Sol 5.6

  1. Choice has not an atom of agency;

    every act belongs to the Creator of choice.

  2. Were we entrusted to our souls and what they choo—

    se, our choice would be ruin.

  3. God’s choice for me is kinder and more solicitous,

    while ascribing things to my own choice is my loss.

  4. If you could glimpse God’s wisdom in what

    the decrees ordain throughout the stages of being,

  5. and contemplate His gentleness in judgments

    that emerge in the molds of harm,

  6. you would behold, beyond the veil, the most radiant beauty

    revealing itself through the faces of its effects.

  7. Incapacity has not the least atom of impossibility.

    What place has planning, branded with the stigma of need?

  8. How can the planning of a nature born to abasement proceed

    if it opposes the destinies firmly decreed?

  9. Do you suppose I can decide, when the mat—

    ter has been decided as He willed, contrary to my choice?

  10. Or do you think I possess a power that can establish a judgment

    whose establishment is impossible in His knowledge?

  11. Or do you suppose I can bring forward what His judgment required de—

    laying among the objects of desire?

  12. Or that, if I resent an affliction

    He willed for me, I can turn it away by my choice?

  13. Or do you think existence has an atom of influ—

    ence? And does existence possess any measure at all?

  14. If you apprehend it as forms and tra—

    ces, what reality belongs to forms and traces?

  15. Or if you know it with certainty as annihilation and erasure,

    the darkness of all that is other will be erased from you.

  16. Or if you picture it as mighty and steadfast,

    it is but dust amid the scattering gales.

  17. Whoever sees nonbeing beholds nothing but Him

    through every mode of bringing forth and sending back.

  18. Let Him assail you with afflictions—for how near

    His mercies are to the station of utter need.

  19. Let my Beloved drive to me some of His afflic—

    tions; His knowledge is not too narrow to encompass my brokenness.

  20. Let my Beloved disguise love with aver—

    sion, and conceal purity amid impurities.

  21. His knowledge precedes; His decrees run their course,

    and His subtle graces flow within them.

  22. So where can an impulse to object possibly go,

    and in what direction can one flee?

Sol 5.6