Louis—Was He in Oswald's fall?
Abbot— 'Tis past my thought
How He should not be;—in his rising, too.
If God is with me when I climb a hill,
When I descend do I leave God somewhere
Upon the top? If only he ascends,
How came he in the valley, then, at first?
Only the ignorant halve the universe
And thresh events and say, "The wheat is God's,"
Piecing their small minds out with nothingness.
The chaff too served its purpose in its time
And while it served its purpose it was good
And like the wheat it drew its strength from God.
Having served its end, is wheat itself not chaff?
If Oswald's fall is evil in our minds,
It is because we do not see its place.
But where my knowledge ends, does God end, too?
Our brother tumbling from the bluff that night
Into the gorge, but tumbled, as it were,
Off of God's fingers into his great palm.
Ascent and descent are in one straight line.
I see no angle in the universe,
A break in things, a point where God begins
And Satan ends. If, in this strange event,
The people see a movement of the sky
And stand amazed, I stand even more amazed
At what I see than they at seraphim.
For what I see is darkness giving light,
An earth-born thing showing capacity
For deeds divine, and busy in the dark
Not with its own low nature but with God.
I grapple with it and my light goes out.
I feel as though I walked in a strong wind
Along a reed, with only faith for eyes.
Reason calls it to me with a blind man's voice.
That helplessness should bring an angel down,
Is that as wonderful as that it should bring
A devil up to do an angel's work?
What we see, Louis, is the miracle.
What they see, while it jars our sense of things,
Falls nicely into the mental harmony.
Louis—Good becomes evil having served its end.
How Benedict would rage should he hear this.
Abbot—Each mind takes of the light what it can hold.
Louis—You know that day in the scriptorium,
When you were reading the Symposium,
What he said, do you remember?
Abbot— Yes, I do.
Louis—"If I had my way I would burn that thing."
Abbot—A beam of the sunshine hurts the owl's eyes.
Louis—And he would peck the stars out if he could.