Only

Real conversion is centred on God: it results from a deeper turning towards Him rather than a closer inspection of ourselves. … Conversion, at its root, is not the action performed but the source of that action, the experience of being loved.

Dyckman & Carroll, Inviting the Mystic, Supporting the Prophet, 9

I am faced with this now; this is what I am shying away from:

One can pretend in the solitude of an afternoon walk, but the night destroys all pretences: one is reduced to nothing and compelled to begin laboriously the long return to truth.

A Year with Thomas Merton, 357

I am “reduced to nothing,” and attempts at “a closer introspection” of myself lead nowhere. All I am able to do, the only truth available, is “a deeper turning towards” You. In the dark, in the solitude, in the emptiness, there is no meaning to be found, no wrack left behind to cling to. Only, I can reach out to You. Rather than trying to hold on to myself, or to another, or to some external object of attention – the radio, a book – I can hold on to You only. Or, not to hold on, but to reverse the image and the relationship: to let go into the Universe, like a leaf letting go in the autumn wind, “a feather on the breath of God,” a diatom in the great ocean of night

—this terrifying, only, security.

2 thoughts on “Only

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