strength in our weakness.

At times I am tired. I have done too much, seen too much, heard too much. Too much that can’t be undone I have done with my own hands. Anything like a prize seems never to be in reach, always further along the path, sometimes not even the barest light at the end of a long, long tunnel. I know the Lord has equipped me in full for all that comes my way, but we are human, we are weak. And even He had His moment where He felt that the Father had abandoned Him. But as I wonder about what it would mean to give up, it comes to me that I have been doing it the right way, if I feel like this. I have been pressing forward with enough of my energy if I feel spent of it. There is hope in the hopelessness, another instance where there is treasure to be had in whatever moment you inhabit. And really, giving up is not what I have become, not anymore: what now the Lord has made of me, through these years where He has been my guide.