Imagination comes from yourself and can deceive you, but vision is a gift from outside yourself - like light striking on your closed eyelids and lifting them to see what's really there.

The elements were "seeking" each other in rage and confusion, and in the fury of the conflict boastful man was utterly humiliated, sucked down, drowned.

...there began to come to her a first dim realization of God's humility. Rejected by the proud in His own right by what humble means He chose to succor them; through the spirit of a child, a poor gypsy or an old man, by a song perhaps, or even it might be by the fall of a leaf or the scent of a flower. For His infinite and humble patience nothing was too small to advance His purpose of salvation and eternity was not too long for its accomplishment.

I doubt if we nuns are really as self-sacrificing as we must seem to be to you who live in the world. We don't give everything for nothing, you know. The mystery plays fair.

We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear," he said. "Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.

Not quite birds, as they were not quite flowers, mysterious and fascinating as are all indeterminate creatures.

All human beings have their otherness and it is that which cries out to the heart.