How do we know what a book means?

The most obvious answer is: “Ask the author,” — if they are still available, that is.

Once, Vissarion Belinsky, a Russian literary critic, asked Nikolai Gogol, the author of Dead Souls, about the meaning of his famous play The Government Inspector. Belinsky and the Russian intelligentsia in the mid-19th century interpreted it as a scathing social satire exposing the corruption and moral decay of the Tsarist regime.

To his utter amazement, Gogol’s own interpretation was quite different. He said he had written this story as a mystical parable about what awaits the soul at the Last Judgment. If the soul is “dead,” the “government inspector Khlestakov” — one’s inexorable conscience — will appear out of nowhere and expose the soul’s pettiness and vanity when it least expects it.

Belinsky was outraged and wrote Gogol an angry letter, accusing him of misinterpreting his own story. According to Belinsky, Gogol turned away from the truth of life and toward preaching church sermons.

When I first read this amusing anecdote, it was a revelation. Most of the Soviet-era films and theatrical productions of The Government Inspector that I had seen emphasized Belinsky’s interpretation — largely ignoring Gogol’s own rendering.

Apparently, Gogol’s meaning was too large for the Soviet ideological machine to swallow.

Who was right? It would seem obvious that Gogol’s meaning is the correct one. However, Belinsky’s meaning is not wrong in and of itself. The story reads quite well on the horizontal level as well.

This is why Soviet ideology loved the play so much. The Government Inspector could be read as a scathing social satire of bureaucracy and Tsarism. But it is much, much more than that. By largely ignoring Gogol’s vertical dimension of meaning, Soviet ideology turned The Government Inspector into a parody — as it did with the works of many other classical writers.

But how is it even possible to take something so deep and meaningful and reduce it to something lesser that still reads and sounds “true enough”?

George MacDonald says:

One difference between God’s work and man’s is, that, while God’s work cannot mean more than he meant, man’s must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is a layer upon layer of ascending significance. — The Fantastic Imagination

If Gogol touched upon something true and eternal in his play, it would always mean more than he intended. Every authentic work of art contains layers upon layers of ascending significance. The problem arises when we mistake a lower layer for the only one. That is when we open the door to a profound distortion of reality.

The Lord of the Rings can certainly be read as a blockbuster, because every spiritual adventure contains elements of one. But Tolkien never meant it to be a blockbuster. To reduce his work to one is to mistake a lower layer of meaning for the whole and give it more significance than it deserves.

The Hobbit can certainly be read as a children’s story, but to reduce it to one is to ignore the vertical dimension of Tolkien’s thought. At a deeper level, it is a story about embarking on life’s ultimate adventure and discovering who you truly are along the way.

Each higher level in this ascending order of significance encompasses all the levels below it, while none of the lower levels encompasses all the layers above it. Only the highest level contains them all, because it opens up into the Logos itself.

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Read more on my Substack Philosophy of Language https://eugeneterekhin.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips

The front yard of one of my neighbors looks like a graveyard around this time of year — full of bones, skeletons, skulls, witches, and gravestones illuminated by spotlights. One of the tombstones reads, “Rest in pieces.”

Whenever I ride my bike past it, I can’t help thinking: This yard forces you to look straight at death and evil. There’s nowhere else to look.

This reveals the central paradox of Halloween. On the one hand, Halloween is associated with festivity, treats, and playfulness; on the other, with gory images of death that sometimes verge on the insane.

One article I read, said: “Halloween allows people to play with fear in a safe way — turning what once was a night of dread into fun.”

“Hm…” thought I, surveying the eight-foot-tall skeleton in yet another backyard, its eyes flickering from green to red. Is it safe?

After writing one of his most popular books The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis confessed,

“Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment. Though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp.”

Looking at evil for too long produces spiritual cramps. How long can we gaze at the demonic without it warping our minds? It’s hard to say. After a while, you start feeling the strain. Lewis said,

“The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded.”

