Gabriel Eris (Chapter 3)

CHAPTER THE THIRD


He awoke to a spider. It was a terrifying spider, with long, shiny, thin, black legs. It was crawling along his cheek before he brushed it absentmindedly to the floor and never noticed it at all. He only knew that something tickled him and he awoke.

In "the common room", as they called it, most of the patients were already awake and doing their own thing. Beneath an open skylight, stood a man with his head back, his eyes shut, and his mouth open wide, as though he were lying in a dentist's chair. By the far doors, a pale young man was sitting in an odd position, rocking himself endlessly back and forth. Another man was taking his fingers for a walk along the windowsill. He had a long grey beard and his eyeballs were a pinkish-white. Gabriel went and talked to him.

"My name is Gabriel," he said, offering his hand.

The fingers stopped walking. The man looked up. A crooked grin snuck across his face and he winked one pinkish-white eye. A moment later and he had turned away, while his fingers continued their walk.

Gabriel was no longer surprised to find himself so confused by the actions of these people. Their entire world was so different from his, and he knew so little about it. All he really knew is that he was in no position to judge anyone here. If he was going to survive, he would have to learn a lot more about this world, and forget a part of the world from which he had come.

Next he went to see the boy by the far doors. The boy was rocking. You couldn't say he was rocking fast, and you couldn't say he was rocking slow. He was just rocking. His eyes were staring, but not at any thing in particular. Not anything in the outside world, anyway. He seemed immersed in something of his own. The angel was not at all reluctant to disturb him, but he knew somehow that God wanted him to speak to this boy, if only to learn more of this world.

"Hi there. I'm Gabriel."

The boy continued to rock and stare, but he spoke. His voice was quiet and soft and a little bit squeaky.

"Gabriel is the angel of the voice of the Lord; that is, the voice of truth," said the boy, "Are you that one? Are you he?"

"I am," said Gabriel, whose reputation preceeded him.

"You are the first. The messenger. The one I've been waiting for."

"Then you knew I was coming?"

"I summoned you with my prayer. You have a message for me, or you would not be here."

"It's true, I have a message always. But I never know what it shall be, or what God shall cause me to say. It is as if He had entrusted me with letters I could never open on my own. Only when the time comes, and I have found the one to whom I am to speak. Then the letters open by themselves. My mouth opens by itself, and the Word is there. But I have no message for you."

"You have none because you've delivered it. What you said is what I needed to hear. All I do is think, and plan, and speculate on a trillion things that I will never know. You are telling me to live in the moment, and that somehow, when the moment comes, I will know what to say, and how to act."

"If I planned," said Gabriel, "I'd never get it done."

The boy stopped rocking and looked up at the angel. He was tall, handsome, with delicate features, almost like a girl's, and eyes as innocent as a newborn's. He seemed not to realize the profundity of what he said. And yet he called himself the voice of God, because that is what God called him. He must have trusted God to put wisdom in his mouth, but as his mind worked-out whatever God had given him to think and speak, he could not see the profundity of it himself. He always spoke as though it were only dawning on him. Like the thought had only just been born, and even he had no idea what it's nature would be.

The boy stood up and embraced him. It was not something he ever would have done, if he had given himself a moment to think about it, but it was nonetheless something he wanted to do.

"Well, hello," said Gabriel, cradling him.

"Speak to me again, angel. Tell me one more word of the Lord."

"He's listening to us, now," answered Gabriel.

The boy knew what he meant. The words he had spoken were a prayer. God was listening, and would answer them.

"You need to stop seeking now," said the angel, "And, anyway, you can never find God. He can only find you. First, you must stay in one place. He is never very far behind you, so, if you will wait a little, He will meet you here."

"I need to calm down," said the boy.

"Stop looking, and you will see clearly."

"But I want so badly to know so many things at once."

"There is nothing to know," said the angel, "Or, rather, there is only one thing, and that is to be present with God in this moment. All the rest will come to you. The knowledge, the answers, are all within you. You cannot see them before it is time, but you must trust that they are there, and they will come."

