The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses

A human being needs to know that even if all human beings gave up on him, indeed, even if he were on the verge of giving up on himself, God is still the God of patience. This is incalculable wealth.

So learn, then, from the lily and the bird, learn this, the dexterity of the unconditioned.

You, too, are of course subject to necessity. God’s will is indeed done in any case, so strive to make a virtue of necessity by doing God’s will in unconditional obedience.

For to cast sorrow away, but not upon God, is “distraction.” But distraction is a dubious and ambivalent remedy for sorrow.

In nature everything is obedience, unconditional obedience.

In nature, everything is unconditional obedience. The sighing of the wind, the echo of the forest, the murmuring of the brook, the hum of summer, the whispering of the leaves, the hiss of the grass, every sound, every sound you hear, it is all compliance, unconditional obedience, so that in it you can hear God as you can hear him in the music of th

What is joy, or what is it to be joyful? It is truly to be present to oneself; but truly to be present to oneself is this “today,” this to be today, truly to be today. And the truer it is that you are today, the more you are entirely present to yourself in being today, the less does tomorrow, the day of misfortune, exist for you. Joy is the present

you might truthfully be able to say of yourself : “I cannot do anything else, I cannot do otherwise.”

For when you keep silent in the solemn silence of nature, then tomorrow does not exist, and when you obey as a creature obeys, then there exists no tomorrow, that unfortunate day that is the invention of garrulousness and disobedience.