{{left|34}
LETTERS FROM ABROAD
sight of the gift waiting for me. This gift has not been my choice, but my God has chosen me for this gift. And now I say to myself, that we prove our worthiness for God’s gift of responsibility by acceptance of it and not by success or anything else.
The past has been for men, the future is for Man. Those men are still fighting for the possession of this world; the din and the clash are deafening ; the air is obscured with the dust rising from the trampled earth. Standing in the heart of this struggle, we have to build a seat for the one God revealed in all human races. We may be mocked and pushed away by the crowd, but the fact will remain and invisibly grow into truth that we have believed.
I was born a poet, and it is difficult for me to suffer myself to be rudely hustled in my path by busy men who have no leisure for ideas, I am not an athlete. I do not belong to the arena. The stare of the curious crowd scorches my soul. And yet, I, of all persons, am called upon to force my way into the thick of the Western public with a mission, for which I have never been trained. .Truth fashions its own arrows out of reeds that are light and frail.
NEW YORK, December 18, 1980.
Our Seventh Paus Festival is near at hand. I cannot tell you how my heart is thirsting to join you in your festival. I am trying to console myself
