Passages from My Prayer in My Solitude

We have known Dr. Jamal Karam Harfush as a woman of letters and a thinker, treating questions of human rights, health, society, and much besides.. It pleases us today to present her to our readers in a new shade of lofty spiritual literature — in passages from her prayer in the hours of solitude...

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I have loved solitude with all its silence and desolation
I have loved quiet, for in quiet lies the peace of my soul
I loved it as a stillness whose serenity no murmur of a breeze can trouble,
whose thread of communion no human whisper interrupts
I loved it as a deep abyss to whose darkness my soul withdraws alone,
to join the farthest horizons of the end,
horizons that show me, across the fearful darkness, an eternal radiance
that touches in my depths the melodies of immortality, and echoes back the refrain of hymns in the world of everlasting life!

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It is my soul, O Lord; it is the nearest thing in me to You,
it is a clipping of Your spirit, and a marvel of Your hands
You loved it beautiful, and made it rich, laden with burdens,
burdens upon burdens from the overflow of Your strength and the greatness of Your power!

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It is my soul, O Lord, a stranger in the world of earth
because it leans forever toward You,
It is my soul; You acquainted it with what it did not love to know,
and made it hear what it did not love to hear,
and that is wisdom from You, O Lord, for You show us only
what You do not love us to see, and make us hear what You do not love us to hear,
that we may prize the beauty of what is not seen and not heard:
and who but You, O Lord, stands apart from all seeing and all hearing?

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It is my soul, O Lord, that yearns for release from its long captivity,
not in denial of Your mercy, nor coveting what You have bestowed upon others,
but in longing for Your tenderness, and in hope of lying open between Your palms,

It is my soul, O Lord, that turns toward the heights to see You
and reaches toward the clouds to touch You,
and rushes with its whole being into the heart of the storm to hear You!

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It is my soul; I loved You because You are the last of all the love existence holds
It is my soul; You gave it — and what giving is vaster or richer than Your mercy!
A mercy that flooded me in the light of day, and in the glow that streams toward me from the break of dawn,
and how many rains have poured down to water, at noon, the dryness of my soul,
and how many a darkness You have let fall in the loneliness of night to hide my gloom and the bitterness of my soul!

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They are blessings upon blessings, lavished by Your heaven, O Lord
summer and winter, night and day, morning and evening
to keep a nearness between us, and to lift me ever toward You, and straightway to You!

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O Lord, if my soul weeps — though of earth's bitterness it has known
no more than the weight of a stumble, and the humiliation of a breaking —
then see in its tears no turning away from Your mercy, but look upon them as a return to You!

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O Lord, if my soul has loved solitude, it is not
to draw away from You, but to draw near to You, and in longing to give itself over to You!
O Lord, if my soul sighs, its grief is sorrow over its own self,
and over man, who drifts far from supplication to You!

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I prayed to You, O Lord, in the age of childhood, and remembered You at the dawn of life,
when I knew You as justice upon the bench of judgment, and saw You as gentleness
moving softly among mankind, and as mercy flowing in the hearts of men.
I stood in awe of You, O Lord, for I knew You as radiant beauty, and as a patience hungering among human beings,
I stood in awe of You because I knew You as the essence of the thing in every thing,
and I touched You as a life spread out in every thing,
I have known You, O Lord, as a part of the whole, and to know the part
is not to know the whole,
so will You not hear me, O Lord, in my solitude, rising toward You to know the whole in the whole!
And what is knowledge of the whole but knowledge of You, O Lord!

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It is a stillness, it is a solitude; I shall return to it, O Lord,
whenever I love to return to You!