#406 On This Flag of Hope

I walk through Life like a Pierre Bezukhov
In search of Truth, I grope in the darkness
I ask myself if all this is enough
Each step a denial against the sadness
Through tears I vainly plant this flag of hope
That God’s own Mercy gives me will to cope.

#401 On the Fourth Day of Ramadan

I give of this, to You, my abstinence
From food, from drink, from haughty vanity
To turn to You in sober penitence
To reach beyond to Your infinity
Tonight I humbly seek your plenteous Grace
My poor soul dares not suffer your efface.

On the Test of Ramadan

In hunger and in thirst are we tested
In solidarity with those deprived
To have our baser natures now bested
This glorious trial for us has He contrived
   In Ramadan against ourselves prevail
   To win His favour in this tearful vale. 

On The Budding Grove

Every Gilberte or Albértine
Who makes her way into our heart
At that one moment in our Life
Is a witness to who we were
And who we could become
And who we eventually come to be.

On Simplicity

I want to live with my eyes wide open 
Not hiding in shame or cowering in guilt 
Like swans basking in a lush green garden 
These simple joys I'll savour to the hilt.

On Tantrums

It took me these many years 
living in this world like a lost stranger 
to finally learn

That so much of what you get out of this life 
is about how much you badly want it 

Every tantrum
is a grasping at treasure. 

On Thou

I was searching for Wonder
And Adventure
I sought Greatness in my Work
And in the adoration of Others
And when Work defeated me
I sought Healing in Others
And in Books, and in Words

It took these words to remind me
That the Greatness and the Healing
I was seeking
Was always here all along
In Thou, closer to me than my jugular vein
In Thou, the Lord of all the Worlds.