When I bound myself to Thee, O my Love, all other bonds snapped asunder.
I watch the swallow bewildered over her ruined nest, and I say: I am not bound to my nest.
I watch a son grieving for his parent, and I say: I am not bound to my parents.
I watch a fish expire the moment it is drawn out of the water, and I say: such am I! If I am drawn out of Thine embrace, I shall expire in an instant, like a fish cast upon the sand.
But how could I have plunged so irretrievably into Thee and lived, had I never before been in Thee? Verily, I was in Thee from Thy first awakening, and therefore I feel myself in Thee as in my own home.
There is eternity within eternity, just as there is duration within time. In one eternity, O Lord, Thou wast in Thine unutterable undifferentiatedness and in Thine evening blessedness. Then indeed Thy hypostases were in Thee, for they could not but be in Thee. Yet they did not behold themselves one in another, for they knew not themselves in their distinctness. In the other eternity Thou wast in Thy morning blessedness, and the three hypostases came to know themselves and beheld one another as such.
Neither is the Father before the Son, nor the Son before the Father, nor is the All-Holy Spirit before or after the Father and the Son. As a man on waking opens both eyes at once and at the same instant, so at once and at the same instant did the three hypostases open in Thee. There is no Father without the Son, nor Son without the Holy Spirit.
When I lie down beside my lake and sleep a sleep without dreams, then neither the power of knowing dies within me, nor desire, nor action, but all flows together into one blessed, nirvanic, undifferentiated unity.
When the sun spills its gold across the lake, I awaken not as a nirvanic unity but as a tri-unity of knowing, desire, and action.
This is Thy history in my soul, O Lord, interpreter of my life. Is not the history of my soul the interpreter of the history of all that is created, of all that is fragmented and all that is united? And of Thee, O my Homeland, of Thee too—forgive me—my soul is the interpreter.
O my Homeland, save me from the onslaught of strangers upon me.
O my Life, burn away all the spittle of death upon my soul and upon my body.