Found this in an op shop and am loving it so can only imagine I will have to restrain myself from a public rendering of the entire tome… I’m not apologising for that… I think its too beautiful.
[p.24-25]
Through our thoughts and our human experiences, we long ago became aware of the strange properties which make the universe so like our flesh:
like the flesh it attracts us by the charm which lies in the mystery of its curves and folds and in the depths of its eyes,
like the flesh, it disintegrates and eludes us when submitted to our analyses or to our fallings off and in the process of its own perdurance;
as with the flesh, it can only be embraced in the endless reaching out to attain what lies beyond the confines of what has been given to us.
All of us, Lord, from the moment we are born feel within us this disturbing mixture of remoteness and nearness; and in our heritage of sorrow and hope, passed down to us through the ages, there is no yearning more desolate than that which makes us weep with vexation and desire as we stand in the midst of the Presence which hovers about us nameless and impalpable and is indwelling in all things.
Now, Lord, through the consecration of the world the luminosity and fragrance which suffuses the universe take on for me the lineaments of a body and a face – in you. What my mind glimpsed through its hesitant explorations, what my heart craved with so little expectation of fulfillment, you now magnificently unfold for me: the fact that your creatures are not merely linked together in solidarity that none can exist unless all the rest surround it, but that all are so dependent on a single central reality that a true life, borne in common by them all, gives them ultimately their consistence and their unity.
Shatter, my God, through the daring of your revelation the childishly timid outlook that can conceive of nothing greater or more vital in the world than the pitiable perfection of our human organism.
itellyouarise 