what is the difference between salvation and gratitude?

thought one: learning to count days

time ticks off like a bomb before “good-bye.” With how many people do I have the gift of time? How many people can I call up to get their opinion, shoot them an email to say “hello,” invade their house for coffee, peanut butter, and apples, or meet them on the South Side for sublime Vietnamese?

God, so often hated for taking away “our” time, has given us time. Right now. Feliz Navidad: you have time. Happy Birthday: you’re not dead yet. Happy New Year: you have days available to be numbered. Right now, with individuals x, y, and z. They’re still around! Rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Now, if we leave our gift in the wrapping paper, sitting on the floor while we go off and “dream solitude liberty” until the present rots away, tissue paper and all, whose fault is that? A sad, solitary past is over. The future may not even ever come. But a rotted present, all alone… is nobody’s fault but my own.

That’s the whole point of books like A Christmas Carol, Revelation, or Joel… even This Present Age. We still have time. Loaned (prestado/ borrowed/ rented) it is, but we can still place our hot little hands around it and use the blessed creature. My western civ professor (may his wisdom ever grow and his humor never cease) started his course one semester admonishing us to “see the end from the beginning.” We believe history is going somewhere. What about this day? This life? This networking? This technology?

thought two: Thanksgiving, fashionably late

Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and all the rest make me pause and think of all i have to thankful for...

(but i already knew all that. i do have five working senses, a half-awake heart, and an occasionally processessing mind.)

it's not a question of objects of gratitude or reasons for thanks. more than anything, times like these show me how grateful i am not. these precious sons of Zion all around, and i act like they're mere mortals. cool, fun, great company... but there's no "selah" between those descriptors.

let us try to pause, here at the death of 2008 and offer an obituary with thought and commas and adjectives and abstract nouns.

i am surrounded by persons who... are filled with the living God. in a world of emptiness, i count my nearest and dearest those so full of the Christ that they share.

selah.

people who make me laugh until my stomach hurts.

selah.

hug me because they are glad i exist. in a world of isolation, people hug me?! in a society of sneering cynics, children tell me they love me?!

selah.

people serve me. me! whose character would be better off serving. they, whose character deserves a solid eternity of rest and relaxation, serve... me?!

(what madness.)

selah.

Family on two continents who accept me, break bread with me, share their life with me, invite me into their hopes, struggles, victories... me! who was once an alien and stranger from the household of God... at home.

selah.

Reyna and Mari... mis hijas. whose "relationship" (phhhhwww. [insert rude noise] koinonia, communion, sharing, intwined life) with me i cannot even articulate.

...who respect me, yet don't allow me to take myself too seriously.
...who laugh at me and make me join in.
...who teach me- them all quiet and serving, grumpy and complaining, serious and compassionate, angry for justice... what company son mis hijas!

selah.

people who respond to God and others as if the Bible really were on to something. who live as if Christ truly conquered a consuming, dark, victorious, unconquerably death. who speak of God the way He should be spoken of: with fear and trembling, wonder, rejoicing, emotion, reason, exhuberance, beauty, allegory, preaching, poetry, essay, book, and life... as if God were really real.

selah.

and Thou, Christ. who invented all this. who love the Father the way He should be loved. who give Him perfect delight when the rest of the world neither sees Him nor looks for Him, neither understands Him nor wants to. You, whose life and death were so overwhelming (so much!) that you could make the blind see God, the lost look for Him, the senseless understand Him, the dead want Him.

You!

Who love beauty and continuously offer it to us. Who brush up near us, so if, by some way, some chance, we, grasping for everything, might lay hold of You, the only Thing. and You, catching our clutching fingers, are only too glad to carry us, clinging, into Your Father's house, already prepared for the likes of us. You, who not content with Your own perfection, desire to perfect the incorrigible. You, who unsatisfied with Your own fullness, desire to fill the empty with good things till their cup overflows, the oil drips down, and no word comes forth from their full mouth but Alelluja. You, who will do so, simply because You will to do so, regardless of recalcitrant servants, fists full of dust.

