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

THE AUTHOR

this is a funny thing about reading books ... you don't remember them for long ... if re means again and it does and member what I think it does then to remember is to return to consciousness one of its members* ... there might be such a memory of books we've read in vivid detail awaiting us all even as now it should pertain to just a few of us ... but as it is ... given its poor performance ... it doesn't seem likely we read to retain ... put the average book down and a week later it's gone ... on the other hand there is a second strange feature about reading a book ... unless somebody reads it out loud reading a book is a private endeavor ... look at a person reading ... they are private but attractively so ... we love to see people reading ... that is ... what we see then we love ... so what is it we see when we see them seeing their books ... I think it's them ... we see them ... for what they're doing is private and attractive because it's personal ... what we see is their persons ... now look a second longer and imagine you actually see their sight ... what does it see ... the object of their sight ... their hearing ... their mind ... I think it's another person

*unfortunately another sad example of folk etymology: the root here is from the Latin for mind, not member, more like memoir than member; but nice try

WHY WE SHOULD NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE INFLUENCE OF ANGELS

some will have it tradition says there are many more angels than there ever will be of us ... a surplus of angels even after we all get one ... and some more to guide us and guard us in our time and here's the catch in their time too ... it's a good idea to quarantine aliens ... you don't know what they're bringing with them and whether you can handle it ... like angel time ... not like our time but somewhere in between and smack dab in the during of which we find ourselves because of the angel assigned to stay with us in his time and ours ... now and hereafter ... for how could he leave us programmed as it were but through his own free will to love us and stand beside us ... to guard us and guide us and here's the strange part it will take angel time for us to understand to enjoy our company ... until we get to god's time which in the heart of it how could we or even an angel ever understand or presume to say what happens then with angels or with us ... in the mean time here we are in our time ... a mean time for sure ... but how much more meaningless without angels and their time to come now