MATINS

what if life were biological mental and spiritual in that order but all three as causes present at one time ... life's material mental and spiritual dimensions ... matter form and will to a purpose ... impossible to separate at their most intense ... at the emotional ... but you can try it ... though you'll only mess things up ... spend your life pursuing a material quest for sex and see how it works out ... try to internalize all perception logically and see what you wind up with ... or try living in the spirit with ignorance or neglect of body and mind ... but this last does sound tempting except for the ignorance and neglect ... both the biological and mental it's easy to see overdone ... but the healthy spirit unusurped by body or mind does seem to ring the bell ... turn such a spirit one way as a statue on a pedestal you see the hero ... another and you see the sage ... again and a saint ... each an exemplar of the healthy spirit ... point is the figure is pulling a bell has a purpose and a destination ... I like to help by tugging at its sleeve to hear the bell chime

epiphany on park ave

REJOICE

I belong to the church of the many different volumes ... it is as you'd expect voluminous ... we have branches all over the face of the earth ... sometimes you cannot see the light for the leaves or the forest for the trees ... there are so many pages we can't see past them to hear what's being said ... our eyes all aglitter on the printed page we can't see through it to the meaning beyond ... it's a tutelage apprentice time till the master rings the bell and the class is done ... just before graduation the volume you open is your friend ... there are no more deadlines papers or tests initiations or confessions but a communion of ideas a community of scholars sages and saints ... in our cathedral on the slope our church of the many different minds there is peace ... in our convent of isolation our abbey of the recluse the motto is people have no time need or desire for conversation with me ... in our monastery eyrie our silent monks mop the floor on hands and knees ... witness to joy and grace ... hear the word rise up through the boards ... and rejoice 2/2

NEGATIVE MEETS DOUBLE NEGATIVE

what's the difference between god and his creation ... necessity ... and all it implies ... infinity eternity certainty ... known everywhere all the time ... supremacy ... the best there can be and more than that if such there be ... not as strange as it first sounds ... depends on what you mean as best ... it must mean as known ... it can't be unknown ... it's better to be known than not known ... but by whom is it known ... if by us we know there's something better just as we know there's a better mind than the human ... but better than best per se that's impossible ... and that would be the end of it if it didn't open the gate to a horde of impossibles ... to let them into the citadel shouting it cannot be it will not be ... while high above on the true tower walls of the inner citadel the soldiers say they shall not pass ... can't-be stopped forever by cannot-not-be ... so I think it truly is as we sit on the grassy slope and picnic outside the outer wall while inside panic and despair wage war against necessity ... with each loss they suffer they cry what's right has been wronged ... as if they were not nothing but wrong 1/2

cf j budziszewski, what we can't not know

LIBERAL? PROGRESSIVE?

gnostic means private personal knowledge of god

gnostic means the universe and god no matter how many levels is one thing

gnostic is not humble but proud

gnostic is the expert the one with the names

gnostic has the form formulas formulettes

gnostic has the way if only you could understand it

gnostic has it all final revelation

gnostic has the last word

SOMEONE THERE

you can't justify your adolescence and certainly not your middle age by saying what you meant to do ... say finding your way ... because the conversation now isn't about you ... it's about what you found ... what really happened ... ask the question ... it has a simple answer ... what's it all about ... the spirit ... sure the material world is the inside of a washing machine ... but out of the spin cycle comes form ... we learn when we find a new difference but we never learn without a teacher ... if all you had was matter mind form and difference what would it mean with no one to guide you ... what difference could it make ... what could possibly be the matter if all you had was form and difference in constant succession ... no ... there has to be better than that ... there has to be something pulling us up and forward ... something we don't do on our own ... something forever utterly different than us pointing the way ... telling us that for the sake of which we are we desire ... someone there to bridge the gap

THINKING

he's pleased with himself ... he can sit in a room alone and be pleased to hear what he says ... especially when it surprises him ... in reflective moments he can almost see the membranes of his thought ... that he himself the one who said it is past but the one who thought it is present on just the other side of the curtain ... he hearing it did understand it somewhat ... has he thinks something of a hold on part of it behind the veil but never more secure than when he lets go ... there's a hidden joke in litter especially when you change it but because it is hidden you don't have to laugh but you still should get the joke ... you can tell it any different way you like because you didn't make it up ... you didn't imagine it but you did suppose ... the words to your thought came out of nowhere ... they were just suddenly there with good rhythm and timing ... substantial ... whose construction matches your own ... and you laugh in sudden vindication ... you guys win ... your side is immortal ... well at least this moment is ... this one just now past ... think here before it goes to tell the good lord thank you

HOW TO READ

I've got to learn how to read ... I already know this much ... it doesn't pay to read quickly as if you were paid to do it ... you've got to see the words as if they were in the rear-view mirror falling into the past and you having to keep your eyes forward to hear what the words are saying to see it on the oncoming road ... their meaning their message ... and if it isn't clear then you've got to drive more slowly even stop and go in reverse for a while ... point is after all what's being said not if you're hungry or tired ... point is what's being said is a most miraculous thing ... pretty much everybody who knows what those black marks on the paper mean knows the same thing ... as you go down the road you can hear the author's voice and after a while get to know him ... which is a fine and indispensable thing ... he's in the car ahead and as you follow you see what he means ... it would be the point if you found his voice appealing just to follow in its wake ... if you didn't also notice you agree with what he's saying ... or just now learning from it you begin to smile as the truth of it begins to dawn on you ... you love the truth

MORAL INCAPACITY

suppose then that you never did taunt the devil himself ... never wrestled him to take your chance ... nevertheless you must have come across a few imps in your time ... some moments of pride a few infelicities some infidelity perhaps ... a small touch of lust ... a roll in the sack of addiction ... a phobia a taboo you like having ... the closer you and your imp get the more pertinent the question how close is the devil to it ... if you sleep with a vice shouldn't you know its past and present partners ... if you took some wine to your room at night and went to bed with a genie what might she whisper in your ear the moment you fell asleep ... the next morning's hangover was it the wine or the advice ... this going over to the dark side can't be meant to appease power ... the thing we go to has no power till we give it ... why do we do that ... fill our imagination with consent ... maybe it's evolution of the most macro type ... mineral plant animal mental spiritual ... and a class thing too ... we peasants learning just now to read ... intoxicated with new truth ... unable to hold it in good faith 2/2

SHOULD WE TEMPT THE DEVIL

what if satan were stupid as well as brilliant ... take his rebellion against god ... of all authority the most unimpeachable ... that was a brilliant move of all moves surely the most illogical ... what in it are we to admire ... the absurdity the malfunction of understanding ... you can stare him in the face and yell at him he's such a dolt ... most of the time he knows enough to keep his distance ... most of the time we get his imps not his angels ... the imps are more lively ... say what some say about satan is true ... he was a DA at the start ... the undercover agent sent to test our faith ... grew to like his job too much ... got demoted when the boss sent his own son to run the show ... went over to the other side ... became the other side ... the alternative reality ... the one without god ... ideas have their consequences so do theories and he spun the most elaborate because the most devious ... styles it just so ... calls in a lot of fans ... begins again with each to ruin life ... and yet withal impotent without an invitation ... and how would such an invitation come ... write him a letter ... entice him ... spit in his face 1/2

peck, people of the lie, ch 5

SOCRATES' ASSIGNMENT

socrates midway between earth and paradise is running a wargame clinic ... why should he do that ... because he's been told to ... turns out the battles and the wars the campaigns and the different theaters are metaphors ... but metaphors in this subethereal palace are so thick and thin in various spots they obviate or become simple understanding ... as the armies are cardboard and the terrain is paper the story being told isn't the one that happened ... and as the students gather round the board there's something else they mean in everything they say or see ... achilles takes the field the dawning of the west meets the setting sun in the east ... athens and sparta disagree now the west is being born ... caesar's chasing pompey the republic takes a fall the epicure into hiding the stoic on his sword ... house against house to become a medieval king god's representative ... parliaments and reformers ... nations and their states ... government against government ... people against each other ... where after all in all of this would socrates be out of place

FINAL HOPE

we thought the death of the body meant the loss of the mind but that's backwards ... losing your mind can be as quick as a bullet or as slow as dementia but when the lower ego shuts the last system down and closes the door all the light and purpose go too ... and the body in that instant is compost ... what an ugly thought ... but it's a simple consequence of flipping that last switch ... one moment it's there the monitors testify to its still present administrative power and then it's gone ... and what it leaves behind requires a totally alien protocol ... it's the mind in particular its higher powers that we value most ... it's what we lose so death may have its high value among us its place of honor and disgust ... between the body and the mind in this my heart goes out to the lower ego ... he cleaned the soiled and polished the brass and in the end he's the one to go from room to room and turn out the lights ... and I can't but wonder what the higher ego's thinking as he does ... thinking I hope of duty and devotion of love and the lost manor ... of the light to come seen in the past

O-D

so by definition at least part of that definition what is death ... I say it's the separation of soul from body most noticeable in the loss to the body of the presence of the conscious mind ... it's how we feel cheated in talking to a senile parent ... the higher ego is shorted out ... the lower ego the one without a life jacket is in charge of the sinking ship ... all the intrigue and clever insight down with it to the bottom ... the present location of the higher ego and the spirit is unknown ... all during life we stage replicas of this death ... besides comas of the body we sleep we dream we take drugs ... we tune in and zone out ... the hard-working not seldom wrong lower ego is taken for a vacation on the corporate jet ... leans back first class and gazes out the window ... he can relax ... the details are far down below ... higher ego and spirit are his pilots ... all LE has to do is listen to their conversation on the PA ... there is something like a game in what they do he muses ... I know what they're saying and I agree but I'd never have thought to think it myself ... this drink is strong the smoke's a fog if this is death let me have more

