The Story of Mary MacLane/February 20
AT TIMES when I walk among the natural things—the barren, natural things—I know that I believe in Something. Why can I not call it God and pray to it?
There is Something—I do not know it intellectually, but I feel it—I feel it—with my soul. It does not seem to reach down to me. It does not pity me. It does not look at me tenderly in my unhappiness.
My soul feels only that it is there.
No. It is not all-loving, all-gracious, all-pitying. It hurts me—it hurts me always as I walk over the sand. But even while it hurts me it seems to promise—ah, those beautiful things that it promises me!
And then the hurting is anguish—for I know that the promises will never be fulfilled.
There is within me a thing that is aching, aching, aching always as the days pass.
It is not my pain of wanting, nor my pain of unrest, nor my pain of bitterness, nor of hatred. I know those in all their own anguish.
This aching is another pain. It is a pain that I do not know—that I feel ignorantly but sharply, and, oh, it is torture, torture!
My soul is worn and weary with pain. There is no compassion—no mercy upon me. There is no one to help me bear it. It is just I alone out on the sand and barrenness. It is cruel anguish to be always alone—and so long—oh, so long!
Nineteen years are as ages to you when you are nineteen.
When you are nineteen there is no experience to tell you that all things have an end.
This aching pain has no end.
I feel no tears now, but I feel heavy sobs that shake my life to its center.
My soul is wandering in a wilderness.
There is a great light sometimes that draws my soul toward it. When my soul turns toward it, it shines out brilliant and dazzling and awful—and the worn, sensitive thing shrinks away, and shivers, and is faint.
Shall my soul have to know this Light, inevitably? Must it, some day, plunge into this?
Oh, it may be—it may be. But I know that I shall die with the pain.
There are times when the great Light is dim and beautiful as the starlight—the utter agony of it—the cruel, ineffable loveliness!
Do you understand this? I am telling you my young, passionate life-agony? Do you listen to it indifferently? Has it no meaning for any one? For me it means everything. For me it makes life old, long, weariness.
It may be that you know. And perhaps you would even weep a little with me if you had time.
It is as if this Light were the light of the Christian religion—and the Christian religion is full of hatred. It says, "Come unto me, you that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But when you would go, when you reach up with your weary hands, it sends you a too-brilliant Light—it makes you fair, wondrous promises—it puts you off. You beseech it in your suffering—
While the tempest still is high—"
but it does not listen—it does not care. Worship me, worship me, it says, but after that let me alone. There is a bookful of promises. Take it and thank me and worship me.
It does not care.
If I obey it, it looks on indifferently. If I disobey it, it looks on indifferently. If I am in woe, it looks on indifferently. If I am in a brief joy, it looks on indifferently.
I am left all alone—all alone.
The Light is shown me and I reach after it, but it is placed high out of my reach.
I see the promises in the Light. Oh, why—why does it promise these things! Is not the burden of life already greater than I can bear? And there is the story of the Christ. It is beautiful. It is damningly beautiful. It draws the tears of pain and soft anguish from me at the sense of beauty. And when every nerve in me is melted and overflowing, then suddenly I am conscious that it is a lie—a lie.
Everywhere I turn there is Nothing—Nothing.
My soul wails out its grief in loneliness.
My soul wanders hither and thither in the dark wilderness and asks, asks always in blind, dull agony, How long?—how long?