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odd bits of paint had been put together to make enough. The cheap coloured glass in the four tiny narrow pointed windows — one green, one red, one blue, one yellow. Six candles, three each side of the cheap crucifix. Some withered lilacs in tin cans and marmalade pots, and a few cheap artificial flowers. Above the altar, three pictures of Christ in homely wood frames, crudely fashioned with a cross cut in the top of each. Christ on the cross, Christ with the crown of thorns, Christ with the flaming heart of love. In the corner Christ again, one hand upraised in blessing, the other pointing to his heart, a wreath of thorns around it, blood drops falling. In the opposite corner, Mary and around her heart a wreath of roses. No sound but a mother hen outside calling her chicks and the chortle of blackbirds getting food for their young. Great peace. What was there, I asked, in the crude pictures on the wall that inspired your reverence? That lifted your spirit and satisfied surely? They were very crude, not works of art as the world counts art. And the answer came, no, “but works of spirit.” The makers of these originals had sought to portray not man or woman, but to find symbols for love, purity, holiness. With their minds on these things, something had happened — something had come into expression — something that spoke in wordless words to the soul. So, I said to myself, must I seek spiritual symbols, attributes of God in this that I would paint? See God in his creation, become conscious of the Maker in His universe without searching or struggling but being still and open to receive illumination with my mind always upon God, seeing in His manifestation symbols of the Creator.
    I am groping horribly lost, trying to search for that thing. It is right here and yet I do not know how to find it, it is in me and yet so far away I cannot reach it. I don’t know where to look and I want it so badly I’m sick — yet I’m dumb and bound — if I only knew what binds me so I could tear it off. If my eyes were only not blind so I could see, and my numb senses so quiveringly alert and sensitive that I could feel in every fibre of me the ecstasy of comprehension. Oh you old fool. Come down. Clear out your heart and mind and soul. Fast and pray — the body material predominates so — I am a slave to the flesh, and the spirit strays and gasps — it cannot soar because it is weighted down by fleshy things. Good food, comfort, laziness, bodily ailments. Cannot the spirit dominate the liver? Throw out the depression, rise above inertia? I am a slacker.
    What is it Ziegler said? “Do not try to
force
those great forests, woo them.” It is I [who] must seek first the true spirit of humble worship, the spirit of communion with the infinite, the allness of God in the universe. Perhaps it is
this
one must seek to find in others. I feel things clearer when I am away from humans in the woods. God seems there more — why? To be sure he is out there among the silent things but not among his highest life creations — man. One should feel him more when amongst those creatures made in his image and likeness — why is it we don’t? Man has answered God back, being saucy and irreverent. Dumb nature has obeyed, goes ahead according the seasons — lives silently — is the mystery of things and sings everlasting praise to the eternal.
    In B.C., epochs ago, was a narrow lake three to six miles long, and on each side stood great, austere mountains frowning down upon its clear surface. Then came some gigantic upheaval andone of the biggest mountains toppled and sat down plumb in the middle of the lake and filled [it] up so that it was doubled into two lakes, each 18 miles long. The southern is called Anderson Lake and the other one, Seaton. For a long time water slapped the sitting-down mountain, but after years the water made a bed for itself and the mountain that was dried out, and made rich land. Farms were planted here and the bare broken