Easter: day 10

" My most usual method is this simple attention, an affectionate regard
for God to whom I find myself often attached with greater sweetness
and delight than that of an infant at the mother's breast. To choose
an expression, I would call this state the bosom of God, for the
inexpressible sweetness which I taste and experience there. If, at
any time, my thoughts wander from it from necessity or infirmity,
I am presently recalled by inward emotions so charming and delicious
that I cannot find words to describe them. Please reflect on my great
wretchedness, of which you are fully informed, rather than on the great
favors God does one as unworthy and ungrateful as I am.

As for my set hours of prayer, they are simply a continuation of the same
exercise. Sometimes I consider myself as a stone before a carver, whereof
He is to make a statue. Presenting myself thus before God, I desire Him to
make His perfect image in my soul and render me entirely like Himself. At
other times, when I apply myself to prayer, I feel all my spirit lifted
up without any care or effort on my part. This often continues as if it
was suspended yet firmly fixed in God like a center or place of rest.

I know that some charge this state with inactivity, delusion, and
self-love. I confess that it is a holy inactivity. And it would be a happy
self-love if the soul, in that state, were capable of it. But while the
soul is in this repose, she cannot be disturbed by the kinds of things
to which she was formerly accustomed. The things that the soul used to
depend on would now hinder rather than assist her.

Yet, I cannot see how this could be called imagination or delusion because
the soul which enjoys God in this way wants nothing but Him. If this is
delusion, then only God can remedy it. Let Him do what He pleases with me.
I desire only Him and to be wholly devoted to Him."

--Brother Lawrence,
from the 2nd letter; to a superior