EDEN'S TREE OF PRIDE

I'm not only a pacrist but I can tell you as the world's only pacrist that all pacrists are sinners ... when I was young I was a thief ... in middle age a lecher ... but I saved till the end the controlling sin of all the others the sin of pride ... in particular I was proud to be a pacrist but in general I was an annoying pain in the ass ... well thank god this more general complaint is settled by my seclusion and the pacres are assigned by way of penance ... to me and to you who read them ... you poor few who have nothing better to do ... but come let's have peace and call it a parsonage ... pasturage finally in our town ... age of the person ... for isn't that our salvation ... flooded in a valley cluttered with ideas there's only one high and wide enough to save us ... true it is a truth a necessary truth the one truth all the human mind must turn to ... but the necessary truth is a necessary being ... not like you or me the ocean or the galaxy not like us but with us ... nothing any of us could call to pin down as if we had the right ... but the living truth which we nailed to a tree

FREEDOM AND NECESSITY DOWN THE AGES

is anything necessary ... the ancients were of two opinions ... parmenides said everything's necessary nothing's left to chance for nothing ever changes change is an illusion ... heraclitus disagreed nothing stays the same he said permanence crumbles anything can happen ... plato said if you want necessity you'll find him at home in the world of ideas but down here in the cave things are a mess ... aristotle reveling in the mess organized cataloged necessity expanding then limiting it to his own four causes and much preferred the slogan always or for the most part ... then came the skeptics his successors the resurrected sophists and took away the conjunction and made the slogan a sneer and an academic prerogative to ask the question who can say always isn't really for the most part ... and the epicureans in shock took to refined eating and the stoics built walls and the walls fell ... and rose again round cathedrals and universities where the word spread that only one thing was necessary ... it was that which made us free

NOSTRADAMUS DEJA VU

modern philosophy at least since rationalism met empirical scepticism since kant met hume has been tossing a hot potato down the centuries ... necessity ... becomes certainy becomes logical implication becomes language becomes culture becomes meaning becomes custom becomes perception becomes sensation becomes neural becomes electrical becomes photon becomes my way of seeing the light and yours ... joins the east subscribes to maya hopes for nirvana but has this in agreement before it goes ... everything's mental ... either the universe has a mind or it's in my mind ... the cosmos is ideal maybe not perfect but made of idea experience awareness ... win or fail it's a grand intellectual adventure ... the sharper the mind the more precise and universal its control ... while the priesthood chants random selection the technicians adjust the dials ... while the academics certify chance and expel design the politicians rig the wheel and plan your future ... it's the age of nostradamus the cosmic gnostic

THE QUALIFIER THAT MUST NOT BE MISSING

LJC SOTLG HMOM AS ... name the authority ... give the source of his authority ... say what it is you want ... explain why you need it ... politics metaphysics and theology psychology anthropology ... say you do say the prayer and you find the edges mellow ... but you are warned against the unauthorized use of the prayer and are told two things to watch for ... irritability and humility ... that the first showed you going wrong ... think hitler ... while the second leads to the company of the sages and the saints ... but say the name of stalin ... he was wrong but not was he discontented ... couldn't he have lulled himself content with his own demonic litany his own luciferic light ... he was a seminarian he would know how to do it ... and just how do you say he couldn't be right even if he thought he was ... even if he said I did all that I did to push the needle through a thick patch and we closed up with a tight knot just in time ... put to trial he'd be proud ... his content would be fierce ... materialistic machiavellian gnostic eugenic he'd be someone's utopian hero ... he'd be all that but not humble

frederica matthewes-green, the jesus prayer, ch 2

PLAYING TO YOUR AUDIENCE

how can you pray always ... you'd bump into furniture and trees ... you couldn't talk to anyone else or hear them ... why you couldn't think straight about anything at all but this conversation with god ... or am I missing something ... well yeah there are lots of people who do it and lots of books on how they do ... but prior to such simple research how would you explain it ... we could start out using our prayer as a filler ... it would have to be short so you would know it by heart ... maybe just one sentence just a few short words so when you paused to take a breath you could throw it in on the exhale ... or when things begin to get dicey and when normal conversation and thought get crowded out step up the rpm ... instead of spacing out or going into shock you might go the other way and think the prayer slowly ... in the midst of a crowded discordant council in the middle of your head you could pray the room quiet with a cadenced repetition ... but this is tactical advice in danger of enlisting in the incantation choir and ignoring the strategic purpose of the prayer ... the one within you who hears it

THE TRUE IDEALIST WANTS IT ALL

I do love idealism but I have to remember that some ideas are true and some are not ... some for example sound great but then go on talking and ruin it ... say ideas are real as real as a dishrag but beautiful and filled with power ... say a planet say a star or the stars in conjunction ... which is to say a dance ... the waves lapping the hips swaying the armies marching air fleets and grand fleets sailing on the high seas of the brain's limbic system ... a chemical pool for dry synapses to recover and to flourish ... and each whole healthy brain pouring faster than its electrical pulsations into the mother's mind ... the world soul ... the overmind and universal perfection ... a system to remember ... therefore one that's right or wrong ... either or ... reincarnation or purgatory ... either one or both ... human perfection on earth or in heaven ... the planet's destination this planet or it becomes another ... it dries up into a dull red cinder a last speck of dried blood on the universal bandage or a walk into the light ... love while you can or love so that you will forever

cf penn jillette on red-eye, aired 11.9.10

RESURRECTION

I must practice detachment from the body because the body is going to die and the mind is going to sleep ... the body of course can sense that something is going wrong ... the mind isn't always sure but given time it comes to know ... indeed our culture is designed as an early warning system and if early enough it's like to suggest certain demands which more often than not are met ... and which require our conscious participation ... there comes a time when that can be difficult ... such times are rare for any comic effect though they do have their wry moments ... but the situation regardless for the most part of our participation is itself a thing that seems to have a will ... to put the mind asleep and to dissipate the body ... knowing that the situation always wins dramatically suddenly or gradually and more often cruelly than coolly I must get to work and practice detachment from the body in its current situation ... prepare the mind for bed and hope for a deathbed conversion of the situation from demon to midwife

SPIRITS

I'll go out on a limb as they say and wonder who's out on it with me ... if thinking is a conversation inside your head prayer is its perfection ... and further out on the bending branch to say ... all things by nature tend towards the source of the conversation the one who started it ... sounds gnostic ... it is after all about thinking ... but it's more ... you can tell because it doesn't end in itself ... if thinking is a conversation even when you're alone it sounds like talking to yourself ... but it's not ... we have a culture that's wrong and this is one of the ways it doesn't work ... what if in fact talking to yourself can't be done ... if talking meant a conversation and conversation meant at least two ... that whenever you were thinking you were never alone ... if we were part of a culture that took this for fact we'd do infinitely more with the thought of it than our culture does but first we'd want to identify the speakers ... what do they sound like ... what do they say ... are they right or wrong ... forceful graceful sweet or brutal ... what are they made of ... how do they live and do they die

THE GRAND INQUISITION

I'll talk politics with you all day if you'll answer three questions I've asked myself ... in one sentence state your theology ... I believe in god the father the son and the holy spirit ... your metaphysics ... I believe reality is composed of three ascending orders body mind spirit ... your politics ... moderate compromise on everything but principle ... let's try some test cases working backward ... where do you stand on hopes for a political utopia ... I think they're thought experiments whose inevitable conclusions warn against their application ... they're idealism disguised as engineering ... they elevate the mind above the body and the spirit to isolate and to kill it ... they are thereby a distorted image of the trinity with a sombre perversion in place of the son ... and gnosticism ... as utopia is an emerging political nightmare gnosticism is its epistemological parent ... how god would think if jesus were crazy or as the devil does think ... what about atheism ... gnosticism's father and son a never-ending circle always ending in death ... you say day I'll say night you say be I'll say not

ON THE ONE HAND

cut the ego off on the left ... now snip it on the right ... let it float to the surface ... let it fly through the sky ... give in on purpose to one of its wishes ... for solitude on high ... but bring it back down shortly ... set it up on dry ground a banner on a pole ... walk beside underneath ... what's the slogan for the day ... LJC SOTLG ... have mercy on me a sinner ... limited joyful community ... limited by law joyful by compliance ... a study in such compliance ... son of the living god ... for what makes sense of ethics but metaphysics with theology behind her ... I mean you can have evidence of design of coherence even a dim beauty but what's it worth with no light behind it and ahead ... I mean fine pick a ruler then call for his mercy but what's the point if you don't know who he is ... unless his name itself is all you need to know and you know it ... unless you know the god you worship isn't dead ... climb the pole bring the flag down give it a good washing the air here isn't what it should be ... lead jesus conquer ... lord jesus christ ... have mercy on me in my sins ... or have you my friend on the other hand something better

VOYEUR KILLING TIME

suppose you had curiosity but that was as far as you might go ... suppose that is you had the fatal kind of curiosity that went as far as it went to get the shortest answer but no further ... looking through the window it sees an attractive sight but must hurry on into the night ... listening outside the door it hears the truth outright but scurries on to the next spot without a pause to make a note ... till door after door and window after window the pictures and the sound flow by as if they were frames on a spinning wheel ... or in a film splattered on a screen ... the voyeur audience incapable of participation and at the end unable even to react loses two lives each ... the one on the screen so far out of touch ... the one in their seat alone in the dark of the crowded theater and a bright day filled with saints and sinners outside ... it's a shadowy world inside with bright colors that fade on the wall ... a passion you can make believe you share on screen and off with the idea of truth the beauty of it ... anything can be made to look true in slow motion but this makes slow motion look good in the real time we lose to watch it

plato, the republic, bk 7, the allegory of the cave

THE DEN

I have all these books because any one of them might be read ... the games on battles and wars might be run each a different way ... but I have no time no one does to read or play them all ... and it's not like any of them can be expected to survive me long ... but I see in each of them nonetheless the glint of immortality ... the paper map the cardboard counters the folio pages the quarto mass are only atoms in a fixed dance ... what does science say ... that in time they'll all go home pull up the covers and fall apart ... you see I didn't start thinking this on my own ... I was born into a community that understands what nothing might be ... nothing or something ... for a while or forever ... either chasing or till the day you die ... rolling downhill head over heels we stitch a seam in time ... inside a house in constant repair we find a room with no window or door ... no lock no key ... a room no one enters ... yet still you hear them talking ... and the words that come through the static linger in your mind and become a foundation ... we print them on a page we draw them on a map ... we see inside the room

