When we grow radishes in a small container in a city apartment, we participate in creation. We sustain the globe. When we sweep the street in front of a house in the dirtiest city in the country, we bring new order to the universe. We tidy the Garden of Eden. We make God's world new again. When we repair what has been broken or paint what is old or give away what we have earned that is above and beyond our own sustenance, we stoop down and scoop up the earth and breathe into it new life again, as God did one morning in time only to watch it unfold, unfold, and unfold through the ages.
No sooner had I fallen asleep than I saw standing a maiden dressed in a long white gown and modestly girded. On her head, in hooded fashion, was a white scarf which was so thin and transparent that through it I could see her face, which shone with heavenly beauty. She stood before me, tender, affectionate and loving, and although with downcast eyes, she would at times humbly and kindly look at me. With such a vision, I awoke.
My attraction to her was not sensuous, but somehow pure, devoted and unutterably comforting, since my soul sensed that this was not an earthly maiden, but some heavenly being, the very embodiment of purity and charity.