Thursday, December 25, 2025

Pope Francis: What Happens When Jesus Is Identified As The Embodiment Of Love? (And What If Everytime We Refer To "Jesus," We Are Aware That We Can Honestly Substitute The Word, "Love"?

 


There are two dogs in this fight.


One is convinced that scripture, doctrine and tradition are supreme.


The other is convinced that acts of love arising from mercy, compassion and forgiveness are supreme.


I suppose most people find themselves in one camp or the other as a result of genetics, conditioning, "cultural momentum" and perceived fidelity to "common sense." 


I understand why people put love, mercy and compassion first. 


After all, embodied acts of love are self-evidently good.


But I do not understand the "other camp" which believes in the supremacy of scripture, doctrine and tradition. All these "things" are human constructs with roots no deeper than the onset of Judeo-Christianity 3500 years ago. 


I say to myself: 


Perhaps the people who believe in primacy of The Word -- rather than primacy of The Word Made Flesh -- have never asked themselves, "Why do I believe that The Word is superior to The Incarnation of Love?"


At minimum,  those who reside in "The Word Camp" might admit a kind of dynamic equilibrium with certain people leaning in one direction and the rest in the other.


Instead, people who value The Abstract Word more than The Incarnation of Love appear to be under compulsion. 


Their worlds would seemingly fall apart if they were not absolutely invested in Scripture - and the other documents which ostensibly derive from Scripture. 


Revealingly, this absolute need to champion "The One and Only Truth" does not apply "the other way around."


Rather, those who love The Incarnation even more than The Word are typically eager for embrace the heterodox as well as the orthodox.


Those who ultimately believe in The Word are almost always eager for huge swathes of humankind to spend eternity in a lake of unquenchable fire. 


Islam? God damn them all!


The relative roles of punitive justice and forgiving mercy correspond neatly to the "two camps." 


Punishment is foundational to those who value The Word, whereas indulgent mercy is cornerstone for those who value The Incarnation of The Word --- "The Word made Flesh."


"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." 

1 John 4:18


Notably, those who believe in the primacy of Love Incarnate -- Love Enfleshed -- have no trouble with people who devote their lives to Texts and other manifestations of The Word.


However, the fact that this is not a "two-way" street leaves me with the distinct impression that rigid textualists are subtly (but colossally) egotistical people, determined to protect their man-made systems even though the cause of Love is damaged by that very determination.


My Correspondence With A Christian Fundamentalist: "The Best... Becomes Evil"


Enter Pope Francis...


By conceiving Yeshua (the observant Jew) as Embodied Love, Pope Francis acknowledges that all Loving Goodness participates in The Incarnation, enriching the world with Love, manifesting The Will and The Presence of God among us -- in effect, making God real as members of The Mystical Body.


"Aquinas, St. Symeon The New Theologian And Their Spiritual Kin"


In the 9th chapter of Mark's Gospel (the oldest to the four canonical gospels) is an episode that occurs shortly after the apostles discover their inability to cast out a demon. 


Pondering their impotence, Jesus assures his disciples: “He who is not against you, is for you.”


Mark 9 37-39


37 John answered him, saying: Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, who followeth not us, and we forbade him.

38 But Jesus said: Do not forbid him. For there is no man that doth a miracle in my name, and can soon speak ill of me.

39 For he that is not against you, is for you.


When Jesus' Nature as The Embodiment of Love is viewed against the Gospel assurance that “God is Love,” the practice of Christianity is no longer constrained by doctrinal orthodoxy even though orthodox practice is a Great Good for millions of practitioners.


To identify Jesus as Embodied Love recognizes that the nature of Christ is realized in every human being who embodies love, however imperfectly.


"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  

"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton


More Merton Quotes


When rigid sectarians ponder the identification of Jesus with Embodied Love, they double down on their determination to “play church” - like students who never “grow in understanding” but get quite good at “playing school” where they consistently score at "the top of their class."


“”He's not playing by the rules!” the punctilious gripe. “He's not even on our team?”


God-Love is not concerned with the exclusivity of “teams” any more than Peace is concerned with the deadly antagonism between Crips and Bloods (or crusaders and jihadists).


Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees: "The Woe Passages"


The profoundest truths are paradoxical.


Among these paradoxes is the exquisitely inconvenient truth that belligerent sectarianism is an affront to "God who is Love” and whose Son taught us to “Love our enemies, to do good to those who persecute us.”


On this glorious Blue Marble where prophets have foretold the "coming of the kingdom," God-Love is only concerned with the ongoing Incarnation and the actual works of mercy, forgiveness and compassion that build up "the kingdom."


If The Texts help, great! 


If they don't, they weren't needed.


 "The Pharisees saw this and asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 

When Jesus heard that, he said, “Healthy people don’t need a physician, but sick people do. 

Go and learn what this means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ because I did not come to call righteous people, but sinners.”

Matthew 9:11-13


"Who Were The Tax Collectors And Shepherds In Jesus' Time"


"Do You Know What You're Doing To Me?"

Jesus of Nazareth


As the great Jesuit Paul Byron homilized (from the altar of my North Carolina parish): “I have no doubt that our Buddhist brothers and sisters are doing the work of Christ.”


Paul understood Tertullian well: "The soul is by nature Christian."


"The Soul Is By Nature Christian." "Anima naturaliter christiana." Tertullian


Similarly, it is not necessary to have conscious knowledge of our Christian Nature in order to participate in that Nature - to “be what we are” whenever we align with the spirit of “I Am Who Am.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+3%3A14&version=KJV


Since “the soul is by nature Christian,” participation in our existential nature is – to a greater or lesser extent – inherent.


Often, goodness is an effusion of what is deepest in our nature, independent of sectarian affiliation. (And just as often, sectarian affiliation obstructs what is deepest in our nature.)



The innate impulse of human Love – and the Universal (katholikos) Love that subtends it – are “baked in the cake.” http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=catholic


Love is not only dispensed “top-down” but rises “bottom up.”


It is perhaps fair to say that Love rises from below "the bottom up." 


Indeed, given the inherent confusion of spatial “direction,” “top-down” may be “bottom up.”


What's Up? Seriously. What On Earth?!?

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/whats-up-seriously-what-on-earth.html


Although humans can either “stumble upon” or “consciously access” their Christian Nature, participation in the fullness of Being always coincides with “perspective and proportion" whether these inter-related qualities manifest spontaneously or by deliberation.


Aquinas observed that “perspective and proportion” are fundamental to Reason and Morality.


"Shark Attacks Rise Worldwide: Risk Assessment And Aquinas' Criteria For Sin"


"Thomas Aquinas On American Conservatives' Continual Commission Of Sin"


Concerning “perspective...”


It is striking that “The West” did not discover how to represent coherent visual perspective until The Renaissance. 


'Til then, the world was relatively “flat” --- more or less one dimensional rather than three.


The Role of Perspective In Shaping the Renaissance


Of course one can argue – as one can argue anything-- that one dimension is “better” than three... 


But don't bet the farm!


Perspective



Renaissance Connect: “Discovering Linear Perspective”


Linear Perspective


Perspective: Brunelleschi's Revelatory Perception And The Re-Imaging Of Space


Notably, the world's “First True Scientist,” an Islamic Egyptian named “Alhazen", set forth the rules of visual perspective nearly half a millennium before Renaissance Europeans “discovered” these same principles.

Ibn al-Haytham, "Alhazen," "The First True Scientist," Trailblazes "Perspective"


Currently, Pope Francis is implementing the theological equivalent of "full visual perspective," propagating the multi-dimensional realization that Jesus is properly identified as Embodied Love - and by virtue of this identification everyone who embodies love – however imperfectly – enriches The Incarnation by doing the work of God-Love.


With this identification, Francis has taken Christianity's sectarian, uni-dimensional vision of Love and given it breath, depth and all conceivable space.


Lacking this multi-dimensional experience of Yeshua, here is how heretofore sand-blind Christian experience played out:


I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. "Well, there's so much to live for!" "Like what?" "Well... are you religious?" He said yes. I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?" "Christian." "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant ? "Protestant." "Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?" "Baptist" "Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?" "Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?" "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off. 