IN REFLECTED GLORY: THE IMAGE OF GOD

does grammar parse theology ... the first person I is what each of us is to start with ... father to all that follows ... the second person is the most personal the closest we get when we each use the same word for the other ... you ... but when it came to the third person I found the analogy most impressive ... she he they it isn't me talking telling you anything ... it's past the first and the second ... it's on to the third ... and there's a fine expression within it where you and I and what they might think are no longer the subject ... what a relief to talk about something else ... and talk we have ... across centuries flooding into millenia ... you and I led the way made the family but we're not human till we go public ... till the third person arrives ... you I've come to love but we're no good out of context ... it's in the third that we know the context ... in the third person that we describe its contents ... there was an explosion we huddled together in order to survive from doing things together we began to make them together through family tribe kingdom and empire through art and science to the glory of god

WHY WE NEED THE SUPER EGO

conscious or unconscious choices ... I've heard of unconscious motives but am used to thinking of choices as necessarily conscious ... so let's see what you'd have to do to either word to make it fit the other ... conscious I take to mean me ... I mean the ego ... but I know when I do I'm being particular ... widening out to more general a sense of who I am we each may take freud's reflected trinity ... our expression of the father's power I'm sad to say is as you know perverted ... freud called it the id ... it's the id that's subconscious ... and now we want to say the id has its choices ... if you mean options you're pulling your punch back into the potential ... say rather choice as in your choice to make ... this choice you now are making ... how do I know ... I see what you're doing ... why isn't that just another option ... because you actually did it ... but if you find a gray area between the thought and the synapses firing ... between the action and the intention ... things there would be so foggy you might confuse the subway for the surface ... here the id might blend into the ego ... super ego would still tell us apart

peck, people of the lie, p105

SOFT CHAGRIN

what's this thing about pride ... is it simply selfish when sinful and generous when it's a virtue ... what good thing was ever done alone ... what bad thing that didn't try to hide ... the recognition of excellence entails a celebration a party a feast ... the commission of a crime makes you want to flee the scene ... and so with pride ... the good kind draws us together the bad kind makes us scatter ... what's the difference between aircraft debris landing in your back yard and the arrival of the first sparrow ... something broken and something well-made ... premonition of death and cause for celebration ... why is a wedding a twelve-hour festival and the honeymoon a mystery of being private but not alone ... what's the bond that pulls us apart ... the scheme that makes suicide the most lively option ... what's the motive behind false pride that isn't found in its name a lie ... waiting here patiently for the bus to take me from someone to someone else ... here for the bones creaking and the aches roaming there is no pride or isolation but for the moment time enough for a laugh

peck, people of the lie, "narcissism and will", pp 77-84

42nd STREET

the ego went for whatever reason the ego goes anywhere ... for the idea of it ... the id goes to sabotage the going there ... the ego infatuated with the idea intoxicated with the word of it prances mimics gestures across the stage ... in a word declaims ... but the spirit super ego the spirit is quiet it listens it considers and it learns ... next day too bad the id has pulled the ego down ... just on the verge of finding the word for what the spirit has said the id calls the ego to bed ... just as well the ego was on the wrong floor anyway well above its natural height ... they spoke in symbols up there as if the words they used were numbers in a line ... they spoke of narrow concepts at the end of long thin branches ... what a bird this ego would be to settle down so large and clumsy on such a line of thought ... besides perfection of a dissolute profusion was all the rage there when the ego still mostly a mumbler was trying to remember ... no wait that doesn't sound right ... what is that word the ego tries to recall ... the thing the spirit said

WANTED FOR POTUS: A NEW MENTOR

o'bama preaches and is driven by a sense of community as old as plato ... a sense indeed of community that is platonic ... power flows down through the strength of wisdom at the top ... children are separated as a class from an ascending series of adults ... from laborers to technicians through teachers to the guardians at the top ... where truth and wisdom are packaged and sent down the slope to the children at the bottom to raise them up from poverty and ill health ... it's a noble picture but it doesn't move ... each year from their birth we bundle each class up the slope to go as far as they can get ... but they're just details ... all the pattern of their movement their purpose that which makes them such a picture to see this design never changes ... but plato had a grandon who didn't agree ... whose nose wasn't in a book ... whose mind wasn't in the middle of a literary discourse ... whose fingers were stained in earth and blood dissecting animals all the way up to god ... who educated princes and advised kings and then saints when it was their turn to learn ... aristotle

A POWERFUL SURMISE CONCERNING EVIL

this is a strange division of evil persons into two groups ... one a kind of natural evil like volcanoes or earthquakes psychopaths missing a conscience ... and the other type the liars who deceive themselves first ... censoring manipulating the truth they receive from their conscience ... we are all sinners but they think themselves sinless ... it's a powerful surmise ... to qualify as an evil person you must first tell yourself a lie ... you may say it first to others but it doesn't count till you believe it yourself ... you spin it ... you tweak it ... qualify it by extensions amend it by intention till it says what you meant it to say from the start ... what you say on the spot you justify by complicated calculation in numbers or words till you get the verdict you require ... true this is a well-known type within the soul but a type the only that's evil ... true pilgrims on the road to salvation know they're sinners but the ones who don't know this are heading to damnation ... not the moral imbeciles the natural disasters but the ones who work at telling the lie well ... who lie like hell to get there

m scott peck, people of the lie, ch 2, "toward a psychology of evil"

HANGOVER MORNING

lazy analysis or we've already eaten too much ... when we aren't ready to hear the obvious truth ... when we've just no room for any more of it ... we are the food we eat inasmuch as we choose it ... but what if in fact we eat ethereally before we get down to grits ... from the unconscious through the subconscious the preconscious up through the water into the light ... each morning reborn again with the manna still in our mouth ... the ideas of salvation and resurrection to eternal life dissolving on our tongue ... dissolving they have their effect ... they nourish us ... they tell us what's to come ... and like zombies we follow their lead stumbling off into the day ... it would all be a dream if we weren't doing what someone else wants us to ... if all we had was our way ... and the dream would be a nightmare ... so whom do we follow and which way tonight will we sleep ... hands first head next down through the deep back up into the light ... or head first but backwards down into the night and still face down up into the morning wondering what what was it I just saw

CONSTANCY OF SPIRIT

demons and devils slip by unnoticed in our culture because of their metaphysical make-up because of its spiritual nature ... in the context of our material age we may not take them seriously perhaps until we pause to consider ... how real is real ... is it the sharp pain in my side right now or that thing I did when I was ten that plagues me still fifty years later ... which is real the thing just done or the next thing on the horizon ... when we search for their meaning which do we find more ethereal quark angel or thought ... in which is the odor most compelling in evil in the devil or the corpse ... which promises to have the most effect the longest and what if it's right ... I know these sensations now in the timing of the pattern but that the pattern itself must end I get from the testimony of others by their spoken or written word and my memory for it ... as the medium changes something about the message stays the same ... I love I hate it ... the thing itself will not change ... a constancy of spirit in darkness or in light ... surrounded by damned souls or fallen angels it never does read false

CREATION EX NIHILO

if you think clearly then you will love ... so it is all about thinking ... well love too if love justifies thought ... and I'd leave it there a happy dualist not of opponents but of amicable components if I could if I weren't obsessed and driven by the myth of three ... what's odd though is how little I have to spend to find a natural third ... good thinking and good will ... reason and love yes but whose ... my love my thought or yours but who are we two ... my love my thought but who or what am I ... my drive my desire my wit and penetration but everything I do is grounded first in me ... not self-centered but centered in myself ... everything I experience starts with me ... how could it not ... but see see this might be a clue ... who'd bother to think to try if he weren't first prompted by some kind of care some kind of love ... and who what would I be without some thought to see myself reflected ... who then would I be or how possibly without thought without love ... this who I am yes indeed but without thought without love nothing

PROLIX IN PRAYER

one thing almost all of us seem always to forget is who we're really talking to almost all the time even when we're talking to each other ... the one we're really trying to impress ... the one thank god we think ... the one whose voice we do not hear ... mystics and magicians aside ... I mean the rest of us who go to other work figuring planning ... doing all that work in our heads means mostly talking ... not so much what's this but what do you make of that ... not so much and now I sign my name now I make a fortune but wait a second who's really paying attention who just now might give a damn ... damn I should have known it ... damn that makes me mad ... who is the me you're really telling ... who's the I that didn't know ... what is this stepping back and talking to yourself and why is it important you tell it the truth ... what's the point when the point is that you bother to talk at all ... these silent soliloquies you give ... these stage front confessions ... what do you say when you hear yourself talking so poorly in truth as you pray

WE FORGET

now as to the quality of that which they sought ... by definition it would have to be the pearl of great price ... the prize you win that wins everything ... owl was right ... one thing just one thing makes everything else ... the baptists and the gnostics arian to zoroaster everybody has this one thing on their mind ... we want its name on our lips as we live and when we die ... it's the one thing and the only thing that would make anything else worthwhile ... but it does and that's the beauty of it ... if you have just this one thing and you lose everything else you haven't lost anything ...and that's the irony of it because this one thing this only thing is the one thing we keep forgetting ... the siren blows and we're back in the race running with all the other particulates ... relativity rules but the absolute reigns ... it's complex we complicate things but we know it's really simple ... one thing one thing only is necessary 2/2

