This Too Shall Pass

There is an unseen magnet in the lure of solitude. I seek it hungrily. In it, I draw down silence as a cover, insulating truth, but I deny the need for joy. For as a boy I sought too often, all the places that my friends avoided, sanctuaries that would give the groping spirit in the heart of me some rest. Of all my friends it was and still remains, the best. Yet finally as age invades this shell, the mind has learned to swim in consciousness, to question and to laugh, to know that truth alone, while still supreme, will reach about in love, and also with the cosmos that it rules, may celebrate its restless peace. I chase down thoughts, and wrestle with them now.. I make them work; they may not get away with merely tantalizing fantasy. They are the mortar of a spirit house I'm building from a curious design some spirit architect passed on, but it is mine and will bring smiles, I think, at its grand opening. The years are good, the friends as well, for as they came along I saw at once that they were not a mirror for my greed nor just a sounding board for some vain homily my ego had prepared- no they were sons of God! I laughed again, but now the joy is sung in concert, in a universe without an end. ~