ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS MEANS TO MARCH

why is the pothead such a head ... why wouldn't he be ... sitting on the bench his head between his knees the fingers of his right hand massaging the center of his brow ... he's up a bit more now ... the rise of being on his brain ... what was it with those greeks and paul who spoke the language too ... thinking so widely and so well ... body and mind it sings like a refrain ... spirit and soul a hymn to people like me ... I heard them talking for an hour ... I knew they were right even when they disagreed ... are they not wise ... then who am I ... hand to my heart I could not tell ... if what they say is not true almost true is not perfect almost so then what do I know says the pothead standing up ... they do speak the truth though I know it with a grunt ... that's me speaking not with my mind or my heart I do it with my shoulders ... I do everything with my back ... and when we're loaded down they tell us to run ... steel pots on our heads to hold everything in ... this was a long time ago they had their talk ... that means a long time we've been on the road to obey

HISTORY AND THE OTHER SIDE OF TIME

thesis ... rome new york vienna washington chicago galena athens jerusalem back to rome ... all in twelve hours not to mention the centuries and millenia in between ... how's that possible ... justification righteousness faithfulness salvation love ... like a blue screen behind time ... the hawaii division lands on the canal a touch on the kindle and a soldier on board an LCI steals a pistol ... took electricity to do that so it didn't take long ... nor does each visit ... an hour at the most ... memory is easy for the things in time ... I see the dictator he isn't large but he is excited relieved and grateful but he's already put one foot in the noose ... I see them now both but neither without time ... there are other places I go people I talk to there and when I come back I can't recall their faces ... I can't remember what was in the room but in each case there's a window ... and sometimes a back door and a porch ... I see why I can't remember there's a rocking chair because of the sky ... it's pure blue the other side of time ... motion here but none there

cf grant by byrd; anschluss in churchill, hitler, and the unnecessary war, by buchannan; the thin red line by jones; 1942, ch 17, by groom.

ON THE WINGS OF IDEOLOGY

sin and death are a necessary connection to be sure but have you noticed how it's always done through the law ... take a liberal dose for example of pride disobedience and despair ... stir in some politics 101 ... sample the result ... what does it taste like ... it has does it not the taste of ideology ... pride past this point I will not go ... disobedience with luck just now who has it better than me ... despair I'm wrong not just this once but always I'm better off dead if I could only die ... the original sin was the angelic sin of demonic pride ... then we came along and added our no and look at what we did ... we sentenced ourselves to death ... and yet we are not dead ... how do you figure something like that ... in the meantime you've got to live ... you're about to be punished for sure ... you know this as you know everything ... it's the law ... this is going to get nasty sooner or later ... in the meantime we've all got to live ... we talk in concentric forums of more and more importance ... headlong up or down ... we wing it either way

cf romans 8:1-4

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY

was inside but there was a trend toward vision brought me outside ... a line outside the theater decades long ... a trend outside the truth painfully wide and foolishly pointed ... an alliance between sight and touch that we'd have one but not the other ... nor taste nor smell the old sentinels at the gate ... not one of them figured it out ... but hearing did ... no not at first of course ... at first there was just a big bang ... but later after music and conversation ... didn't so much figure it out as it was laid out line by line and then word by word ... till sight came back to watch ... touch paused to consider ... and the sentries went back to their posts ... there were colors profound but this was something else ... and music of course and warm winds and cool breezes but this was something else ... here what was said and everything changed ... all the learning and all the practice that these words might be said ... and before them already beyond its time and place something old but never anything this new ... (c)

cf kreeft jesus shock pp 126-7

WHAT DID I MISS?

there's a room at the center of the universe where the body the mind and the soul come apart ... often they offer each other written credentials testimonials defences ... if purgatory is a bureaucracy there may be a ring of rooms where separated minds go to recover and report ... a concentric narrowing series of rooms from hovel to palatial and is one long conversation ... what did you think of that body thing one might say to another ... threw me around I can tell you ... took me a while before I could say it was a holy confounding thing ... but who could forget the first moment of each morning of being there when you just had not ... all this time all these mornings that moment has never changed ... each time before time there's nothing but space ... and then you begin ... that much was never less than right ... nor less than a satisfying obligation ... if it weren't for the pain ... it was a thought ... we might have gone on forever ... it gripped the bone past all that flesh ... forget the pain it makes me say I suffer ... I want to know what I missed ... what made me say I thirst ... (b)

THE FUNDAMENTAL INCONSISTENCY OF DEVOLUTION

no ... you wouldn't want to talk to him ... some say he was high up ... some say the highest of them all ... think how much lower than the rest he would have to fall ... how low he is now and how low descending ... that would be some elevator ride up all that way back if anything went wrong during the conversation ... now here's a guy who would rather snuff you out than profit by you ... one who isn't suffused with matter but who infuses it and controls it ... one who doesn't just gaze at the stars but was present at their creation ... was present before both time and space ... before the rainbow he knew its elements and formation ... where you see light the most profound and elevating he saw it all first before you ... and by it he was overwhelmed ... call it grace or beauty ... but in the middle of his rapture he asked himself a question ... whose ... I guess at first he might have meant where in that who there was any room for him ... but not in the end ... by the end he knew whose splendor it was ... and what he had instead was only murder and the lie ... (a)

BEAUTY AND THE TRUTH

if faith is an unattached gift ... given to us by god and cannot be earned by reason that doesn't mean that faith must be ugly blind or detached from reason ... or that reason has no easy way to serve faith ... reason must at least figure this much out ... if faith is a gift from god then it most probably is the best it can be ... now admittedly here we must take a broad view of reason and say it includes not only understanding judgment and calculation but memory and imagination too ... think on the second of these for a moment and ask what obligation do we have through it to honor such a peerless gift from god ... may we not start when we ask what does she look like by hearing from her first ... reason has understood much ... done a lot of calculation ... made a lot of tough decisions ... it has a right to examine its pretensions before it comes to this one last attention ... reason was a servant from the start in attendance upon the truth and it should end by seeing just how beautiful she is

BRAIN IN THE VAT SCEPTICISM

the subject makes the object ... if you're god ... any other subject the object makes you ... from time to time comes a generation often after a war thinks it is god ... the collective vision of its subjective glare peoples the landscape with points of interest ... little hogs on a flat plain prickly but small ... and all with a set purpose ... set them on fire to light up the way ... we were never all that dumb ... we could see enough to know there was something there ... and more by touch and bruise we caught its corners and curves ... sometimes the endpoint was sharp enough to teach us a thing or two ... so came the circle to give us the rest to remember ... thank god even folly can give a good night's sleep ... in the morning there may be fog and by evening confusion ... the hedgehogs flare out ... small white points on a black curtain ... they pull it aside each morning and we start all over again ... same menu different words ... you are what you eat ... today for instance for breakfast we have brain in a vat ... what does it think of me when it's mine even though I think it's not ... who can say

THEISM TRUMPS PANTHEISM

the problem is do we have something in us more divine than the essence of a blade of grass ... were we all sent out with no thought of return ... not even with the pulling weight of a child in the air knowing she must come down ... or are we the first to turn around and reflect in our faces god's decision for us ... when we do get to thinking we could fill a glove with five fingers of thought and then move the hand as if it were one ... we can say a word and act as if we meant it ... we could tell a lie and then repent it ... we can turn in a still empty room and ask what's the point ... close our ears and close our eyes and hear a rattle of voices ... see not just what she's saying but get a touch of her intent ... before the system and the thought first comes the thinker ... like the cob in the center of the web we find the filiments resillient ... like the blade of grass they mean some other ... a finger on the bell we mean to press it to enter ... we've seen the world all its turning turning ... if there's a point to be made we want to see the who that makes it

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

calculation that's what you do with logic ... imagination that's what you do with understanding ... here's an example ... the ego is homeless or thinks it is ... it gets the chance to live in a fleshpot a vacuum chamber or a fountain ... he goes to the fleshpot first ... this is nice he says ... it has a regular circular swirl punctuated by fast surges even spikes of impulse ... over the years it's a great game of straight line and curve ... especially swinging wide on the turns ... and it's a great life of coasting and sliding into home ... but comes the knock at the door and there's no one there ... not even a question as to who it might be ... and it's the loss of that question that haunts him most ... an aimless vapid little void ... ah now's the time for thought ... the eagle sits himself down ... now while we're waiting let's fire up the cause and watch its effect ... let's take the essence of our observation and put it in this box ... along the sides we'll cut holes out for its breathing ... lord what to do with such a toy so that now I can say I see

SEAN LAMB'S GIFT

a friend asked do you pray ... I said these pacres are my prayers ... he said do you pray to jesus ... I said I am not worthy ... he said do it anyway ... so I did at three o'clock in the morning ... I said jesus you are hidden from me ... through me he replied that's a given which brought a chuckle and emboldened me to ask why is that a gift how is that a gift and he answered I temper the wind for the shorn lamb ... well that's right I conceded ... I am a lamb shorn of any significant power psychological and especially now physical and I know if I should see the lord here in my room in the middle of the night it would scare the hell out of me ... in general not a bad thing you might say but not now I would object not now necessarily in my shorn state a good thing ... I'll trust the lord in his timing in preference for auditory over visual illumination ... not so sudden not so sheer the light of his words ... more mellow in counsel more measured in prudence ... drop by drop syllable by syllable ... prudential and practical I say ... in answer to a simple question what should I do now ... sell what you have was his quick reply ... give

