The Luminous Look of Lovers

It was my sincere intention to let Valentine's Day go by well and truly ignored 'round these parts, but this picture... Well, you get the idea.

"It's a beautiful thing when you love somebody... and if you love somebody, you better let them know."

The Boy The King Loved

and now a story. It's a bit of a medieval fantasy, which is peculiar from me, since I usually don't like to read or write that kind of thing. I'll post it here in installments. We'll see if it ever gets finished.
There was a boy beloved by the King. Indeed, beloved so much the more because he was not the King’s own kin. The child was not much of a boy, but kind enough that one noticed so almost straight away. He was at turns talkative to a fault or taciturn without explanation. He was sturdily built but carried himself as though he fancied himself less imposing in stature. He would sometimes be scolded by his tutor for crossing his legs knee-over-knee.
“A man rests an ankle crosswise his opposing knee, son. Let no one mistake you for an effeminate,” the tutor would chide. Yet when safe from the reach of his tutor's swat, the boy would fold his right leg over left, tucking his elbows into his sides and folding his hands atop his doubled knees. His shoulders would slouch and he would glance up to whomever he was speaking with a steady gaze that hinted at gentleness. Or perhaps some unnamed and latent guilt felt at some existential culpability. It was this amalgamation of guilt and gentleness the King loved most.
The Kingdom in that time was dangerous, over run with shameless men who scoffed at the law. They harmed the weak and fled the authority of the monarchy, living in tents outside the city walls. The King would often sit quietly in the darkness. His solemn eyes glimmering with some small, mysterious hope his creased forehead did not betray. He would eat only salted meats and country breads. He would drink only the most meager portion of wine diluted immensely with water. Clear nights when the moon was out, the King would take the air on the parapet. The King seemed to swell beneath the moon. So much more so did he shrink back from the sun’s direct glare.
Huge, ancient, and heavy tapestries were hung across the glorious and likewise-ancient stained glass of the King’s court. The walls, where they had previously hung, stood bare. The special awkwardness resulting of the misplaced tapestries took on a tremulous menace as the vague twilight shadows crept across the space as hours lulled by in silence. The jester would yawn. The cup-bearer would sip drunkenly from the King’s chalice in some shadowed doorway. The Queen, perpetually pursued by a draft, would recline near her husband. Her lap would bear a fine quilt. The quilt would rest atop many knit blankets nesting about her knees, like a doll reclining among scarves. The knit blankets were of the kind the Queen remembered from her youth.

Morning Tide of Thought

I think the one of Jesus commands that I'm most focused on these days is to not worry. I'm trying to be obedient, but sometimes I just end up worrying about worrying.

This kind of obedience is especially important for philosophy right now. If I'm doing philosophy to try to meet the expectations of an exterior, posited, super-ego-like standard of what a philosopher should be or do or whatever, I end up lying all the time.

"Sure, I love reading Wittgenstein."

I end up reading things in order to impress people and to try to be someone else. To try to be the REAL philosophy student and not just my fraudulent self.

Even Truth isn't really my goal, if by truth we mean some out-there-now-real that has to be discovered and comprehensively comprehended. If that were the case, I would never stop worrying about all that will inevitably escape my grasp.

No, I think I'm here to do only this: To do the work I love and love the people I'm doing it with.

That and, as Shaq says, not "come inside the paint w/ any weak shit."

No more ambition. It is just the self divorcing and judging itself. It's horrendous doubleness.

If I pursue this place, these people and this work in passionately LOVE, I will be exactly the kind of successful I'm supposed to be.

and nothing more.

Godspeed.

Connaitre of the Co-Natural

"What is God?" is the wrong question. The first 3 pages of Augustine's Confessions shows the trouble that kind of thinking gets one into.

Instead, "Who is God?" is a finer place to start.

God is The Father who gifts His full being to the Begotten Son. This is Charity.

God is The Son, who receives from the Father (from eternity!) His whole being. This is Hospitality.

God is the The Spirit, who is the eternal Love of Father for Son and Son for Father. This is Unity.

God knows me. God knows me not just with an encyclopedic knowledge, like I might know my times tables. God knows me like a people know one another. We are "familiar." We are of a family. The french verb "connaitre" gets closer to the way in which God knows me. Connaitre means familiarity or knowledge, but more literally means that God and I are co-natural. Being "connaitre'd" by God (and meagerly knowing God, as we are able) is to share in God's nature. Is to be made in God's image.

Because God and I are co-natural, my self-hood is intimately tied up in the self-hood of God. The God of Love Loving Love is intimately familiar with me and values me and LOVES me.

And though I have peculiar gifts and weaknesses and fanciful obsessions and meager patience and self-delusion and self-obsession and every other kind of messy, vulgar particularity...I know that I am co-natural with the God. There are many gifts, but one Spirit.

And at my best, I may rest transparently on the spirit which gave me rise. Gave me rise, I'll add to Kierkegaard, into a Creation of rampant Goodness. A goodness which includes me.

A goodness I have only because I am valued by the source of value and loved by the lover of love.

Godspeed.