Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

*Thomas Merton

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

*St. John 14.18 (NASB)

I sit here with you. Some say I'm the expert. They say I'm the one knowing what he is doing. They say I'm the one others look to to know the way in the dark. Or am I the only one thinking those things? Have I been so shaped by others to assume, when I am here, that you want what you do not most need, or want? Is it possible, all you're saying without saying a thing is "I want you"? I want you to be here, not above me, but with me? Not needing you to say anything in particular? Not needing you to pray anything in particular? Not needing you to take that holy book out of your pocket to read anything in particular? Really, trust me, and please trust yourself, all I really need is you, and that is the greatest, most beautiful gift you can give me, for this brief time we are blessed to be together in this hurtful, confusing place. Please, do not hide, from my pain or your pain, do not abandon me. See, you, just you here and now, are what I most need, and what I most want. Others tell me of God, but I can't see what they call God. I, however, can see you. And what I know with you and through you is Love. And in that Love, for a time, when we are together, I feel permission to feel what I feel and to be who I truly am. Thank you, thank you, for you.