GRACE

grace pouring round down your head ... what does it do to the tenant in the house ... as the tendrils reach downwards seeking to become roots the tenant's eyes open wide ... he stops writing propositions their premises and implications on the board ... puts the chalk down ... and turns around ... does he leave the house evicted by the tendrils ... or does he stay unable to escape ... are the tendrils too thick and lazy obstructing ... or too thin and razor-sharp and oscillating ... if he does escape how long is his room in the attic left vacant ... what's the name of the new tenant and how well was he screened ... how long will he last before they tear the house down ... long enough to be the last tenant or just the last one before the next ... my money's on the original tenant staying on ... the one before the hypothetical transient ... what a tenuous thing the memory is ... sometimes memory of you passes in others after it passes first in you ... who holds your identity then and how can it be held by anyone else other than you ... no ... I say give the whole thing up ... you don't have a single point you earned yourself ... even yourself ... alone

TRY TO REMEMBER

put on the mind of christ the apostle tells us ... what pascal his wager secure would hesitate to do that ... wrap his head round with the eternal word ... discernment in the midst of confusion ... from now on according to the prayer ... clause by clause you got it ... what else do you need ... what else could you want ... when here in a spark is everything forever ... nothing lord but to remember that I have it ... I had it ... I had it with me just now ... where is it ... where did I have it last ... where did I put it down ... the logic of the universe ... the walk and the talk ... where did I see it last ... in the battle of the match the needle or the pill ... again and again if I won't remember at least after a while I don't have to try ... there is advice then but you're too tired to hear it ... this is it it says ... the point you wanted to hold on to ... the fulcrum to raise the world ... all in a quiet and a silent intent ... first the talk then the walk let them go let them go ... follow the quiet intent so quiet it's invisible but soft very soft and warm and wet a bed to lie in and roll around in tossing from one dream to another

THE ADAM AND EVE FUND

we are too judgmental ... especially about ourselves ... but too judgmental means excessively defectively so ... excess kills the thing it's attached to ... say moral self-examination ... if you're doing too much of it it means you're not getting it right you must be doing it and yourself wrong ... walking down the street you bump into athanasius ... I'll tell you what he'd say ... god didn't make no junk and he aint gonna let it go to the junkyard ... now there's a conclusion to start with ... you can take it to the bank and maybe get some of your false defense fund back ... god knows you put enough wasted time into it ... be nice not to lose it all ... maybe start a savings account instead of paying for everything by check ahead of the money and at high interest ... put something solid in and off to the side ... a bond or two ... it's not the worthless piece of paper you thought ... athanasius' piece of advice ... but it is a share in a mutual fund ... look at what he wrote ... it's the adam and eve fund ... we know it by the name humanity ... it's not a direct deposit in your name ... it's an ongoing account ... before your particular time ... but very current ... the fall and all its recovery

WHO HAS THE BETTER HOPE

the culture war at its best is deadly ... at its best it's a war of ideas a war of words in which each battle is expected to produce for the winning side a number of captives a pack of words a bundle of books and notions sent off to the provinces to die out ... ideas versus ideals and execution by exile ... comfortable enough but as deadly as lying down to a lethal injection ... it's not as if such conflicts with no blood lost are unusual ... we see them all the time in games and in sports where one possible true sentence is killed by its opponent ... the one answering best the question who won ... it's at such moments that we know the truth isn't trivial ... we see it we feel it in the face ... there's nothing we enjoy so much as winning ... nothing that satisfies us as much whether at the end of a game a debate an election a courtship pregnancy or war ... if the last seems out of place it isn't ... play the tape ... I only mention it last to go on the record as not to minimize the war of ideas ... I know as well as you where it can lead ... do I have a better hope where it will

LAST STOP NOT BROOKLYN

the philosopher says sin is hell's echo in our life through its ambassadors to us ... and that not all suffering brings us to god ... some of it is a touch of hell ... a foresense of it ... that this makes sense is because hell makes no sense ... is fundamentally perverse ... why would a place whose reason for being is a concentration of focus on the individual self call for companions ... why does misery whose impulse is to shed all connections in its pain love company ... are they still trying for the good even in hell ... still looking for god even if they choose a god-substitute instead of the real thing ... have they no choice in having being but to want it in the strongest measure ... still to want something other than the self if only to subdue it to the self then to ignore it ... never to be able to resist these appeals from outside the self even as you choose constantly only the self ... whatever their motivation what does it mean to say that there is this two-way road on the map and in good repair ... every rest stop of course another good intention ... would you not say attend to the traffic lights the police and the signs ... especially the sign for the nearest exit

