your brightness is my darkness

"Your brightness is my darkness.
I know nothing of You and, by myself,
I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You.
If I imagine You, I am mistaken.
If I understand You, I am deluded.
If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.
The darkness is enough."

—Thomas Merton, prayer before midnight mass at Christmas, 1941.

Dorothy Day Advent Reflection

Woodcut by Harlan Hubbard

Advent is a time of waiting, of expectation, of silence.  Waiting for our Lord to be born. A pregnant woman is so happy, so content. She lives in such a garment of silence, and it is as though she were listening to hear the stir of life within her. One always hears the stirring compared to the rustling of a bird in the hand. But the intentness with which one awaits such stirring is like nothing so much as a blanket of silence.  Dorothy Day

- See more at: http://cjd.org/2014/11/21/dorothy-days-reflections-on-advent/#sthash.ZXNu16px.dpuf