You... whose kindnesses break our best and loneliest attempts at self-sufficiency. You, whose Word brings fire to our utterly inflamable soul. You, who make the frozen to burn. You, who consuming, consume not us, because Your compassions fail not. For the listless consumers ever wanting the new and improved, Your mercies are new every morning, and we are ashamed into thanks.

selah.

You, who might take our life and those things that can't remain to give us.. an everlasting Kingdom, an unshakable home, and a body fit for Your company, even after all matter has been emphatically and irrevocably destroyed. hope of Resurrection! hope that we shall be changed!

selah.

You, who give... Yourself.
when we're swollen by what we know or deflated because of all we don't: Yourself.
when we're hateful and catty or broken and hurt: Yourself.
when we follow the lost or mislead the seeking: Yourself.
when we disregard the truth or misspeak Your merits: Yourself.
when we "love our own selves," but the parts we ought not, when we we hate our own selves, ignoring the Alternative: You still give Yourself.

when we have sinned and done wrongly, beastly, abominably, or have sinned and done nothing, loved nothing, given nothing...

Yet You are there.
We are not alone.
in a universe of beauty, good, love, images of God,
filth, evil, hate, and reflections of hell...
You are here.
You are Emmanuel.
We are not alone.
We are not condemned to ourselves.
You are here.
Emmanuel.

selah.

Blessed be the Uncynical God!

Thought one: last carol allusions (of 2008 at least. i think. probably.)

Christmas is God’s yearly anti-cynicism inoculation for our chronically- sardonic world. Go ahead: defer it. Be miserable sick the rest of the year. Sneer at the gloomy clouds of night. Make dark jokes about how death’s dark shadows aren’t afraid of you. Shrug yourself to death in the midst of envy, strife, and quarrels. Make choices; you have no future. Be brave; you have no hope. Be wry; you have no joy. Be resigned; you have no peace. “Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."

You can… even in March, August, October… any cynical day of your wretched year. (Assuming you have breath left, I mean.) Say something pathetic. Say something noble. Quote if you must:

“Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord…
Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner…
I do believe; help Thou my unbelief!”

And see how fast, how happily, how lovingly Emmanuel shall come to thee, miserable rebel, ornery sinner, and generally faithless one!

Thought two: a brother says it much better than I can: B. Davenport- prologue to The Bravehearted Gospel by E. Ludy. Remind me to rave later.

“What was Jesus like? After all, if He is the historic example of every-thing that we are to be at this very moment in time, then what was He
like?…

Most of us have heard that God is love, that God became flesh,
and that Jesus was His name…

Jesus was perfect, and He lived the only perfect life that’s ever been lived. [But what does that mean?] It means that in all things, and at all times, Jesus was perfectly loving, perfectly unselfish, and perfectly humble. He was perfectly righteous, and perfectly holy. … blameless.

Not once in His life was He ever arrogant, boastful, or proud. The number of times that Jesus spoke an unkind word or mindlessly lashed out with His tongue came to a grand total of zero. He had no blind
spots. His doctrine was pure. He never erred in His teaching by placing an over- or underemphasis on any doctrine. He never spoke out of prejudice, mere opinion, or dogma.

He transcended His culture.

He spoke only what His Father game Him to speak, and His words were the words of God. He came to serve others, not to be served Himself. He made no attempt to manipulate the masses for His own gain, but lived humbly and without pretension.

He was approachable. Women, children, tax collectors, prostitutes, and even lepers came to Jesus and were never turned away. He taught that we should love one another, that we should treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated, and that we should do good even to those who use and mistreat us.”

Because He did. He preached what He had lived.

Thought three:

“Love is patient; love is kind…” Jesus was.. Jesus was… [Jesus is... Jesus is...]

“Love always trusts.” We have no first person narrative regarding Christ. Quotes, sermons; no writings. He could have. It would have helped, maybe, to have Someone omniscient write His view of the necessary Scriptures for 2000+ years of faith.