THE WAY TO THE TRUTH

the seer sits in his chair and sees ... well understands ... perhaps he knows ... in his drug factory owl flips out because one rare time he takes his own drug and travels in time ... he sees well he thinks he does two centuries back ... he does at least know or thinks he knows that one by one everything goes out till he's down to one last cell and in order to get back to where he started he has to build everything back ... now maybe in spirit that door and the experience beyond it really did open to him ... in one philosophy an idealistic realism it did ... seems like a large sect in the south has the same philosophy which they call the inner light ... and another sect 1800 years before in the first aftershocks of the second cosmic explosion riding the ripples of the blast sailing in its echo said the same thing ... said the final truth was hidden and they had found a way to it ... after all these years after all this testimony something does in fact remain hidden ... some do seem to know the way ... what do we look for to show us its success ... constancy 1/2

wolfe, kool-aid, "cosmo's tasmanian deviltry"; bloom, american religion, ch 13; douglas w johnson, the great jesus debates, ch 1

BOTH IN TIME AND BEYOND IT: HOW TO ESCAPE IT

that's also how wargames are like literature ... they both want you to linger ... one does it by brilliance the other by giving you things to do ... they are more of course dissimilar than alike ... brilliance for instance makes us pause but a list of things to do usually comes with a deadline as wargames do with their sequences of play and limited number of turns ... the well-spoken word the haunting sonata give us pause to wonder and wonder is the pathway to the eternal ... everything in a wargame from movement rules to victory conditions is governed ruled and harassed by time ... just reading a good novel distracted by an abstraction you can miss your stop on the line ... but literature is more charged than that ... best wait till you get home to read it ... wargames now that they're on the small screen can be played anywhere ... their abstracted distractions are always a run in time ... historic ancient nostalgic fictive what if could you do better running time ... nonetheless consuming sometimes wasting real time ... as if after all we meant just killing time 2/2

LITERATURE DEFINED?

one of the worst pieces of advice I've received in my life I received corporately when a high school teacher of english warned the class in response to an answer I gave don't use literature as an escape ... I see now he should have qualified his warning ... I see now literature is a great escape ... why else do it ... it is in effect the definition of literature as opposed to writing in general ... there's something in the use of the language that makes us willing to linger ... all writing is a collection of ideas and it's those we come to the written word to take away with us when we leave ... ideas that tell us how to do things or why things work or happened the way they did how people behave and how they can be expected to act ... only in literature is taking your time reading it a virtue or reading it out loud just to hear it said ... this is a mistake from the pounding passage of time where we get pounded distracted or hurried on from one idea to another ... eventually we'll escape from and through the race of time but here we linger to listen 1/2

HOPE AS DUTY

the lord will provide ... isn't that another way of saying I believe ... not just I believe and this is one way I do it but if I have true faith this is what I must believe ... and if I have the best kind of true faith I believe it all the time ... to live life each moment according to the ancient prayer said most nearly when we're children ... now I lay me down to sleep I pray the lord my soul to keep and if I should die before I wake I pray the lord my soul to take and if I should wake before I die I pray what I know to be true ... the lord will provide ... and that's how each day is an alive long day not dead with dread a common expectation that no one escapes still living but a living expectation that the lord will provide ... a humbling anticipation that all I can do is help ... a startling interruption sometimes to step aside to get out of the way ... but mostly do your duty ... mostly be of good cheer ... dutiful hope the lord will provide

FALSE FRIENDS

there's a spiritual dimension to all addiction as any addict can tell you and it's not good ... there's a spirit to any addiction ... it's the element that gets you high ... oh you can give me the formula or name the active ingredient but the form you mean is academic and mechanical and the action just a series of predictable events ... I mean a living breathing spirit whose breath is in your blood ... I mean the breath of the spirit in the oxygen cracking open in your head ... the addict doesn't think he's dreaming ... he knows if you say it you'll only bring him down ... he thinks the new colors he sees and the combinations are hiding in the spaces hidden in the new places in straight time we're too slow to see ... and if it's this that makes him proud and strips the humility from him the spirit no matter how pleasant that befriends him is a false spirit ... no friend at all ... a high spirit but worse because it's so high and so fast it will leave us in the echo behind if it can

tom wolfe, the electric kool-aid acid test, "the unspoken thing" and "dream wars" before it

SUPPOSE YOU HAD A FRIEND

there's only one kind of peace ... the peace between friends ... when you have the peace of solitude meditation grace it's personal ... you're with a friend ... the same friend you're with when you're with another ... the same that makes the two of you three ... it's the spirit of freedom the truth that sets you free ... the spirit that makes you whole the wholly spirit who makes us complete ... and no wonder unless you stop to wonder how ... sent to us he's sent to bring us back ... no sooner have we sat in that big swivel chair by the window on the train got the soda in our hand and begun to speak to the spirit by our side when we're there ... and the conversation becomes an understanding and the words become light ... things now don't work the way they did ... intention isn't trying learning isn't hard and oddly most of all the company isn't wearing ... we have no cause for complaint we have no cause to worry we have no cause to quarrel ... we have the argument's conclusion the decision in the smile on his face

QUIET AT A FUNERAL

I'm not much on small talk ... I don't do it well ... I prefer big talk ... even though I don't do that well either ... you might say try middle talk ... but I don't have that gear ... I know this idea about talk has a gear ... that it's about moving ... and I like third gear best ... it goes up to the speed of light ... but most time I struggle in low gear going up a hill ... this is when we talk the smallest ... short phrases and clauses as we catch our breath ... I know what's important now isn't what we say but I think as if it were ... I know we're going uphill but I think we're in the air taking off ... I know we're talking small as if to say we could but we won't talk big ... but I try anyway ... but that doesn't work out ... so all in all it's best just to keep quiet ... just then a funny thing happens ... being quiet keeping it like a vigil but an easy one you start to hear the others ... and then you start to think ... only later do you learn after you think some more there was a grace in that quiet ... a gentle good will

THE HEAVY VEIL OF WILLFUL IGNORANCE

lord help my unbelief ... not the kind that says I don't know who you are but the kind that turns me from you ... not the kind of unbelief that thinks the argument for atheism from the presence of evil has any chance of being right ... but the kind that makes me not care for its details ... my unbelief doesn't care about the unfortunate ... it says we need the unfortunate to keep the equation in balance ... just enough evil not too much not too little to keep the ship level flying through the narrows on to the other side ... help me lord my own unbelief the kind that doesn't let me care about the details that disturb the conclusion ... the facts that disrupt the equilibrium of that conclusion ... I have the kind of unbelief that doesn't believe in kindness as any other than a wise tactical maneuver to a preordered conclusion ... the winning side ... victory on just the right move at just the last moment ... belief tells me lord you set us up and then you let us down but you let us down easy ... let my unbelief lord let me lay it down

A SANTA CLAUSES GOD

nothing is alone ... that I take to be metaphysical maxim #1 ... I guess there could have been nothing all by itself but I know that I'm here so it's too late for that ... now I've seen evidence of chance and necessity and of the two necessity appears to have the upper hand so that's maxim #2 ... necessity rules ... I've seen people and things and of the two people are much more finely developed so that's maxim #3 ... people are what it's all about ... now I ask can I work out a theology with just these three metaphysical clauses ... what would god be like according to maxim #1 ... before creation before god made something else god was not alone ... according to maxim #2 there must be something about god you can always count on so I figure that would be generosity ... once again after all I'm here ... and lastly according to #3 it's personal ... god's necessity his generosity is intentional ... with this theology in place I know what I'm looking for ... a social god necessarily because intentionally generous

THE ANGEL'S ADVICE TO THE GNOSTIC

and when human hearts are breaking under sorrow's iron rod ... then they find that self same aching deep within the heart of god ... says the anglican hymn ... the corruption of the body suddenly or inevitably now in the past or in the future the thing in fact or just the threat of it has been solved intellectually as a puzzle by the christian doctrine ... why does evil happen ... jesus ... where does it come from where does it start ... jesus ... how do I stop it how do I escape ... jesus ... because that name only is the bridge from nothing to it all ... the only bridge ... the only name ... the one we must all come to know sooner or later ... then why am I still waiting if I know and believe all this ... why don't I love the name of jesus as jesus himself loves me ... why don't I feel his presence as he feels my pain ... well that's where being a gnostic comes in the room with an answer ... all your life from the start and by grace this is what you chose to look for ... the academic answer to the academic puzzle ... relax and enjoy it

n t wright, in, the case for faith, by lee strobel, dvd; bloom, the american religion p127

