- Eternal being as the ground of my own being.
Aside from eternal being, nothing exists – that is truly in full possession of being.
My own being, as I know it and as I know myself in it, is null and void;
I am not by myself and by myself I am nothing;
at every moment I find myself face to face with nothingness,
and from moment to moment I must be endowed and re-endowed with being.
And yet this empty existence that I am is being,
and at every moment I am in touch with the fullness of being.
How does the ego learn to see in eternal being also the source or the genuine cause of its own being?
The undeniable fact that my being is limited in its transience from moment to moment and thus exposed to the possibility of nothingness is counterbalanced by the equally undeniable fact that despite this transience, I am, that from moment to moment I am sustained in my being, and that in my fleeting being I share in enduring being. In the knowledge that being holds me, I rest securely. This security, however, is not the self-assurance of one who under her own power stands on firm ground, but rather the sweet and blissful security of a child that is lifted up and carried by a strong arm.
In my own being, then, I encounter another kind of being that is not mine but that is the support and ground of my own unsupported and groundless being.
- Edith Stein. Finite and Eternal Being. (pp 55 – 58)
Drinking From The Mountain Stream 