A Prayer

Dear God,

I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me push myself aside. 

Amen.  

- Flannery O'Connor, "A Prayer Journal"

P.S. -- Click here to read Annie Dillard's classic essay, "Total Eclipse"