But before we worded them, we had ideas. Before the scripture of ancient men or the academia of modern ones grew an elegant forest, there was a feeling. A ghost of the thing that animates the human machine, and stalks between the trees in the deep places. The dark-made-fluid places.
“So that the generation to come might know, the children, yet to be born, that they too may rise and declare to their children.”
– Psalm 78:6
Sometimes I return to writing out of inspiration, sometimes out of need, and sometimes through an indirect kick in the pants. Despite my dereliction, I had a post half-written in a journal somewhere, because I love how writing by hand slows the process of thinking about structure and cadence. Enough to make writing so much smoother. But that post is still mostly crap. And so you get this.
There was a blog once, that I used to follow (and still occasionally return to, hoping for an update), written by the first person I’d ever really encountered who had decided to live a life that meant something beyond accumulation. The first real, actual human being who asked the two questions “what do I believe” and “how do I live those beliefs”, and properly dedicated her life to bringing them together in an ever-imperfect, but ever-better dance.
The metaphors of light and dark are wrong. So blissfully, but deceptively wrong. Light must always win. Its advance can only ever be so. Can only, can always be met with dark’s retreat. Night’s dissolution. It is where there was none. Presence into absence. The conquering flood of what is into the space of what wasn’t.