AMERICAN GNOSTIC

say the soul has three parts ... a connection to corruption a body that must die ... a connection to eternity a mind that understands universals ... and a connection to god inasmuch as the soul can love ... that we are tired of pain and trying and want to sleep ... that one thing only holds our interest and keeps us awake the search for truth ... that one thing and one thing only is eternal from start to finish from before and beyond ... the love of god and what god loves ... say all this is true what we say here about the soul ... how does the american gnostic see it ... that he's ancient and as old as god ... yes inasmuch as god loves him ... that once he hears the whole story he will be free ... yes the truth will set him free and it will have the one complete story to tell ... that the soul will be solitary at the moment of her greatest transfiguration ... well yes but not to do or say or talk about later ... for the soul then will be god but not and this is important the soul as we ever know it

bloom, the american religion p99

THE IMPRUDENCE OF THE GNOSTIC

what if this is the thing ... that none of us is an I but each of us is a we and that's why the cardinal virtues are hinges ... because in trying to ensure justice for others we rely on prudence a supervisory virtue to first set our own divided house in order ... which takes courage/fortitude and temperance to deal with the two fundamental disruptions of pain and pleasure that unsettle us ... tear our integrity apart to test and play us false ... for each of these virtues but prudence and justice overall is a reflection a conformity towards truth ... and prudence foremost ... for it's how we treat ourselves our selves at war with our selves that determines how we approach others ... prudence the political art ... and the prudential man the man in balance the one most likely to choose well ... and this is what's wrong with the gnostic the progressive the modern-day liberal ... that in his fear for social justice his panic in the face of inequality and atrocity his irrational always hurried rush to utopia his ambition to make all things right by laying down the law he imprudently makes them worse

josef pieper, the four cardinal virtues

CRUCIFIXION POINT

gnosticism without christ is just class against institution ... like hippies against the establishment ... or the untouchables against all the other hindus ... I don't know but this might be right ... I think of kerouac and cassady or kesey and leary and the term gnostic seems to apply ... but then I think of hindus and buddhists and again and just as well it seems to apply ... and I start to worry ... is everything without christ gnostic ... just nascent or decreprit ... approved by many or just a few ... but especially by the many thinking they are the few ... we sages politicians doctors and professors artists dancers accountants matadors and martyrs we know what's best and whether on mars or venus or another star galaxy or dimension what we know here will be verified there ... and if the soul can migrate wouldn't the devil rule if nowhere could this be true ... that knowledge saves and will save us again ... and yet I worry ... that this truth will just float away and cannot be nailed down

tom wolfe, the electric kool-aid acid test

ROULETTE

say there was a small roulette wheel at the nexus of six or seven people and the possibility that one or none of them would be the first to say or decide a certain sentence ... say ... good now I have a right not to respond ... or ... this will be better for them than it will be for me ... and as a result of that sentence spoken or decision taken the sum total of evil realized rises ... now say that wilde was right and that we have something like a soul that the eyes in the head cannot see or the reason in the mind understand ... and that it suffers deformity whenever it's near evil being realized ... and that this deformation crumbles it inside or out near or far in gravity as our intimacy with the evil intensifies or lets go ... it doesn't hurt the body directly or distress the mind immediately but both are diminished in health because the framework of the universe both spiritual and moral is weakened compromised degraded ... what's the right response to the sound of that wheel spinning

the picture of dorian gray

ANOTHER PROOF THAT THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION IS TRUE

the difference between a book and the things it represents ... the distance between a historical simulation and the battle or war of which after all it's just a configuration ... this distinction between thought and its reality is nothing less than what it means being homo sapien ... god and the angels have surely a higher and more immediate communication ... we have books ... the angels and we have a passion for getting at the thing itself ... they fall we fail trying but not all always for we both have a delight in the artifact as god has in creation ... it's one of those layers where we meet ... between god and the man who loves him is the idea that lets him try ... no wonder we love them too these films plays pictures and songs buildings and bridges medicines and highways ... these thoughts that come before the healing the invention the judgment the sentence ... these words ... stumbling to god we spend all our lives trying to find them ... and we do ... our own and others ... we find in the word the face of god

LAYERS UPON LAYERS

it's easy to pray to god ... the lord has layers ... beauty surprise books insults gratitude humility meekness silence a peaceful obedient joyful spirit work to do and skill to do it lessons to learn and years enough to learn them sorrow when you should feel it care when you should take when you should give it wisdom to know how often life is a poor conversation with at least one false adviser mental excitement seeing an idea as if it were your fingers sweeping across a map ... when the answer has been waiting all the decades of your life ... when unlike any other the answer is alive ... a live wisdom ... the living word ... layers of profundity implication and device but a living breathing thinking action leading you up the steps ... a present problem a future solution but a presence throughout ... here in the throes of your calculation at the height of your isolation a companion a philosopher a friend ... and when you have no last breath to take a new breath to breathe a new life

TODAY'S PRAYER

meek ... I don't know that I can do that ... say I can be quiet ... speak only when spoken to ... and here's the catch ... only in good spirit ... the bet is that not speaking otherwise will make the good spirit more willing to stay ... meek but not unprincipled ... she'd never stand for that ... to have no principles is to have no origin ... there are parts we can play even in our own head that step onto the stage of consideration with a sign hanging from their neck saying don't play me ... I'm a bad premise and I'll lead you to a bad conclusion ... being meek is being discerning ... you don't take those parts ... being soft and seldom speaking you will have less later to defend ... and more time now to be observant ... a skill which should grow with practice ... this is the exercise of the application of your principles ... what would it be like not to have them ... to hang always on the tip of the point that you have no point ... I know what it's like ... you talk and you don't stop ... lord let me be silent

ON THE WINGS OF A DOVE

the uncreated self as old as god ... if this is the first premise of the gnostic how can he be saved from hell ... if he adds more assumptions as true as this first one and his logic works how can his conclusion save him ... what's damnation to a gnostic after all but being perpetually wrong and given this start how can he ever be right in the end ... what a grab all over the world but for the jews ... the self captures the castle and runs away with the world ... psyche deified with a false set of papers caught at the border made to begin again ... reincarnation justified as the necessary conclusion to a failed argument ... psyche and pneuma after falls like this have no longer their guaranteed connection and they stray ... ah remember when they were right and saw clearly ... before their besotted affair with infinity ... before by their neglect daimon became a demon ... before the devil took charge ... the soul loved the spirit and the spirit gave life ... that was a world with a garden ... that was a time for delight ... a gift from above 1/3

bloom american religion p36

AN OLD-FASHIONED LOVE STORY

freud had his id ego and superego ... hegel his thesis antithesis and synthesis ... instinct meets reason intuition is born ... demiurge archons and keroma ... chaotic hell on earth ... swirls of trinities each claiming to be holy but each is filled with violence ... order and calm murdered in a corner ... daimonic fury let loose ... wits at their end ... spirit tortured or at best detached ... tell us a story of peace ... there is no peace no peace without war ... there is a trinity a holy trinity communion with which is our goal ... but in this world we are not yet free ... which means war ... now add to this combat further and more reason and good sense ... add courage and prudence ... temper the pleasure and the pain ... now add just one thing more ... victory ... not just more thought but profundity ... and there now here now this is a story to tell ... another trinity by reflection ... daimon psyche and pneuma ... instinct given time enough would kill the soul just to kill time ... and the mind would be overwhelmed ... without the spirit to love and be loved 2/3

bloom american religion pp 37-40

LET US REASON TOGETHER

but no one's saying there is no progress ... indeed victory implies it ... but it may come suddenly after a long wait ... or it may come slowly bit by bit only ... or it may come both of these as one ... an uphill road past heroic stations and monuments ... high ways and low ways running together ... war on one ... trade on the other ... destruction and increase ... ruin and creation ... or at least recreation ... who wouldn't pick the one over the other yet who is it that can ... consistently ... well if not consistently let's do it persistently ... honor the general but pay the merchant ... prepare for battle but negotiate a trade agreement ... and one thing only common to them both soldier and capitalist the measured reasoned refinement of technique ... while all the world labors and groans technology improves ... while people live and die the generations learn ... not only how but why peace is better than war ... not just why but how thought and truth open to the right conclusion 3/3

FULLNESS

american gnostic at play in his mind is better than with people around him ... the critic says it's the abyss to the abyss the gnostic to the world before god made it ... but I find myself that this is too simple ... while I live there's always the devil between us ... because I'm a christian for me that's the meaning of life ... to get rid of the devil the obstacle and danger in front of me by asking jesus to replace him ... this of all plans is the most clever and based upon centuries of research ... for jesus the guide and intermediary turns out to be both direction and destination ... the one for which the many has its being ... that for the sake of which as aristotle called it is an abyss only to pride a pit only to error at the bottom of which at the horizon of the loss of existence is the devil just where you'd expect to find him ... look around at the world behind us filled with instruction about evil ... not gnosis or hidden knowledge but history ... history and common sense ... not abyss to abyss but suffering humility to pleroma

bloom american religion pp 14-15

GRACE, AGAIN

a spiritually mad culture because we are distracted ... on the trail of the great beyond we are tempted to linger and stray ... here take the first lash or the pounding of the first nail no straying or wish to linger there but revelation ... round one and the devil wins ... round two and entropy reigns ... things by nature fall apart ... concentration falters ... logic is ruined ... our thoughts fly away ... we are distracted ... and now for a moment but the last one lost ... even at the first creation we have no reason why ... here at the second we have no least conception how but everything starts anew ... it wasn't just the dying of the light it was the loss of mind ... not just the decomposition ... that we thought we could survive ... but the soul's decay ... just let that thought enter and like a worm through the ear it eats away the brain ... nothing more to prosper ... that's why it has to start again ... the absolute offence penalty and punishment is absolutely complete ... and now once again from nothing you get nothing ... so to have something then is to have it all all of it gratis

harold bloom the american religion p4

ON THE ROAD NINE TICS OUT OF TEN

the divided self is the divided will ... it comes from knowing there's something below us that's beneath us and something above us that's on high ... salvation paradise is the author the self and dean moriarty holmes's nemesis the rival of reason the id is down below ... wild anarchic ... the women condemn him ... but chaotically fecund ... and the women willingly bear his seed ... because his passion is possession by a spirit ... how true or unholy that spirit is you must finish the book to find but that dean is inspired no one will doubt ... he's of one mind ... one thing only he searches for and finds all around him ... in music he calls it by its name it ... the musicians when they blow that's it ... hitherto ineffable ... but mostly it's in the pretty girls dean and paradise find all around them ... inescapable ... if it weren't for the girls dean would be a gnostic mystic explosion to a point you'd already have to know to understand ... but the girls swarm him contain him bring him back down try to domesticate him ... and dean dean how will it all end

