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Thomas Merton wrote, "There is always a temptation to diddle around in the
contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues." There is always an enormous
temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals
and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so
apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and
winds pour down, saying, I never merited this grace, quite rightly, and then
to sulk along the rest of your days on the edge of rage. I won't have it. The
world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more
extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we
are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.
Ezekiel excoriates false prophets as those who have "not gone up into the
gaps." The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the
altitudes and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can
discover itself for the first time like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are
the clefts in the rock where you cower to see the back parts of God;
they are the fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy
narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the gaps. If you
can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in
the soil, turn, and unlock --more than a maple --a universe. This is how you
spend the afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the
afternoon. You can't take it with you.
--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
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