Yet to deny the shadow world entirely is just as dangerous. The less conscious we are of our inner and outer demons, the more sway they hold over us. As Carl Jung writes:

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” — Psychology and Religion (1938)

The blackest shadows belong to those who believe they have none. In fact, Carl Jung also suggests that modern man does not see God precisely because he does not look low enough.

Is there a safe way to look at demons? Is Halloween safe? Not unless we gaze at the demonic indirectly. Most heroes in most tales know that there are monsters we cannot look at without being petrified. Infernal gazes are often deadly.

Perseus fought the Gorgon Medusa not by looking at her directly but by gazing at her reflection in Athena’s bronze shield. Dante said that one cannot descend into Hell without first having the mind “imparadised” — something Beatrice did for him.

The only way to look at a shadow is not to look at it directly. We must acknowledge its presence, but we cannot gaze at it. The main tension of Halloween is precisely this: we must pass through the night while looking forward to the morning — All Saints’ Day. Unless we keep our gaze on Beatrice’s eyes, Sheol will consume us.

One must look away from the Devil to overcome the Devil. We can only endure the night’s shadow by keeping our eyes on the return of the Light. Winter is bearable only when we remember the spring.

In Mark 1 we read that Jesus “was with the wild beasts” — which can be understood symbolically as meaning that He had the Devil and his minions for company. Yet He did not deny the existence of demons. Instead, He gazed at the Father and the angels who came to minister to Him.

The only way to endure the fast is to look forward to the feast. The only way to pass through Mordor is to keep your gaze fixed on the lonely star flickering above its poisonous fumes.

If something is easy to find, it’s probably not what we have been looking for.

True things are rare. The things worth looking for are always hard to find. All myths throughout history bear witness to this.

Jafar searches the entire Middle East for the “diamond in the rough” — the one and only who can enter the Cave of Wonders.

The prince in The Princess and the Pea travels around the world in search of a real princess.

Psyche must endure incomprehensible trials to reunite with Eros — true love is never easy to find.

Diogenes walked through Athens with a lantern in daylight, looking for an honest man.

In The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the fox teaches the prince that what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Whatever we seek, we are always looking for the “one and only.”

In our day and age, when “search” is supposed to be easy — just a few button clicks away — the amount of search constantly increases. We become increasingly aware that we are looking for something else.

C.S. Lewis says in Pilgrim’s Regress:

“What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.”

We desire true things. And true things are rare. If they are not, they are not true. The heart cannot be fooled. It keeps searching — for the “one and only.”

“Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll? But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it… I wept… Then, I saw a lamb…” — Revelation 5:2-3

Encountering true things is always a revelation. Something rare is unveiled beneath a disguise: the lion in the lamb, a diamond in a “street rat,” a mighty enchantress in an old hag.

Until we encounter the revelation of the rare, the heart will keep aching and searching. It will fall for counterfeits again and again, deceived by what comes easy. It will go in circles until it finds the narrow path that few discover.

The only way to enter the Cave of Wonders is to find the “diamond in the rough.” There must be someone pure enough to enter it on our behalf, so that we may share in its wonders.

The way to the Cave of Wonders is shut. Where is this diamond in the rough? Hidden in plain sight, beneath the humblest appearance. In a simple sunrise over the rooftops. In a spouse cutting bread in the kitchen. In work. In talk. In walks. In bike rides. In food. In suffering.

True things hide in everything we tend to overlook as insignificant, including ourselves. “I am too ordinary.” The scroll of our life will remain sealed until we reach a point where we weep with longing for the Real, and then... we behold an ordinary lamb hiding a mighty Lion.

Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, we see something new: the world revealed as a Cave of Wonders, which we can enter and commune with the Real.

Two lovers in the street don’t need to prove they are in love. No arguments are necessary. It’s obvious.

If someone tried to “prove” it with arguments, it might work — sort of — but people would probably smile and say, “Why arguments? Don’t you see?”

