Living With Contradiction. Esther de Waal

I am nothing without God; it is his grace that calls me and upholds me. Yet my human nature is good, and God looks to me for the activity that will make use of my gifts. Again, I believe that if I can enter into this paradox and incorporate both these elements into my life I shall escape that passivity that encourages me to do nothing at all and hand everything over to God, or that terrifying compulsion of over-activity that comes from reliance upon my unaided self.

      Now from the interplay of these contrasting elements, and from the determination not to let one dominate, comes a vigorous interaction of all which brings with it energy. And in a world in which we see so frequently on the one hand energy directed in so many different directions that it is totally disseminated into some quite frenetic activity, and on the other hand inaction, sometimes to the point of paralysis, it is good to be confronted by the Rule, and by the energy which diffuses the Rule.