SUFFUSE BUT FOCUS

the problem of reading as in why bother is the problem of knowledge and its solution is most easily but not best expressed in the maual or catalog of goods on sale ... more profoundly and troublesome we get to the novel or biography or book of history where the invitation is to immersion and by a displacement to free the soul from the tyranny of this false particularity that browbeats the mind with thoughts of this far but no further this much but never any more ... thus to float free in another sea of someone else's particulars to hike under that sea the faultlines of another people's submerged tragedy is to come as close as our secular gills can to breathing in the air of the kingdom of heaven ... now who at this point would say too much ... sit down sit down I say ... here look at this map ... do you see these splendid brown colors and these hard ridgelike lines ... that's it ... that's what they are ... these are the carpathians ... but what are even they without a date ... so here take this one ... august 1914 ... and think of franz joseph in vienna mournfully musing

ABORTION (1)

my father is god almighty my brother is jesus christ my mother is the holy spirit st sophia ... how is it that I know these things ... how is it that I do not ... whose voice did I hear coming across the water in my mother's womb telling me to come out ... what reason can I give even now that I should have been there ... that I should be here ... what signs are there mathematical and precise to explain how I got there ... to tell me who I am ... what is this lump of matter that it should summon others to it to nourish and to grow ... whose name was I given that I should know when to respond ... what word has been spoken that I am the one to hear it ... what is it about all this stuff swirling cogently in space these clumps of interest that together they should sing ... and why should I alone be sent into the corner to weep ... to play at deaf blind and mute when everyone else is playing outside ... what punishment what penance and contrition consign me to this sorrow that by looking down I should pretend to see heaven ... that by closing my fist in front of my mouth I should deny my right to be born ... what world is this I have created ... my birthright has destroyed ... who am I forever that an orphan I am now

THE PRESENCE OF THE TRUTH

I feel the same way ... I'm agreeing with you ... all my life all my life I've built a shrine to that great god sensation ... each month another stone on the perimeter round that great fire ... but as the fire dies out and the cold advances from behind me in the dimming light I can still see the way ... I can see the light but it doesn't warm me ... I can see it's a straight run to the town that cannot be derailed but I'm not smelling any roses on the way ... and when I listen and it's very very still ... past the ringing and the drums the pistol shot and the applause the speeches and the crowds ... something like the wind the last wind moving out to sea ... and just then in the second or two it leaves behind ... the thought of something I might just remember having heard it once before many years ago ... no ... no ... even that the last clear recall moves on ... this isn't in the past and it seems to have no future ... if it has a there it's not like any place I've seen before ... this is something else ... like a pressing in only the feeling is a sham or what's a metaphor for if you can't use them when you need them ... this is something else ... here

BEFORE EVOLUTION

the trouble is dribbling forward when I should be spitting ... aiming at ... starting with a plan a question then its answer ... it's not enough to have a hammer even if you can throw it really far and straight ... it's not enough to have an anvil even if it's flat broad and powerful at the top ... you have to halve them both and you know even that's not enough ... you need the material in between the hammer and the anvil ... something to give a form ... something that doesn't have it yet ... a pre form thing and what a thing that must be ... a thing without a form ... any form ... I'm thinking about the first thing before the first form ... using such a thing formless as a form to guide you is enough to make anyone dribble ... and I wouldn't ... I'd have if I could nothing to do with it ... but I have no choice ... I have a form indicative of the time ... fatally attracted to this thing without a form ... before the first form ... it drops me on a downslope with my feet running in a circle but fixed in place ... I know I'll be going down I just don't know when ... it can't be long but even then I'll disagree ... hold back on my consent ... before this final wonder

TOO BIG NOT TO MAKE US SHY

why is the name of jesus an embarrassment to us today ... is it because he's the linchpin in our defense against a meaningless but powerful deity on the one hand and a doctrine just as meaningless and as powerful in its potency on the other ... ah isn't it better to be a greek better even than latin ... plato say or with a liitle reading aristotle even better once again ... ones are ones and threes are threes and never the twain shall meet without a two between them ... all right a first material cause call him paternalistically father ... a second necessary cause the cause of necessity call it form ... and a third filling the form with passion and with light call it purpose ... how can you see without the light how can you care without the passion how can you know the form or understand the matter without the purpose and what purpose is there ever finally without the person ... thus aristotle ... four causes ... and jesus in the center both the person and the form and we beside him the persons by the person learning the form compelled by the matter propelled by the purpose freed by the form and the person

cf kreeft, jesus-shock

DEFENDING THE TRINITY

I don't know ... this may be right ... there are only two things ... reflections reverberations of two other distinctions ... of the beautiful and the ugly ... of the true and the false ... and these two the good and the bad are everything but primal ... and what a wearing down between the two ... and what a distance from the primal ... the wearing away and the distance involved tempt the mind to float away out into infinite space ... from one distinction to another and all derived and each more distant than the last ... but what's the point if you can't get back to the one thing necessary with all your vapid theorizing and shallow inspiration ... an old man climbing one flight too many out of breath and frantic out of patience ... this chisel point tapping against the shell of your security ... good this is bad ... good this is bad ... what is it what is it you think they're trying to say ... their timpanning distraction what is it what do they want ... they clutch at your sleeve they tug at your elbow they pull you where you do not want to go ... in the opposite direction not to the one but away ... you cannot stay here at two ... they pull you away to more ... pull you to three

WHO IS IT ABOUT?

well it's true it's not about me or it is about me but only tangentially ... it's not about friends but about my isolation but only my isolation in time this time for a time ... it isn't about communion and life it's about dissolution and death ... but closing the door has opened the window because it's a strange house but a stranger world outside ... it isn't about the taste of the fruit on the tip of my tongue or the breeze through the screen on a cool summer night ... not even about a word not even about a desire follow as they may ... in a word however if there must be one it's not about a beginning but coming to an end ... after all these decades of bulling forward what can it mean to come to a stop ... to call up your troops to put them in line but give them a rest fill up their supply get them ready to advance but all to no point because you've come to an end ... no it's not about you ... shortly shortly for us all there is no more you ... but even that even that isn't the point simply because it's not now ... it isn't even later ... now there's something else ... the something that made you stop and put all of you now now to an end ... that's made you stop so now you must think ... what is it about ... what did it mean ... if you say we and I don't

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

the grief they say is in the ancilla ... the hairbrush the dish the care you gave before she died ... let me tempt no large sorrow here but a small one though very deep ... no extensive loss of wife or children or parent no brother or sister or friend but family though just a family pet ... what's missing when she's not there beside the bowl or the place on the landing or by the window where she'd wait till you came home ... what's not there beside the black fur or the deep purr or the sideways stroking of her neck on your hand or most of all the wide-open round eyes in the patient face on the tense body ... what's not there beside these that still remain with you in your mind in the air or the space she still fills ... what's missing that she is ... or is it was ... or that's the point ... for this is a being unlike all the other stray pieces of her being ... traces that attract your attention and fix her in your mind but not her ... the being you mean to mourn ... isn't that what pets are for to teach their children and adults the distinction between the accidental and the essence ... there's a movement of substance from here to some place else that wounds ... even as the largest movement back is the one that heals

for plato

PACRES TWO

July 18, 2008

A HAPPY ENDING

was he someone sent in custody to the gallows ... sent in the custody of a priest and expected to show up on time ... what then would be the particulars of the conversation they had on their way ... do we have enough time to stop for coffee or should we get there early ... is there no chance of another appeal ... is the channel to the governor for commutation still open ... or will this way in truth suit me to the end ... it does have a competent insistent tone this call to come to the end ... indeed I take it at its own value and have no thought for defiance ... if only a little for just a slight delay ... but I own that may be just another distraction pulling me back or to the side ... while I do admit the way forward is clear and very straight just now ... I would not even ask for a little nap and that alone is unusual ... I have a sense of the time when I am no longer ever tired ... I have a sense of the platform stout before it opens ... and I am grateful for the sense of ceremony where not just the limb of any tree would do ... but I would ask you just one question ... am I expected ... and the priest hat off said yes

GRACE

if I start doing something significantly new ... saving instead of spending ... getting up early rather than going to bed late ... staying sober going straight giving up inspiration spiritual company and comfort ... instead of just talking of it theoretically ... and do so some amount of time unheard of before in the record of my usual habits ... what would be the chances ... being beat back say all the times before ... what would be the chances it all came naturally ... that I began saving because I loved to write a bigger number each month ... that I got up early because the sun's light lifted me up ... and went to bed early because the night now only made me sleepy ... what if I put the bottles away and didn't miss them ... smoked the last batch and left the window open to let the night and the air send me peaceful dreams ... and was in sleep and in peace because a new baseline had been set down ... a new way of life set before me ... and I could no more avoid it than stop walking or stop thinking ... for this new way was a way of thinking and walking with more and better such than ever before

ALL WE EVER WANT

but to be and to be more of it the suggestion is that's one thing ... and how can that be true ... it can't be this one thing be and then be more of it ... why not ... what would the more be unless it was ... no matter what we want as long as we want it we must be ... what can more do to being ... what can it add ... whatever it is it still is ... oh you can add all the predicates you want and say you don't have ... but you're just piling on words and you know you're too late ... before you had your first subject you had this little verb ... before the first name this little touch of being was waiting for it ... and waiting for what ... why waiting for it to be ... and for everything else that follows ... that's why each morning when you wake up early or late you get the sense that you too were just waiting ... now the place to do this waiting is for us a place of great mystery ... and is of course a thing of great affair ... this waiting to be ... and the other side of the door from being ... where we do it ... and from which apparently we take nothing back with us ... and the odd thing is it doesn't seem to hurt us ... as long as once again we get our turn to be ... that's all we want

ONE THING ONLY?

if only one thing were necessary could it not at the same time appear to be very complicated appearing as it must everywhere and all the time ... for want of a better word let's call it being and say it does nothing else but be all the time and nothing else does that ... actually you get the impression it's so good at what it does it doesn't need anything else to do it ... not even time or space or matter itself ... it just is and there's nothing to compare with it ... but everything else must try for this is being itself without which nothing else is ... the simple cell organism pregnant to split into two wants more of it ... the amphibian on the edge of a spiral in a corner of the galaxy comes out of the dark mud to look into the sky at night wants what it sees ... more of the night and more of the sky ... the old man in the hospital bed struggling to breathe with each half breath wants to be just a little longer ... like the amphibian taking in a gulp of it ... like the amoeba moving to it ... each particle in orbit or out of it ... each thought near or far mistaken wants this one thing ... to be and to be more of it

SURRENDERING TO THOUGHT

this is something I can eat and drink to ... whose colors are bright that I can easily see ... whose sounds are clear that I can hear them clearly ... but most of all is up close that I can feel it strongly and I should give this up for what ... something you tell me ... something for me to think about ... and I will not argue the point on the road back as it were if you have a hundred and fifty thousand and I have only sixty ... if you have the numbers and the other symbols in just the right order to give you the bigger shield the bigger sword the bigger bomb ... then of course I want to listen ... and you tell me ... and I learn ... that you get these sentences from the power of discernment ... then I make it my constant study to tell the difference between A and B ... and still I am your student ... but when I go to my room at night ... when I forget the day that was and the day to come ... even as just before sleeping I step into the center of the truth ... the dynamo of discernment ... and find set in a grotto of the wall what ... not sound or sight or touch or feel but what ... this knowledge that what you say is right ... this truth ... that I might as well sit down ... for this is the thing that sets the sight and sound hereafter

WHAT CAIN MUST HAVE THOUGHT OF ABEL

to be human is to inherit the nexus between the universal and the particular ... to thirst for the first and be satisfied only with the second ... to feel the compulsion to follow the truth and do the best and sooner or later to turn from it casually with contempt ... it isn't a both and ... it's an either or ... not the easy cohabitation of mind and brain but the attempt of each to murder the other ... one with an excuse ... the other with a snarl ... this would be bad enough if it were kept at home and within the family but it will leave the house for the forum and the marketplace as if it were resolved and could go where it wanted ... to the higher levels of philosophy and political theory with a concealed weapon ... to the church and the temple with the stock and the stake ... and even to love and teenage romance to bring disease and abortion ... it isn't that I didn't see you or think of you but that I must suppress you ... I love you but I want the best for all of us which as I see it means to put you aside ... this I would not do if I could reason with you but in all the tides of the ocean I know you for a spike that won't bend or go under ... too pointed ever for that

WHO ARE YOU?

do you remember that splinter of society in the sixties who bent their heads down to ask the question who am I ... now four decades later a sliver still wants to know ... over those years we've come to admit the priority of another question ... before who there's a what ... well my soul answers with descartes I think ... and with james this fund of thought is what I am my experience ... how simple to say my soul the part of me that ponders over my experience ... and I for one would buy it ... for in my thought is all my concern ... what could I be beyond or without it ... put me in a funnel and keep me at the bottom of eternity ... the horror would come when I thought of it ... put me in a bubble and let me float through infinity ... the honor would come because it was in my thought ... isn't everything just information and aren't we best when we know the most ... perfection when the scope of the bubble and the highways inside are complete ... except ... what's true for me would be true for you and everyone else ... the object I know ... the subject I am ... how do I know you but by the spirit among us

WHEN THE SOUL STOPS TO LISTEN

you may laugh at new age new wavers but there are certainly circumstances under which that would be a mistake ... for they at the least know that after the body speaks and the mind has its say there is something left to be said by the spirit ... and the catholics know something when they speak of one spirit which above all the others is holy ... here's a category I only mean to say without which you are lost when you try to understand human nature ... when you scrub your sins away thirty or forty times a day ... when you will have that last drink when it's final now forty or fifty times in a row and all the years of your life in attendance behind them ... when you put one book down just to pick up another ... page after page till all the days of your life are turned out now gone now past your recall ... but that my hands tied her heart's strings back together again ... and all the words on all the pages in all the books written and printed had one point to make and made it all together ... there is a learning that purges and a wisdom that quiets the spirit of the soul

STATIC WITH NO SPARK

it's in the fashion to talk of ideas and their influence but not of spirits and their interaction ... ideas after all are incorrigible flirts with the ideal though they have but an abstract passion ... it's the spirit that has the real emotion ... without the spirit ideas even the idea of form are worse than static they're frozen ... without emotion and purpose and persons what do we have but instinct and effect stimulus and consequence ... still tending as all things must to completion ... if only the final map of all cause and effect and no one to read it ... a final summary of how all the universe went down and no one to tell it ... it's not clear to me you say that it had a beginning or will have an end ... much less an end in mind when it began ... and I agree ... how can it be clear when the end is never in sight ... when you reach out to touch her hair and it's only the flow of atoms in space ... when she turns in response it seems for a moment with purpose it's only to bring her electrons in order ... which is strange after all for what order can they have with no destination in mind ... what is electricity if there never is a spark

WHAT WONDER THE CHRIST

the wonder of a wholly different kind than the wonder of the incarnation is the wonder that the incarnation is disbelieved ... the wonder of the incarnation for us is that once we see it we want it as the most powerful and satisfying of all the reasons why ... the closest and most imtimate of all the true answers yes ... and it has the crucifixion ... it has suffering ... if it didn't we would all be a lie for each of us has suffered and knew it had a meaning though we could not tell what it meant to the last intonation ... and it has the resurrection ... without which the crucifixion has no meaning ... without which we who have each been crucified have no meaning ... not one of us but has been held back held down had power taken from us strength out pain and fear in and made to die sooner or later ... what a wonder then that we say it is not true ... how we say it however is clear ... to say it to kill the wonder of it we kill all wonder ... not the cat staring into the sky ... not the dog listening to the night wind ... nor the ape in the tree lokking across the savannah knows it more clearly than we ... all man is an animal only

IS SPIRITUAL MAGIC WORSE THAN SUPERFLUOUS?

god's in the details and the devil in distraction ... what good are the details how is god in them not obscured if the details are scattered and fighting each other ... if at any point on a spot inspection they cannot answer to their overall purpose ... if one set says for the glory of god and another set says for mine ... if one set says my glory is the glory of god god and I agree ... just now however we're talking about power my power to advance the glory of god by advancing the glory of mankind ... suppose a bell rang in the midst of discourse and discord calling all souls to attend to the beginning of time in the middle of history to the purpose of time in the midst of universal flight from the beginning of time ... and suppose some did attend and others said not just now ... some said the call is universal and unique and knows no real competition ... and the other group said the call is universal because it's made through me and a few others just now like me ... is unique because I my brothers and sisters we are unique ... and knows no competition because together we are all equal ... is there not in that reply the simple rebellion of pride and distraction

FALSE MESSIAH

we've heard perhaps we know that a good part of the calamities last century was due to species pride on the part of humanity ... but this pride no surprise was false ... consider nietzsche precursor and preacher to the century ... by the time he's gone things are not just wrong they've gone fatally ill two times ... he starts out with the metaphysical question is the will ontologically superior to the intellect ... does it have more being ... and then he geta sick ... syphillis first deranges then destroys him and the calm philosophical examination of the will suffers its first death ... in its last lingering illness and at the funeral this idea of the will is conceived in death and then spreads like a cancer ... bad idea goes on to meet bad idea and together they form a pact ... and because ideas have consequences and these are carcinogenic europe and the world are convulsed in sin and suffering ... the sin of pride false pride ... that god was dead and the will the human will the hero's will had come to take his place ... wrapped in a sheet put in a display by his sister nurse will incarnate stares into space

THE INTERSECTION OF THE PHILOSOPHER'S FOUR CAUSES

the antidote to anger is perspective ... no satisfaction without fulfillment ...there's an important distinction not only between what they say but also in why they've been said ... the first speaks to form the second to purpose ... the first wraps form round an aberration informs reforms it makes it conform to a more complex pattern than a point ... brings it into a system in which one thing anyway may be said ... there is a sense in which all the points in this larger field are valid are equal ... but to ask for satisfaction and fulfillment is to make no formal request ... here is something entirely different metaphysically unique I mean absolutely new ... let me say it another way ... there is a sense at least barring one or two minor factors they have absolutely nothing in common ... form and purpose ... they call to different things ... they're involved all their lives in their separate conversations ... most of all they are incomplete each in a wholly separate way ... they have a proclivity each for a wholly different object of desire ... for form searches for material and purpose calls out to persons ... I will not quibble and say they never meet ... of course not ... they do meet ... they meet at the center where they make a cross

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PREVENT A HEART ATTACK

pain fills the page so you cannot turn it to go on with the story ... till the words seem to say that for you this is the end of the story ... the whole story on this last page the end of it and all the parts that went before ... but if you couldn't close the book someone else took it away ... the pain was gone the story went on as if it hadn't been in the book ... as if it were back to living on its own ... and that would have been the time to forget about it about the book and the end of the story as if you had the power that is to do it ... but you find you've been outvoted the council has stepped in you're just the lame duck in the side office ... the new staff moving in ...a directive a mandate ... you now a man being moved to a purpose ... step by serial step you give your formal consent ... we'll give you five umbrellas or open-heart surgery give you a choice with the first option withdrawn ... who needed it anyway this is no more time for options no more thought for choices ... ask for a priest it will be an afterthought ... confess your sins ... all these years and they still don't amount to much ... they pale beside the penance and the bread on Holy Thursday

