Something we know well and another I know little.
Remember … re-member … before we begin Dallas Willard on knowing — namely … named-ly … not intellectual apprehension but interactive relationship.
Each and both come from the same aim: good and right and lovely when well and harmful on all counts when not, as is the wont of many and our most, or perhaps a way of all flesh.
I once knew a child — rather, pace Willard, did not know him … but was near him for a time, coming to see him in only the merest mortal modes. There was a moment, child offers many, when, offered a sweet treat, dropped this:
Why not two cupcakes?
More to say on this but we find it hard to say much about something without we end up in evaluation and pronouncement and I want my writing to be reporting not (press) release, more edited than editorial, as Reuben Land:
All I can do is say, Here’s how it went. Here’s what I saw. … Make of it what you will.
[We find ways to say real, true, helpful without teaching, announcing, proclaiming … ]
And so last night … the last night … the (God grace me) final night … excess. Trying to find a friend in food, in the creature not the creator, ‘solace’ in falsity not truth. Not that ‘authentic baptismal self’ which, as my Bishop says, ‘is not an asshole’*.
Now, it was good food. The cool kids are eating it today. It was for many reasons not the food I want to eat, and certainly not the amount. It harmed other areas that I have oft-resolved in. All-in errors involve gluttony, humanity, animals, fasting, sleep, thrift …
One of the worst is it required no imagination, utterly lacked creative — as generative power or the pleasures we find in story.
Devoid … de-void.
But ultimately it was that first one: trying to know God in ways He cannot be, or in ways he’s said are not, tho the mystics tell us yet there is He and David too: even in Sheol …
I found this to be so.
An interaction came next morning, the first morning, the (God grace me) first morning in an recently arrived Rahner:
Of all the things man can love, there is at least one which he can love without limit and unconditionally … and that is You. … In You the heart can safely follow its yearning for the limitless …
Rarely at rest, my mind. Some material vital … life-giving … pursuit oft-endless … tho this is changing returning, yet for now it still pulls, mars, distracts, can derail.
[You see the urge to pronounce, perhaps? Pro tip: lessen the directness of definitive wording. One, it, the, etc.: desire to declaim builds as one blogs. See … just happened right now again.]
And then thought to action.
Continue to live and move.
That being is You, my God.
* Fairly, this was answering whether living
into one’s true self could be dangerous
if one was an asshole.
Our baptismal selfs, he said, are not.