jack kerouac on the road read by frank muller recorded books up to disc 9

OBJECTIVE SIN

I know that and I know how ... I know who when and why ... but they're only dry runs to just plain knowing ... I read a thousand books it took me twelve years but they're all only books ... I played five hundred games it took me thirty years but win or lose each was only a game ... the milk runs out you have to buy more ... the toenails grow they have to be clipped ... we criss-cross the country loving life but we're headed for a fall for everything falls ... falls apart gets rebuilt and rises stands for a while and then it falls ... when I was twenty I was the fashionable pessimist ... at forty objective idealism was all my rage ... now I'm old and a christian and have come to the fulfillment of objective pessimistic idealism ... and it's nothing like being a skeptic ... I know what I know ... it took me a long time and I know why ... but the why doesn't count and neither does the how ... the floor beams crack it's been such a dry decade ... and words words all the live-long day ... we played at being god to take his place ... now we're utterly ruined ... he has to come down and take ours

john stott quoted in lee strobel's the real jesus p256

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST CAFETERIA JESUS

cafeteria jesus by faith and definition subordinates divinity to custom ... custom of culture and individual habit ... I'll have one of those and one of these and one of that ... but the selection changes with the season and each season lasts but one generation ... to the next the old flavors are all wrong ... now if you're a perpetual patron the variety might seem appealing ... still you could be wrong about your perpetuity ... the star you're hitched to may go out and one day the cafeteria close for one eternal night ... variety alone won't keep the sun in the sky ... besides there is a wrong kind of variety that meddles with digestion ... some items on any such menu just don't go together ... like resurrection and reincarnation ... the repetition kills the idea of incarnation and makes of resurrection a what did you expect ... you're next ... or smorgasbord salad and pipe dreams after dinner versus plain bread and wine ... we fly out on the back of the cosmic pulsation or we go to sleep and we wake to judgment ... hell or heaven on earth in the morning

strobel the real jesus ch 6

A WASTE OF TIME

if with analysis and honesty you can reduce the tenor of your daydreams to and then I you can give up daydreaming as a waste of time ... but isn't that what daydreams are ... an amateur autobiographical novel we keep writing in our spare time to remember the day we just went through and the one coming up tomorrow ... and that if that's all it did might pay its fare from beginning to end ... but it's more than that ... every good novel is ... and all these novels are good for they mesmerize their audience as the best of all drugs and only solitude to unlock the cabinet ... and yet still a waste of time ... when just around the corner you might come to market ... when just through the lobby a hundred yards away you might walk into the wisdom gallery and hear the collected thoughts of the ages seen from the side and coming round to face you ... finally felt inside here's the thing to talk about ... what did the church do when the last apostle died ... what should a jew do with isaiah 53 ... where do you go to save your soul

raymond brown the churches the apostles left behind; strobel the real jesus ch 5

WE SACRAMENTAL DEAF

the constraints of language its paltry and inept commands drive the young metaphysical lothario the yml to distraction ... he knows that which he desires is inexpressible given the present deficit in the vocabulary budget ... he will play a weak hand in its strong suit ... a skinny grammar will give him license to say what he wants about any desire he will entertain because the language is so weak ... you know what I mean will be his constant conclusion ... you know his persistent punctuation ... for everyone knows what's best for himself or those who don't will be told ... but not to worry those in the know the real know should they be careless and fall with just a little retraining in the current idiom will be absolved ... for now there's just one deadly sin to avoid ... self-denial ... only one insanity ... picking up the one thing to ignore ... your cross ... a thing we make purposely obvious and easy to avoid by talking around it whenever we can ... fault conscience pain and disease ... by talking round truth as if meaning were a potato too hot to hold and not more and greater reality talking

mccabe god matters ch 14 on sacraments and n t wright judas and the gospel of jesus (esp p 144) on the gnostics

THE OPTIMIST'S CREED

see it pays to wait and hear the other side ... transubstantiation now is said to be a misleading term because it indicates a transfer of substances when the only thing it shows is that we've come to the end of our tether ... the limits of what we can do with the words we have ... what happens to the bread here isn't what happens to dogs on the run or cats on the prowl when they die and decompose but to us when we die and don't decompose but take on a new body so subtle and expertly powerful living in a world which is source and promise to any hope we have here now that all our present words and structures of language must pass it by the elbow and never know it was there ... but that at good times alone in thought we remember in passing a picture a snapshot taken as we went by and later stored but given no caption ... and here finally is time to smile ... what better time to laugh when come to harbor sitting at table having a drink in good company ... remember when we said this remember when we thought that ... we were so young then and since we've grown still younger

mccabe god matters ch 12

PRIME ACT PRECEDES PRIME MATTER

so the argument said a piece of bread is a piece of bread ... we must continue to know at least that ... the essence they say but not the appearance has changed ... the substance not the accidents ... this substantial change would be the activation of a prior potential ... say my potential of becoming food in the belly of the lion ... but in god there is no potential to become another substance ... there is no potential at all ... this pre-prime piece of matter always prime is never material ... and no potential in the other direction of a piece of bread becoming god ... no possible causal connection one way or the other between them ever ... and I before I hear from a better mind agree ... but do say rather on a hint from that mind that this is exactly what you would expect ... the eucharist if it were possible must be miraculous ... no less so than the incarnation resurrection or creation at the start ... especially the last as it makes clear you must start from scratch ... another name for nothing ... if there's a prime lump of matter prior ... a heap of potential only ... that too must start from here

cf g egner in mccabe god matters ch 11

CHRISTIAN CANNIBALS

but what about the argument that if there is this substantial change we wind up eating christ ... yes you may reply we do ... christ's body ... the resurrected body of jesus ... eat it drink it breathe it in ... become intoxicated by this antitoxin supreme ... the air and manner of infallible success ... not the blood and sizzling fat of prime ribs over the fire or shredded muscle in the predator's mouth ... not the satisfied full feeling of rolling over in the leaves with a grunt ... a change in accidental circumstances from relative want to comparative plenty ... but a simple absolute change of substance ... the cannibals knew what they were doing ... they were on the right track ... just off location out of time and dimension ... you can't really swallow spirit ... it's not the murder or the skill it took to do it that can earn spirit as a reward ... there's nothing we can do to earn such a reward ... it has to be given ... that's the spirit ... so yes have a bite of christ ... develop not so much a taste but a hunger for it ... down the hatch they say ... like a lightning bolt 2/2

ETERNAL TRUTH

the intellect perceives the end and the means leading to it and the relation between the two ... but this allows the intellect to be the cause of its own judgment ... but that which is a cause unto itself we call free ... thus it's our intellect makes us free ... its object is the truth ... so it's the truth that will set us free ... this is offered among others to the listless bored of heart the wanton the promiscuous and the effete to the dilettante in all of us ... leave your room come out of the house wade into the stream of congregants ... each of us has the same purpose ... to tell the truth ... we first must find it ... wade in do the work read the books study ... sooner or later you'll come to christ ... christ who had a plan but was rejected ... jesus who told the truth and was murdered ... how would the intellect read such an encounter ... must it not conclude the truth will set us free but will kill us first ... what sound reason then would choose to continue ... if freedom meant death and death were final ... no ... freedom demands more than that ... after death resurrection 1/3

compendium 76

VADIS?

this inner sense we share with cats and dogs owls and magpies that leads to a first conclusion that we have an inside and out ... what does it say when the teacher comes into the room ... like two cats still staring into the sky we sense the presence of the quiet truth ... here now on the outside a thing to which all the inside is attentive ... this inner sense wordless as always now in the presence of the word ... what will it say and all through history no? keep repeating ... we the intellectualized brute given a big brain to say what with it ... what to answer when called on ... what to say when challenged ... this monad of good animal sense suddenly has a window and look over there a door as well ... look out the window but open the door ... one to be on the inside looking out ... the other to go through ... but you can't do that sitting by the window looking out ... but look again the teacher having been in the room just a short time has walked out ... here's where the theoretical and the practical meet ... says out to in what's your sense of it ... should we follow 2/3

THE PARTICULAR IN THE UNIVERSAL

the intellect and the inner sense would by definition have no point of contact or what would it be where could they meet ... the universal and the particular ... the sense of smell and eternal truth ... not that they don't but how or why should they ... isn't the beating of the heart measured by the inner sense following its flow ... the passage of time ... is outside the heart already in the measure and pace because of its meaning sensed from the start ... the voyage through life beat by beat before the heart's formation up to the moment of death ... the sense of existence inside and out ... resigned both to living and to death the philosopher cat mute for eternity ... unless a friend translate from wordless to word ... unless one animal speak of something more than the particular ... not of this smell or that direction but of why we smell or even bother to go this way or that on a good day as well as a bad ... of how in the midst of all these trends one way or the other one particular not universal one only saved us all 3/3

strobel real jesus ch 4

SALVE

the sage of boston says the only escape from the petty tyrannies of life is praise of the lord for only in that praise can we forget ourselves ... if this is true then praise must be more subtle than we allow ... even with an open mind perhaps especially with an open mind ... and must imply wonder simple admiration by surprise and the persistent indictment I knew this why do I forget it ... who is this self-obsessed forgetful one locked alone in some control room at the back of the mind who thinks self-expression is for the sake of self-consumption and doesn't know what communication means ... picking up meaning and then letting it go you thought you were being most meaningful and profound when you thought some puzzle through ... when in truth it was visiting the sick and those in prison ... you thought your finest moments were the most clever when it was giving comfort to those who mourn ... you sought to solve the world to bring it to salvation ... an easy error when you really meant salve and as in salve regina ... but this you know is nothing new ... each of us is a screech and scrape just beginning to sing

