The cosmic dance

For the world and time are the dance of emptiness.
The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast.
The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life,
the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own,
the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, and despair.
But it does not matter much,
because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things,
or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.

                        Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation