Obsessive passion

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You now seemed to spurn your friends, you lost consciousness of them. Your love was everything. You sat at your desk waiting for the allotted time to end so that you could run to be with your love. The thought of your happiness constricted your breath. Then like a bell ringing slowly came the hour that had been designated and you rushed to your meeting, stood waiting for the door to open. It was the hour when things were still visible but without sun, everything outlined and a little bit dark. There were dry crackling branches against the walls, and shadows in the chalk powder alcoves. Where was your love? What could you do to get close to your love and give yourself away completely, forever? You climbed into the bus. All the passengers were drab and sad.

Your love was here, riding in the bus (as he’d been at the desk before), but you couldn’t just take a seat next to him, he wasn’t simply sitting in one of the seats. It wasn’t that simple! Your love, your God, was more widespread than a single seat or a single hour.

*

One certain fact: every gesture of love that is given to God or received from God has this in common, that it has some relation to the poor. Sometimes in America, it is hard to tell who is poor, the poverty can be hidden behind money, of all things, but there it is, and God is not far away. After all, who exactly is poor, if not you yourself?

*

There are many more poor than the poor themselves realize, no, don’t say they, say we. Why hide? A refusal to be poor is a hindrance to love.

What is wealth but a distraction?

*

It is on the bus that you first betray your love – by not in fact loving, not sharing it somehow – for instance, in this space where all the poor are riding home, sullen and disconsolate. You know what you are supposed to do but you don’t do it. You are worn down by sharing, you want to keep it all. So you frown at the other passengers or ignore them. The love ebbs away at the exact moment when you think you are storing it. And it is a shock how poor you yourself will suddenly feel.

No longer abundant but scarce.

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“Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not; he passeth on also, but I perceive him not.” (Job 9:11, KJV)

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