kreeft ycuot p104 on the psalms; mccabe god matters ch 10 on communication

CREATION-SIN-RESURRECTION

what if hume is correct there is no necessary connection between cause and effect ... or if kant's right and time and space are human apperceptions ... or leibniz is right and only coincidental events link person to person ... or berkeley is right and something must be perceived before it can be ... or aristotle and aquinas are right no conception without a preceding perception ... and say finally with thomas that by abstracting the intelligible from the material we get closer to god ... can't we get a group photo showing the universe of space and time together in a great big block ... all the action as we perceive it is bouncing side to side from top to bottom within the box ... in the middle of the turmoil right dab center is the human mind in crisis in a panic that it might get cut off hits the button on the phone and cannot stop repeating ... are you there ... are you there ... can you hear me ... I'm too old for this ... if we ever get reconnected I'm going to insist the next plan has a guaranteed connection ... I know uncertainty is necessary for the virtue of prudence but I need assurance outside the box

mccabe god matters p109; compendium 75; strobel real jesus challenge 3

THE CHURCH DISCURSIVE IN PRAYER

you can't treat jesus as a buddy ... I don't ... I thank god for the sages and saints in between ... he's not at my right hand not even my elbow but he's just across the room even if the room is crowded ... all around me in between are family ... never was a love like this before ... that's the music playing ... I spend the day attending to the uncles ... most of them still living but some of them dead ... point is they're older and more than me much wiser ... you know I'd slip them a note to carry over to jesus if I weren't more frightened of how they'd respond ... especially the ancients ... I know what they'd say ... take it yourself no one's in your way ... except me I know I'd respond ... except me but say it to myself ... I listen during the day to the uncles talking ... listen with my eyes ... but they understand when we come to dinner at the table I've forgotten what they said ... but I have these notes in my pocket to remind me ... colors on a page ... pages in a book ... on a good day and more good days now than bad something brilliant from the uncles in their notes to god

FOR MEN EVERYMAN'S LILITH

if there is just one story being told and we each tell it by our story the way we live ... and we do this by way of reflection as being made in the image of that story being told ... as a mirror sometimes one way sometimes two ... you see yourself or you see through ... and now in your mind's eye you see above it off to the side in inner immaterial space ... flashes of light here are conceptions ... planets and stars stable ideas ... opinions are comets mistakes are falling stars ... like a wondering child our eyes grow large and we see new worlds where ideas are gods ... we meet there as we grow young the objects of our desire ... or at least we think we do ... in any event we take them back with us as we grow up and our eyes narrow ... we smuggle them in these gods and goddesses of desire ... we don't announce but secretly follow ... but as we grow old and they stay young we find in them what you'd expect ... they were real but not personal ... solid line shape and color but not dimensional ... first love but in someone else's imagination ... in fact for men everyman's lilith

CRUCIFY HIM

if we were made in the image of god some of his perfection must have rubbed off onto us ... for that's what happens to the lesser being in such an encounter ... he learns he grows in wisdom he wakes up and sometimes he has to die to do it ... it's this background static the present reminder that something once did happen and still does behind us almost to touch that drives us though we do our best to veer left or right ... it's a crowded road abreast life's procession as we perform our way through ... speaking singing dancing painting writing filling every space with our mark ... and what a clean-up crew we must be who follow ... I only ask take a look around ... how much of a mess are we in ... the one thing I think would surprise us is what a large part of it makes sense ... in moments of brief clarity it's the same story every time ... indeed if it had no matter this one story told many times would rise up in the air conflate and take off into space ... if it didn't have us to weigh it down ... let's be honest ...to hold it down pin it nail it kill it if we must ... I wouldn't say kill it if it didn't keep pushing

compendium 74; mccabe god matters ch 8

IN TROUBLED TIMES

there are gnostics and agnostics and people who have religion ... gnostics have themselves agnostics the world for what it's worth everyone else has god ... by gnostics I mean western secular progressive culture ... by agnostic I mean the secular libertarians often considered conservative and often well-to-do ... the impetus you might think of most entrepreneurs ... religion thinks it talks about god that is it thinks there is a god and it knows enough to talk about him ... thus him to start with though it knows it's neither him nor her to finish ... you can tell the difference between a progressive and a libertarian by asking if they're religious ... the libertarian says no thanks and the progressive says not religious but spiritual ... and what he means is progress materially ... for himself and others who see or will see the process of history as he does ... now since religion has a larger concern than the human it's the libertarian and the progressive who are the rulers of this world ... and when they collaborate they run it well ... sometimes however the gnostics grow fervid

GNOSTIC IN REMISSION

packing boxes in a warehouse or grocery bags at the checkout year after year ... say the soul behind the hands has come to peace and packs what he must with grace ... he fills the form and does it blithely ... what's the meaning of that ... the poet with his sonnet the reporter his five hundred words after a while they flow with the go of it no matter what they say ... how do they explain that ... the retired scholar defeated by his craft still follows the routine ... each morning read underline make a note ... what's the point when phrases are moved massaged and put into new skimping clauses that sound sweet but mean less than they did before ... are all the planets waltzing over the falls are the galaxies twirling out into space and just one voice to cry wait I know something better ... freeze the frame ... everybody turns to hear ... forget it he says my mistake in truth I have nothing to add ... and in truth what could he have said that hasn't been heard before when everything was said two thousand years ago ... press the button return to play on with the show ... we know our part when we mean the lines

lee strobel the case for the real jesus ch 1; kreeft ycuot 98-99; and compendium 73: for his cure

MOVE ON

there had to be diversity because nothing can be one but one and we're not it ... but did there have to be so much of it ... it's confusing ... now it wouldn't be if something weren't broken ... at the least our understanding but more ... something in the fabric of the law that says after addition there must come subtraction ... first a birth then a death ... and before you can multiply and be fruitful you must divide and destroy ... the old must hurry from the path that now belongs to the young ... think for a moment it has to be done ... but that doesn't make it right ... if we must take the worm's part even a worm can turn and tunnel back up to the surface ... and isn't that the meaning of our life in all this diverse confusion to break through the static out into the clear ... repeatedly or to try ... suddenly the old medium oxygen and gravity is breathless and too light ... out with the bad air in with the new ... so rarefied and pure you're immediately up high ... and now see your eyes are finally open ... that is we come into a new dimension ... we must ... from the start we knew we were told that the old one would die

compendium 72; mccabe god matters 71; kreeft ycuot 97-98

BEFORE WE BEGIN

to us it's all a matter of technique ... if I know how to do it I am it ... at least as long as I want to be ... but what if there's something wrong with this and the more successful I am at doing things the greater the distance grows between subject and predicate ... between me and my success ... identity can't be built on practice or technical know-how ... I have an internal sense telling me I was here before my nature ... otherwise there was nothing to know ... no way to be ... nothing to say ... don't get me wrong I know once we are there's plenty to do ... and wonderful to see connections and causes all the way through ... right turns left turns wrong turns ... advances and retreats ... but falling back in one of these last you can turn down a culvert to hide till the enemy pass ... all your disaffected relations ...till they disappear over the hill ... and you're alone isolated and cut off ... isn't this the point to learn when there's nothing left least of all you ... which will it be then ... less than nothing or more than everything ... if here's the space all things start ... before anything is new

mccabe god matters p59; kreeft ycuot 96-97; compendium 71

THE EPISTEMIC HUMILITY OF JOB

job's friends are wrong in their assumption that it's a simple causal connection between our behavior and god's judgment ... or between infinite goodness and our reward ... such that no reward or punishment instead must mean bad behavior ... not a bad assumption on the surface however ... for if there is no clear connection what can it mean ... that god doesn't care ... he's not involved ... surely not that he's sadistic ... there's no sense in that at all ... but that he's transcendentally distant seems transparently true ... what's the distance between potency and act when there is no potential ... if a difficult potential makes a happy conclusion more remote how impossible must it be if you start with nothing ... that's why creation as opposed to the thing we call creative is a great mystery ... now make it twice as hard and say this same creator at an inconceivable distance is also inconceivably close ... between me and my conception ... between me and myself ... that I can't get from one to the other unless I go through him ... that I can't do anything unless I do it in him ... faced with these two puzzles of the infinitely far and near who am I to say it's clear

kreeft ycuot 94-96; compendium 70; mccabe god matters ch4

NONE DARE ASK

you can argue there are no evil desires just ill-proportioned and misdirected ... too intense not intense enough ... too angry not angry enough ... right place wrong time ... too bright too mellow ... always out of step even to murder ... it's why job has a fair complaint ... he's innocent as far as that goes but his punishment goes way further out of all proportion ... but you know job is in pain ... he's the hero in the final scene of a passion play ... he's naturally anxious to see how it turns out we say in ironic advantage ... he's fed up too tired of being too passive too long ... answer me make things right you've weighed all my freedom down except my hope you've given me that you must mean to give me more ... or I die ... up here at our end we just close the book light the pipe go to bed ... down there the conversation's just begun ... job powerless but in conversation full of potential ... potent pregnant with hope ... what an ambition ... how many born so we may come to the right conclusion ... the right answer to job's question ... his potential ours speaking to pure act ... here on the shore and we silent

mccabe god matters ch 3 p36; kreeft ycuot 93-94; compendium 78; john 21:12b

THE WAY IN WHICH EVERYTHING INDEPENDENT STILL DEPENDS

if anything is free it's also independent ... but everything depends on god ... therefore nothing is free ... what kind of trouble would we all be in if this syllogism is valid ... thank god it's not ... the first premise means more than it lets on ... its deficiency hides itself in custom ... namely the verbal usage of god's name as just another noun ... as if god were just another subject to which predicates adhere ... a thing with an essence we can define ... with characteristics we can describe ... sooner or later we come to resent those we most rely on ... it's part of our essence the way we've come to develop ... who can deny god ... he fills the room of anyone's presence with his own ... who can breathe for fury that all the freedom is sucked out of the air ... if god were just another thing competing for space and attention ... if not the foundation before anything making everything possible ... if not the conclusion every argument attempts ... the answer every time we ask ... what then should we have but manipulation and control ... if god is not always other than where would we find the room to love 1/2

