Help me to be born anew, O Trinity One in Essence.
In vain I labor to grow clear in the muddy riverbed through which my life flows. I cannot defend myself against the turbid tributaries that rush down the valley into my river.
Raise me up onto a high mountain, and make me once more a clear spring. To Thee I vow: I will flow through dry stone, and I will grow turbid no more. Thou wilt mirror Thy face in me, and wilt know it. Thine angels will descend into me, and will not feel the descent.
No willow will cast its shadow upon my water, and no serpent will dare enter my cold pools.
Only help me to begin from the beginning. To Thee I vow: I will weave a new garment from new threads. Long enough have I labored with my neighbors, sewing new patches onto old garments. The patches fall away, the old cloth crumbles, and our filthy nakedness strikes us with shame across the face.
The wise rishis beneath the Himalayas speak of new births, whose number, they say, is greater than the sand of the sea. But what are all those births to me, which serve me as a gate from one dungeon into another?
For one birth I pray to Thee — for birth from the Spirit. I was born of water and baptized with water, and I crawl over the earth like turbid water.
Behold, birth from water is only a prophecy of birth from the Spirit. And baptism with water is only a prophecy of baptism with fire.
By water soldiers are recruited, but by the Spirit victors are made.
Permit not, O my Lord, that Thy soldier wage war his whole life long and end his warfare in defeat. Let the victor be born in me, who not for a moment will doubt that he is born for victory.
Water bears an army of defeat, but the Spirit bears an army of victory. Help me to be born anew, O Trinity One in Essence. That the man may appear in me who is in Thy mind before time. Girded with Thy strength; adorned with Thy wisdom; illumined with Thy purity!
That through my eyes Thou mightest enter, and not the world. That my heart might yearn for Thee alone. And that my soul might be pregnant only with Thy seed.
Leave me not, O Holy Trinity, to breathe my last as the old man; to be torn apart like a threadbare garment, patched in vain and unpatched still.
The world brought old age into my soul. It stamped her all over and left its seals in her, that from them she might sicken, and fear, and — die.
When the soul is born anew in my bones, my bones too will be made young again. And there will be in my soul only one seal — the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. In vain will the world attempt to strike its seal upon me, to notch me as its own sheep — it will find no place for its seal. For the newborn man will be filled with Thy seal, and with Thy life, O Life-Creating Trinity.