Another Choice

The aspiration to serve

The very first movement of this presence which rises out is of self-giving.

It is a movement that transcends time: it does not begin nor does it end anywhere.

It is a hymn, a dance, an offering every time beyond compare, which knows neither haste nor fear.

But this self-giving cannot be made where there remains the least duplicity, the least contradiction, the least apprehension.

For this nature can be a warrior, it can join a battle – against death and ignorance, this condition that wants to keep us prisoners and devour the earth and the Lord’s path.

***

Human existence, the life of a human being, human condition, such as they still are, do not suffice for this nature.

Even the richest, the most accomplished and refined and the most varied human experience, still seems poor and superficial to its sense.

There is only, at times, here or there, a particular kind of distress, a certain calling cry, or a quality of unreasoned but wholesome temerity, that seem real to it – as if arisen from this vibrant plenitude which is to come. And as regards to our relational possibilities, this nature is not at all moralistic: thus, it is not so much our urge for sexuality – legitimate in many ways – that can repel it, as it is our propensity to self-serving behaviors, inertia and the death of meaning, our inability to maintain a state of wakefulness and self-giving and, often enough, our addiction to a voracity for which nothing else counts but the taking of its satisfaction.

It is the weight of our egoism – this momentary contraction on the surface of a vast subconscience.

***

129