mccabe god matters ch 2

A LITTLE DISTANCE PLEASE

if whenever we love we're in god's presence but more to the point he's in ours ... when we die and come to our reward in heaven how then could there be any distance or room between god and us ... where's our freedom then if we're just fingers to his glove ... but if god is freedom are we not less and less free the more static there is between us ... if god is generosity particularly in revelation ... if god gives us a motion picture of his life his internal essence ... shouldn't we buy a ticket ... but maybe not if we're the screen the picture plays on ... if yes we can get to heaven but don't leave the show early ... all right if every breath you take fills you with being and every thought you have clothes you in truth but first you have to hear the whole story ... understand how it reads in human ... and play your part too ... will you see the argument through ... this is how it runs ... this is how it ends ... each of us takes the starring role ... with all this power in your fist wouldn't it be easy to love everyone ... if you had the script to write ... but here's the one you're given and it ends with a cross 2/2

mccabe god matters ch 2

THE LORD OF VICODIN AND VIAGRA

turtles all the way down ... one on top of another to infinity ... that way the circle of nothing that almost surrounds what there is never closes ... and this is our warrant our key in the lock to keep things going forever with no questions asked ... if things had a beginning couldn't they have an end as well ... and if just once they could end wouldn't you have to worry that once might be soon ... now the hero sits on the throne ... he doesn't care ... not only about his own death he doesn't care about the loss of everything the impossibility of anything the wonder and the eternal surprise of something something at all ... lost ... and he doesn't care ... it's not an act ... it's not a pose ... he wonders why you keep bringing up the question ... truth is for him the line between is a bit fuzzy ... lots of pinprick points but put together in a line the surface they form has too many perforations the code too many exceptions ... that's just the way it is ... why do we have to talk about it ... but especially why this unseemly sense of urgency ... all this drama ... my lord and my god indeed ... the law and what's good instead for as long as it lasts ... seek pleasure avoid pain ... live until you die

herbert mccabe god matters p7; john 20:28; ruth 1:16

PEACE BE WITH US

honor is beautiful ... in a soldier a priest a politician a marriage ... but if the link between the two is more than accidental how close to necessary does it become that the beautiful is honest ... no more beautiful villains or evil-minded courtesans or great but bad men ... the picture of his own dorian gray is on every man's face ... and would be of course if we saw as we were meant to be ... and why blame that we're not on what we should be ... don't the freudians call that projection ... and isn't that just what we mean ... throw it away pin it on someone else ... aren't they all just more forms of rejection ... won't have the truth won't take the offer but will do all we can to cover it up to forget it ... clarity and proportion the two hallmarks of the honest truth ... obfuscation and injustice the trademarks of deceit ... we must admit no ... the parts do seem to fit ... honor knows it will wait if it must for beauty ... it's what gives patience its appeal ... and beauty never was she more stirring than sitting by the window with her feet up and a book in her lap thinking softly in repose ... ah there now she says ... that surely that ... that's the truth

mccabe on aquinas ch 15, pp 171-172

CALLS YOUR NAME

the foundation of justice is friendship so the sage the saint and the scholar all say ... am I my brother's keeper the surly sinner says ... worse still the trio respond ... you must keep your neighbor in virtue also ... for all people are your brother sister and parent too ... I never did like justice the solipsist complains ... makes my inward life awkward to think of another and his due ... I've my own house to put in order ... what a revolution if this unreal other were true ... well think of it this way the sage says ... life should be like a well-run city where at first people do things for a reward but at last do them because they're a part of that reward ... a new and better second nature ... think of it like this says the saint ... life is a journey from one garden to another but through a jungle a desert and a flood to get there ... a healthy well-ordered growing place during the day ... a cool place for reflection in the evening ... well-ordered in virtue ... no social contract needed ... where the soil is fertile and the grave empty ... and the gardener knows your name

mccabe on aquinas ch 14; john 20: 15-16

WHEN THE UNIVERSAL MEETS THE PARTICULAR

if there were no true distinction between universal and particular then porn would just be skin and nothing wrong with that ... if there were nothing immaterial then the light on a tanned forearm the light through all the air in a lovely day at the beach on that arm nonetheless would be the end of day its desire and satisfaction all day long till night ... if there were nothing past the senses ... and surely surely that's the attraction ... not purpose or plan or conflicted execution ... but a lovely warm bright distraction ... when time itself as we live it is layered out like slices on a plate some tastier and others more healthy till we die ... if truth were just a word and every word just another sound ... unless time were in fact the measured beat of a story ... and a word whispered in your ear at night filled with venom or delight each had its meaning ... unless meaning had a master in the truth and truth a name you'd remember ... unless all the universe in one bright flash of an idea gave truth its meaning and put us in touch with something really solid here now

mccabe on aquinas chs 12 + 13

WITH NO ONE ELSE TO TALK TO

who better than the dilettante to prove the impossibility of a private language ... or a private understanding ... for their failure is what makes the dilettante what he is ... effete ... a touch here and a dab there in a hundred different interests ... and nothing deep ... nothing from found to profound ... all the brilliance stays on the surface and soon is in the past disconnected from the start ... for all those lovely thoughts are purloined letters smuggled into a corner and not let loose from there ... and the author like a parrot on his perch with just a new line every day ... never was a thought he said till it came in a word ... no sentiment no perception till it settled down into a sentence ... no understanding till you told it to another ... the dilettante's dilemma there was no other ... no thought no word no deed that wasn't so because of its part in the discourse ... and our hero on a log in space talking to himself as if it were talk when it had no other purpose with no one else to talk to ... couldn't really speak at all ... just a colorful flash of sound not understanding language is a prayer

mccabe on aquinas chs 12 + 13

STUPID!

why is it that we're so stupid ... it's not just that people have different talents and that in many perhaps most ways each of us doesn't have this particular talent ... but we're also stupid because we're stubborn ... say we have a mind for universals and a sense for particulars ... so we get to brand as stupid those who don't have a talent for abstraction and as wise those who can handle the details ... the advantage belonging to abstraction is detachment ... its temptation is to a canny calculation in which everything is assigned a number and a value ... every triumph transaction and trespass ... prudence is an intellectual virtue and under this temptation it can become purely theoretical ... and in that way vicious ... how worthwhile is this class of eggheads ... how far worthless are the poor and the stupid ... under what conditions and in what manner can we rid ourselves of this liability ... euthanasia give them a good death ... birth control discourage their conception ... if there's one thing we need now it's a few less particulars ... be bold ignore the sentimental ... be ruthless on principle and stubborn

mccabe on aquinas ch 11

LATE TESTIMONY

we were kids in college and we heard there were people who wanted to be totally aware ... so not wishing to join them or study too much about them we figured to save time we'd crack the code ourselves ... what we came up with was a two-part combination will and idea ... not the chronological order between them but the one that counted in importance ... for we meant to do things and get them done with our wisdom once we got it together ... half a century later we see indeed things did get done and we were the ones that did them ... during the day ... but at night we still planned the big things ... thus the disconnect between night and day ... between mature practice and theory still developing ... till a messenger arrives with the last piece ... one word ... virtue ... and another word vice on the reverse ... completes the picture ... potential practice dispositions forming ... reliable habits for good or bad ... farewell fealty to the immature ... we're headed up to the east side philosophy intact ... virtue is better than vice ... we all saw the same thing after all ... nothing else has relevance ... we see vaguely what the young one saw brightly ... evidence

mccabe on aquinas ch 10; kreeft ycuot pp 78-79; john 19:35

THE COMMON AND PROPER END TO SORROW

the bishop asked why didn't you call for help ... the priest answered I thought it was too far away ... it's easy to think big thoughts ... they are most natural ... from the particular just strip the universal ... from matter take away the form ... from anything proper we can always get something common ... it only depends on what you think is common ... in the rooms where things are most proper they serve the finest wine but caesar's common soldiers on duty got a wine that was sour ... common is not usually a thing to aim for but proper in its perfection does seem so far away ... whatever was common to that must surely bring an end to this world ... the universal that raised the particular ... the material brought finally to act by the form ... it's easy if you have the talent fine if you have the friends but commonly at least impossible if you don't ... you need a sharp eye and an educated ear to pick out the proprieties ... what good are courage and temperance if you don't have their address ... but I hear the bishop talking and suddenly I see how he's right ... the hyssop by itself isn't strong enough but after the wine everything's done

manzoni the betrothed chs 25 + 26; compendium 62; tom wright john for everyone 19:29-30

WHAT SHOULD THEY HAVE DONE

without anger how would you have the strength or courage to defend justice ... pilate was angry with the jews ... together he and they had murdered a just man ... the jews and the romans who lived by the law ... now the scribes came demanding a he said and king of the jews in quotes ... a typical passion for men of the pen ... but pilate was a man of the sword who are often touchy about spelling and grammar and he refused ... what I've written I have written ... and he had his revenge ... which is what anger is for ... so he posted his horizontal notice in three layers of speech hebrew latin and greek with the cross running through it and the body of christ below to support it ... pinned down as it were to the earth against the sky ... or like a red flag on the map ... we had a second chance and they just skewered it to hell ... why the hell then aren't we angry too ... justice incarnate defiled and we to pay the price ... I don't know why most of us are not or how many just don't care but for me it's guilt ... complicity ... much too much I'd have done the same ... I still don't understand

mccabe on aquinas ch 8; john 19:19-22; kreeft ycuot p75