I remember some of the times when I was most happy, after — I used to spend the whole of Lent in a hermitage alone, and I’d come back just sort of glowing, like a bliss ninny, for the next couple weeks. But when people would look at me, I remember again and again, they said, “Richard, you look sad.” And I said, “Oh my gosh, do I?” Because in fact, I’m feeling exactly the opposite. And I don’t know how that transferred to my face as sadness, but when you live at this deep time, deeper level of communion or love or grace or whatever you want to call it, there is a heaviness to it that — “Is the rest of the world not seeing what I’m seeing? Why are they so caught up in trivialities, and why are they making one another suffer so much?” So it’s the strangest combination of being able to hold deep sadness and deep contentment at the very same time. So I discovered that in myself, and my most wonderful moments were also my most sad moments, which leads you to a kind of participation in what I called earlier “the one sadness,” that your very fact of enjoying grace and love carries with it a dark side that I didn’t deserve to know this, I didn’t earn this, and most people think I’m crazy if I try to talk about it. So the two intense emotions very often coexist in the contemplative mind. So that’s what taught me this both/and world view, that opposites do not contradict one another. In fact, they complement and deepen one another.

2, 8, 16 :)