Not my words...

These preciously convicting words from St. Augustine have weighed on my soul for many years... Just thought I would share them:


Without You I am Nothing

I call upon you, my God, my mercy, who made me, and did not forget me, although I forgot you. I call you into my soul, which you prepare to accept you by the longing that you breathe into it. Do you desert me now when i call upon you, for before I called upon you, you went ahead and helped me, and repeatedly you urged me on by many different words, so that from afar I would hear you, and be converted, and call upon you as you called to me. For you have wiped away all my evil deserts, O Lord, so as not to return them to these hands of mine, whereby I fell away from you, and you could restore them to your own hands, whereby you made me.

For before I was, you were, and I was nothing to which you could grant being. Yet, behold! I am, because of your goodness, which preceded all that you made me to be, and all out of which you made me. You did not need me, nor am I not such a good as you would put to use, O my Lord and my God. I am not such as would serve you in such wise that would would not tire out, so to speak, from activity, or that your strength would be less for the lack of my services. Nor am I such as to cultivate you like a land that would be untilled unless I tilled it. I am such a one as may serve you and cultivate you, so that because of you it may be well with me, for from you comes the fact that I am one with whom it may be well.

A recent realization

We speak of boundaries, boundaries –Boundaries between family members, co-workers, friends…Lovers, and the dangers of emotional incest. We study the distance that exists between two people that allows for conversation and the eternal struggle for equal parts autonomy and intimacy. Distance, Distance, Distance. Repulsive required distance. This quasi-philosophy is overtaking my psyche. So much so that it’s now being applied to—You, the only You that matters. I’ve placed a boundary around the limit you have to impact my soul. Curse these boundaries! Without them I’m to believe it’s pathology. But with them it’s the origin of the deepest, strongest cancer my soul’s reality can ever know.