Emo Philips


Like Teilhard de Chardin before him, Frances is announcing the arrival of The Cosmic Christ, who in St. Paul's world-view, would put an end to the groaning and travail of "the whole Creation's birth."


"All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs." 

Romans 8:22 The Message

 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Paleontologist/Cosmologist





Afterthought


Alan: Jesus made no reference to homosexuality or abortion, a peculiar “oversight” for an individual who, according to Christian orthodoxy, participated in the omniscient nature of God. Did Yeshua fail to see that homosexuality and abortion would become the signal red button issues of post-Modern Christianity?


In light of this perceived importance, why did he not provide specific guidance?


On the other hand, Jesus did say: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who persecute you.”

(He also said: “Judge not lest you be judged.”)


Literalists!


It's your move!


***

"Love Your Enemies. Do Good To Those Who Hate You," Luke 6: 27-42


"Do You Know What You're Doing To Me?"

Jesus of Nazareth

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/12/do-you-know-what-youre-doing-to-me.html

Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees: "The Woe Passages"




This correspondence is posted as "Pope Francis: What Happens When Jesus Is Identified As The Embodiment Of Love?" at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/pope-francis-what-happens-when-jesus-is.html







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Memoir # 15 - The women in my life

Recently, Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered by their deranged son, Nick.

In one of the video clips currently circulating, Reiner spotlights his belief - actually, what I would call his "empirical discovery") that women are, by nature, more complete -- more whole -- than men.  

Although there is "plenty of lunacy" to go around, women (in the main) are kinder, gentler and more compassionate than their male counterparts.

A disproportionate dose of testosterone makes men notably "testy/combative" and so it is no surprise that 80.4% of violent American criminals are men.

Reflecting on his wife specifically (and women generally) Reiner observed: "The girl in the story is always much more emotionally mature. The boy is always running around like an idiot trying to catch up, trying to figure out what's going on... Basically, my wife made me a person. You're like half-formed when you're a guy. You meet the right woman and she basically helps you grow up."

In my experience, women are well aware that Reiner's observation is a bedrock fact, "plain as potatoes." 

In consequence, many women take it upon themselves to "save" men from their innate inclination to be incomplete humans - and often egregious jerks - who frequently occupy the psycho-social spectrum from somewhere between "tantrum-toddler" and "mobster-killer."

But because marriage is not for everybody -- and due to lengthening longevity that has increased from 60 years (when I was born in 1947) to nearly 80 years today (despite astonishing numbers of "deaths by despair" befalling men in the last two decades) -- divorce rates have soared as a result of long-lived people having ever more "free time"  to "drive one another nuts" over life spans that are a third longer than they were at the end of World War II. 

My four siblings and I will testify that none of us ever heard my Dad raise his voice with Mom, but almost as soon as he retired - and in the absence of the focusing tasks of raising children - Mom would get regularly mildly irked with Dad, now that he longer "spent all his time at work" and had become a "fifth wheel" around the house.

In a society with more single person households than any society in the history of humankind, only half of adult Americans are now married, and, rest assured, that those who are unmarried are neither celibate nuns nor unfailingly pious priests. 

For purposes of raising children, I do not dispute the evident fact that children thrive best when embedded in stable family structures.  (In his influential 1965 report, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the breakdown of the Black family structure, particularly the rise of single-parent, female-headed households, was a significant barrier to Black economic and social progress, even amidst civil rights gains. He warned this "tangle of pathology" would perpetuate poverty and disadvantage, a prediction many consider prophetic as nonmarital birth rates and single-parent homes have since grown, not just for Black families but across all groups.

In any event, the irrepressible emotional (and physical) needs of half the adult population ensure that a huge number of people "are not now, nor ever will be," sexually "celibate."

This prelude is to make clear that the writing is on the wall: We can pretend that our species is something it isn't, or, we can acknowledge that many men - and at least as many women - are going to be emotionally and physically intimate outside the "bonds of wedlock."

I didn't marry until I was 43, and as I now reflect on my own emotional and sexual history, I am profoundly grateful to the women who "gave me shelter from the storm."

