God might come to visit me on a Monday afternoon.
He would come in at the door of my blue-white room which had been
left about twenty inches ajar: for I cannot imagine God, the aloof
and reticent, opening a shut door to visit anyone. It is as if God
purposely lacks all initiative. If I wish to meet God I must first
suffer deeps of terror and passion and loneliness to make the mood
that wants it. Then I must train my life down to two plain frocks.
And to crown all my room-door must be left ajar on the day he happens
to come or he will not come in. _That_ seems certain: but for twenty
inches of ajarness at my door he will not come in.
In it God is quite fair. I do the reaching-out and I live out the
despairs: he furnishes a fact to go upon: I go upon it, in some
anguish doubtless: but then mine, not God’s, are the lights and the
translated splendor. It is a ‘gentleman’s game’ God plays. It is
because I feel that to be true, more than for that he is the Dealer,
that I would have a word with him.