[Sometimes I think that God has nothing to do with me]

Sometimes I think that God has nothing to do with me, that the desert in which I live is not inhabited by Him at all. Yet I call this world of things and events and people as clear to me as to any man, a desert, roughly because it is not Him. The suffering at the centre of my soul is there precisely because I do not find Him in any created thing, and He does not choose to lift up my helplessness and bring me to Himself.

Sometimes, though, I am in mind of his being obviously present in every venture of my life, as its core of mercy. . . . To be near to God is mainly anguish, this God I cannot [find?] in deserts. Yet at the bottom of my heart . . . I believe I prefer that anguish to anything else. And I believe that all men, simply because they are men, are the same in this.

1972? (672)