Perhaps this "advance warning" will minimize the number of prissy, judgmental "church ladies" from shifting the needle of our collective moral compass in the direction of their own frequently supercilious bone-dryness.

I say, "Thank God for all the juciness of Reality."

*****

Here is the roster of women who have "taken me in."

Nancy

Cathy Archibald - neither my sister-in-law, nor any other blood relative.

Joyce

Mary

Cynthia 

Jenny

Afro-Colombian Berta, a Caleña prostitute.

Patty

Leigh

Frances

Cheryl

"The Jap"

Kat

Lizbeth

Alex

Jody

Cambridge Professor Nancy 

Eileen

KC

Maggy

Denise

Later, I will talk about the individual roles played by many of these friends and lovers. 

But for now, there are two inter-related curiosities to address.

One curiosity is that I still maintain emotionally supportive (non-sexual) relationships with seven of these women, a circumstance that suggests to others that I keep some kind of "platonic harem," even though "from the inside" of these relationships, it feels that we provide one another with important psycho-spiritual and social nourishment and would be diminished if not for our ongoing friendships. 

There is no avoiding the fact that we are fundamentally social beings despite "Rugged Individualism's" attempt to lock us in hermetically-sealed compartments best described by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin who alleged that the motto of The Republican Party is, "We are all in this.... alone."

*****

There is also this inter-related oddity.

I consider Mormonism's founder Joseph Smith -- a so-called prophet... born, raised and (purportedly) visited by the angel Moroni just 20 miles from my birthplace -- to be a flaming scam artist and a sexual pervert who capitalized on his prophetic status to seduce women. 

Similarly, I think Smith's heir, Brigham Young, was at least as reprehensible, if not more so than Smith. 

But despite these two weirdos, Mormonism itself has evolved into a religion whose rank-and-file practitioners are unusually honest, trustworthy, upstanding people -- folk who, remarkably, are far better than their founders. 

In the 1980s, I served as deathbed "Godfather" to a woman who, throughout her adulthood, only hired Mormons because they were such good, principled people.

A noteworthy characteristic of Mormonism that - to my surprise - I have come to approve is the Latter Day Saints' blessing on polygamy. (Originally, this blessing was "formal," and remains a "tacit" blessing among many Mormons.)

As was true in Old Testament times when a brother-in-law was expected to marry his brother's widow -- thus providing her, and her half-orphaned children, with sustenance and a home -- I believe Mormonism's enduring polygamous impulse is much the same. 

By using polygamy to absorb "widows and orphans" into the domain of marriage and extended family life, Mormonism suggests a viable, albeit very problematic, way forward.

Against the backdrop of all these psycho-social elements, I find that the substance of my many ongoing friendships with women "from my past" have provided me (and them) with lasting bonds of friendship, bonds that have been beneficially life-enhancing throughout our lives.

*****

I harbor another overarching attitude about spousal relationships that I have not seen emphasized elsewhere.

Starting in early adolescence, I could "see" the crucial importance of loving one's spouse's body. Buoyant, celebratory, joyful and frequent sexual union is at least important, if not indispensable for the solidity, stability, and lasting happiness of marriage. 

Of course, as an adolescent kid when this "view" of body-love took root in me, I may have been mistaken. 

But I do know that one of my emotionally heterosexual relationships - a relationship I still treasure - would have been a disaster precisely because I did not love her body.

I have also had a ringside seat to this particular kind of "sexual discernment" by virtue of long-lasting psychological intimacy with a dear friend who is asexual. 

Due to her (self-acknowledged) asexuality, our relationship - from the beginning - lacked the kind of juice/glue that provided far greater "relational adhesion" with other women whose bodies I loved. 

I hasten to add that it is not just a question of "good sex" that contributed mightily to my most lasting intimate relationships. 

At wide intervals over several decades, I was powerfully attracted to the physical delight of one woman in particular, but despite the "good sex" (which was coupled with her sexual availability), we actually made love only a few times.

Anticipating sexual intimacy with passionate eagerness makes it easier to "write off" the "emotional abrasion" intrinsic to every intimate relationship. 

