Many people don’t know the notion rapiarium. Neither did I, until I had a thorough read of the book Mysteries and Symbols of the Soul. It’s a term from the founder of Modern Devotion, Geert Grote, who believed that reading was the best way to learn. Such a booklet is meant to write down sentences or fragments that have touched you in a special way and that you want to be able to think about again and again.
Nowadays, you can buy such beautiful, empty books for a few pennies, so anyone can start a rapiarium. Now I have such a book and the funny thing is that once you have put a sentence in your rapiarium, you don’t have to look at it at all because it sticks to you – at least, that’s how it works for me.
The first sentence I wrote is still my favourite. I have no idea where I found it, but I’m happy to pass it on:
The worst thing that can happen to you is when God says:
‘OK, your will be done’.
There, at its most condensed, is just about the entire history of mankind. For we have been given an incredible space in which to learn and to experience what we bring about.
We are real sorcerer’s apprentices, who enter forbidden rooms, peep into secret books and meddle with forces we cannot control because we are not yet ready. The great sorcerer allows us to experiment, except of course when we really affect the foundations of the plan for the world and humanity. Then the Master will intervene, we can count on that. Perhaps we are already at the outer limits of what is permissible on many fronts.
We need not fear the master’s intervention, for it will save us all from the destruction that would be caused by ourselves, if we had perfect freedom now. Our freedom is restricted until we have made our masterpiece, so we can work on that.
How could we be afraid of the supreme master, who is also us, in the end, in our deepest being? A closer friendship is unimaginable. Your will can only be part of ‘Thy will’; it is an indissoluble whole.
I can tell you from experience that the result of ‘your will’ can indeed be terrible… and that afterwards you can retrace your steps to that which you had rejected, only then to enter into it with real conviction.