The boy's shoulders visibly relaxed.

Gabriel smiled, then went to see the man beneath the skylight. He was standing in the same position as before; head back, eyes closed, mouth open wide. When the angel approached he changed. He looked at Gabriel, spread his legs, and raised his fists.

"Don't come any closer," he said.

"I won't," said Gabriel, even backing up a step.

"This is my window. I stand under it."

"All the time?"

"No, not all the time. What do you think I am? I stand under it when the sun comes through. To catch the sun. I have to catch the sun when it comes through. Don't you get that?"

"Why do you have to catch it?"

"What do you mean," the man cried, growing more agitated, "You want the ground to get it? You want it to end up all over the floor?"

"No," said the angel, "not if you enjoy catching it."

"I have to," said the man.

"But you don't have to. Not if you don't enjoy it. Don't you think the floor would appreciate it more than you? Why would you keep the floor from being warmed."

"The floor? The floor!?"

"Why, yes. The floor has feelings, too."

The man looked at him in the most befuddled way. He looked back at the long shaft of sun spreading over the blue linoleum.

"It's beautiful," he said.

"It's alive," said Gabriel, "because it's beautiful."

The man looked back again at the angel. The phrase seemed to contain something. In his mind, he wanted to dig it out, like the bottom of a peanut-butter jar.

Gabriel Eris (Chapter 2)

CHAPTER THE SECOND!



When Gabriel awoke, he was rather worse for wear. His back ached, as it had never done before, and he was more hungry than ever for some real food. He quickly sprang up from his cot, despite the pain he felt, and headed back out into the street. One of these trees had to have fruit on it, and he was determined to find it.

He had his head all the way inside a young maple tree when the officer spotted him.

"Sir... Excuse me, Sir," said the officer, "Just what do you think you're doing?"

Gabriel pulled his head out of the tree. "I'm looking for fruit," he said.

"You're looking for fruit. In a maple tree?"

"Yes. Well... I don't know what manner of tree it is, but --"

"Look here, Pal. Are you some kind of wacko or something? Because if you are, I'm supposed to take you in and process you and all that? So, what's it gonna be?"

"Process me?"

"Yeah. You look like either some kind of vagrant, or some kind of mental patient, or both. I don't know. But you're actin' real strange here, and I got a job to do."

Gabriel could only understand a portion of the words, but it seemed some explaination was required of him.

"I'm looking for fruit," he repeated.

"Alright, that's it," said the man in uniform, getting out his handcuffs. "You'd better turn around and put your hands behind your back."

"Pardon me?"

"Turn around. Now!"

Gabriel turned around.

"Hands behind your back!"

Gabriel did as he was told, and felt his wrists gripped by cold circles. After that, he was being dragged, then pushed along the sidewalk, and finally slammed against some sort of object. The object opened. Gabriel was thrust inside, and into a sitting position. It was like the structure he had slept in, but much, much smaller. Soon, the officer was in the front and the object began to move. Faster and faster, it sped down streets, and around corners, while Gabriel struggled to stay upright. His wrists began to really hurt from the circles behind his back.

At last, the car came to a stop. The door openned and Gabriel was again being dragged and pushed down the sidewalk, then hurried up a huge flight of stairs, and into another building.

"Got a live one here."

"Oh, yeah," said another man behind a desk.

"Yep. And it looks like we're gonna need a psych evaluation for this one."

"Callin' in the doc," said the man.

Gabriel was forced onto a hard seat and told not to move. He sat there for what seemed like hours before a short gentleman in a brown hat arrived and offered to shake his hand.

"Oh, excuse me," said the man, "I see you're still in handcuffs."

After a while, they were taken to another room, where they sat down with a small table between them. The man removed his hat and set it to the side. He smiled and offered his hand again, which Gabriel was now free to accept.

"My name is Dr. Wassman," he said, with a warm grin.

"They call me Gabriel."