THE GNOSTIC'S SALVATION: THE SELF-CONTAINING CARRIAGE

he's a funny lad they said carrying him ... let's try to get him to the end ... but first they had to put him down ... they were like the past and the future bound together by that causal bond that one must be just that much older than the other ... and so in drub monotony they might have continued arguing always if they forgot the boy sitting on the floor like a triangle in his ignorance and good will ... the boy they picked up again to carry because he gave them balance and direction both ... when one remembered his habits of attempted manipulation and the other wandered off in accusatory dreams it was the boy who got them back on track ... when one pretended to be essential the other tried for an accident ... the boy set them between the both ... destiny and romantic chaos ... formality and the freedom to be something else ... because between the two the boy was neither and both ... the one thing neither ever did measure up to ... and the one thing both of them had to be just in order to be ... and the thing was they both knew it ... knew that it was true ... while they carried him he was carrying them

THE GNOSTIC'S COMPLAINT: WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

the gnostic pardon me for saying is deistic don't you think ... in some way He got up and went and we haven't seen Him since ... or at least that's our story and we're sticking to it ... on the surface ... down deep I don't think there's a one of us not constantly searching for Him surreptitiously ... it's not that we don't realize the advantage in our loss ... the freedom the possible freedom it gives us to experiment ... it's rather the worry it gives us of late ... how long do we get to be wrong ... what if being wrong does matter becomes a bad habit and has a bad end ... it's a look over your left shoulder suddenly kind of feeling ... what face were you expecting to face ready or not for the finale ... our premises permit of his return ... what will be the look on His face when He does ... and what do we do then shut up and lawyer up or just figure it's too late ... but now perhaps you shrug me off with shouts of Metaphysical Dribble or Dungeon Religion ... what's this you say all this only if there were one right answer and that one unforgiving ... and I too would be inclined not to worry ... only I hear it said the truth is logically unforgiving

THE STYLISTS

beating method in particular routine especially habit you would think would be substance ... more than the vagaries of style and wit you would think should be essence ... nonetheless there is a type of writer I confess some intimacy with the character likely to mistake the wrapping and the package and the thrill of opening them for the gift inside ... the book and the ease of its delivery and the colors on the cover for the argument or story inside ... to allow this confusion to set into a routine is to miss the message and soon enough set the book aside as having lost its interest ... this much is fairly obvious more subtle as in simply taking more time is to do the same to the truth of the argument or story once you've set the package and the book off to the side ... to set the truth up knowingly not admittedly as it were another idea or opinion taking its place with the others gone before on the same long shelf ... as if there were no book or thought word person or idea to stand out before all those others ... the really good ones with all that style and grace ... one word one book one idea one person to shut up all the others in the library of style

THE PROBLEM OF GNOSTIC TRANSLATION

there are lots of ways to punch through these solipsistic sorrows ... each I suppose of haymaker potency ... but each of a different type ... I know four such methods of translation ... let me mention one ... see how lonely you might be in the middle of the night at your wide desk trying to figure out which universal made the most sense ... and never having done it suddenly asking yourself what the hell is it you've been doing all this time ... turning then to the walls of books that surround you you find you must agree ... nothing much ... how else otherwise to explain all the books but as the best of friends distilled to keep you company as you wait on failure ... failing to blaze a trail of your own you listen to the stories of those who have ... all the meantime still trying to tell the one of your own ... translation rejoining the stream of discourse ... the discourse of meaning ... what it means and what you mean to do about it ... what we have meant and have done about it ... the translation of universal to particular ... the translation of thought to action

GO HOME

I'm lonely but don't pity me ... I'm working on the assumption we're all lonely and we can't all be pitiable ... and don't get me wrong I drop what I'm doing when a friend calls ... but friendship is not fulfilling odd as that may sound ... it's kind of like halffilling or maybe even two thirds but the act itself takes time and the arts of compromise and is wearing ... all things wear when they reach the limit of their time ... but there's something that doesn't take time and artiface ... that doesn't wear and isn't limited by time ... but it does fulfill ... and that's the thing the longing for which makes us all human and lonely ... wouldn't the next step be you might be willing to say all right forget everything else go out and get that one necessary thing ... and believe me many of us have tried ... taken our emotional investment to the bank of the one true thing ... but have found the doors closed with a sign in the corner saying go home ... and another further down saying I thought snidely get a life ... I am however inclined to agree since I trust the power of that great house to prohibit mindless grafitti ... we must get a life mustn't we

WHY DO YOU REMIND US?

from birth to death is it not a simple struggle to survive ... but isn't that struggle based on an assumption that life is good enough to fight for ... and it's the loss of that assumption that signifies despair is that which follows ... but how worthy is the assumption ... how mistaken is the despair ... surely that will depend on how you word the assumption ... for example is it the only thing worth fighting for and if not how does it compare with the others ... or you might ask what do you mean by life ... will you fill in the form ... how long is it to last ... what elements must it include to succeed ... what do you mean by success ... how are we to treat the auditor when he arrives to inspect the accounts ... I mean suffering when it comes testing our resolve ... what does that resolve mean when it's quite clear the evidence shows every life form must die ... why these periodic takings of the account if not to remind us the book must close ... and why do we need such reminders ... is it that we're dense and would never think of death without them ... if so what is there about death that we should think of it

WHAT WE ALL HAVE IN COMMON

the reflection on the silver plastic seemed a light within ... a small blue white light ... how beautiful it was the heart of the crucified christ ... whoever could pray like that to make a point or strike a pose let him come to suffer ... who speaks of such a light in such a place may he come to temptation ... only to spread the good word ... what's all the flesh in the world wrapped round a point like that ... from africa and asia the new world and the old ... eve and her family even to the last family on the last evening ... flying through all the space of time to get to that point ... but don't you think it glided corkscrewed in and made a fine landing ... for there is no flesh without blood ... flesh everlasting if only the blood could keep to the course ... but you know the world and so do I ... the blood will not keep to the course ... it's stirred to the overlap ... stirred up as it's bundled down to the point ... if you go through this you must suffer ... if you had another way it would be beside the point missing the point all of us have in common

THE OLDEST TESTAMENT

do you have it ... are you with it ... is more objective than you think ... it answers to the question Did you remember ... I'm thinking of you all the time I just never remember what you wanted ... this book made a greater impact on me than any other I just don't remember the title ... I tell you I tell you the truth but I forget to listen ... dementia dementia lord is it so simple ... for all our calculation judgment and understanding what's the meaning of it all if you can't remember ... there there in the streets of alexandria down carpenters lane that's the beginning of all that I've learned ... but do I remember in time to make a difference ... I tell you I'd describe everything minutely and honestly if you'd just turn me in that direction ... I was there just now though it happened half a century ago ... I'm here now to be here here after even as now and then here is the hereafter ... what's the quid for such a quo ... be still my adolescent heart the world is not as you feared illimitable ... have faith in the lord that you may remember

with thanks to Anne Rice for Out of Egypt

METAPHYSICS

that would be fun but most of it would be in the initial selection of the one hundred ... for the older they are the little more likely are they to change and what you select in the beginning is what you get in the end ...but if your selection is representative of the population at large you're going to get experts who don't agree ... not in ten weeks ten months or ten years ... and that means in any election rather than consensus what you'll get is faction ... rather than one stepping forward you could get a hundred and each likely to emphasize the points of his contention with the others if only to give them all something more to talk about ... but that they do form factions though fluid and temporary is not nothing ... though they argue endlessly there is something ... though they argue against reason they come to a point in common half in favor and half against ... from a hundred candidates they come down to two ... who turn and face the other ninety-eight ... who then turn and group themselves in order of importance ... from faction to party to party leaders ... but what are they looking at that got them started ... what is it that they have in common

THE PHILOSOPHER KING

if you were having a party ... say a political party ... who would you invite ... how about experts on abortion and war and freedom of speech and on religion on drugs and addiction on poverty and wealth on health and disease ... collect about a hundred ... give them a salary ... feed and house them to a pip ... then let them run loose but give them each a vote ... start in january and call them in november for an election ... give them ten months that is to convince themselves ... meeting in committees that sit around diningroom tables and on sofas and in recliners in livingrooms and homemade libraries ... let them talk on the beach and in the mountains by the pool and on the lake ... let them determine their answers to the questions that will likely plague us these next fifty years by playing the amateur to each other's expert ... novice to the oracles ... let their questions and their answers none of them hard to understand be published to each other in reports ... let them form a shadow government ... get one step ahead

THE END TO OUR WAYWARD PERCEPTIONS

percept and precept is the difference between taken and taking ... whether an impression takes or you take a principle and adhere to it ... whether a pathway is cut among the old byways of your brain or you discover one outside yourself and determine to follow it ... each is an anagram of the other ... there's always something of the precept in every percept ... and of course a precept without any percept is deaf dumb and blind insensitive without feeling ... the one is an entry into this world the other an exit ... an ongoing introduction and upcoming farewell ... a gnostic graduation is something like what we all intend ... with each of us a degree in something like musicology ... each percept a note in the precept's score hurrying down the assembly line to join its fellows in the song ... each its assigned place amidst the ensemble ... here a color there a pang ... here a crash and there a swallow ... oh what a foul smell our iniquity does hang about us and what a sweet taste our deliverance in the mouth ... the word of truth ... to purify the air ... the meaning of the truth ... to stabilize our flight ... precept the flight plan ... ETA the eternity of salvation ... percept redeemed