cf kreeft, suffering, ch 10.3

THE DEVIL, HIS DUE

of course none of this makes sense without the devil ... without the devil there'd be no crucifixion ... without the prince of this world we'd be on no fallen planet ... water and mountains would purify and soothe ... bread and wine would not be filled with blood ... what was in his mind in that amazing angelic ruin ... he thought he'd put god in a box ... he thought he'd kill him ... as if that were a good thing even for him ... as if it wouldn't shred his own great birthright in rebellion ... as if it must not kill death with resurrection ... why didn't he inspire the governor to let the right man go ... or if he couldn't stop it at least leave town and wash his own hands on the way out ... I don't think he did any of that ... any of that reluctance or prudence ... I think he wanted it to be true for all time that for one time if a short time truth was dead ... he wanted it because from the beginning he's both a liar and a murderer and now he could still be both and still be right just this once ... even the devil has his logic ... the wonder is the majesty and mercy that gave it to him

POLISHING HIS BEADS OF SWEAT

if jesus were not just a great man and a good one but god what would follow concerning suffering ... he allowed himself to be captured tortured executed ... he died ... and transformed the meaning of death ... just as he transformed the meaning of humanity by being born ... the presence of the creator as part of creation is like the presence of the word in meaning ... it transforms it eternally ... and so too with suffering ... the crucifixion transforms it for all time and that means now ... but who recognizes this ... rather we're working under the old dispensation that pain is what it always used to be ... intrinsically immovably bad ... a thing to be put away outside the park as far as can be ... not grappled wrestled and pinned ... what a sweaty smelling thing that is and hard painful ... hit it far down the fairway and sink it in the deepest hole if it can't be changed ... bury it in some black hole for nuclear waste if it can't be redeemed ... but if it is transformed ... if it means something totally new ... then you can put it like a war or a plague or your own death-dealing cancer between your finger and your thumb like a bead or a marble and roll it round and round to glory

cf kreeft, suffering, chs 7 & 8

CHAPTER ONE

it was a stick figure with a square head whose face was a tv screen ... it was the first thing I saw after I died ... on the screen was the face of a woman whose eyes were closed ... I think it was my soul ... I saw a plane on a steep ascent from JFK ... I hoped she was aboard ... in the meantime here was I a collection of disembodied thoughts not so much condemned as allowed to wander in the world of thought ... with perhaps enough time to get to meet all the ideas I had so long admired ... as the wind can ruffle the pages of a book as the light can shine through one of them so I might pass a resident alien in the life of the mind ... there were three ideas ... I will not say people ... not yet ... I wanted to meet most of all ... the magician whose manipulation was a seduction ... the general whose act was a logical conclusion ... the saint who of the three was the most practical ... each one in his historical appearance I must claim for a stranger ... for after all I'd only heard a few things about them ... though I was under obligation life-long to follow with them in the pursuit not of happiness but of heaven ... for they were power law and love

THE INGRATE IN CREATION'S ZOO

the whole truth and nothing but the truth about god and his creation ... surely this expression was designed to humble even more your humble servant ... for how can he entertain such a notion the likes of which he can never achieve ... such a knowledge the scope of which he can never appreciate ... and if he can wrap his mind round the outline of the concept how is it possible the concept has such an outline when the object of its devotion never can have one ... an infinite map of eternity who has the eyes to read it ... an end point to being whose pen has the ink to mark such a period ... unless in our beginning is in fact our end and in the tiniest particularity in the dam of nonbeing there is an explosion of all that is and can be ... that by definition will be enough to satisfy in logic the most severe critic ... yet we are not satisfied ... why is that ... we can have no outline of the ultimate truth but we are as it were indrawn by it from the start ...who can understand the mysterious ways of providence or fail in truth to be grateful for the blessings it provides ... we at least fit half that bill ... is that what we are then ... the ingrate in creation's zoo

