March 14th, 2021

One day I arrived and saw that all my choices led me to this empty place; that I had believed a lie and it turned out that this is all there is. There is nothing else. My greatest fear had come true.  A fear I never really knew I had until then, or, most likely, had failed to recognize, suddenly realized itself right in front of me.  And the realization was terrible; terrible enough to rage and spit and slap the face of God and say, “He is worthy of death!” Terrible enough to beat my breast and throw silver at temples and call down curses and hang myself at the precipice.  It obliterated me.  But then after forty long days at sea and forty more years in the wilderness, I saw something.   In the darkness, though my eyes had been eaten by vultures I saw.  I heard something in the emptiness just before dawn.  And then all the darkness of sorrow that “this is all there is” broke like the sun into my greatest Joy.  And it is wonderful.  A friendly and familiar voice had spoken in the dim morning light:  “If this is all there is, then there is nowhere to go, and you can just stop.”  And I knew he meant stop everything; in a sense, stop being me.  And somehow in the stopping, I can stop being stopped.  And I can live again.  And this time, not by my thoughts or power or energy or will—which is only frustration; only a stopping of myself by myself—but by something, or rather someone else’s, my truest love and most faithful friend—which is truly going.
It is the difference between killing everything and killing God.  The difference between 
me killing God, and God dying for me.
The difference between nothing and everything.  It is exactly where God is.