The Pain of Nothingness

Plunging into pointlessness day

After day, diminishing to insignificance

In anguish (a straw swept on by the desert wind;

A cork on the frightening sea; a child lost

In a crowd startled by sudden glimpse of self,

His pain of panic and isolation, bewildered

Stares at the passers-by, seeks one form

Familiar, the hand he held, one face, one voice),

I walk in a world not mine, too big to possess,

         Too fleeting to understand.

Called into solitude, called by a voice

Familiar, held by a hand well known, led

To solitude’s reverse, to fellowship,

To oneness with He-who-is, I walk in a world

Made mine. Inserted where heartbeats rise, where eyes

Startled behold the Face so longed-for, bewildered

Man finds himself. The world’s too small for man:

O freedom from the small! The human heart’s

A mystery too terrifying to plumb, a point

         Too God-close to understand.

~a Carthusian monk