t be in company.
And so forth of all the remenant, what so they be. For silence is
not God, nor speaking is not God; fasting is not God, nor eating is
not God; onliness is not God, nor company is not God; nor yet any of
all the other such two contraries. He is hid between them, and may
not be found by any work of thy soul, but all only by love of thine
heart. He may not be known by reason, He may not be gotten by
thought, nor concluded by understanding; but He may be loved and
chosen with the true lovely will of thine heart.[257] Choose thee
Him, and thou art silently speaking, and speakingly silent,
fastingly eating, and eatingly fasting, and so forth of all the
remenant. Such a lovely choosing of God, thus wisely lesinge[258]
and seeking Him out with the true will of a clean heart, between all
such two leaving them both, when they come and proffer them to be
the point and the prick of our ghostly beholding, is the worthiest
tracing and seeking of God that may be gotten or learned in this
life. I mean for a soul that will be contemplative; yea, though all
that a soul that thus seeketh see nothing that may be conceived with
the ghostly eye of reason; for if God be thy love and thy meaning,
the choice and the point of thine heart, it sufficeth to thee in
this life (though all thou see never more of Him with the eyes of
thy reason all thy life time). Such a blind shot with the sharp dart
of longing love may never fail of the prick, the which is God, as
Himself saith in the book of love, where He speaketh to a
languishing soul and a loving, saying thus: Vulnerasti cor meum,
soror mea, amica mea, et sponsa mea, vulnerasti cor meum, in uno
oculorum tuorum: "Thou hast wounded mine heart, my sister, my leman,
and my spouse, thou hast wounded mine heart in one of thine
eyes."[259] Eyes of the soul they are two: Reason and Love. By
reason we may trace how mighty, how wise, and how good He is in His
creatures, but not in Himself; but ever when reason defaileth, then
list, love, live and learn, to play,[260] for by love we may feel
Him, find Him, and hit Him, even in Himself. It is a wonderful eye,
this love, for of a loving soul it is only said of our Lord: "Thou
hast wounded mine heart in one of thine eyes"; that is to say, in
love that is blind to many things, and seeth but that one thing that
it seeketh, and therefore it findeth and feeleth, hitteth and
woundeth the point and the prick that it shooteth at, well sooner
than it