THE WORST OF ALL AGES

is it true that we are in the most wicked of all ages ... ages should be seen through historical lenses in which a hundred years takes up a couple of inches ... and they should be seen philosophically ... for example either all men are created equal or they're not ... if they are then the answer is yes ... this is the most wicked of all ages ... if you mean the last hundred years when more people were killed in war or starved to death or massacred than in any other century on earth ... not to mention all those who were exploited or humiliated before they were murdered ... tortured before they were let die ... if all this is true then we don't have a problem ... we have something deeper than that ... if amidst all this iniquity upon self-examination we can still find a collaborative spirit to hurry this chaos along we don't have a problem or dilemma or even a tragedy ... we have a simple horror ... for which suicide is the only honorable reply ... unless we have a story or something like it with a good old-fashioned moral about right and wrong ... and unless we have a chance to do that right thing by choice ... there are no people ... there is no hope faith or truth

cf kreeft, making sense out of suffering, p57

HOW TIME'S FAITH IS FALSE AND LEADS TO DIVORCE

it's not that the fingers and toes are not important ... it's that by themselves they are not substantial ... see what happens when their connections are broken ... how quickly they lose substance ... these connections may be formal conceptually ... wrapped in flesh they become substantial ... matter and form equal substance ... we might be inclined to leave it at that ... if it weren't for these peculiar systems of forms within forms within bubbles of bone we substances some of us carry on our shoulders ... capsulate capsulating ... enfolding inside and out ... too many to be incidental ... too much of a point to be accidental ... we're forced to recognize these substances as free agents ... free within these restrictions of matter and form but free enough because of these material forms to worry with doubt these same connections holding their integrity together till at last under the strain they wear down ... they break ... they bleed dry ... and the substance crumbles ... and the larger form to which they were connected that too begins to collapse and the generations expire not in truth but in false hope and failed purpose ... because they have not been true to that purpose and hope eternally

PINKY'S LAMENT

I can't take my eyes off me and it's driving me mad ... someone's dying I ask myself how will I handle my sorrow ... someone's talking and I'm wondering how will I make them understand the truth of what I'm about to say ... I wouldn't mind but after a while I get curious and I want to see who it is I spend so much time looking at ... then I have it ... for a second ... but it isn't me for it's already gone ... it's never me ... I'm always going gone ... then I get it for the second time ... there isn't any me there ... it's more like a pulse than a drop of blood ... as subtle as a fiction instead of a fact ... an intention never rising to a deed ... or if I make to be bold it soars above the deed that now is done ... it is the doing ... I am the act ... and so I am even in my sleep ... but whose act is it ... after all these years I no longer think it's mine ... or it's only one finger in a glove and probably the pinky if I were so lucky and smart as to move with the hand ... but mostly I will not ... and then I'm as useful as the little sleeve cut from the glove ... empty and all alone ... wondering where it went wrong that now it has so little substance ... oh for a bit of a breeze to puff me up and blow me away

BEING FOR

why do we need other people ... if we didn't have them we'd get nothing done ... I don't mean just physically I mean emotionally ... now if you're one of those who tend to say to the emotions be quiet I must caution you ... I believe emotions are eternal ... you might want to pay them more respect ... take the pleasure we feel on doing something well ... or that particular evacuating fear when any other place is better than this ... but beyond wright and flight we have for and from ... it's easier to be for something when you're right even easier than going back where you came from when you're wrong ... but there's nothing to be for unless there's someone to be for first ... you can move towards a thing as a falling rock obeys gravity or as a small magnet is pulled onto a refrigerator door ... but to move truly for something is first to want it and then to want that which is good for it ... so that when you're for it you're for all of it not just that part or glimpse of it that attracted you ... the attraction of the word for is the completion between you and it ... not just a captivating landscape or a logical finesse ... but a whole person on the other end

WHAT IT MEANS TO MEAN IT

the devil likes to sit down with us and talk about the bad things we've done that can't be taken back ... foul balls they'll be fine if they get where they're intended don't swing at them is the advice of the coach I want to hear from before I do one of those things that can't be taken back ... I don't want to talk anymore about the bad things I've done ... I want to think about the next one coming up ... I don't want a life of regret ... I want a life of the mind ... I don't want to be on Planet Z20 and have to pay a bill I ran up on Planet B103 or try to remember who was that girl on Planet H110 all those many lifetimes ago ... I want to be on Planet A1 just getting started ... not all over again ... the devil says we're talking about a box ... it's pretty narrow and you've nailed it up pretty thoroughly ... the teacher whose voice I want hear says come on out ... the devil wants to talk to you up to a point ... but then he wants to kill you when you get to that point ... the teacher too just as the devil does says trust me ... that's where the devil got it ... the teacher though says trust me if you know you mean it