CREATION

you know the truth ... we all know the truth ... that's not the problem ... the problem is why we don't admit it ... why do we turn from it spurn it pretend we don't know it ... there's just the one thing ... and no I don't mean to denigrate the other stuff ... no I mean at the top ... not where it counts I know the other stuff counts but where it begins to count ... where nothing else counts because there is no counting because there's only one thing ... when you put it that way I begin to see what you mean ... there is no memory because there is no past or future ... there is no acknowledgment of the truth because there is no knowledge neither subject nor predicate nor object neither knower nor known ... knowing this as you say we all do how could we not be confused ... knowing this how should we not all be destroyed ... if this one thing one thing only is real truly real must all else be not ... there is a wonder in it ... not that these distinctions these divisions survive but that we are the ones that take such pride in them when they do ... what's it to us or we to them that these lines for a while touch or don't if none of us is real ... nor an illusion for long ... if this one thing is not both generous and kind

I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW

I'm still having trouble with the word understanding ... I still don't understand it ... when they say got it? I say no ... I know when I understand something because my mind stops telling me to ask questions ... and if it has to do with something to do I start doing it ... especially then I don't have time to stop and ask what just happened ... I'm already on the move ... and when later I try to remember what I did when I understood there's no space left between the attempt and the understanding for me to see anything ... the gap is seamless ... I know what my face must look like ... I've seen the look on other faces when suddenly a person understands ... but that of course is too late ... past the fact ... there seems to be no time allowed for the understanding to do its thing ... it's too quick to be fast ... an electron makes its quantum leap from orbit to orbit ... there it was now it's there ... with no time between the was and the now ... a leap of faith I'd say ... as soon as announced it's already done ... not I will believe ... I already do ... when did it happen ... sometime before I said I would ... I don't know when ... I once was blind but now I see

DEISM:SHOULD GOD RETURN?

if god came down into the middle of our world ... into the middle of history ... into the middle of your life ... into the center of your consciousness right now ... what would you do ... how can you answer that question with only this amount of information ... wouldn't you first need to know how ... they say see paris and die ... no no there is an older saying and truer ... see god and die ... who could survive his absolute presence ... unless it was mitigated ... unless it was moderated ... which brings us to the question how ... the answer is quick and easy ... modified to fit the mode of our nature ... not just that we may see god and survive ... but that we may survive to a purpose ... which is to express god's self-revelation to us ... tempered in the wind that informs us ... tempered in the fire of our own essence and existence to tell it ... tell it like it is to anyone who will listen ... that's the vocation we all share on one of the easy assumptions in history that we can make ... the enlightenment made a mistake ... deism ... not born of its despair but prior to its birth rising with its conception ... giving birth through pride to horror

YOU

but who are you ... I know who I am when I'm in the student's place ... and I know where I'm going ... from this vantage point looking back all those years to the ten-year old I know what he's looking at ... I can still see the attraction ... I see now the chaotic mash of material we grew through from five to thirteen and the slow institution of order we realized incrementally painfully but surely ... by the natural appeal of that order the question and the answer ... the matter the form the appeal drawing each of us on ... the agency the push that I thought was mine alone ... the glide along the form of the question to the answer could be clever and smooth but I see now there was more than form to it ... and more than technique ... there was grace ... from the first question to the final answer there was more than effort and style ... the answer beckoned ... the form mapped the route ... the effort climbed the ladder ... but all the long way from start to finish the middle ground the middle ground was you ... alpha and omega and each iota through ... the spirit the spirit of it all was you

THE CLASS PICTURE

knowledge is then perhaps we may conclude innocence ... perhaps ... because it may just produce innocence as a byproduct ... an epiphenomenon the philosophers say ... I'm a philosopher just not yet a good one ... too vague too imprecise I'm sure ... all too eager to float an attractive idea while not conscious of the ground beneath it ... inconsistent contradictory absurd ... nonetheless I trust something in the air here ... something sound imperturbable eternal in the connection here ... between the knower and the known ... the question and the answer ... but it's nothing that the picture shows ... none of the objects in the room give it away ... not the wood desks the finger of the student in the corner plucking his nose the second hand on the clock frozen in its place ... not even the teacher's expectant smile although that's close ... everything else is posing ... pretending to be the common ground ... the middle term working as it should to make the argument valid ... there is a midddle term between the question and the answer ... one that doesn't pretend to be ... about whom there is no subterfuge cleverness or deceit ... it's you ... you're the middle term

INNOCENCE

think of yourself ... say as ten years old in the classroom ... your hand raised quietly ... devoted to answering the question ... now freeze the picture ... what is it that you see ... pan back widely first ... see the rest of the classroom ... the other students you would remember if recalled ... the friendships the tensions the forcelines running between the cliques ... the sociology of the little society ... now focus back in on your hand ... on your face ... the posture and poise of your body ... now let's say directed to your classmates and not quite to the teacher because somehow through her ... through her to the question ... change the angle ... go in a 360 degree orbit round yourself now as the object ... the object as a statue ... but full of color flesh and life ... you at ten years old ... but not you ... not only because it's a small slice of time but because of the look on your face ... in particular the look in your eye ... this is what I think convinces ... the picture the statue is not quite you ... it misses the context not of the classroom but of the question the answer was made for ... the question completes and makes you ... a picture of what

THE FORMAL AND INTERNAL CRISIS OF THE MODERN MIND

I have a snapshot of the human mind ... there are only twelve or fifteen pieces of furniture in it ... there's a billiard table on which we play causation ... and set-in window benches for time and space ... I would ask you now just to consider these two pieces ... the web of relation and the block of substance ... the first may have begun in some long away corner but I can tell you now it covers the whole room ... now from any nexus in this web of relation we might catch a glimpse of this black box of substance ... it is as are all the pieces in the room covered by the web ... covered and recovered by so many plot lines fault lines communication lines and con lines ... lines of advance and lines of retreat of intention protest and desire ... we can't see the box through the surface of the lines ... we can't see the box itself ... only its indentation in the web ... but of so many angles ... of such unexpected configuration ... who can say there's a box at all and that these twists and turns are not the whim or even perversions of the lines themselves ... playing with god making him up

THE GNOSTIC'S LAMENT

understanding said the old man is the key to ultimate reality ... that's because the content of what's really real must be understandable because it's understood ... understood already by the mind that designed it ... you might accept this but for the definite article ... you might want to replace it ... say with the word one ... understanding is one key to ultimate reality ... what about the others ... love say ... love and understanding are keys to ultimate reality ... I'll agree but say as long as we assume love and understanding are ultimately the same thing ... as it is whenever you see one the other is nearby ... even when you're mistaken and your love deceived you why is it then the truer your love the deeper your sorrow the less your anger ... you did not understand what you should have ... that you did but your love did not understand the love there was for the two of you ... the loss of that presence is the cause of your sorrow the diminution of your pride and the death of your anger ... in the depth in the greater depth of your sorrow what's the use of your new understanding without your old love

THE SPINSTER'S INSOUCIANCE IN THE FACE OF THE THEORY

part of you picks up a book as if it were an idea ... preferably a noun ... maybe a gerund ... but an idea ... a universal ... these things have meaning ... they can be understood ... they are what you've been looking for ... but the spinster pays no attention ... the spinster spends all of her life whenever she can reading a book ... but not just reading for she's a highlight fanatic ... she began with a red pen and checks in the margin ... finessed into pencil dashes and plus signs ... and now paints the words in bright yellow ink ... banners above the nave in the cathedral of her soul ... at first she was wild with her pen ... more discriminating with her pencil ... now all her banners ring true ... while her body and mind matter and one form take each night off ... long hours to sleep deep ... her soul on a spree runs through the cathedral town from church to church parade to parade procession to processsion in celebration of the spirit that let them be said ... those words on the banner ... that let them be read ... her mind and her body in their attendance during the day ... her soul understanding in the night

NOT SELFISH ENOUGH

my formal study of philosophy was similar to yours ... that is I expect you began with descartes ... since then a healthy generation long ago I've heard the man criticized for being too selfish ... I think therefore I am ... but I've come to disagree with that opinion ... and with what must be a radical disagreement for rather than too selfish I find the cogito not selfish enough ... he may start with I but he's really talking about think ... the therefore isn't for me it's for my thought he must be saying ... and this is so selfless as to lose the self completely ... and where's the self lost but in a huge wilderness of thoughts without thinkers ... of predicates without the first subject ... of a world not just without a soul but the whole universe without a self ... not even one ... and just because of this simple initial gamble on a thought ... even if THE thought ... we go to work today as well as relax in a thicket of chaotic predicates thorny but never fruitful as a result ... descartes descartes you've lost us in thought and now that's lost too

THE STYLISTIC OBJECTION TO CASUAL THEOLOGY SOMEWHAT REBUTTED

no what you say can't be right ... to talk about god often dulls the theological senses when it's not done well ... there are lots of people with declarative conceptions of themselves who like to talk about god because it gives them the chance to say something about a topic that must be important and should be interesting ... and that should be enough to make the importance and the interest rub off on the speaker ... you want to stay away from them ... you don't want this particular important interest second-hand ... it can't be given that way ... and you shouldn't expect to pay second-hand prices when you find it for sale ... there's an art in any skill especially in the highest art keeping the artist out of the picture and of his art letting remain just the trace of a hint the measure of his truth ... does he really mean does he know what he says ... are we artists not in the majority when we admit we are not in that high class ... but never mind me what do you say ... I put myself in the low class too ... every being expresses itself according to what it is ... we all are what we are and so is our love ... some better formed than others

