Homilies, mostly

No labor is small when the laborer is great. A master builder knows that every stone he places is the cornerstone, if he will treat it as such. It is the spirit in which he receives it, according to the measure of his gratitude, which determines its worth. Therefore, he looks inward, to his own capacity for receptiveness, and not askance, at what is offered outwardly.

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The anxious, the restless, the overworked, the grief-stricken, the wrathful, the stumbling, -- they all do more to advance than to hinder your work, Lord. The more they fuss, the more evident is your peace; for the backwardness of their ways cannot long be hidden. They are a reproach to themselves and a veiled psalm in praise and supplication to you. They prove their ignorance, their lack of experience of your grace, just as surely as the saints prove their knowledge of, and intimacy with, your will. They can do nothing against the truth which is not, ultimately, for it.

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God cannot deny you that which you do not seek. If you train your will to desire only that which is given, that which occurs from moment to moment, then you will live in the fullness of his peace and joy. You will possess all that you desire, for you desire only that which you possess, and cease to desire it the instant you no longer possess it. How is this accomplished? It is not by attaching one's desire to objects or circumstances, but to the will of God as revealed by fate. Abandonment to fate is submission to the will of God, since it is God's will for us that we become receptive to all that is. Not what is done, but what is permitted, lights the way. Fate acts, and whatever resists is of the devil, but the will of God is to allow and, by allowing, to go its own way. It is because we do not rebel against the natural course of events that we are positioned to transcend the world altogether.

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Faith sees more order in chaos than doubt sees in order.

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I am for the idlers, the fantasists. Let them make dreams, and not troubles. Let them make dreams, and not fortunes won at the expense of unfortunates. Let them do nothing and be insensible to all encouragements toward industry. If it is a crime, it is a negligible one, compared to the crimes hard-working men commit daily in a bid to do "their duty". In such a world as we have made, the unemployed sluggards we see may be among the most harmless creatures we know. They take what is given (hardly more than what they need), and put to use those things which have already been amassed and largely neglected. Who deserves less blame than they do, for the collapse of the environment and the exploitation of third-world countries; the enslaving of peoples for the purpose of perpetuating an insane paradigm of blind, materialistic extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and ultimate wasting of untold natural resources? And who is better placed to develop a sensitivity to the divine call, -- to a life of reflection, entirely answerable to, and free to obey, the promptings of an inward spirit? I have always been drawn to these "untouchables", and have found the most priceless treasures drifting in the gutters. I suppose, had they not been discarded like trash, someone would have snatched them up long ago, and I would never have discovered their worth.