cf kreeft, prayer, p112

THE SUBTRACTORS

here come the ideas from the mound ... one by one ... some slow some fast ... some curved some twisted ... almost all of them wide or low or high ... and of the rest a bunch of singles a few doubles and triples just one or two homeruns ... in other words your typical ballgame only with ideas mostly errant but each and every one claiming the same authority at the center of the mound ... the trick though is still the same ... knowing when to swing and what to ignore ... clearly a method is called for ... my favorite is subtraction and to do this you need good subtractors ... they go after things foul and out of bounds ... things wrong and malcontented ... the judgments that snarl the appraisals that wander ... they take away excuses misunderstanding and lies ... they pick up the rug and vacuum out all the fine grit down to the last cosmetic blemish ... they leave the colors as long as they're smooth and gradual with sharp contrasts and fortunate backgrounds ... be careful though ... there's one squad that's radical ... the metaphysical squad ... they see accident they cut to substance ... they discard the ephemeral ... they'll accept only the timeless ... they'll suck the substance out of being itself

THOUGH

we have wandered from the protection of our churches ... we have formed groups cults too of our own ... we have pockets of self-pity and dead-ends of self-analysis ... we don't feel guilty when we should ... we can't figure out why we do when we shouldn't ... we've turned away from god though we meant to turn right back ... we've picked up all kinds of infectious assumptions ... thrilling but not examined ... so now we don't like our conclusions ... we doctor the premises ... we drug the patient ... still the same conclusion ... we lose ... no help ... too bad ... what to do what to do what to do now indeed ... rolling downhill no gas no brakes looking for an empty parking lot and a smooth curve till we're done ... at least we can say this is what we have done ... come to an end ... no thanks you hear a few say ... we'll take another dip and narrow if you please even with a wall at the end ... we don't hold with this leveling off ... good souls brave souls let them come to a fast end if not just now ... I say go with the glide when you can ... the hollows and the bends are enough for me ... but a few times each day I hear as from the radio still playing ... though though aim still higher

TETRAGRAMMATON WITH VOWELS

because the name his name is the truth itself all good things and beautiful must follow as contained within it ... no other word is as true as this name ... to say it is in essence to put the vowels back in the tetragrammaton ... now I ask you isn't that magic and isn't the formula abracadabra ... well it does depend who's in the conversation ... if it's someone you want to pull out of the line and give instructions to that's magic ... if it's someone who pulls you out of line and gives instructions that's black magic and dark art ... but if it's you who leaves the line sits at the foot of and takes instruction from that's prayer ... if you have an arm that stretches out and paints the sky red that's magic ... if fingers grip your artery and rip it loose that's the work of the devil ... if one hand holds the other and you're lost in thought that's prayer ... if the thoughts that come through mottle and distract keep praying and begin each prayer with his name ... because that's what we're talking about ... that word his name in which if this is right all wisdom power good intention and formation rest ... and all things work ... for the benefit of those who love him

cf kreeft, prayer, p67, pp55-57

THE WORD, THE TRUTH

some people have tried lots of ways high and low to get stoned ... I only knew two but I'm considering a third based on something I just read ... the two methods I'm familiar with struck me as being similar in this respect ... they both have a moment when all the buzz and rattle stops ... the first method under whose influence I came to legal maturity required an hour or two before the moment came ... helped if you could find a spot to yourself which was difficult in this a social way ... the second was immediate but blurred or even falsified if you had to be with others but alone it came within a minute or two ... but this new method requires no drug at all ... indeed something to be desired ... and short as it is it implicates the hierarchical structure of the universe ... mercy rather than simple justice ... and the insignificant yet tawdry role I have played myself within it ... and it takes no time at all ... a good deal you would say ... well yes but the high it gives me does not raise me up ... the calm with which it surrounds me does not keep the world out ... and the feeling of quiet it brings me isn't centered in the smooth flow of the blood round my ears but in the assurance of my mind that this word is the truth

RECANT

you would at the end of life recant all your mistakes for fear of something worse and say they gave you no pleasure ... you might even believe it ... memory now at the service of your immediate desire to survive somehow anyhow ... but there should be a little man at the back of your head at the base of your skull to stand up and say no that's not the way it was ... I enjoyed myself ... it was fun ... and he should have an audience of your past moments and present good advice who stand up then and applaud the little man for telling the truth ... but then the audience will sit down and having heard just a little bit of the truth they'll be in the mood to hear some more ... what will you tell them ... the stage is now yours ... might you not reverse the last four hundred years of philosophy in the west ... use your little note of honesty to flip the foolish sin of pride at the beginning ... when it said I think therefore I am ... as if this I am was not already the name of something far greater than man or creation and you little man could use it to close your claim of self-definition ... not I think therefore I am ... but he thinks therefore I am his ... now that's a correction worth applause