Could have included a special message to the Arians, Gnostics, and subsequent heretics, and systematically, unequivocally defined and explained all those sticky issues like a human/divine nature, the Trinity, acceptable analogies thereof, salvation and all it entails, sanctification, hierarchial outline of Church, identity of Mary, exhaustive analysis of baptism, tongues, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the 2nd coming (time, identity of anti-Christ, meaning of Old Testament symbolism), the Sacraments, liturgy, et cetera.

Oh, but wait: Someone omniscient did write His view of the necessary Scriptures for 2000+ years of faith… just not in first person. (and without my advice!) He didn’t wrack Himself with worry that the subsequent generations get the EXACT view of life and liberty and pursuit of the Kingdom that only His syntax could provide.

Because, you see, love always trusts.

And as His Father trusted a pious Jewish virgin to love, care for, and sacrifice herself for the life of the Word, so did Christ trust His followers to do the same for the life of the Word, the Faith, the Body. Nothing so ignorable as a quiet child, except maybe the still, small voice of God in the midst of cacophony. Yet God chose the Child, and Christ the still, small voice of God and clay pots...

Whoa. He trusts people, not books. A Church in so many illiterate ages. Disciples, martyrs, the faithful among the masses. Sheep among wolves. Human beings in so many over stimulated, over-machinated, over-informed circles.

He trusted a few to transcribe the essentials. He trusted a few more to provide a tradition of interpretation. He trusts us all to be living epistles, known and read by all men.

He trusted a few to oppose the religious status quo, most to submit to it. He trusted a few to blaze new trails of faith, most to continue in trails long blazed. He trusted a few to lead, most to follow.

God trusts us. God trusts us. God trusts us?! Even though He knows us…? Maybe, mejor dicho, God trusts His Spirit, so powerful, so trustworthy, so triumphant, Death and Hades cannot foil Him. Broken, repentant humanity… that’s not His worry; that’s His masterpiece.

thought four: hope that does not disappoint...

Paul: “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ…”

And then goes on to say, consequently,

“and this I pray that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.”

Funny, how that “confidence,” that trust, is for us but in God… and how trust like that leads to several verses of fervent, effectual, spot on prayer. [think: The Lord’s Prayer… all about trust.]

Maybe that’s why Christ prayed so much on earth and intercedes so much now- and the Spirit groans- because They TRUST so much… after investing so much, They must trust so much… in the only One worthy.

Don’t leave the Spirit to trust, to invest, to pray, to intercede, to groan alone. Care. Trust. Hope. Invest. Sell all you have and give alms. Pray. Bet all on Christ’s Body, risen gloriously 2000 years back, rising victorious today, and to rise in a big way someday soon, not too far away…

"the people who sat in great darkness...who dwelt in the region of the shadow of death..."

thought one: where's justice? where's hell?

"the chains shall He break
for the slave is our brother
and in His Name
all oppression shall cease"

student teaching in 8th grade American history last year, the kids made me think and blink in all sorts of wonderful ways. Once, when studying pre-Civil War America, one youngster, Aarin, made an interesting comment to me:

"Ha. Wouldn't it be funny if now we paid you white people back what yall did to us and made you slaves and you had to do all our work for us?"

"What do you mean, 'you white people'? Was i there?"

"Naw, but you know, white people."

"But 'we' didn't do jack to 'you.' you weren't there either."

and all of a sudden, here was a 13 year old hoodlum preaching the necessity of hell to me. "them white people" never got what they had coming. yeah, you can say that "America" received her judgment during the Civil War (that's what Lincoln believed, anyhow), but there were some 250+ years of slavery before that, in many countries who never had a Civil War. the actual slave trade ended well before 1860. [of course, i speak of the atlantic slave trade; we know there are presently more slaves than ever before in human history. see also NPR, NG, freetheslaves.net] most perpetrators and enablers of this particular crime against humanity died snug in their aristocratic beds, attended with care by the people they enslaved. (i speculate.)

but here's the truth: most never "paid" the price for what they did. (and who, praytell, can appraise the value of a human?) that is American slavery, a single era among the horrors of our race of homo sapiens, homo adorans.

where is the justice? and how funny that we feel justice must be!

thought two: and so, hell...