"Pleased to meet you, Gabriel. Yes. They tell me you were talking to a tree on the sidewalk, is that right?"

"I was looking for fruit."

"In a tree on the sidewalk?"

"Of course. Where else?"

"Well, if you want to find fruit, you have to go to a fruitstand or a grocery. Yes. Fruit trees aren't planted on the sidewalk, you know."

"They're not?"

"Of course not. That would defeat the whole purpose."

"The purpose of what," inquired Gabriel.

"Well, fruit costs money, of course. And we can't have fruit trees growing on the sidewalk, where just anybody can eat from them. Do you see?"

"I don't understand. Isn't that the purpose of fruit trees?"

The doctor removed his glasses and polished them. This was an odd case.

"You think fruit should be free, is that it?"

"Free?"

"You don't think you should have to pay?"

"Pay?"

"Look, it's very simple..."

The doctor proceeded to explain, in the simplest terms he could think of, the basic concept of economics. He even explained words, when he had to.

Gabriel was astonished.

"So," he began, trying to wrap his mind around it, "you lock away the fruit?"

"Yes, we -- What have I been saying? Look, the farmer grows the fruit. And he deserves something for his efforts, doesn't he?"

"But God grows the fruit."

"No, no. God does not grow the fruit. The farmer grows the fruit."

"Because all the fruit trees are on farms."

"Precisely! On farms. And then the farmer sells them to the grocer, who houses them along with all the other food, and he sells them to the consumer. That's you. And you come in, and you pick out a nice piece of fruit, and you pay for it. Yes."

"With money."

"Yes, with money you've earned."

"How do I get this money?"

"I explained this, didn't I? You have a job of your own, just like the farmer, and just as he gets money for growing the fruit, you get money for doing what you do. Yes. Now you understand?"

"I think so. Where I come from, we also have people who take care of the trees. But they do it because they enjoy doing it, and they don't ask us for anything before letting us try the fruit. The trees do not belong to them."

It had taken Gabriel a while to gather the gist of this word, "belong", but he was begining to understand. Somewhat.

"Look, it's very simple," said the doctor, "What do you do?"

"I am the voice," replied Gabriel.

"You are a singer?"

"No, I don't sing, although we do have singers. I speak the truth."

"You speak the truth?" This was indeed getting interesting.

"The Word of God."

"I see," said the doctor. "And I suppose God speaks to you."

"He tells me what to say."

"Yesss."

It was less than an hour later now, and Gabriel was being led into yet another building. This one had white walls and white ceilings and pale blue floors. It was full of people, all acting on their own. None of them seemed very interested in any of the others for very long. Gabriel was led to take a seat by a polite young man, who shorly thereafter returned with a couple of pills and a glass of water.

"I don't understand," said Gabriel.

"You take these."

"What do I do with them?"

"Swallow them."

Gabriel did as he was told. Obedience was a great virtue in Heaven, after all.

Gabriel Eris

Don't all truly beautiful, -- 
I mean, shamelessly beautiful, -- 
stories begin the same way?


CHAPTER THE FIRST

Once upon a time...

An angel fell to earth, and his name was Gabriel, the voice of God. As he had fallen with nothing but his voice, -- not even his wings, -- and as he was subject to the same needs as mortal men, he had quickly to find some food for his belly and some place to rest his head for the night. He was sure this would be easy.

Now, Gabriel did not know of labour, for in the Kingdom of God, from which he had come, there is no work to be done. Nor did he understand the concept of money. You see, in Heaven, everything is shared in common. The fruit of the trees is more than enough to satisfy the appetites found there, and there are no fences or hidden boundaries to discriminate between what belongs to one soul or to another. In fact, Gabriel didn't even know about shelter. He had always simply slept on clouds under the stars. Oh, sure, there were cold places in Heaven, too. But nobody slept there. Souls multiplied slowly in Heaven, so there was always enough room in the warm places for everyone. But now Gabriel was getting cold.