THE REAL OPTIMIST'S CAN-DO

I had figured it out that the clause because we can was enough to explain evil ... and of course it's not ... it's enough to explain the good ... what changed my mind was the silent and invisible clause that experience shows must follow ... after because we can and still like it must follow and follow all the way through ... now I could argue the next step theoretically or for the most part ... go out of the box in theory or be satisfied with the majority of mankind ... the awful and dull truth is that it's virtue and not vice we wind up admiring ... most of us at any rate ... and those who don't or the rest of us when we don't it's because we're laboring in a theory and it's badly fractured ... one more push in that direction one more restraint ... there is no end of trying down that way till the last trying fails ... what a loathsome pest is wrong desire fulfilled ... its wage is a perpetual debit ... it ruins satisfaction and makes desire a cloying cannot hereafter ... for that which we cannot do finally is just that which we were not meant to do ... all our happiness is found in that small affirmation can ... and even now at the end of life looking back you see it is what we are

WHY WOULD ANYONE DO SUCH A THING? AND YET WE DO.

you know the tree by its root but also by its fruit ... what you do is important but what you think is too ... even when it comes to nothing ... and sometimes especially when it does ... when we are in error ... what more welcome advice than stop before you step in front of the bus ... stop ... here you are in error ... where no such thing is you put one there and when I call you pretend not to hear ... there is no place where nothing is unless we mean the place of error ... where nothing's in the right place even no thing is well placed ... and you can get there at that point ... death's point ... only by lying not by making a mistake ... not in that light ... the light of death ... the darkness is not blind just a lie to say that it is ... and all our good sight falls through the stomach and out the gut and we too along with it ... a thoroughly tasteless bad example we used to have the good sense to ignore ... will you hold it up pertinaciously forever even as you fall ... let it go let it go down let it go out now rather you stay in stay here ... what a twist a contortion really it must take at this point to leave ... will you scurry down the trunk the withered syllable in your mouth just to say no

BAD HABITS

this inside outside stuff is very strong ... some of us get together from a society that bans the inside and we deny the outside ... we have the four corners posted ... we have sentries in betweeen ... we don't intend to let any of it through ... but over the years we fail in that intention ... we find the outside has seeped in and the walls are about to collapse ... whole acres of tissue are wasted ... on the inside we are invaded and about to capitulate ... but inside the inside we're still plotting bunker strategy ... and in these confined rooms we have a score of lawyers working our defense ... we know they won't be needed ... at our trial there will be just one question asked ... with no lie or misunderstanding possible ... there is no defense ... everything's out in the open ... it cannot be argued or ameliorated ... that is the assumption we begin with and it's the one we must dismiss if our answer to the question asked is no ... and that's what worries me ... that I should say no ... the philosopher says I've been training all my life to answer that question ... the answer I give will be shaped by the habits I've formed ... how can I avoid saying no one last time

WHY A MATERIALISTIC HEDONISTIC CULTURE BREEDS MEGALOMANIACS

there's good news for the megalomaniac ... the good news has two parts ... first he can be cured ... second he can be cured because in a sense he was right all the time ... he is a great man ... just not in the sense he thought ... he thought he was a great man or would be or should be on the outside ... and there he is wrong ... his greatness is on the inside and it is unique ... but so is mine and yours and everyone else's ... it's because he could not reconcile this paradox that he got confused ... but if he did he had help ... help from the runaway culture at large which says that there is no inside ... what we think is the inside is just a mishmash of chemical urges shaped by the pressures of society mediated by a phantom construction called the ego ... indeed whatever we do find on the inside peels off to become another outside ... but this was not enough to content our friend mr m ... he had a sure sense of something great about him ... he just didn't take the preposition literally enough to recognize it holds the key to the pronoun ... this about was all around him but when he went to pinpoint its location he found only himself on the outside looking back in

WIDE AWAKE AFTER A LITTLE NAP

you may find this of little note this movement of the hand across the shelf ... almost accidentally ... but there's often a significance most of all in that little word almost ... my finding the book is of little noteworthiness in our outside world ... but the philosopher also notes that we are all bigger on the inside than we are on the outside ... so it is with me then too ... and unlike most books which have passed through my hands on the outside this one has made its way to the inside ... let me give an example ... I've always wondered why on the average we waste a third of our life in sleep ... this author the philosopher answers the question by reminding us the average is a mean between the two extremes the infant and the old man and the difference in their need for sleep ... it grows less and less as we get older and older because life is working as it should ... doing the job it was designed to do ... it's waking us up ... just in time to kill us ... well yes but only because our time is up ... the body is worn out ... and we should be ready to go ... and would be if we believed what he believes is waiting for us

