Where you come from is gone,
where you thought you were going to was never there,
and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.
Where is there a place for you to be?
No place.
Nothing outside you can give you any place.
In yourself right now is all the place you've got.
You needn't look at the sky because
it's not going to open up and show no place behind it.
You needn't search for any hole in the ground
to look through into somewhere else.
You can't go neither forwards nor backwards
into your daddy's time nor your children's if you have them.
In yourself right now is all the place you've got.
If there was any Fall, look there,
if there was any Redemption, look there,
and if you expect any Judgment, look there,
because they all three will have to be in your time
and your body and where in your time and your body can they be?
~ Flannery O'Connor
from Wise Blood
art by georgia okeeffe
with thanks to whiskeyriver
