I found light and joy at the same moment, and I can say without hesitation that from that time on light and joy have never been separated in my experience. I have had them or lost them together. I was not light myself, I knew that, but I bathed in it as an element which blindness had suddenly brought much closer. I could feel the light rising, spreading, giving form. Since it was not I who was making the light, since it came to me from the outside, it would never leave me. I was only a passageway, a vestibule for this brightness . The seeing eye was in me.
What I find distinct about gratitude in the wilderness is its simplicity -- the thankfulness I feel here is for what I usually take for granted: my capacity to breathe, move and see ... For the most part, gratitude here wells up unexpectedly, in the quiet corners of the day, over events small and ordinary. Gratitude is the other side of dependence on God: to take anything for granted in the wilderness seems presumptuous, blasphemous. And so, here in these naves of vaulting stone, prayers of thanksgiving begin to edge out prayers of petition.