DEATH IS FOOD ... UNTIL IT POISONS?

well ... on the surface the philosopher has some points in his favor ... if death is food a culture that denies it would feel itself starving ... and if you consider the alternative to death as being without explicit reference to god humanity's claim to immortality ... given a tight contract where nothing implicit is honored ... you have as he says the classic definition of hell ... furthermore you have prior clauses argued that come now in support ... death gives life here on earth its limits ... but definition is a matter of limits ... without death the board cannot be placed on the side of the house ... without limits the board can't be held by the hand by the eye by the mind ... death not only seasons the food ... without its limits there is no food ... as matter provides space for spirits to communicate ... as time gives the mind food for thought ... and mystery something for it to chew on ... so death gives it the chunk of steak in the middle of the plate too big to be swallowed in one bite ... with instructions on the menu saying that's the only way it can be eaten ... and swallow it you will ... though in fact it kills you

A PHILOSOPHY OF DEATH

reading philosophers is not quite the same thing as reading philosophy is it ... I mean you have to read the philosophers to read philosophy because it's a necessary means to an end ... but that's all ... philosophy itself is the end ... you can be an eclectic and collect a little from parmenides from plato from aristotle from plotinus from augustine from thomas from berkeley hegel schopenhauer kierkegaard blanshard and hartshorne even popper too ... you can put it all together ... season it with a little insight you've had yourself ... put it in the oven for a decade or two ... and then use it to defend the way you've spent your life ... or upon your coming up to an end of that life grace may be given to you ... to pull a book down from off the shelf ... a book by a philosopher on death ... a little book ... a hundred and twenty pages ... but he tells you to read it more than once ... and here too as almost always in this book he's right ... this philosopher who says death is our food and we eat it up as we do matter mystery and time for they nourish us

cf peter kreeft, love is stronger than death

ON WHAT THE VOICES SAID

of the man who heard voices it was not necessary to stipulate where they came from ... it was enough that he heard them and then confessed it ... so much for the commitment stage ... but when it came to housing storing and releasing the patients the identity of the voices assumed an administrative value ... did they threaten or soothe ... suggest or command ... if either what was it they wanted the patient to do ... now up in the capital there was a clerk in charge of correlating the responses and submitting to the secretary an annual report a summary of these messages ... for the last few years a section of the report had been growing in length and thereby attracted first the secretary's attention and then his alarm ... it was the section of the advice sometimes peremptory but never claiming to be more than a suggestion but for a growing class of patients the persistent advice to remember their oncoming death ... the clerk explained to the secretary this expanding number was a mere function of their ageing demographic ... but the ageing secretary himself began to brood

THE THREE MOST FRIENDLY WORDS

I got ya ... was there ever a more reassuring note ... not gotcha! a cruel distortion ... but I got ya ... as in don't worry indeed if you could only see it from my point of view you would know how simply safe you are as this is not a complicated matter but a completely done deal ... so relax ... later on you can worry about something more serious ... you hear talk at this point of the law of the heart ... justice or mercy ... it's a nice puzzle that the trinity solves ... the answer is the law of the heart of merciful justice ... of course right now I'm talking about the solution which is simple enough intellectually but not at all the same as living it which is rather being part of the solution ... so that when you say I got ya your voice emphasizes the I ... whereas the cop to the criminal emphasizes the verb ... or simply says gotcha! ... putting the cruelty back on the head of the criminal who's the real ironist here ... nor do I mean I got your back as if together we fight the foe ... back to back ... but simply I am the one to hold your back upright as a wall

IF WE START WITH ONE THING SIMPLY GOOD

if god is all good things at once I should be grateful to be one good thing every now and then ... and I am ... but there's more ... I'm to be one good thing all the time after the end of time is over ... just to be at such a time must be splendid but I am to be more ... I am to be perfect ... complete ... in the fulness of time fulfilled ... and before you say what nonsense let me say you are to be this one good thing as well ... now you may say that may be well indeed ... but if you persist and still say nonsense it will never happen then I would ask you why not ... what better argument is there than to know from things that are wrong that they cannot last ... and to know from things that are right that they cannot be lost ... for long ... I say what better argument ... you may think you have one as good ... that neither good things nor bad can last forever ... and it would be just as good given the evidence we have and how we may interpret it ... as good an argument but not better ... and why is that ... when one of these two arguments will win and one will lose why is it that the argument for the good end is not better ... isn't it already good