In the absence of such satisfying "sexual absolution" to offload the many pecadilloes and quirks that inhabit every relationship, those same pecadilloes and quirks have a cumulative "snowball effect" that becomes persistently and naggingly bothersome when there is no dependable "climactic tide" to wash them all away.

For me, at least, it is a defining characteristic of sexual climax that The Whole World -- with its cares and anxieties - is swept out to sea, and what remains - albeit for a moment - is the rock-solid certainty that all "the small stuff" doesn't matter diddly.

At a certain threshold of sexual exhilaration, it is clear that "looking forward" to the next sexual encounter with a woman whose body is a good fit for one's own, is more than enough to absolve "the next round" of emotional abrasion even before the hurt takes place.

I must emphasize my conviction that this is a Big Deal! 

But if you have not experienced the "built-in forgiveness" of sexual transcendence, "just telling you about it" will be no more effective than trying to "explain orgasm" to a preadolescent child.

Ain't gonna happen.

*****

The following data confirm my suppositions about asexuality, that it is an important and overlooked area of study that must be taken into account when considering long-term "relational wisdom" and "relational strategies" for "coming together" and "staying together."

AI Overview
About 1% of the general population identifies as asexual, but estimates vary, with some studies showing higher percentages (like 3-4%) in younger demographics or among college students, and figures ranging from 0.5% to 4% depending on study methods and definitions. Asexual people experience little to no sexual attraction, but many are unaware of the term, leading to undercounting in general surveys, while specific surveys on LGBTQIA+ communities or college campuses yield higher numbers. 
Key Figures & Findings:
  • ~1% (General): The most cited figure for the overall population, according to the Asexual Visibility & Education Network (AVEN) and various research.
  • ~4% (Young Adults): A higher prevalence is often seen in younger age groups (18-24).
  • ~3.2% (Australian Survey): A 2019 Australian survey of LGBTQIA+ individuals found this percentage identified as asexual.
  • 5-6% (College Surveys): Some American college health surveys reported rates of 5-6%, including gray-asexuals/demisexuals, making it the second most common orientation after heterosexuality in those groups. 

*****

Before closing this chapter, I must mention le petite mort, a phenomenon that has been part of my verbal and emotional vocabulary -- not to mention my life-experience -- for nearly all my adulthood.

AI Overview

La petite mort (French for "the little death") is a poetic term for the brief loss of consciousness or intense release felt during orgasm, describing a temporary surrender of the self. It signifies a moment of ecstatic oblivion, akin to a mini-death and rebirth, but the phrase also broadly refers to moments of deep emotional or spiritual rapture, like those experienced through art. The concept highlights the connection between intense pleasure, surrender, and the boundary between life and death. 

Key aspects of La petite mort:

Literal meaning: 
"The little death". 

Primary usage: 
A euphemism for sexual orgasm and the subsequent blissful, temporary loss of awareness. 

Broader meaning: 
Can describe profound spiritual or aesthetic experiences, such as ecstasy from art or music, where consciousness momentarily fades. 

Historical context: 
The idea of a profound, death-like release isn't exclusive to sex; it also relates to fainting or spiritual visions, but its modern association with orgasm is strongest. 

Le petite mort is most beneficial when it goes cheek-by-jowl with spousal love, and particularly, love for one's spouse's body. (If it makes my concept of corporal love easier to understand, I would return to my childhood indoctrination, and ask my fellow Catholics to recall the dictum that "our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.")  

By the way, indoctrination is not a bad thing, for we either know that we are indoctrinated -- and are therefore partially inoculated against indoctrination's downside -- or, we refuse to believe we have been indoctrinated, and are therefore dangerously misinformed.

A final observation about le petite mort...

One of my intimate friends spent the front half of her adulthood tormented by her inability to "let things go" - things that she considered her birthright... things that she thought were "stolen" by cruel people who, in fact, did do her great harm. 

Le petite mort is a particular facet of sexual communion which, as we see in the Old Testament's "Song of Songs," is our readiest entree to "the foothills of mystical realization." 