WHEN WE WILL NOT SEE

such a lovely child and left in the middle of such a ruin ... sierra perdito ... metaphysics abandoned by a desolate epistemology ... when no one trusts the other's point of view ... when no one trusts his own ... ethics is forced to connive in order to survive when thought is reduced to calculation ... when judgment is deprived of a foundation science must orbit round faith orbit with calculation ... when understanding comes to mean our agreement ... then that we agree this is just an agreement what defense is left against the tyranny of the arbitrary and the absurd ... so here we stand ... rather let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of god ... for we have no understanding ... we've reasoned it away ... we have no judgment ... instead we have lots of expedients ... and of course the reason this leaves us with gathers no respect ... animals do it machines do it ... all together we put our pegs in a row ... all together we tie them up with string ... what wonder now our souls we say are these connections ... you see we have no understanding

with homage to william shakespeare, his richard II

WHAT WE DO WHEN WE THINK OF GOD

what I saw was god ... said the old man leaning against the tree ... a white fountain of energy and light overflowing in great waves of generosity ... of love ... what I mean by saw is that I saw it at the same time as I thought it ... it was a fountain as I described it but not as I see it now ... it was then in the thought and crucially was the thought ... this picture of the fountain in my mind ... like seeing the letters and hearing the word one step further ... seeing the idea ... looking through the thought to the idea it was trying to picture ... only this time the idea was the idea of god ... say simply the truth of that generosity ... you see my mind now hesitating before the final step ... not because I fear it or fight it but because I'm swept back from it ... I'm swimming in the tide ... not because I long for it or because I'm conflicted to leave it ... but because I saw it ... though the picture is fading out of focus ... nor for my comprehension exalted over any other student's when we all study ... but for my understanding restricted and in parts broken but present in his presence ... as quick as a thought ... but seeing eternally

WHOSE VOICE IN ALL THE CONFUSION

what's this ... do you expect advancement for mimicking the lord's voice ... for what can it be but mimicry ... you as you are and so far from the original ... you'd do better to talk like a wino or a druggy ... for they've lost their minds as you have too ... what's your reply and please be brief ... I'd like to get lunch ... well I admit this may be poorly done and others may be wrong to put on the mind of christ and ask what would Jesus do ... and I admit the part about the wino and the druggy brings a smile to my heart ... but I doubt all the others are wrong ... and if I've had one love all my life it's for the druggy and the wino ... besides like brisket the butcher I cannot see my way ... what can I do if this last attempt should fail ... I've tried particulars ... they itch and sometimes lead to a playful romp ... but I'm lost in particulars and far worse than brisket who found his way out ... I've tried generals especially the ism's who've had millions in their command ... but I'm lost in abstractions ... I cannot hold my own ... I need to hear a voice in this fog

trollope, the struggle of brown, jones, and robinson

A SIGN

I thought he meant his own generation and that he condemned it ... but this was misremembrance ... he meant what he said ... the generation that wanted a sign ... any generation ... but he didn't condemn it ... he did say they would receive no sign ... that I remembered ... so I thought they were condemned ... how could they wicked and corrupt survive if they received no sign ... well the truth of course some of you already know comes in the next word and the phrase that follows it and both before the end of the same sentence ... for the next word is the one that always opens the door for the rest of us ... the word I've learned to fear and adore ... except ... and the phrase that follows it is the sign ... the sign meant to save us all ... the sign of jonah ... which the master if he taught junior high might with occasional and good-homored impatience roll his eyes and explain by asking have you forgotten so soon ... it was just four short chapters ago we spoke of this sign ... only two fast millenia back and all the world speeding on since ... ignoring the sign ... buried ... once ... in the heart of the earth

matthew 16:4

THE UNIVERSE AS JOURNEY: RATIONALE

what is there ... something ... what is it ... a presence indicating power in degrees ... I don't like to be threatened ... I won't consider that now ... so tell me about this power ... why do I find it attractive ... or why do I care ... it's more than an attraction ... it's a push as well ... you are by nature designed to seek this presence as something good ... designed ... what good ... any good any true good that is is meant to appeal to you ... but hold it there for a second ... I want to say how much I love this language ... for there are two meanings of the word appeal that must apply now and as was said by degree ... the kind of appeal we say is a noun ... something you follow ... and the other kind ... something you do ... the first can be very wispy uncertain problematic ... and anyway it's the second now that I mean ... not some pretty form passing by but a knock on the door calling for a response ... more like a smile or a frown ... someone looking you in the eye ... something deliberately calling for your participation ... not like tapping on wood or gazing at the stars ... but a voice in the ear ... close ... what does a person want to hear

ibid (McCool/Clarke)

ON THE PKG LINE

yufoolio lost for years in the maze found what again he thought was the center ... but strange to tell only by a climb to the top of a mountain ... not a mountain distant from the maze but a mountain in the middle of it ... of course he thought when he got to the top ... how else to solve a maze but to add a dimension and climb above it ... catching his breath he stood up and began to survey the puzzle when immediately the clouds gathered and it began to rain and he could see nothing and he was tired and he was cold and he was getting wet ... each drop reminded him he had been here before ... or what was the same ... thought he had ... the little man in the oversized coat leaning against the pillar of the tree for example ... the coat might be new but the ticket in its pocket was the same he'd been traveling on all his life ... the very same carriage carrying him when he thought he was the one doing all the weary pushing and pulling ... not his strength but power ... not his mind but kingdom ... not his hungry ambition but glory

cf McCool, ed, Clarke, The Universe as Journey, 49-92

THE EGO DOES NOT FIND THE SPIRIT NECESSARILY GIVEN

I speak for a minority ... I don't know how small ... just that it can't be only me ... I see in my imagination periodic collusion between my heart and mind ... or between one thing playing one part and something else playing the other ... I see this done in the absence of a third party without whose cooperation the party of the first part and the party of the second part would have no part at all to play ... the next scene is set in the memory where once again the parts collude though this time ignoring the presence of the third part ... thereby creating a memory taken for true which is false ... the third part holds the truth of the memory which is false and grieves in its presence ... all the first party or the second has to do is turn to the third part always in the presence of that grief to feel its pain ... and feeling its pain to recover its truth ... first the pain then the true memory then the real event ... most people call the third part the soul ... not me ... I call it the spirit ... I am myself the soul crying to the heart and the mind ... abjure sin ... recover spirit

THE FUROR ONE NIGHT BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE

ding an sich was anything at all if you could call her shy ... she couldn't help but express herself ... but like a fire ... and like a fire she required a screen to protect her audience ... a screen made of anything handy ... wire glass canvas paper nerve-cells tradition ... and like any performer in front of any natural audience no one could see her entirely inside and out but got just a tiny slice of her time and space ... and always through the screen ... but some it seemed would get a better shot of ding and what she was doing than others as it were in the back row who got to see next to nothing ... but it wasn't these two groups at odds with each other or the performance ... that discontent kept boiling up in two or three rows not far from the front ... it was they who accused the theater of fraud ... they who so boisterously pushed themselves forward one evening before the performance ... pulled down the curtain and then cried revelation when they found nothing behind it ... and it was they who sold pieces of the torn fabric saying to the people this this is the real ding an sich

WHAT'S IN A NAME

we are people of the name ... they are people of the word ... we are masters of language ... they are mastered by it ... we excel at manuals ... they have bibles ... we use words to get through things to where we want to go ... they use words to get into things and then sit there and wonder ... even the people of the word concede the power of the name for to name is to command and to command is to get the right to name ... we don't pretend to know things in and of themselves ... it's enough for us to command them ... the people who don't take this seriously are no good in business or war ... they are the ones we command ... the poet on his mountaintop lost in the reverie of his words is the last to speak his language ... the rest are here down on the plain learning ours ... we write the histories we graduate the doctors and the scientists we name the universe ... and then we put it to work ... of all men we are the most humble the most moderate the most reasonable for we know what's in a name and we know it won't last ... all things pass ... in the meantime we intend to thrive

THE ETERNAL PROPRIETY OF CERTAIN PREDICATES?

we usually think we have plenty of time until we get old ... but truth to tell even then ... plenty of time before the crunch ... bozo puts a lit match in an open ashtray an inch below some overhanging papers belonging to odo when odo is in the room next door ... and the library and odo but not bozo go up in flames ... and one of the books burnt with most of the others beyond even a fine grey ash the heat is so intense is a book on predicables properties and accidents ... odo can read that book as when it was new now that he's not with bozo who can't ... now each letter in the book delights his eye with unexpected and playful color ... a kaleidoscopic symphony of meaning tripping across the surface of each word he reads ... what were once sudden or terrifying clusters of light and heat are now joyfully natural and proper to his understanding ... what sang and seduced or then popped and burst an eardrum is now the word of wisdom fitting and proper to his soul ... so odo is now in essence and can predicate a property while bozo fumbles

for bozo and odo see kreeft logic x.3

A PROVOCATION

which is life ... is it a puzzle or maze that we figure out ... or mountain we struggle against something that by will we climb ... is it an answer or an achievement ... now don't tell me both ... I'm not trying to be real here ... I'm just trying to provoke a new opinion ... possibly a new ideal ... or more likely reveal a new aspect of an old ideal ... is it the heart or the head that's the best place to live your life ... which of the two should you let rule ... well suppose it's the head ... how could that be ... why should it be ... we're talking human life here ... at the least animal life and animal hatred and affection ... at most angelic aspiration ... love ... and all that range is a matter of the heart ... yes is my reply but a little hatred and little enough love ... we have within us an impulse which says if we only had more understanding there would be less hate and more love ... I agree with that impulse ... and I'd go further and say all hatred and a lot of accidents proceed from a lack of understanding ... and further still to say understanding is that which first makes us human ... more than judgment more than reason ... because it's first

cf kreeft logic, x.3

COMPUTER PERFECT

why isn't every claim true or false based simply on an analysis of its terms ... so s is p you say ...well just give me a full analysis of s and p and we'll see by comparison at a glance if the claim is true or false ... the balance is either precise and exact or it collapses beyond the province of the truth ... and isn't that the definition of truth ... everything everywhere in balance with everything else everywhere through all time through all space ... stasis supreme ... reality complete ... quick take a picture before it moves and someone somewhere is forced to tell a lie ... well maybe ... but ask yourself is there anything wrong with this four dimensional picture of everything from start to finish ... what about motion for instance ... doesn't it disappear when as here shutter speed hits infinity ... or cause and effect ... who needs that now when everything is explained by its grid coordinates ... or relation itself ... what does that mean when it's lost its wiggle room ... how can the relative be absolute and not evaporate ... what are we missing ... what have we lost ... wait ... is it life

