loneliness, gratitude, and heaven

Loneliness is born from the death of tribal life.

Truth is specific, not absolute.

Badness is not defined by its adverse effect on others, but by its appearance in the individual's conscience.

We know the way, it's often just too intimidating to follow.

Should we beg pardon from Divinity, for being able to live without it? Or is there any possibility that we can ever be without it?

To engage, impossible, for I cannot get past existence.

Cultivating gratitude, we apologize for ambivalence, and scorn lethargy.

And sometimes the world has the strangeness of a dark and unfamiliar room you have just woken up in.

The praise of friends falls on the subject, not the object.

I have viewed life from the height of gratitude, and know that despair is only a valley in heaven.

Confusion begets faith. For doubting requires knowing.

***

These selected fragments are excerpted from unpublished writings by Jack Haas; selections from the notebooks 1990-2005.