caroline :3

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“As John Shea so aptly put it: "God is not a law to be obeyed but a presence to be seized and acted on."
In an analogy that comes from Jesus - "Take the fig tree as a parable; as soon as its twigs grow supple and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near" - letting God be God means undergoing the presence of God as a tree undergoes the presence of summer. The metaphor is simple and perfectly apt: a tree is brought to bloom by summer. It does not understand summer, conceptualize summer, nor is it able to project what summer will do to it; it simply acts under its presence. To let God be God is to live in openness to the mystery of God without limiting the nature or effect of his presence by any expectations or by withdrawal. The task of contemplation is not to specify what conditions must be met before we believe in God's existence, power, or goodness. Rather the task of contemplation is to let God be God, and like the fig tree, act under his presence. The proper approach to God is not to try to analyze the infinite, but to celebrate it.”
― Ronald Rolheiser, The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God