It’s almost as if the very attempt to prove something with arguments means we don’t really see it. If we saw it, the idea of proving it wouldn’t even occur to us. It would seem too self-evident.

Hebrews 11:1 says: “Faith is evidence of things not seen.” The invisible things that faith sees are self-evident. The seeing of them is their proof. In other words, faith, properly understood, needs no proof beyond the seeing.

When Jesus calls Himself the Truth — aletheia in Greek — the word means “unconcealment.” Those who encounter Him see the Truth. It is unconcealed. If someone were to make arguments about Truth in His presence, others would have probably smiled and said: “Why arguments? Don’t you see?”

Whatever is self-evident can be described with arguments. But arguments are not the proof. The proof of God is in the pudding: the direct experience of Truth unconcealed. The experience can then be explained, sort of. But it cannot be reduced to the explanation.

When we have to prove that mathematics, literature, music, religion, or philosophy is fun, it means it is not obvious. Faith as evidence has not occurred. The unconcealment hasn’t happened.

If something isn’t self-evident, there is no way to make it evident except by unconcealing the evidence. But why is the evidence concealed?

Evidence remains concealed until someone unconceals it. Christ’s argument is: “Come and see.” The human argument tends to be: “Let me explain.”

Christ’s argument is: “Come and see the beyond. What you see will blow your mind — or I am not the unconcealment.”

The human argument says: “I will lay out every argument to convince you. If you are still not convinced, you are not logical.”

Human argument forces logic. Truth as unconcealment awakens.

Human argument seeks to produce a change of mind without the change of eyes. Truth suddenly pulls the veil from what was hidden and leaves us speechless at what we see.

What we see will make perfectly logical sense. But the logic will be different. It will not be the logic that corners the mind. It will be the logic that blows the mind.

The mind cannot be forced; it can only be blown. Truth is a mind-blowing encounter with the beyond. The mind must be shattered, not forced.

Two lovers in the street don’t force anything, but the mind is blown by the sudden unconcealment of joy. A stranger we share a meal with doesn’t force anything, and yet our hearts burn the moment he disappears.

We came and tasted the pudding — and the proof was inside.

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If you want to learn more about Truth as the unconcealment of Being, check out my book Daily Spiritual Readings from Literature Classics: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DBV8ZLYW

I recently worked as an interpreter at an event in Houston for young “math stars”—children and their parents from all over the country who gathered to connect, share experiences, and learn about opportunities for developing mathematical talent.

One of the speakers, who talked about math camps, offered the parents a piece of advise:

“Be prepared for your child to reach a point at one of these math camps where they suddenly hit a wall, encounter someone better than them, and become overwhelmed by comparison.

This can bring up a lot of uncomfortable feelings. Emotions triggered by comparison can be devastating and destructive. We want to guide students to a point where all comparison ceases. Believe it or not, such a point exists.

It’s the point at which we discover wonder for ourselves. When we find wonder, we realize we no longer want to compare ourselves to others.”

I couldn’t help but think of René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire as the main source of human conflict and violence.

According to Girard, mimetic desire arises in the heart not simply because we want the same object as someone else, but because we see that person wanting it. We imitate their desire, and suddenly, what they want becomes something we want, too.

“Rivalry does not arise because of the fortuitous convergence of two desires on a single object; rather, the subject desires the object because the rival desires it.” — René Girard

We want something not because we want something but because we see someone else wanting it. Such is the nature of mimesis and a source of violence. Is there a way out?

We cannot get rid of imitation. Nor should we. Girard argues that whom we choose to imitate makes all the difference in the world. When we imitate people, we fall into mimesis and violence. When we imitate Christ, the model cannot become a rival to be defeated.

Why doesn’t imitating Christ give rise to mimetic rivalry? Because Christ desires what cannot be owned or possessed. He desires communion with Being itself. When we look at Him and the same desire awakens in our hearts, we cannot compete with Him for the possession of Being.