He knew something was wrong. He was not quite where he should be. He had to find the warm places soon, but he was sure they were not far. All he had to do was discover their direction.

"Kind Sir," he said, approaching a rather worn-looking gentleman with some bundles in his arms, "Won't you tell me the way to the warmth?"

"Huh?" the man replied, clutching his bundles tighter and shrinking away.

"The warmth. The place where it is warm. I seem to have lost my way."

"What the --?"

The man hurriedly stormed away, almost afraid for his life, and sure he had just come into contact with a genuine madman.

"Oh, dear," thought Gabriel, for the first time.

The sun was gradually setting behind the rooftops, and snow was beginning to fall ever-so-gently on the heads of all the people in the square.

"At least there are so many people," Gabriel thought, and cheered.

He mounted the pedestal of a nearby statue, and with a sweeping gesture of his arm, called out to the people all around,

"Gentle people of the square," he called, "I have lost my way and am in need of some direction. Won't one of you be so kind as to tell me the way to the warmth?"

Many of the people went on as though they had not even noticed him. Some of them shook their heads, while others nodded, as though they had understood. All but a few of them went on their way. The ones who stayed were merely curious to see whether the man was a lunatic or a fool. Not one of them answered him.

"I say," called Gabriel, "can anyone tell me the way to where it is warm? I am tired and the sun is setting. How shall I sleep in the cold?"

Just then, a small child was passing by with his mother, giving serious attention to the icecream cone in his hand. But when he saw and heard the man, he forgot his treat and stopped in his tracks, pulling violently on his mother's hand, so that she, too, came to a most abrupt and unusual stop.

"Hey, Mister! Don't you have a home?"

Gabriel looked at him, a little puzzled. "A home," he asked.

"Yeah, you know. Ain't you got a bed, or what?"

"A bed?"

But the mother pulled harder than the boy had pulled her -- harder than he could have pulled her -- and soon they were out of sight, lost in a flood of shoppers on their way home for the night.

"A home... a bed," Gabriel repeated to himself. This place was certainly stranger than he'd first supposed. New words had to be learned. New things.

"Good people," he called out once more, "It is cold and I have nowhere to sleep! Could one of you show me where I may find a home, and a bed?"

A girl, about thirteen, approached him now.

"You look funny," she said.

"Pardon me?"

"You look like a child, but you're not. What's wrong with you?"

But her father, who had only just now discovered her absence, was not pleased to find her talking to this strange man. He shot Gabriel a look the angel had never seen before. It was the oddest look. It tore through him and hurt, as though he had fallen a second time. Surely, the man had not intended to look at him that way.

"Hello," said Gabriel, with the tenderest smile.

"Weirdo!" replied the man, and he quickly disappeared back into the crowd with his daughter at the end of his arm.

"Another new word," thought Gabriel, but he was growing cold and had no time to be interested in learning new words or new things. He really had to find some place warm for the night.

"Good people," he called, "I have no place warm to rest. Can one of you help me, please?

Just then, a fragile gentleman, much bent-over with years, approached the statue where Gabriel was standing. His face was pink and wore a large smile.

"Young man," he called back, "Come down from there."

Gabriel climbed down and approached him, at once.

"What on earth do you think you are doing," asked the old man.

"I -- I need a warm place for the night," said the angel.

"Oh, very well. Come with me, and I'll take you to the shelter. You don't look like much of a threat, after all."

And he led him down the cobble streets, through the cold and the snow, which had gathered force, it seemed, rather suddenly. The dark, too, had gathered much quicker than the angel was used to.

As they walked, Gabriel realized how hungry he was, so he studied the trees along the sidewalk. Not one of them had any fruit! Not so much as an apple, and even apples grew in cold places. Now, along with the hunger, Gabriel felt something entirely unknown to him. A sense of concern. Something he could not yet put into words. Something decidedly bad. But he didn't yet know what bad was.

"I'm hungry," he said to the kind, old man.