THE ONLY TENSELESS WONDER

some people say the greatest wonder of all is that there is anything at all ... well I suppose ... but what if it all just suddenly went out as if the universe were the last candle in a multiversal chandelier that's already dissolved ... the last candle before the final actual night ... nothing at all ... no god no creation not even the possibility of either ... all the god and all the creation remaining till then wouldn't seem to amount to much without the guarantee that they'll still be around tomorrow whatever day you happen to wake up ... the wonder then doesn't seem to be existence but continued existence ... not now but now not worried about later or hung up in the past as if a pedigree were a guarantee ... not impulse or desire or will ... nor longevity if it comes to an end ... nor steadiness if it peters out ... not the validity of a moment or the verification of a lifetime ... nor the enthusiasm of any particular insight ... but the absolute conquest of time and space ... especially time ... so that there should be no claim but this claim ... not was or will be but am always

TWO VIEWS

house for sale ... each room a mansion and a worthy topic of a flock of books ... but it's the view from just one corner room on the second floor for which I beg your attention ... well really two views from the same room ... one to the north out to the ocean and one to the east along the shore to the mountains in the distance ... one mountain in particular in the far distance yet taller still than all those before ... a pleasing resort around its base if you can get out that far to visit ... as many clever savage trails to the top as there are those brave perhaps foolish to try them ... each trail designed and sure to kill you if you get to the top and the desired promotion ... the view out to sea from the other window passes over a garden maze ... just four or five long blocks square but filled with tunnels overpasses subterfuge and deceit ... none of them perhaps intentional ... but all debilitating ... all distracting but promising ... that is as you might have guessed amazing ... point is to take your pick ... the maze on the way to the ocean or the killing path to the top of the mountain ... question is what's at the top what's in the center

cf moreland & muelhoff, the god conversation, chs 4 & 5

ADAM'S SIN

what am I to adam or what's he to me ... what's what he did have to do with me ... or what I do now or hereafter anything to do with him ... our relation is as tenuous as the claims for his existence ... as the claims for heritable guilt ... as the concept of a moral dna ... how can one drop dye an ocean or one sin influence untold degrees of separation ... how can the relation between adam and his descendents be causal and anything more than accidental ... unless adam is unlike any other man ... any man a son ... any daughter ... and his power if causal somehow is essential ... and how can that be ... unless the cause traveling through essence through the nature of humanity becomes necessary by way of definition ... by way of identity ... I'm the bearer of adam's one sin willful disobedience to god because I am adam ... because I am human ... have his nature ... share his essence ... well I might reply so much for metaphysics and terms of necessity and essence if they lead to such absurdity ... if the absurd in this case didn't make sense ...am I older than ten older than seven ... don't I know I've already committed adam's sin

IF REASON WERE LIGHT IT WOULD BE BLUE AND IT WOULD TELL A STORY

two powerful ways of talking ... telling a story ... presenting a syllogism ... you could see a character in some futuristic novel leading a double life ... during the day she's a scientist arguing from evidence to conclusion ... but at night she makes the rounds telling stories and getting people to laugh and ponder ... having spent a full day and most of a full night she goes home for a few hours to sleep ... and to dream ... in her dreams her jokes are logical and her arguments are laughable ... and that's ok ... because somehow she weaves them both together ... she goes to the window and sees in fact as far as can be seen ... she goes to her table and reads in her book exactly what it means to say ... she sits in her chair and puts her head up and thinks precisely what she should ... and understanding bursts from her head like an umbrella collapsed in the wind and all the universe like the bulb of a flower within ... and her mind's a match on fire the yellow crowning the red ... but look to the stalk below the red bud ... look to the blue the ring that holds the head and the crowning mitre above ... the circle light of blue

THE ENORMITY OF UNDERSTANDING

I came to a conclusion based on evidence details examples but my conclusion isn't an example ... that's the first step and by it I perform an act of reason ... from details from examples I form a general conclusion which is neither absolute nor certain ... at first ... and here's the trick and what a nice trick it is ... indeed one of the nicest tricks our collective human mind has ever performed and of course still does ... not reason nor judgment but an understanding ... that is being able to tell the difference between a property belonging to a thing by its nature and an accident adhering to it by chance ... understanding is that first act of the mind by which we find the essence of the thing ... no perhaps not all of it but still the thing itself that in the sight of it we see as well that something else alongside it ... not passing by and stooping in its hurry to pick up the thing the essence must have dropped ... handing it over saying not at all quite welcome I must be moving on ... but there beside it not just in space and time but beyond these two the two of them together steadfast and eternally

WHICH WAY

what does conforming to a routine mean to an individual other than an annoyance ... especially to a distracted mind ... especially to a mind willfully distracted ... nor is such a mind unusual ... especially today ... look around you with such a will ... see what a wealth and a variety there is to attract you ... call this induction ... before the patterns are set we see them form in our imagination and luckily that's what's really happening outside our imagination ... the rain falls when we see it ... the sun sets when we don't ... you can keep the conclusions it's the evidence we want ... just the facts m'am ... but there is another way of looking at it ... once we've got the conclusion we can start to apply it by setting out to find further examples along the way ... the way of the conclusion ... call this deduction ... the sun rises setting the cobble aside from the flagstone ... and this much I can report ... one small piece of evidence my lord ... once the way is set it does give this relief ... that it gets things done ... the frustration in finding your way is relieved simply by following it ... simply because this way you actually get to move ... you go forward

cf kreeft, logic, pp 211-212

THE OLD MAN IN THE CAGE

in his cage he knelt to pray ... this quiet gently mannered man ... a rich man he dwelt in caves ... a poor man filled to the brim with god ... or was it just his ... his own idea of god ... no ... others would agree not his idea but their idea together ... but then too there was the wider problem ... not his alone but not theirs alone either ... the knowing and the ignorant thinking that they knew ... and when they didn't what was it that they did ... a mistaken type of idealism specifically determined and agreed in this at least ... past the senses the chariot drove back through the sun and out the other side where the life that was broken here was made whole again ... but what ... with the same kind of time going forward and never back ... the same kind of causality saying this now that ... substance and relation thought and control and influence influence everywhere falling like manna from the sky ... but with what effect here on this side up against the moon ... thoughts and bits of philosophy coming down like snow and flakes of thread from the many-colored coat ... singing kill love choose ... patience or the bomb

EVERYMAN

there was a novice with every intention on going into the room to sign the paper ... but when he got the pen in hand he thought to look up into the face of the master on the other side of the table ... to ask him who are you ... but when he did that he could not see the face of the master though he looked straight into it ... he thought he caught one eye but then must travel hours to find the other ... no no it must be ages before the sound of his own voice should reach the master one ear and then the other ... and what a crowd there was now between them across those ages ... all looking forward and he behind looking past the back of their heads ... and all their hands above those heads many more than twice the number of heads he thought ... and each hand waving a book ... and all the pages in all the books rippling in the breeze ... till all the breeze and the scent of the pages and the fragrance of the still moist ink flew before him like a mist on wings ... and the air was delightful ... and the light ahead of it calling it on and he always behind following ... his mouth his ears his eyes wide open ... what a bemusement he thought to love god and not know it

BEFORE THE SYSTEM AND AFTER

what's the good if the ideas are colorful but there's nothing to hold them together ... if people do things but they're never part of the plot ... there's a human need to be part of the story as well as to tell as to hear it ... but I tell you what ... it's not just the story or how you tell it ... we could sit on top of the universe and arrange its contents like blocks in a balloon and still we would not be satisfied ... not even if we got inside the balloon to arrange the blocks ... and after a while we would want to get inside ... try sitting for aeons with the winds of nothing behind your back ... but once inside we are drenched if not drowned in relations and we forget ... these new connections push us and pull us keeping us busy all the time ... and again we are dissatisfied ... for we know what they mimic when they mock us these repellent bullies these magnetic attractions ... we know what we've lost ... we know what we want ... but we know them both darkly ... some kind of eviction some kind of promise ... the big push the grand pull ... all this is in the midst of matter and the web ... all this as if somehow they did not count

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

without god without a benevolent designing intention behind the universe dostoevsky tells us what happens ... everything is permissible ... isn't this because without god nothing is possible ... not only the impossible but the inconceivable ... kant's antinomies spring up everywhere ... nothing gets started but everything goes ahead anyway ... the law of identity is stretched from one dimension into the next ... into so many in fact and stretched so far finally it snaps ... and all through the worlds it's passed the inhabitants are holding but one of its limp fragments ... scratching their heads and turning to fight each other over the little piece of thread each says is his own ... together they pull the pitiful remnant apart and run down the avenues and sidestreets into the forum each crying their own paeans in pride singing each in his own voice see I bring you the truth ... but A is not A and really shouldn't go on to B ... and when it does anyway repeatedly will it not sooner or later meet itself in the doorway ... each half refusing the other its self-recognition ... rejecting its own truth ... until the universes fed up turn themselves out

