Religion Is A Romance

Religion is a romance between the soul and God.
 

All true romantics are religious. Religion itself is only a language designed for the romantic. It is the epitome of poetic license.


Religious figures, or icons, anchor me to my ideals. The Son, the Virgin and the Saints all steady me, when I would drift in sordid and uncertain moods. They call me back to what is good. They center my spirit and point me true north.

 
Like many boys, and more than a few girls, one of my favorite things to do as a child was to play a game of "catch" with my dad. Somehow, the ball connected us, even as it allowed us room to stand back. It was relaxing. We'd get into a rhythm. We'd bond. Tonight, I attempted meditation for a while. I had the experience of playing a game of catch with my Holy Father. In place of a ball, there was air; in place of hands, lungs. It was very relaxing. I think we bonded. 
 

If we would route all notions through our hearts,
how few would make it as far as our tongues?


The softest touch breaks the heart. 


The path of excess leads to the hovel of frugality.


The world made by God is magnificent, splendorous, a banquet of sense; that made by man, a grotesque carnival of broken resolutions and bloated pretense.


The soul rests like a ball inside a dish, displaced by the slightest movement. As the body moves this way and that, the soul is jostled and rolls haphazardly around inside. Sometimes it even slips out and disappears under the furniture. Then you have to get down on your knees, or prostrate yourself altogether, in order to recover it. And if you want it to rest securely in the center of the dish, you had better learn to be still.


The spirit -- I mean, the human spirit -- needs something to fight. It needs an enemy, a devil, colossus, or, at least, a gadfly in the ointment. Otherwise, it slackens, bows under its own weight, and runs off to the side. The spirit needs a dark night. The dawn must be something to win.
 

Really, we are in no position to judge who is making efforts, or what efforts are required for each person to rise above their karmic station. We may see a man tumbling down a mountainside and think to ourselves, "The man is making no upward progress, but is actually continuing to fall, -- therefore, he isn't making a sincere effort," when, in fact, the man is fiercely dragging his pick behind him as he falls, and gradually slowing his descent, in order to regain his footing and renew the climb.



Our merits mount up as far as His foothills, and win us no share of His glory. It is our weakness, our folly, and infirmity which make us worthy of His love. For the love of God to man is not a love of one equal to another, but a descending love, whose character is compassion; just as the love man bears his God is an ascending love, the nature of which is adoration, and astonishment.


One cannot oppose the order of a civilization without opposing procreation. Procreation is the ultimate act of consent; just as the refusal to procreate is the ultimate act of dissent. In bringing another fragile life into the world, one affirms the world, fate, and the order of society as it stands. One effectively throws in one's lot with the whole, and becomes complicit in the will of the culture; obligated to respect its values, and to inflict them on another impressionable soul. Only the anti-natalist is truly entitled to imagine and enact his own values; to live in the world of his ideals, and not in the world as it is.


There is no birth without death. Every mother is a murderer.