"I'll bet you are," came the reply. "Unfortuneately for you, they must have stopped serving soup some hours ago. But, then, perhaps you are in luck, after all," and he produced a napkin from his pocket, which he proceeded to unfold. A small bun, round as a fruit. There were so many words the man had spoken of which he was unsure, but Gabriel understood that this must be food the man was offering, and he took the bun with a tremendous display of gratitude.

"Alright, alright," said the old man. "Geez, it's only a stale dinner roll. You'd think it was the king's pheasant, the way you're carrying on."

Gabriel bit carefully into the bread. No, it was not like fruit at all, though the inside was softer than the outer part. It was hard to chew, had no juice, and hardly any flavor. But the man seemed to agree that it was food, so Gabriel did his best to get it into his belly, and to be grateful still.

Before long, they came to the shelter. The old man showed him in, wished him well, and then he, too, disappeared back into the stream of shoppers outside. Gabriel approached the desk, where a large, round man sat looking at him.

"Need a room, Bud?"

"A place warm to sleep," said Gabriel.

"All the way to the end. You'll see it," said the large, round man, as he made a jabbing motion with his arm.

Gabriel walked past many rows of cots, each divided from the others by dark blankets, which hung from the ceiling like thin walls. In each "room", someone lay snorring, or tossing in their sleep. One man sat up, shuffling a deck of cards. Finally, Gabriel came to the last cot, which was empty, and he lay down at once. It was nothing like a cloud.

Proverbial Thoughts

I sit in the dark, with growling gut;
and  pay no mind to food or light,
as long as I'm inclined to write.

A fool claims the first and only thing he sees;
while a sage contemplates possibilities.

Nothing is heavier than what you have in hand.

I am more at odds with myself than with anybody else.

My teacher is love, and all that's made of love is bread for my spirit, life for my soul.

A pure soul is a polished flute, in the fingers of the muse.

When the heart is as clean as a whistle, the purest of muses will play.

Desire nothing of which life can deprive you. Not even life itself.

I am responsible for everything I say, and much of what you hear.

Said the Heart to the Head:
"It is only a matter of time, before you do me in.
You have your razor tongue, and I my paper skin."

Attention is blood well-supplied in the brain. Concentration, when it swells, upright and aroused, and carries all thoughts to the Shaivite shrine. Reflections, lifted on a river of desire, ford the furrows of the winding brain, towards a spiritual erection at the site of the crown.

Lord, strike all cruelty from out my breast! Give to me a good heart, or make evil every good I've got. For cruelty feeds on, and ends by consuming, the heart; as a worm works its way through a fleshy fruit. Consider how quickly a rotten organ, centrally place.d, spoils every organ in the body of virtues. Without love, the sacred wand of brilliance becomes a worldly scepter in a tyrant's hand. Humility is deformed to form servility. Industriousness used for personal gain. The example of the good more than pales before the evil by which it is employed, and only makes of the virtue a more cunning, facile, and sophisticated vice.

Suffering and strength are the same in everyone, and nothing is more beautiful. Knowing a person, -- her private, festering wounds, neglected because no one remembered how to heal them, and the most generous and expansive movements of her heart, -- we cannot help loving her. The closer we come to seeing her, the less we regard whatever separates us from her. We come to see how much we share, and that the things we share are, in fact, the very things which make us human, and which remain the most profound and affecting aspects of our being. Our fear, our aspiration, our courage, our vulnerability: It matters so little which particular conditions arouse these feelings, or what manner of expression they take. Granted, those are more or less unique for each of us, but the feelings themselves are what make us beautiful and human. We should always relate to the feelings of others, even when we are indifferent to, or differently related to, whatever evoked the feelings in them, and whatever behaviors the feelings provoked. The multitude of external stimuli and, finally, the outer effects, are not so important as the internal emotional responses which mediate between them, and which we all share, to greater and lesser degrees.

There is within you a saint, a mature spirit, who may look with circumspection on the writings of the saints, and have mercy on their sins.

