A Meditation:  Vigilant Through Our Trials

VIGILANT THROUGH OUR TRIALS, by Caryll Houselander

Caryll Houselander was a British mystic, poet, and spiritual teacher.

Stop trying to think out a solution for the moment: there isn’t one.  One day there may be;  God will then show it to you.  In the meantime, accept it all as being the big thing for God and his Church that he asks of you-that, and the depression too.  You will find the relief of merely accepting, instead of struggling, wonderful; and I include in this, acceepting anything in yourself, during the crisis, which seems to you a failure or fault.  Don’t exonerate yourself, but just say you are sorry, briefly, to God, and add that your name is dirt-that’s what is to be expected from you-but you’re sorry, you are forgiven, and it is over.

During the war I was simply terrified by air raids, and it was my lot to be in every one that happened in London-sometimes on the roofs of these flats, sometimes in the hospital…I tried to build up my courage by reason and prayer, etc.  Then one day I realized quite suddenly: As long long as I try not to be afraid I shall be worse, and I shall show it one day and break; what God is asking of me, to do for the suffering humanity, is to be afraid, to accept it and put up with it, as one has to put up with pain (if it’s not druggable) or anything else.  I am not going to get out of any of the suffering.  From the time the siren goes until the All Clear, I am going to be simply frightened stiff, and that’s what I’ve got to do for the world-offer that to God, because it is that and nothing else which he asks of me.