Sweet Lamb of Heaven (76)

Let God leave us, Kay, if what you mean is constant company. Let God leave us! Let us grow up. Let us walk forward on our own. Because we need the silence of the holy: we need the sacred and equally we need its maddening silence. And in the curious privacy and relief of that silence we can go out into the chaos and commit a thousand acts of minor and gleeful splendor all our own. If it’s our tragedy to be left by God, then let it also be our luck.

Our loneliness is our strength. It’s not the same as being alone—almost the opposite. Loneliness is the sense of others, present but beyond our reach.

We feel a terrible tenderness, a terrible gratitude, and at the end we see that face and know the moment is here. The beast has come for us at last.