“… the original term for hell in the New Testament refers to the site of the cult of Moloch, an idol whose worship demanded the incineration of little children. Pagan priests sounded cymbals and beat drums to drown out the screams of the burning little ones. After the pagan site was finally destroyed, it became an urban garbage dump, where the carcasses of animals and executed criminals were burned. This horrible image was what Jesus had in mind when He warned of hell.”

~M. Tooley, referring to V. Westhelle in December 2008 Touchstone


thought three:

“Surely God will never do wickedly,
Nor will the Almighty pervert justice.
Who gave Him charge over the earth?
Or who appointed Him over the whole world?

If He set His heart on it,
If He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath,
All flesh would perish together,
And man would
return to
dust.

If you have understanding, hear this; Listen to the sound of my words:

Should one who hates justice govern?
Will you condemn Him who is most just?

…

Yet He is not partial to princes,
Nor does He regard the rich more than the poor;
For they are all the work of His hands.

In a moment they die, in the middle of the night;
The people are shaken and pass away;
The mighty are taken away without a hand.

For His eyes are on the ways of man,
And He sees all his steps.
There is no darkness nor shadow of death
Where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.

…

Therefore He knows their works;
He overthrows them in the night,
And they are
crushed.

He strikes them as wicked men in the open sight of others,
Because they turned back from Him, and
w o u l d
n o t
c o n s i d e r
any of His ways,
So that they caused the cry of the poor to come to Him;

For He hears the cry of the afflicted.”

~ JOB 34:12-28

thought four:

“Woe to those who join house to house;
They add field to field,
Till there is no place
Where they may dwell alone
in the midst of the land!

In my hearing the LORD of hosts said,
“Truly, many houses shall be
d e s o l a t e,
Great and beautiful ones,
without inhabitant.

…

Therefore my people have gone into captivity,
Because they have no knowledge;
Their honorable men are famished,
And their multitude dried up with thirst.

Therefore Sheol has enlarged itself
And opened its mouth beyond measure;
Their glory and their multitude and their pomp,
And he who is jubilant,
shall descend into it.

People shall be brought down,
Each man shall be humbled,
And the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled.

But the LORD of hosts shall be exalted in judgment,
And God who is holy shall be hallowed in righteousness.

Then the lambs shall feed in their pasture,
And in the waste places of the fat ones strangers shall eat.

~ Isaiah 5:8,9,13-17
…

20Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

21Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,
And prudent in their own sight!

~ A rhetorical reflection:

I, who scorn consumers: what do I consume?
I, who hate The Man’s marketing of sin: what alternative have I shown than him?
I, who gnash teeth at the sheeplike, sleeping masses: when have I introduced them to the slumberless God-Man and Shepherd of their souls?
I, who sneer at the proud: what is the wisdom that fills my eyes?
I, who love the bitter and sweet in their rightful place: do I serve it on time?
I, who see good as good and evil as itself: am I sight for the blind?
I, who know the heart of a stranger and fatherless: do I give a home; do I sing the Father?
I, who can pick the lonely out in a crowd: do I make the widow’s heart sing for joy?
I, who scream (on the inside) against slavery: do I free?
I, so frustrated by the grasping and greedy: what do I have that I have not been given?
I, so disgusted by the mindless ignoring: what do I know that I have not been taught?
I, so despairing of the graceless: what am I that I have not been made?

Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy on us.

"Rise, the woman's conq'ring seed,
Bruise in us the serpent's head.
Adam's likeness now efface,
Stamp thine image in its place..."

Far as the curse is found...

a thought from a forerunner: take heart

"Indeed, the worship of demons has ceased. Creation has been sanctified with divine blood. Altars and temples of idols have been overthrown. Knowledge of God has been implanted. The consubstantial Trinity, the uncreated Godhead is worshiped, one true God, Creator and Lord of all.
Virtue is practiced.

Hope of the resurrection has been granted through the resurrection of Christ.


The demons tremble...