I'm weightless, lost, hanging onto this planet by a fuzzy yarn;
a crazy story with threads of guilt, guile, grace, and grief.

Gentle honesty. Gentlemanly. A head more well-formed than well-fed.

I've never seen a fresh cadaver on the road.

Pensées

Dreams are the rebellion of sleep, and stars are swords raised against a dethroned sun.

Dreaming will never get you where you want to go, -- unless your destination is a reverie; in which case, dreaming is a way of going, and maybe the only practical route there is.


Lightning can turn evening into day,
Yet, only for an instant;
Such is everyone who speaks the truth,
While living in the darkness of a lie.

Few people can perform complex mathematical equations in their heads, and fewer still would try. Yet, everyone imagines he can philosophize extemporaneously, without recourse to the page.

Philosophy is often slandered as an idle pursuit, but nothing could be further from the truth. Besides the fact that no endeavor is more critical to the survival and enlightenment of our species than patient, profound reflection, thinking is a veritable labor in its own right. The philosopher is not so far removed from the brick-layer as we might suppose. When ponderous matters are at stake, words have considerable substance and weight, and the structures erected must be of the finest workmanship, or long they will not stand. 

To withhold can also be a form of generosity.

While man is surely mortal, mankind is something more.

The rich man, no less than the poor, dreams of what he does not have, and is disillusioned by what he has.

One day, we will think of sending children to school the way we now think of sending them to workhouses. 

White light may be broken into many colors, and God into many gods, but white itself is not a color, and God is not a god. Love may be enacted in many ways, but in it's purest state, it has no form. So, God is worshiped differently in different lands, according to the "metaphysical terrain" of the place, and if the dimensions of the Godhead must be compromised to assume one form or another, it is a holy sacrifice, that God may become apparent in the world. 

There are matters, and religion is certainly one of them, so obscure as to attract mostly fools and wise men; the former by the ease with which they misinterpret what is said, and the latter by the sagacity with which they find sense in it. Average intellects, on the other hand, heap equal scorn on things too great and too small for their understanding. They deride and hasten to pass by those subjects which fools have deformed, yet, give their credence to these same interpretations of fools, refusing to countenance them even when sages have reformed them. Rather than question the pronouncements of the foolish, and suppose that such things must appear differently in the eyes of a more contemplative soul, instead, they merely wonder how wise men can be taken in, and commend themselves for being wise, at least, in this. In fact, they are themselves taken in. Though they rightly call the interpretations of fools absurd, they nonetheless assume the correctness of the interpretations, and promptly conclude that the matter is itself absurd. They will not hear it, when a wise man retells the tale a fool has corrupted, but cry out, "We have heard all this from the mouths of fools, and know well what we should make of it." Thus, matters of the highest merit are confounded with the most abject.

That the writings of the mystics sometimes lack lucidity ought to be taken as a matter of course, and not as a serious criticism. It is the least, and therefor the most forgivable, of their faults, -- if indeed it is a fault; for the matters in which they deal are not simple by any means, but subtle beyond the power of language to express. In attempting to indicate the reality of such things as mystery and paradox, it may not only be unavoidable, but even beneficial to retain some elusive sense within the text. The appeal of mysticism is not specifically to the intellect, but to the whole of a man's being, -- so, the objects considered will not be served by the mind which claps down upon them in a spirit of finality, but by the soul which, upon encountering them, unfolds and opens itself out onto infinite vistas of providence and possibility. Truth is not held in the mind, but moves like breath upon the lungs, and alone embraces the world.

Saying a person thinks too much is like saying they climb too much. Trees or mountains. Whatever they like to climb. However high they like to go. The fact that climbing is dangerous, that it may precipitate a fall, is reason enough for many to abandon and advise against it. But then some folks are incurable climbers. They belong in the trees, or in the mountains. Maybe they belong TO them, in some way. Maybe they speak for them.


