If the place assigned to the lily is really as unfortunate as possible, so that it can be easily foreseen that it will be totally superfluous all its life, not be noticed by a single person who might find joy in it; if the place and the surroundings are—yes, I had forgotten it was the lily of which we are speaking—are so “desperately” unfortunate,

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

For if you cast away all sorrow, you of course retain only whatever joy you have. Yet this will avail but little. Learn, therefore, from the lily and the bird. Cast all your sorrow upon God, entirely, unconditionally, as the lily and the bird do: then you will become unconditionally joyful like the lily and the bird.

Yes, when you are surrounded by commotion or when you are immersed in diversions, this seems to be almost an exaggeration; there seems to be altogether too great a distance between loving and hating to permit someone to place them so close to one another, in a single breath, in a single thought, in two words that—without subordinate clauses,

Even less may you become self-important—in view of the fact that the lily and the bird, after all, are simple—so that you (perhaps in order to feel that you are a human being) become clever, and speaking with reference to some particular tomorrow, say: “The lily and the bird, of course they can—they who do not even have a tomorrow by which to be

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

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

For there is one thing that the lily and bird unconditionally do not understand, that, alas, most people understand best: half-measures.

You shall learn joy from the lily and the bird. Even less may you become self-important—in view of the fact that the lily and the bird, after all, are simple—so that you (perhaps in order to feel that you are a human being) become clever, and speaking with reference to some particular tomorrow, say: “The lily and the bird, of course they can—they