Anais Nin, St. Francis of Assisi, eccentricity, beauty, and love

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“Perhaps it is true that those who unveil the mysteries have tragic lives.”

Conrad Moricand (Anais Nin's Diaries, '34-'39, p170)

I am God's thought.

You need not understand, you need merely accept. But if someday you come to understand, then you must truly accept.

“He knew that we can best measure the towering miracle of the mere fact of existence if we realize that but for some strange form of mercy we should not even exist. ...From him came a whole awakening of the world and a dawn in which all shapes and colours could be seen anew.”

GK Chesterton on St. Francis of Assisi (St. Francis of Assisi, intro)

A man becomes deranged trying to belong to something he does not understand.

Because we are all just visitors here, we are given guidance and the use of things, though we are not the owner. Know this, and be thankful.

We are so alone down here. And we are not alone.

I decided that I was not going to suffer. That I was going to love and embrace the mystery.

'Eccentricity' is: turning toward the centre.

We must accept that we add nothing, that we 'create' only in that we modify that which has been created.

And yea, I stand in solemn deference to that which asks of me only my silence.

And lo, I have seen Beauty in the droplets of water caught hanging from the spider's web not made to trap the rain.

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These fragments and quotes are taken from the unpublished writings of Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.