Unless we are grounded in Mystery -- unless we experience both ourselves and others as co-participants in Mystery -- we find it almost impossible to live in compassionate love of one another for any length of time. Unless we have "new eyes" that can see others contemplatively, it is easy to miss the many-spendored thing that is our life together.
Why has this Frenchman from France written his book in the United States to present to his friends today? Because loving the country and wanting to show his gratitude, he could find no better way of expressing it than in these two truths, intimately known to him [Jacques is blind] and reaching beyond all boundaries.
The first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us it is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without; Light is in us, even if we have no eyes.