« Comes that one for whom only counts to know. And he says to you: "Why die for a temple which is but a sum of stones?" And you have nothing to answer him. And you refuse to die, therefore to love, and you call this refusal the exercise of intelligence when you are eating your most precious asset: the meaning of things.
Because what you agree to die for is the only thing you can live for.
(...) This face that appeared to you, irony will destroy it by seeking to show what it is made of. How would you answer that there is something else here, since this something else is for your mind and not for your eyes?
(...) The men having observed that it is fertile to demonstrate the object in order to acquire knowledge, having noted of this method the lightning effectiveness, ruined their inheritance. For what is true of matter becomes false for the spirit. »
« God clearly reveal His absence when He withdraws. For the sailor He is the meaning of the sea, and for the bridegroom the meaning of love. But there are times when the sailor wonders: "Why the sea?" And the bridegroom: "Why love?" And they occupy themselves in boredom. Nothing is missing except the divine knot that ties things together. And they miss everything.
However beautiful the poem may be, it cannot feed you for all the days… Nor can my sentinel who goes to and fro be fervent day and night to the empire. The divine knot that binds things is often undone. Go see the sculptor. He is sad today. He nods his head in front of his marble. "Why, he said to himself, this nose, this chin…" because he no longer sees the capture.
Your life is suspended when these eclipses of the heart come to you. Around you nothing has changed and everything has changed within you. You see things and you say to yourself: "What have I got to do with all this mess?" I am not asking you to understand or to feel in every moment, knowing only too well that the most drunken love is made up of so many interior deserts. And in front of the beloved herself you ask yourself: "Her forehead is a forehead. How can I love it? She said this nonsense here. She made this misstep here…". She's sleepy and be decomposed. She can't feed you, and soon you think you hate her.
The sense of God will come back to you if you are a priest, the sense of love will come back to you if you are a lover. Be faithful, clean your house even though it seems abandoned, you don't know the time of the visit. That's why I'm constructing you like this through dull hours of study so that the poem, by some miracle, can set you on fire. For there is no gift that you have not prepared, the visitation does not come if there is no house built to receive it.
It is by striving to love without loving, to believe without believing, and to be faithful when there is no longer anyone to be faithful to, that you prepare illumination within yourself; it will come to you as a reward and a gift of love.
Sentinel, I don't know where your empire stops when God gives you clarity of soul. And it doesn't matter to me that at other times you are like someone who dreams of soup while grumbling about your chore.
Lies to you those who deny their hours of drought, having understood nothing. And they make you doubt yourself because, to hear them affirm their fervor, you believe in their permanence.
I say soul what of you communicates with these sets which are divine knots which tie things together and laugh at the walls.
To love is to recognize the face read through things.
Love is only knowledge of the gods. When the domain, the sculpture, the empire, the woman or God are given to you for a moment to grasp in their unity, I say love this window which has just opened in you. And I say death of your love if it is nothing more for you than assembly and countable pieces.
However, what is delivered to you through the senses has not changed...
You don't just have to look to see.
There is no idle walker to whom it is given to see. The assemblage, which alone shows itself, is nothing.
I speak truth only that which exalts you. If you resonate with such a sculpture, only then will you recognize that it is beautiful.
« Where does it come from that wealth does not enrich me? » they lament and they calculate that it is appropriate only to increase it because it was not sufficient. And they appropriate some others, which encumber them even more. And here they are cruel in their irreparable boredom. Because they don't know that they are looking for something else because they haven't met him.
The desire to enumerate everything makes you attach yourself to the materials and not to the face that they compose and that it is important to recognize first. It necessarily follows that you cling first to life as to the piling up of days, whereas if the temple is pure of lines, it would be foolish to regret that it did not assemble more stones.
So don't count me, to dazzle me, the number of stones in your house, the pastures in your domain, or even the memories of your loves. I want to know for what, more durable than yourself, your existence has been exchanged. »
