From my journal for July 11, 1996. I’m visiting my friend Randi in the southern part of New Hampshire.
It occurred to me, looking at Randi’s beautiful mezuzah by her door, that I would like to make such a thing for the doors of my house, inscribed with words of blessing. I’ve been trying to think what would be the right words. Cousin Mary’s three prayers: Lord have mercy, Thee I adore, into Thy hands. They seem more possible now, since I’ve had that vision of the universal process that created galaxies, and the song of the thrush, and people like Dana, Lynelle, Randi — a universe that’s struggling to create — well perhaps not struggling — a universe that is creating more complexity, beauty, diversity, compassion through experiences like mine. I am one of the ways the universe learns how to do this. Therefore: Universal Process have mercy on my frailties. I am in awe of your enormously complex beauty. I offer myself to this process.
Cousin Mary is a character in the Elizabeth Goudge novel The Scent of Water. “I offer myself to this process” is a mantra given to us at Kripalu. I found it very useful for many years when I could not say “Thy will be done” because my view of god was so negative and judgmental.
I think the lines from Job that I love so much: “Canst thou bind the sweet influence of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion?“ Thou who made the Pleiades, and the stars of Orion, Thou who made the laws of gravity and of plasma physics, Thou who art so huge that my littleness is like a grain of sand on the floor of the ocean, and yet Thou who art so complex, who has created my complexity as mirror to your own — how can I fail to be astonished at my own amazing complexity, most of which is as far beyond my control as the movements of the Pleiades.
And here’s Paul, the blind writer, more comfortable at night because he needed the calm and quiet for the deeper concentration called for by his way of working. “The mysterious power that commanded men appeared to him to ask of them only obedience and the maximum of effort, and to remain curiously indifferent as to results.”
Paul is another character in The Scent of Water.