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23 Noel, Cogito I admire Father Jerome and know the strength of his faith. I’ve little of my own. We’re together gone the length of Lac des Illinois. Now I’m to Quebec while he goes alone to winter with the Hiroquois. He’ll learn their words and we’ll meet in spring to seek the southern tribes. I don’t believe I’ll see the Virgin there. Nothing but the noise of my mind seems certain until its clamor rises and oppresses me, doubt flows even there. I must practice a discipline of emptiness— 24 unlike the Father’s full of solid faith and solace— one that can wrestle the world to its knees, and when it turns up empty, let go if I please. Leaving France I vowed to seek no knowledge than what’s inside me, or can be read in nature, however brutal the book. It may be that I’ll die a heretic as the Father warns, but sometimes there seems something in the wind when nature is around me. Perhaps Spirit as the savages think— or just a lower part of seeing, like a dog musing on the mind of Descartes. ...

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