The Gospel of the knowledge of God has been preached to the whole world and has put the adversaries to flight not by war and arms and camps. Rather, it was a few

unarmed,

poor,

unlettered,

persecuted,

tormented,

done-to-death

men, who, by preaching One who had died crucified in the flesh, prevailed over the wise and powerful, because the almighty power of the Crucified was with them...

These are the successes consequent upon the advent of the Christ; these are the signs of His power...

Well done, O Christ, O Wisdom and Power and Word of God, and God almighty! What should we resourceless people give Thee in return for all things?

For all things are Thine and Thou askest nothing of us but that we be saved."

~ John of Damascus

a hymn for Christ's Mass: God is not dead, nor doth He sleep

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of Peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how as the day had come
The belfries of all Christendom
Had roll'd along th' unbroken song
Of Peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair, I bow'd my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song,
Of Peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep;
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With Peace on earth, good will to men."

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

"I would never belong to a group that would accept someone like me as a member." ~g. marx

thought one:

ask a Latin what it means to be well-educated, using the phrase bien educado. Bien educado means someone who is gracious, polite, and, in short, "well-socialized." some readings (Trumbull, Bridging Cultures Between Home and School) for a class on bilingual education point out some differences between collectivistic/ individualistic societies:

* From such a [collectivistic] point of view, cognitive development in itself is not the main goal of development, or at least it is not seen as a goal in itself apart
from development that characterizes a good human being in that context.

* "Many European-Americans believe that the self is "located solely within the individual and the individual is definitely separate from others. From a very young age, children are encouraged to make their own decisions" (Lustig & Koester,
1999, p. 95.) They are expected to learn to maintain strong borders between the self and others.

But a child reared in a collectivistic community is socialized to have his or her sense of self based on affiliation with the group, principally the family, and responsibility to the other members of the group, rather than on personal achievement for his or her own ends.

There is less psychological or emotional distance from other people, and "the collective becomes the place in which people find their identity as human beings" (Brislin, 1993, p. 49.) In Korean culture as in the cultures of immigrant Latino families, it is group membership that largely defines the self...

One reflection of this orientation is seen in people's perceptions and use of the personal pronoun "we"... ["We"] is used in many cases where a Euro
pean-American would use "I."

[hmmm: "we love you..." "we miss you..." "we were thinking about you the other day..."]

thought two: expanding personality

the more varied our communities, the more our character has a chance to expand. When looking at some personality tests for lesson plans a while back, i noticed that, in my never to be humble estimation, Christ would fall about smack-dab in the center: wryly rational and phlegmatic, precisely and unapologetically choleric, deeply feeling and divergently thinkingly melancholic, and a dining and imbibing sanguine. (probably the last one would have the least evidential back-up in Scripture, but I think the principle applies:) the closer you are to Christ, the more rounder a personality you become.

You can un-self-consciously confront and lead or “pass through the midst of them” observing. With an uncomfortable intensity you can critique the wrong and articulate the right. “to what shall I liken the Kingdom of heaven?” the thing is, you’re really multi-faceted, and really not muy-fleshly. You’re not infected, sabe? You don’t have to worry about “disposition” and “strengths” because Christ’s Spirit is your strength and His mind yours. It’s beautiful, really… we are persons, and some things we will always do worse/ better than others. Some things we might not “enjoy” as much. But, they are not in the realm of impossible.

We have access to be more. Your personality is your freedom, not your cage. The stony, passive rumishungu type can weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. The girl plagued by the fear of man can bear witness before kings and councils, synagogues and the congregation. The angry, abrasive youth can learn humility, servanthood, and to excel in words fitly spoken, like apples of gold in setting of silver. The smiling, nodding, chameleon-like socialite can be persecuted by those who first hated his Lord, and rejoice to have it so! God rounds us, ‘tis true, ‘tis true. There is Scripture… the voice of truth in prayer… and people.

thought four: on adulthood and the community

I never thought of myself as a grown-up until so many small voices started with the “Mizz Hernandez” bit back when I was 17.

it was disconcerting.