SOMETHING MORE

the universe had a beginning ... all beginnings are caused ... the cause of the beginning of the universe is that which we call god ... well maybe not ... what kind of a cause are we talking about ... material formal efficient final ... suppose it's the first three but not the last ... we might this way wind up with neither a true god nor a true beginning ... just a lump of compressed matter smaller than an atom but so formally arranged that all of succeeding time and space pop out in a great explosion and spread out in a highly detailed determined development that takes billions or trillions of years before it hits critical mass and begins to pull back into its tightly circumscribed space in preparation for the next explosion in an infinite series ... or you might as well throw in a final cause of minimal intent by saying that this oscillation without further thought or purpose is the plan ... that the final cause is the efficient is the material cause is all she wrote ... she being no one at all ... that is without hearing or feeling something more

NOT A GNOSTIC TRINITY

if god is a trinity and we're made in the image of god aren't we each a trinity ... isn't that why we're trinitarian beings with a body mind and spirit who make pyschological and philosophical theories with id ego and superego and thesis antithesis and synthesis ... why even perceptually we have it in our bones to live in a sense of time as past present and future ... or is this simply the reemergence of gnosticism today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow ... for what is gnosticism but everything not as the image of god but as god himself ... especially to the point of ignoring or forgetting the image of god's name ... if we're made in his image and the image has a name how is it that we don't know or can ever forget or ignore it ... unless that's meant to be precisely the point ... that forgetfulness and ignorance are possible only in the world of contingency and that the image of god ... call him the name of god or the word of god ... freely chooses to enter that world that doesn't know who he is or who they are or what they do ... that evolution has a point ... not to become god but to call him by name

WARRANTS ON ASSUMPTION

the scientists have their research projects and so do you and I ... sometimes our three groups have our research projects together in grocery stores gymnasiums and day-care centers ... we have a set of beliefs that we want to change add to them or pare them down and we want to know if this can be done ... the first thing to do is to see the situation as a problem to be solved ... next devise a strategy to solve it ... so we go from hour to hour and day to day ... we sleep we solve a set of problems we go to sleep again ... the sun rises the sun sets ... but it doesn't rise and it doesn't set on one set of beliefs ... all this other stuff mutability and revision is happening inside our daily set of likely assumptions ... this set of beliefs we like to tinker with and try to sell ... but not the cask of jewels in the heart and mind of the soul ... we'll take the testimony and bargain on the one set of beliefs but not on the other ... we'll sell compromise and desert the one but we will not so much as expose the other to the light and fire of interest and debate ... for what we have we can lose on good evidence but must hold on faith

MYTHOLOGICAL THEME PARKS

the romans had zoos like ours with a wide-open landscaped park for the animals to well roam in ... but here they did what we would not ... they gave the scene a point ... they turned it into a story by giving it a plot ... start out pastoral herbivore and cute ... then up the ante ... add the element of conflict ... let the lions in ... then after you've cleaned up the mess and reset the scene up the ante again ... feed the lions this time with human meat ... feed them with a crucified felon like a raw sushi shishkebab ... reset the scene again ... this time give the felon a chance ... don't pin him down ... give him a sword ... make a game of it ... finally up to the last ante now give the beast a better chance ... give both the human and the beast swords ... make them both human make them both a beast ... gladiators land combat sea combat ... fill the coliseum with water ... make it a lake ... now the people must respond here at last is the perfect zoo ... a real theme park where the theme is real life and real death ... just like ours in the audience only speeded up ... just like the felons' the slaves' and the volunteers' in the pit ... the beasts' too ... all of us dying

BEGINNING PROFICIENTLY TOWARDS PERFECTION

normal life is gaining faculties that in old age and death we are meant to lose ... in one sense it's this loss that dominates ... call that sense the beginner's ... in another sense it's the gain that's dominant ... not the gain before the loss but the gain we get from the loss ... I mean the gain from the lesson in time if gain at all there is ... I mean the lesson on how to beat pride ... the final proficiency of the proficient ... it never was mine but to use well whatever that good thing was which I thought was mine and reflected on me so well ... letting the last false one die ... false modesty ... not false because it's true but because it's beside the point ... false because it's about you and we're not talking about you now are we ... that's the first lesson ... I got this body and now I know how it works and how to make it work but now in its failings it's rapidly becoming not mine ... I got this idea and the skill on how to turn it but in turning it I see how fine it is ... and even in the skill I see it turning with a will not mine ... and all that was mine ... I mean me that is ... turns in that will too

cf garrigou-lagrange, the three conversions in the spiritual life, ch 5

WITHOUT GRACE

my neck is stiff ... how many years can I have to live without my body dying under me ... my days are wasted it's all I can do to leave the house go to the store and buy a liter of soda ... you can talk to me all you want and as long as you want about spirit and vigor ... I'm just not interested ... tell me why ... tell me how damaging my attitude how further self-depressing it must be ... I don't care ... you think I'm here lethargic not giving myself anything to do but you're wrong ... I'm very busy here on my inside trying to figure how in the hell I got into this mess ... I can't bring myself to do the dishes or take the garbage out or brush my teeth or cut my hair ... I'm too busy telling the recording angel I think I've lost my way ... or riding shotgun in the car watching the little lake passing by and saying where'd all the meaning go ... I have a sense of wonder but I can't bring my finger to my nose ... I hear what I should object to I just don't have the desire to speak about it ... I hear what they're saying ... the premises are true the argument is valid and still the conclusion is false ... what is this ... bad luck or someone just always telling me no

MORE THAN CURIOUS

my question is mild and when I ask it my mind is dull but simple ... my curiosity is honest uncomplicated and gentle ... what were the ancient greeks like ... what does the pope say jesus did ... what's wrong with illegal immigration besides its being illegal ... what happened to the doctor who made popular the analysis of dying ... who deserved to win the battle of gettysburg ... and when I've read the book involved two hundred three hundred pages I could have a bunch to say but be quite content in the potency of my knowledge only ... if I weren't pursued by an ambition to participate more fully ... and how does that make you feel the therapist asks ... angry is my answer ... feet pawing the ground fingers searching for something to hold onto ... wanting nothing better and nothing else than to throw myself into the thick of it ... not to pick it up in my hand to hold it up to the light poke rub spurn it ... but to go into it ... not with a part of me but all of me ... to walk the streets and go through the rooms ... to sit down and listen to them speak

ALL THE WET CHEMICALS WE ARE

we think so much of solidity we are from time to time startled by how much liquid we and our thoughts are from the groin to the brain ... in the same way are we so much chemical though we think we live so mechanically ... not just to bend or to grip to stand or to fall but also to provide a network of highways and by-ways for couriers and their messages for signals and sometimes an explosion of news a headline wrapping its words round the heart giving the whole organ a throb and a thud ... how do we ever catch our breath after something like that ... or simply decades of more pedestrian traffic ... from young athletes to crippled old men with the second complaining of the first leaving potholes in the road and even the corridors in their reckless parade into old age and old news ... the lights flashing on and off in a hidden sea of colors from toes to the brain the miasmic storms of the latter the kicking twitches of the former ... sprint or plod from one hemisphere to another atop a tower above an ocean whose liquid waves are dry thoughts' combinations passing

WORKING THOUGHT THROUGH THE INITIAL DISTINCTIONS

abesoc abesoc the lord is the lord ... there are some who say we get nothing from this till we add a premise through the medium of history giving his name ... not so not so ... the story is not perfect without the name is incomplete but the logical law of identity is not nothing ... indeed sometimes it seems just a touch short of everything ... until with leisure and reflection we see how broad and deep that touch is ... nonetheless it is the pluck of the string and surely the beginning of the string is the law of identity ... it is what it is is the beginning of truth and the last word to be said at the end of the conversation ... everything else is amplification of that pronoun and that verb an elaboration of being and existence ... as far as truth and thought go at least for may it not also be true that the law is just that and only so ... an amplification and elaboration of a preexistent being ... speaking about something that's somehow just past even as you begin to describe it ... first the act then the explanation ... a command say ... let it be ... and it is ... and then we see that it is ... unless the command and the truth are one

LOGICAL NECESSITY

have you prayed for it ... yes ... are you willing to pay for it ... you want the conclusion ... the conclusion must follow from these premises ... will you accept them ... you want certainty ... you want purpose ... you want an end to your spiritual inertia ... all these things are yours ... just accept the premises and you'll have your certainty ... it's not absolute certainty ... it's relative ... what did you expect ... absolute certainty absolute necessity isn't a thought or an idea a proposition or a claim ... there's no room in it for any of that ... it's not a process or an event a network of connections all that stuff is relative ... when absolute necessity is in front of you you whip your head over your shoulder ... you think it's passed you by ... you think desperately not being ready for this there must be something you can explain some detail or better still some series of them to reflect what it is there was a glimpse of just now ... something to describe ... something to talk about ... to examine the validity of ... to buy time to consider what timeless thing it is you just saw ... slow down ... careful ... sit down ... lay the words out ... make sentences of them ... ah there they are in just that order ...the premises

FOOLISH LUST

the nice thing about a material thing is what it tells me ... it tells where it is what it is and whose it is ... I like these pieces of precision especially the last one especially when it's mine ... spiritual things don't work like that ... they don't seem to be anywhere and then they're everywhere at once ... it's hard to believe what they are and they don't grow in power in the hands of just one or a few ... the more you share them the stronger they become ... despite these major differences I've seen it's easy to confuse the two ... to have a spiritual feeling for a material object ... a beautiful woman her face or her body to put her on a shelf behind glass to keep the dust off ... or is it to have a material feeling about a spiritual object ... or isn't it a subject ... you see what I mean ... material life is competitive and resources after a while run out ... most of them even run out while standing in place ... like fruit on the vine ... even time itself is against them ... then add to all that this misplaced spiritual longing ... this misplacing making it technically lust ... for the thing that changes and decays ... to see that it doesn't