Light On Dark Water

…In the meantime, the only thing that I can see that will help you is to learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, to be kind to yourself, by looking outwards to God, by accepting the fact that you are infinitely loved by Infinite Love, and that if you will only cease to build up notions of the perfection you demand of yourself, and lay your soul open to that love, you will cease to fear, and you will cease to be exhausted as soon as you stop fighting one part of yourself with another. I can only pray for you and beg you to turn your face to this immense love and power and cast all your fear on to it. You should try to realize that in you is the power, strength and love of Christ, that you can carry all that darkness and not go under, if you realize that it isn't you but He who will carry it; also, if you will try to realize that in you Christ lives His risen life, that He has already overcome death–died and risen from death and overcome it; that it is the Risen Christ, who has already defeated death, who lives in you. If you will only realize that, you will soon be convinced that you will also come right up through the darkness into the light. One can't think of God at all without thinking of light; at least I can't… Try to believe that life is in you like a seed, pushing, striving, struggling up to light. Instead of fighting yourself, let this seed of supernatural life fight its way out through darkness, just as an ordinary seed fights up through the darkness and heaviness of the hard, frozen earth. First it has to sharpen its own green blade in the night and cut through the ground, or pierce the wood if it is a leaf on the tree, but suddenly it breaks into flower or leaf; and when it does that, it does not see its own beauty–the world outside it sees that; what it sees is the glorious sun that drew it up out of the darkness. Light. So too it will be with you; your soul, your mind will break into flower and you will find it is flowering in the midst of light, the light of Truth and Beauty and Life.

I enclose a good translation of the Veni, Sancte Spiritus. Try to say it–read it–will it.

God bless you.

I'm sorry I can't write a decent letter, but I am snowed under with people and work.

My love, and have no fear, for all will be well.

–Caryll Houselander, Letters

This is one of a series of letters described as "To a Young Friend Who Married and Settled Abroad."

After returning to work on Wednesday at the end of the Christmas-New Year break, I was very busy and chose the selections for the past three days pretty hastily. Today I had a bit of free time and sat down with the book intending to spend as much time as needed to find a good quotation. But it opened at this page, and I thought I would hardly do better. And this was the first of the letters that I've wanted to quote in full. Now to go back to the beginning and read the book through.