Poor things, what a world they’ve got, if i get a title and a last name. By the time I was 20, cheeky youths were used to getting the cheeky-esque reply to inquiries into my “real” name:
“first name: Mizz. Last name: Hernandez. What’s yours?”

no doubt about it: i was grown.

thought three:

kids' eyes relax when they smile at you. few adults smile at me like that. it’s amazing. i wonder when people stop trying to make eye contact in crowded places? i bet it's somewhere around middle school...

Oh, and this...

the devastating part of chapter one of part ii was this...

we all are unreliable narrators.

what horrors. what tragedy and terror. we deceive ourselves. we are false to all... and to ourselves.

Christ, have mercy. "i thank God through Jesus Christ the Lord..."

on getting a face

thought one: wherein i resolve to forget all the right books

i hereby give up the attempt to become an educated person, in the sense of aspiring to read "all the right books."

i'll probably never touch Das Kapital again, let alone read it aloud for entertainment in exile one day. i hate greek mythology; oedipus, odysseus, hercules et al. can live out their dreary, powerless literary existences without me. i'll probably skip all the other greeks and latins too; just so long as lewis and co. have read them, their synthesis is good enough for me. and i'll wiki On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, thank you very much. good-bye, hopes of imbibing don quixote, Locke and Voltaire. i shan't miss you, Rousseau, Kant, and Joyce.

i'm not knocking these books at all, or the aspiriation of erudition. i just feel the need to be realistic: there are many books. i have only so much time (and if everything goes according to plan, i'll have more so now than ever again in my life.)

there are books i need to read, whose meaning has been enduring, style has been timeless, and wisdom greatly beneficial across the ages. and i hope to read those books. i love good books, and the good books i read might just happen to be "the good books." but my reading of them won't be because Mortimer Adler or thecollegeboard told me to do so.

very possibly, it will be because some 14 year old homeschooler used her "serious" voice, (eyebrows raised for emphasis) and employed several well placed verbal exclamation points to tell me a book i must read.

then, i'll probably try to some day. like, the next day, if she makes me borrow it. and then, in the spirit of if you give a mouse a cookie, [after your time, after your time] i'll probably stay up way too late on a work night reading it, stay awake thinking about it, and then blow off all studying the next evening to read it some more, only to end up in tears at about 12:15 the next a.m., totally and completely GOT by the unreliable narrator revealed in part ii. oh, it was beautiful. i hope to finish tonight. it's a good book; it's one of the good books of modern times, i would think. but that's just coincidence. well, "coincidence" except for the fact that, yeah, it's lewis.

c.s. lewis: till we have faces. get it in you soon.

thought two: till, continued

what i can't get over about the book, besides the lyricism, allusions ("I am afraid-- no, I am ashamed-- to disobey him." -- "Then, even at the best, look what you make of him! Something worse than our father. Who that loved you could be angry at your breaking so unreasonable a command-- and for so good a reason?"), typical brit wit and wisdom, and the fact that lewis is writing very credibly from a woman's perspective, is that this is a greek myth retold. and, as was afore mentioned, i have no great love for the greeks.

but lewis (praised by the new york times) makes a myth, set in a pre-Christian pagan setting, say exactly what he wants it to say.

(and we like what lewis wants books to say. especially because he likes parenthesis almost as much as we... errr... i do.)

thought three: a snippet
after the first chapter, i was too involved to copy quotes. (i don't read a lot of novels; it took me off guard.)

~~" 'If a man can teach a girl, he can teach anything... Especially the elder. See if you can make her wise; it's about all she'll ever be good for.' I didn't understand that, but I knew it was like things I had heard people say of me ever since I could remember."

~~" 'No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city...' But I think what really kept him cheerful was his inquisitiveness. I never knew such a man for questions."

~~"For I was now old enough to know that a man (above all, a Greek man) can find comfort in the words coming out of his own mouth. But i was glad to hear them, too."

~~"Even my ugliness I could not quite believe in. Who could feel ugly when the heart meets delight?"

~~ "Die before you die. There is no chance after."

~~ " 'Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.'
A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words.
I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"