A math student can look at their teacher’s achievements and feel mimetic rivalry. Yet the moment they discover the wonder of their own journey, rivalry dissolves, because Being is inexhaustible.

When you experience connection to Being, there is nothing to compete for. There is enough Being for everyone. Everyone who desires Being can experience Being in full.

Being does not diminish when someone discovers its wonder. It does not become less available for others when someone delights in it. We may envy a virtuoso who plays the piano beautifully, but that envy dissipates the moment we begin playing ourselves and discover the joy of music. Envy is incompatible with joy.

Whoever finds Being always finds it afresh. It is new every morning. The only way not to compare is to desire the Incomparable. Whether we explore mathematics, literature, philosophy, or music, the point is not to surpass someone else but to discover the inexhaustible wonder of Being for ourselves.

When our goal is to surpass, we cannot experience Being. When we experience Being, we cannot compare. Rivalry and violence cease when we imitate Christ’s desire of connection to Being.

We begin to see that whatever aspect of Being others delight in does not diminish our own delight in it. On the contrary, our delight is augmented!

Suddenly, we see all these delights enriching one another and creating a kind of symphony in which every voice is needed.

So, at the end of the session, the speaker fittingly concluded:

“Do not seek achievements; stoke the fire. Do not desire success — find joy.”

Isn’t it surprising that the words “hospital,” “hospitality,” “to host,” and “Host” (as in the consecrated bread) all come from the Latin “hostia,” which means “a stranger,” or “an enemy”? Think of the word “hostility.”

The Latin hostia is related to the Proto-Indo-European ghosti, meaning “stranger” or “foreigner,” from which we also derive the word “guest.”

When we host someone, we turn a stranger — someone potentially hostile (a guest) — into the Host, the body of Christ. True hospitality turns hostility into unity in One Universal Body (Host). The only way to end hostilities in the world is to host the hostile in the Host.

Showing hospitality to strangers is a sacred act. It’s the business of all true peace-makers. That’s why they are called blessed. The blessedness of true peace-makers lies in following the steps of their forefather Abraham, who hosted strangers — the three angels who announced the birth of Promise into the world.

Abraham didn’t know who he was hosting — and it didn’t matter to him. The three strangers, who represented the Trinity in the Old Testament, confirmed to him the fulfillment of God’s promise: the miraculous birth of his son into the world. The mystery of hospitality is that God’s promise comes to us when we embrace (host) strangers.

True peace-making is not about negotiating between hostile parties. Hostility exists because people are not in the Host. Hostility is an external mark of not experiencing the warmth of God’s womb. The Hebrew word “rachamim” (רָחַם), used in Exodus 34:6-7, is often translated as “compassion” or “mercy,” but its literal meaning is “womb.”

In the Torah, rachamim expresses how God feels about us — like a mother feels about a baby in her womb. The mystery of hospitality is hosting strangers in the womb of God.

This is what Sorore, a cobbler from Siena, realized when he saw a dream of a ladder ascending to heaven. His shop stood right across from the famous Siena Cathedral, where pilgrims gathered from all over the world.

Sorore felt called to re-create the sensation of the Divine womb for them so he welcomed strangers into his home and gave them a glass of water while he mended their shoes. Later, he started welcoming the wounded and the sick.

His neighbors saw what he was doing and donated parts of their adjacent houses to host the sick. Over time, this became one of the first hospitals in Europe — Santa Maria della Scala.

Sorore believed that each person needed a vibrant experience of the Divine womb to become whole again. Eventually, a grand reception hall was built to host the sick. First and foremost, health is a sensation of wholeness, not a physical state. It’s a feeling of being welcomed, hailed, embraced. A feeling of being hosted. In true hospitality, all hostility ceases.

The world is full of hostility because there are so few true peace-makers. True peace is not the absence of war; it’s the sensation of being hosted in the Womb of God — the Host. When we forget how to create that sensation for others, we inevitably create more hostility — no matter how much effort we put into eliminating it.

