I look around me, as I'm wont to do, and I notice: I
notice a society that has established self-love as the noblest
aspiration; that sizes up the person against a doorpost, then pencils
him in dollars.
I want to blame, and so I ought. But whom?
I might blame another, for that would be easy; but that would be false: for I am to blame.
I am to blame: Because within my own heart I possess -- no, even
more: I give birth to -- the very faults I abhor around me; but if God's
home within my own heart is ramshackle, I cannot expect the social
order to be more welcoming.
Worldy wisdom then lies within me, ever more than without; and if I
am to do justice, I must become a fool: to the wisdom that is worldly,
within me as without: so that my wisdom may be God.
Then fool I shall be: I shall join Prayerbuddy.
For here we are fools: A community of lay people who pray together --
who interrupt our days together -- every third hour, from morning 'til
night; who read and write our daily lives together; who meet face to
face together; all the better to irritate one another: to grow patient
together, to focus ourselves on God together: so that we might help each
other break our disordered attachments within.
So that we might learn to love just a little bit, because a little
bit of this love is enough: enough to create the universe: enough to
redeem it.
Perhaps then the love we pursue isn't ordinary; or perhaps it is very
ordinary: perhaps it's just not worldly. The thing we name love is a
characteristic of the thing that gives matter being -- the
indemonstrable cause that tunes the strings of string-theory -- the
nature of which it is human nature to know, and more: it is our nature
to harmonize our desire, in tune with this cause: because it is the
essence of our nature to touch the joy from which creation comes.
The cause of which creation we name love, and God; and even more
particularly, as regards our participation in this love, we know the
perfection: a man named Jesus.
Fools then we shall be, to the worldly wisdom first our own: that we might hope to love.
