to ourselves. Where I can see Him, there is His reality
in my soul.
I need not explain that all the while she showered her devotion on me
she did it to me not as an individual. I was simply a vehicle of her
divine worship. It was not for me either to receive it or to refuse it:
for it was not mine, but God's.
When the Devotee came again, she found me once more engaged with my
books and papers.
"What have you been doing," she said, with evident vexation, "that my
God should make you undertake such drudgery? Whenever I come, I find you
reading and writing."
"God keeps his useless people busy," I answered; "otherwise they would
be bound to get into mischief. They have to do all the least necessary
things in life. It keeps them out of trouble."
The Devotee told me that she could not bear the encumbrances, with
which, day by day, I was surrounded. If she wanted to see me, she was
not allowed by the servants to come straight upstairs. If she wanted
to touch my feet in worship, there were my socks always in the way. And
when she wanted to have a simple talk with me, she found my mind lost in
a wilderness of letters.
This time, before she left me, she folded her hands, and said: "My God!
I felt your feet in my breast this morning. Oh, how cool! And they were
bare, not covered. I held them upon my head for a long time in worship.
That filled my very being. Then, after that, pray what was the use of my
coming to you yourself? Why did I come? My Lord, tell me truly,--wasn't
it a mere infatuation?"
There were some flowers in my vase on the table. While she was there,
the gardener brought some new flowers to put in their place. The Devotee
saw him changing them.
"Is that all?" she exclaimed. "Have you done with the flowers? Then give
them to me."
She held the flowers tenderly in the cup of her hands, and began to gaze
at them with bent head. After a few moments' silence she raised her head
again, and said to me: "You never look at these flowers; therefore they
become stale to you. If you would only look into them, then your reading
and writing would go to the winds."
She tied the flowers together in the end of her robe, and placed them,
in an attitude of worship, on the top of her head, saying reverently:
"Let me carry my God with me."
While she did this, I felt that flowers in our rooms do not receive
their due meed of loving care at our hands. When we stick them in vases,
they are more like a row of naugh
|