Know

Waiting for letters that don’t come,
Perhaps the mail is slow,
Perhaps they have not yet been sent,
Perhaps they have not yet been written,
Or even thought of.

Is it not foolish to expect what is not?
What will not, presumably, be?
Ah, presumably. You mock me.
Much better it would be that hope died
than that hope lived on only to cripple its host.

God, what creatures are we?
Creatures that want and long?
How very uncomfortable,
How very inconvenient.

It is one thing to want what is good,
And grief to have the good denied.

It is another to want what is bad,
And horror to have it supplied.

And to want a thing,
A thing glistening
That perhaps
Is gloriously good,
Or that perhaps
Is desperately bad
Is worst of all.

But you are good,
You are the ultimate good,
Everything good comes from you.

In my core,
In the center of my soul,
In the essence of my being,
I know that I long for you.

And in my heart,
In my emotions,
In my passions,
I know that there too,
I long for you.

And I know that I know that I know,
And I know that I don’t know at all.
And I know that you are patient with me,
And I know that you are good.

Oh my God,
MY GOD,
Dear God,
God who is mine,
Am I yours?
Are you mine?

Such conflicts of emotion,
Sort them, sort them, sort them.

You who give life in the morning,
And sleep to the weary at night,
You who sustain by the Word,
Who carry the universe in might.

And you, who have known me forever,
Will you not help me know you?
Not many years have I,
To learn before learning anew.

Enoch walked with you,
Is it wrong that I am jealous?
Jealous for what is available to me,
Jealous that he found a way,
Or that you found him,
When I cannot seem to keep on the way for very long.
Keep me Lord.

I do not understand myself
The wiseman paints a picture of the self that is so complex,
Only you could know it truly.

How strange!
To not know all of oneself,
To know only a fragment of what is one’s being!
I know more than most,
More than any other,
But the Other knows more than I.
Infinitely more.