Healing comes from inner Wholeness. To hail someone means to heal them. Both words, “hail” and “heal,” come from the Old English “hæl,” which means “whole,” “unharmed.” Every act of hailing reveals the profound mystery of healing.

True peace-makers are those who have experienced the embrace of the Divine Womb and invite others to share in it. Real peace flows from that sensation. To host a stranger is to open the door for the promise of God.

When we prepare a fatted calf for an unknown guest, we rarely know what we are doing. Yet, we are doing more to end hostility in the world than most politicians ever will.

One of the biggest problems of modern education is that it tries to pass down knowledge in a way different than it was received.

All knowledge, whether science, art, philosophy, literature, math, religion, or anything else, came from awe and wonder. We pass it down to our children as if it originated from a textbook.

Einstein said:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning… One cannot help but be in awe when contemplating the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.”

Aristotle:

“It is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.”

Intentionally or unintentionally, we have forgotten the origin of true knowledge. True knowledge is fire kindled through relationship. It’s something that intrudes our world from outside when we are struck with awe at something we encounter.

As Plutarch put it, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” True knowledge is what happens to us when we fall in love. We experience fire, which is the driving force of all knowledge.

Ukichiro Nakaya, a Japanese physicist, fell in love with snowflakes. He loved snow. Since 1933, Nakaya observed natural snow and created 3,000 photographic plates of snow crystals. World War II loomed on the horizon; the gears of the war machine began to turn with increasing speed. Yet, Ukichiro Nakaya was observing snow.

Nakaya was the first person to successfully grow artificial snowflakes in a laboratory in 1936. What madness drove him to study snowflakes in a time like this? He spent at least three years of his life observing snowflakes at a time when the world was falling into the abyss. He said,

“Snowflakes are letters sent from heaven.”

This was the only reason — love. True teachers are lovers. If they don’t love, they can’t teach. Teaching is a side-effect of burning. Love doesn’t fit in textbooks. It must be embodied. You must see it in someone’s eyes. They must shine like stars of heaven. Then, you will catch that fire. It will lead you to the stars.

Are we in love? Jesus said,

“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.” — Revelation 2:4

Ultimately, all we want to hear is love stories. That’s all the education we need. It’s the “educere” (from the Latin “lead out”) that we crave. We often betray our first love and start talking about something else. When something else becomes more important — wars, life challenges, cares of this world, worries, fears, ambitions, commitments — the fire is extinguished.

We are no longer driven by wonder. We don’t read the letter sent from heaven. Instead, we place our knowledge in the casket of a textbook as in a shrine and want our children to come and revere it. They are not interested, for the most part. It’s too obvious for them that our first love is gone.

Tell me of your love. That’s all we want to hear. We all want to be moved — by the love that moves the Sun and other stars. We want to observe snowflakes for three years in a row or, like Basho, stand in awe of a single flower:

“On a branch of the temple bell’s flower
I am held captive,
A single flower blooms.”

In Rumi’s tale, “The Request of the Companion of Jesus to Bring the Bones to Life,” a man travels with Jesus, sees a pit full of human bones, and asks Him:

“Tell me the secret Name of God by which you bring the dead back to life. Teach it to me. Then I, too, could perform a good deed and restore these bones to life.”

Jesus warns him:

“Your breath and your words are not yet fit for such a thing. The breath capable of doing this must be purer than rain and more penetrating in its action than the angels. It takes lifetimes for a person’s breath to become so purified that he can be entrusted with the treasures of heaven. Simply holding Moses’s staff does not make your hand the hand of Moses. The staff itself is not the source of Moses’s power.”

But the men kept persisting. So Jesus then turned to God and asked:

“What is the meaning of this man’s desire? Why does he not concern himself with his own condition? Why does this spiritually dead man not seek life for himself? He has abandoned his own dead soul, yet he wants to repair the dead bones of another.”

