Everything faded -- beside
The light which bathed and warmed, the Presence
Your being had opened to. Where it shone,
Their life was, and abundantly; it touched
Your dullest task and the tasks were easy.
Joyful, absorbed,
You "'practiced the presence of God" as a Musician
Practices hour after hour his art:
"A stone before the carver,"
You "entered into yourself."
I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separated in my experience. I have had them or lost them together. I was not light myself, I knew that, but I bathed in it as an element which blindness had suddenly brought much closer. I could feel the light rising, spreading, giving form. Since it was not I who was making the light, since it came to me from the outside, it would never leave me. I was only a passageway, a vestibule for this brightness . The seeing eye was in me.