Perhaps one of the reasons sexual communion is not often discussed in "religious circles" is that so few people fall in love with people whose bodies they also love. 

And so it may become necessary to take a more universal approach to "religious centeredness" and spiritual growth by leaving the unpredictabilities of sexual love out of the equation altogether.

"How Did Jesus Come To Love Guns, And Hate Sex?"               https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/08/how-did-jesus-come-to-love-guns-and.html


*****

Only by "letting go" (in a world where death is the ultimate "letting go") can we achieve, albeit "in miniature," the kind of ego loss/ego evanescence/ego-transcendance that,
while we still wear these mortal coils, catapults us beyond the anchors-and-tethers 
that bind us to perceived realities that have little, if anything, to do with The Reality 
we "know" is "out there."

*****

A few final observations about passion and sexual communion that give way to 
le petite mort as surely as the yellow brick road leads to Oz.

We tend to use the phrase "animal spirits" somewhat dismissively, as if "animal 
spirits" are of a "lower order."

I prefer to think that humankind - at its best - imbues animality with divinity, and thus
we are not lowered, but uplifted.

For all I know, there may be some divine "pleroma-hierarchy" in which "animal 
spirits" are of a lower order. 

But there is an element in the high-spirited animality of sexual coupling that is
the very "thing" that propels most human beings to make our way in the world, 
the thing that impels us to become skilled and self-sustaining, the thing that moves us
to reproduce and raise up a new and (hopefully) better generation of homo sapiens.

And my hunch is that while we roll through these everlasting cycles, we build up for
ourselves -- when we "do it" right -- the happy home where we - or our descendants 
embodying us - will reside as far as eye as can see.

*****

I must say that it is surpassingly ironic that humankind's most unmitigatedly animal 
behavior is the very behavior we most romanticize, the behavior we "pretend" (perhaps
correctly) to be closest to divinity, while at the same time, it is "the most animal thing
about us." 

I do not think "loving animality" brings us down, but when properly engaged, our 
animality teaches us that pure animality raises us up where we belong.

Chinese sage Lao Tzu (c. 300 B.C.) held that the profoundest truths are paradoxical, 
and so it may be with the relationship between animality and spirituality.

Perhaps we must learn to meditate with the imperturbability of grazing animals - 
to achieve the sacred stillness of bovine stolidity. 

No matter how these mysteries play out in realms that will always lie beyond our ken, 
the nub, the kernel of Civilization is that the essence of human social activity 
is wrapped around an axis of animal nakedness, a place where the clothes come off, 
a place where our bodies mostly move with a will of their own,a place where our bodies shed their "persona-masks" in order to enact instinctually - 
with no need for instruction the animal essence of Hallelujah! Oh, my God! - 
a place where ecstasy is as elemental as the oozing juiciness of Life Itself, irrepressible 
body fluids surfacing from the embedded power of "the prime mover" not only "above
and behond" but "below and beyond."

Or maybe these melded impulses surface as the inevitable manifestation of God-Impulse-Prime-Mover, ensuring that the cornerstone cycle of yin-yang, 
lingam-yoni "does it" yet again... and again... and again, ad infinitum, in saeculi, 
saeculorum.

I believe in a place where the natural and the supernatural meet just "be cause."

I believe in apokatastasis. 

I believe that love of every kind is - or, at least has to the potential to be - the Alpha 
and the Omega.

God is love - which in turn is not a "thing" but an activity.

As Buckminster Fuller, a scientific mystic put it, "I seem to be a verb."

*****

I have loved Cynthia's beautiful body since we were kids.

And whether we make love or not, just lying beside her, loving her body as I do, we both delight in how well our bodies fit, staying entwined -- wrapped the whole night through.

When we first reunited after 60 years apart, I had the clear, unmistakable feeling that we were long-separated "littermates" - completely natural beings, but also divinely-ordained "cubs," finally come together again to occupy the primordial nest.

The 20th Century Writers Who Have Been Most Influential in the Development of My "Outlook" and Worldview are Ivan Illich, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Merton, Wendell Berry, Neil Postman and G.K. Chesterton



 

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