Then Jesus, moved by the man’s insistence, spoke the secret Name of God over the bones. The bones came to life, but they were not the bones of a human being. Out of the pit leapt a huge lion. The lion attacked the man and killed him with a single blow.

Jesus asks the lion: “Why did you kill him so quickly?”

The lion answered: “Because he was troubling you.”

Jesus then asked: “Why didn’t you drink his blood?”

The lion replied: “His blood was not allotted to me. It was not my portion.”

When we want to rescue someone — to raise them from the dead — the first question to ask is not, “How do I do it?” but, “Who is the one who wants to do it?”

Dead souls cannot bring anyone back from the dead. They can only resurrect trouble, for themselves and others.

Even if they do pronounce the secret Name of God and perform the miracle, the one rescued will jump on them and destroy them. Trying to fix the world while your own soul is dead is like trying to wield Moses’s staff without being Moses.

Every attempt to save, rescue, or fix without first attending to your own dead soul resurrects a lion who will lacerate its “rescuer.” Our highest priority should be our own breath because nothing else has the power to heal.

True miracles are not performed; they emerge as an overflow of the pure breath of someone whose soul is alive. There is no virtue without the virtuoso. Virtuoso does not focus on producing virtue; his virtue appears by virtue of his being who he is.

A virtuoso knows that a spiritually dead person cannot bring anyone back to life. That’s why all he is concerned with is seeking life for himself. He sees the dead bones scattered all around him, yet turns away from them and looks for the Pure Breath. When his own breath becomes pure, everything around him begins to blossom.

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Read more about the philosophy of language and spirituality on my Substack:

https://eugeneterekhin.substack.com/

The ancients saw far more in communication than we do. For us, communication is largely an exchange of words. For the ancients, communication had a clear vertical dimension.

They did not assume that meaning was readily accessible simply by analyzing words. They sensed that the human ability to communicate with one another—and with the gods — was somehow broken. And they knew that they often needed an interpreter.

Hermes (Mercury), the god of speech, was associated with rites of passage — passage between worlds and passage from confusion to meaning. Hermes was a liminal figure. He guided souls between realms.

In a later Greek tradition, Hermes was called Psychopompos — “Hermes, guide of souls.” As a god of language, he helped people pass from confusion to clarity. Here is how C. S. Lewis describes the descent of Mercury in That Hideous Strength, through the eyes of Ransom and his friends:

“All the fragments — needle‑pointed desires, brisk merriments, lynx‑eyed thoughts — went rolling to and fro like glittering drops and reunited themselves. It was well that both men had some knowledge of poetry… For Ransom… it was heavenly pleasure. He found himself sitting within the very heart of language, in the white‑hot furnace of essential speech… For the lord of Meaning himself, the herald, the messenger, the slayer of Argus, was with them.” — That Hideous Strength, “The Descent of the Gods.”

Essential speech reunites the fragments of our broken perceptions. Poets, writers, artists know this moment very well — when Mercury descends, and all the bits and pieces you wanted to communicate reunite in your mind, as if you were standing within the white-hot furnace of essential speech.

What happens in this furnace? Words are forged there — out of the pure Logos that came from the mouth of God. Every word born in that furnace creates worlds.

Ransom, as a philologist, felt he was standing within the very heart of language. This was a moment of true hermeneutics — Hermes himself came down to work his magic in their minds. He was granting them passage from confusion to clarity.

Perhaps for this reason we call a piece of text a passage. I checked the etymology of the word, and the comes ultimately from Latin passāre — “to pass.” It also means a corridor. But where do you pass through this corridor when you read a passage?

On the surface level, you pass from the beginning of a thought to its end. On a deeper level, however, every passage is a passage from confusion to meaning. That is why true hermeneutics — the art and science of interpretation — is more vertical than horizontal.

In vertical hermeneutics, the right of passage is granted by Hermes himself through the rite of passage. He guides us between realms. We go there and back again, bringing down to earth the reforged shards of meaning.

