Examination of Conscience

Your competence is not a substitute for compassion. Your competence will not cover the poverty of your charity.

Jealousy! Is it useful to you? It is good for nothing. It makes you curse the others for singing in the rain while you stand stubbornly under your umbrella.

You heard someone's footsteps approaching behind the door, and you flinched again. Who was it? You will never know. But you keep waiting for the footsteps. You camp in the room behind the door. But you won't answer the door. You call this hope?

Courage: it is to reject your suspicion that others are not interested in you. It is also to call upon others and risk having your suspicion validated.

You waited to have your name lifted up before you left them: greed, even for wooden nickels.

Your eyes are suns. The one whom you can look directly in the eye is the one whom you can blind and burn. Be careful.

But do not be too careful. The one whose face you avoid will freeze.

Quick, in the name of Isaac, a miracle: laugh, laugh well, and laugh within earshot.

Did you obey? Did you defy? Did you make it possible to do both with excellence?

Did you live? Did you die?

Did you love?