saturday vigils. 

yes,  but the silence remains just that: a silence.

the sense of you're not being in it is overwhelming.

first, I have to convert this room, this house, this landscape . . . 

that's how it seems.

an act of faith.

remembering what rw says about 'unholy places that have no hint of you'.

in the past I believed these rumours.

now I know that they are my perception only - whatever may be the underlying cause -

I was thinking again how essential, fundamental, overwhelmingly important is that single psalm -

(I've said it before, I'll say it again)

how many are my foes O Lord!  . . . .

everything speaks your absence, your separation, your irrelevance.

these voices cannot be listened to because they lie.

they say seemingly obvious things which yet have not a grain of truth in them.

and when the psalm ends, despite the fact that I still hear you in the words - some of the time at least - the silence which overwhelms me is an emptiness which chills me to the core.

And so I see that this leads to the need for an act of faith which is almost desperate: 

I hear nothing, 

I see nothing,

I know nothing,

I understand nothing, 

I hope for nothing,

I  rejoice in nothing,

I perceive only emptiness and futility,

and yet I will trust in you. 

I will trust in you.

knowing also, even as I write that, that I could not say even that were you not enabling me.

the psalms become my only sight. 

without them: blindness.

a blindness beyond blindness actually . . . . .