The only life worth living is life in the spirit. It is the new life, the true life—the life that is life, indeed.
It is a life of longing and love—longing for the Lord, the “First and only Fair”, and love for His children who suffer and are in pain. And birds and animals, too, are His children.
God can only be met in the lonely desert where I have no friend, no companion, no support, nothing on which I can lean. He can only be met in the depths within where, losing all, I am prepared to annihilate myself. Self-annihilation opens the gateway to God’s kingdom. Do I have the courage to annihilate myself, to cut myself off from attachments and throw myself entirely at the mercy of God?
All good things come as gifts from God. Without His grace nothing can be achieved. And the visible sign of grace is renunciation. The man who receives the grace of God grows, inevitably, in the spirit of renunciation.