GRAVITY & GRACE

 "Attitude of supplication: I must necessarily turn to something other than myself since it is a question of being delivered from self.

Any attempt to gain this deliverance by means of my own energy would be like the efforts of a cow which pulls at its hobble and so falls into its knees. 

In making it one liberates a certain amount of energy in oneself by a violence which serves to degrade more energy. Compensation as in thermodynamics; a vicious circle from one can be delivered only from on high. 

The source of man's moral energy is outside him, like that of his physical energy (food, air, etc.). He generally finds it, and that is why he has the illusion--as on the physical plane--that his being carries the principle of its preservation within itself. Privation alone makes him feel his need. And, in the event of privation, he cannot help turning to anything whatever which is edible.

There is only one remedy for that: a chlorophyll conferring the faculty of feeding on light. 

Not to judge. All faults are the same. There is only one fault: incapacity to feed upon light, for where capacity to do this has been lost all faults are possible. 

'My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.'

There is no good apart from this capacity."

"At a certain moment, physical pain is lessened by projecting it into the universe, but the universe is impaired; the pain is more intense when it comes home again, but something in me does not suffer and remains in contact with a universe which is not impaired. Act in the same way with the passions. Make them come down like a deposit, collect them into a point and become detached from them. Especially, treat all sufferings in this way. Prevent them from having access to things."

...

"A beloved being who disappoints me. I have written to him. It is impossible that he should not reply by saying what I have said to myself in his name. 

Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt. 

To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God.

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness."

...

TO ACCEPT THE VOID

"Tradition teaches us as touching the gods and experience shows us as regards men that, by a necessity of nature, every being invariably exercises all the power of which it is capable' (Thucydides). Like a gas, the soul tends to fill the entire space which is given it. A gas which contracted leaving a vacuum--this would be contrary to the law of entropy. It is not so with the God of the Christians. He is a supernatural God, whereas Jehovah is a natural God. 

Not to exercise all the power at one's disposal is to endure the void. This is contrary to all the laws of nature. Grace alone can do it. 

Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where this is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.

The necessity for a reward, the need to receive the equivalent of what we give. But if, doing violence to this necessity, we leave a vacuum, as it were a suction of air is produced and a supernatural reward results. It does not come if we receive other wages: it is this vacuum which makes it come. 

It is the same with the remission of debts (and this applies not only to the harm which others have done us but to the good which we have done them). There again, we accept a void in ourselves. 

To accept a void in ourselves is supernatural. Where is the energy to be found for an act which has nothing to counterbalance it? The energy has to come from elsewhere. yet first there must be a tearing out, something desperate has to take place, the void must be created. Void: the dark night. 

Admiration, pity (most of all a mixture of the two) bring real energy. But this we must do without. 

A time has to be gone through without any reward, natural or supernatural. 

The world must be regarded as containing something of a void in order that it may have need of God. That presupposes evil. 

Admiration, pity (most of all a mixture of the two) bring real energy. But this we must do without. 

A time has to be gone through without any reward, natural or supernatural.

The world must be regarded as containing something of a void in order that tit may have need of God. That presupposes evil. 

To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death."