Sower, you awoke to the trumpets of the dawn and began to sow. . . .

Hard work demanded sweat and day after day you tilled the soil, callusing your hands from the dew of dawn to the lighting of the stars.

In the face of hardships, the most beloved persons, desirous of comfort, deserted you. But when they left you alone and no one wished to talk to you, nature talked with you in the name of Heaven and you listened in surprise to the prayers of the seed at the moment of dying abandoned as it were in order to be faithful to life; you heard the confidences of the rose gardens enslaved in the soil, whose flowers shone forth in the salons, without being granted any other right than that of breathing amid sharp thorns; you gathered the story of the wheat, which told you, while still in the golden clustered ears, how it would be ground in the teeth of the implacable millstones, in order to serve in the house of man; and old trees, splintered and suffering, made you feel that God had taught them in silence to protect affectionately even the unkind hands which cut off their branches. . . .

Consoled and happy you worked, sower!

One day, however, the field awoke embellished with perfume and beauty, and there appeared those who demanded your harvest for the banquet of the world. . . .

You wept at the separation from the beloved plants. However, no one saw your tears hidden among the seams of your face.

You were alone in the face of the multitudes who contended with one another for the fruits, and since you had not mastered polished words with which to defend yourself before groups, nor did your mere presence offer any prospect of social charm, the few friends of your cause deemed it prudent to remain silent, shamed by the harsh austerity of your disciplines and the poverty of your dress, but God impelled you to renewal and, though despoiled of your humblest possessions, you sought other climes and other furrows where your toil-worn and aching hands continued to sow. . . .

Sower of the lands of the spirit, grown gray in the labor of light, like the patient cultivator of the soil, do not be down-hearted or discouraged.

Although ever new tempests bow your soul, continue sowing. . . . And if banishment and solitude must constitute the transitory heritage of your destiny, remember the Divine Sower who, although pious and just, preferred the cross out of love of the truth and continue sowing even thus, in the certainty that God will suffice for you, for everything by God, passes in this world.

Meimei