We live in a culture now where mediocrity passes for modesty, and flippancy for strength. If you speak with any gravity of purpose or breadth of vision, if you give expression to any lofty sentiment or noble aspiration, they'll call you pretentious. If you speak with sincerity, they'll say you just don't get the joke; you're too sensitive. Don't believe it. Don't buy into any of it. It's better to care about something important, and to be sincere; to care about anything at all. I'm tired of the jokes that make light of everything good and real and true; the madness that laughs to scorn everything worthy of respect. Tell me it's not insanity, when the same people who think it's judgmental to challenge empty chatter, are the first to criticize more meaningful words for not being deeds. When you say nothing, they act as though nothing is lacking, and ask nothing of you, but when say something, they scoff and demand action. Do they hear themselves, at all?

Fragments

If your body is not your temple, your heart is not in it.

Whether the size of a mountain or a mustard seed, faith is always a leap, never a sure step. Moreover, great faith cannot exist without equally great doubt, since doubt is precisely what is overcome by the leap of faith; the greater the leap, the greater the doubt overcome. Faith does not grow, it dwindles, as certainty is approached, so that if we were to wait for our faith to be certain, we would be waiting for it to be consumed and replaced by certainty, which is something other than itself. Rather, we are called to go by moonlight, and not to wait for dawn before setting on our way. It is, after all, the sunrise that we are going out to meet.

Fear darkens that which knowledge had brought to light. It is a kind of "second doubt", which occurs even in the midst of certainty, when the intellect is satisfied, but the will still has need of faith.

In order to be certain of the reality of God, we have to observe his movements in the higher chambers of the heart. Before he will show himself, we must spend a night in the tower of this dark, neglected building. If we hesitate, our indecision is not intellectual, but purely of the will, for we know perfectly well the direction we should take. Who among us has not overheard the spirit of Christ, pacing and dragging a cross, somewhere in his own breast? Or who is not haunted by the specter of his highest ideal, whatever form it takes? Much daring is required to encounter what is closest. It is the fear of powerlessness which causes us to pause before the entrance; for our will would surely be seduced and overcome in the presence of the Most Beloved One. Moreover, it is pride which causes us to fear this loss of power, and not to yield in the name of one admittedly greater than ourselves. Love is only possible when we are humble, for it is when we are humble that we allow ourselves to be led and ruled by love. We must dare to lose ourselves to discover him.

The Holy Spirit moves within us as more or less subtle promptings in the direction of God. It arises from the deep core of our being to remind us of the present moment, -- and of the Divine Presence, the Shekhinah, which infuses all things. It is calm, strong, compassionate, spontaneous, gentle, and detached. It receives with humility all that happens, and has no interest apart from the glorification of God in every moment; to sing the praises of the good, to inspire what is good, and call him "Lord" who is the source and fountain of goods.

The Dead Law And The Living Word

It is not true, that if you appeal to a man's emotions -- his pity, his misery, his sense of honor, or of wonder, -- you may not then make an equal appeal to his reason. For the heart is no impediment to the mind. Even the heart's desire for the fantastical is not altogether unreasonable. It is simply one more thing, the existence of which cannot be gotten around by any maneuver of logic; one more thing which should be admitted into our calculations.

The imagination will have its due, and any picture of reality which does not allow for the existence of miracles will never sit well in the bowels of man. He only sees the world, after all, through the lens of himself, and experiences himself in the midst of his dream. It is natural for perceptions, upon passing through this lens, to become transfigured, embodied in larger-than-life legends, symbols, and characters with personal resonance for him.

These images are not abstracted from the laws and themes for which they stand; on the contrary, they are the fulfillment and the "fleshing out" of those things; their exemplar, and actual manifestation in history. The fact of their subjectivity is no shameful secret; it does not make them less real, but is precisely what allows them to approach mankind, so as to become personal for him.

"Love" is general, while "Christ" is specific. He is One Who Loves, and so lends a face to love in the world. If we cling to him, it is because he provides something tangible to hold. It is a concession to human infirmity, yes, but one which God's mercy evidently permits and puts to good use. And it is nothing if not reasonable.