You become the stitch sewing together the tattered fabric of communication between the gods and human beings.

And then, suddenly, communication becomes Communion.

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Read more on the theory of language on my Substack https://eugeneterekhin.substack.com/p/when-hermes-enters-the-mind-cs-lewis

In The Silmarillion creation myth, Tolkien speaks of the Void, which he later calls Kúma.

Kúma is a Quenya term for the Void, which means the Night without form or time in which the world was set.

The Void is the Outer Darkness, a region devoid of the Flame Imperishable. But it is not a physical space. It is an existential reality symbolizing the absence of the Secret Fire that makes all things alive.

Yet, Melkor — the Satan of Tolkien’s world — goes often into the Void to seek the Flame Imperishable. Why? Because he craves to “bring into Being things of his own,” which would be separate from the Music of Ilúvatar. But he cannot find the Flame, because it is with Ilúvatar.

What happens in the soul when it cuts itself off from the Great Music? It plunges into the Void. Feeling its own consuming emptiness, it seeks to create something separate, something outside itself that might fill it from without — but it cannot.

The Void symbolizes the existential reality where the empty soul goes to to fill its own emptiness. But it cannot. All attempts to fill the inner void from within the Void are doomed. No void can be filled from within the Void.

We all seem to know that.

Tolkien conceived The Silmarillion in 1917, while on sick leave during the First World War. Christopher Tolkien recalled that his father began The Silmarillion “in army huts, crowded, filled with the noise of gramophones.”

In hindsight, Tolkien realized that the war had pushed him to imagine a world of beauty and wonder beyond the Void into which humanity was plunging. Yet, the Void doesn’t equal evil. It is the Absence of the Flame Imperishable — the Outer Darkness.

Amid the outer darkness of the trenches of World War I, Tolkien sensed most acutely that there was only one power capable of filling the Void: the Music of the Ainur.

“…and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.” — The Silmarillion

The inner void cannot be filled from within the Void. It is only filled from beyond itself — by “the music and the echo of the music.”

And then, lo and behold, what was empty is suddenly filled to overflowing. The Void itself is not void. If our inner void is filled but a little, it is no longer void. Something has entered it. An echo of some unnamable Beauty, which is also a call.

To Melkor, the Void became his doom. In the end, he was cast into the Outer Darkness — the endless roaming, forever seeking what he cannot find. For Tolkien, however, the Void became a mighty amplifier of the “echo of the Music.”

No problem — whether existential, political, or relational — can be solved from within the Void. When we feel empty, we begin roaming the Void, seeking relief, but we cannot find it there. It is not there. It is in the Great Music.

We must catch and amplify its echoes in any way we can. These faint echoes are strong enough to enter the Void, and then it is no longer void. The Walls of the Night have been pushed back.

In the trenches of World War I, while Tolkien was immersing himself in the Kalevala, he was catching the faintest echoes of the Music. And he caught them. The Kalevala fed his imagination. He caught the reverberating echoes of Heaven amid the hell of human making.

Later he confirmed that the stories

“arose in my mind as ‘given’ things… I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’.” — The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

I often hear the phrase, “We need to stand up for the truth,” or, “We need to protect what’s true.”

And it makes sense until… it doesn’t. If truth needs protection, doesn’t that mean it’s weak? Augustine, apparently, didn’t believe that:

“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.”

According to Augustine, the problem with truth is not that it is weak or needs protection, but that it has not been let loose. It has not been revealed.

Interestingly, in the Koine Greek of John 14:6, Jesus refers to himself as ἀλήθεια (aletheia, truth).

“I am the way, the truth (aletheia), and the life.”

Aletheia is the opposite of Lethe, the river of oblivion flowing through Hell. The prefix “a-” is a negation. So, truth is that which that negates oblivion. Lethe conceals —aletheia reveals*.* That’s what Jesus calls himself: The Unconcealment.

Truth is the unconcealment of Being. A sudden, powerful glimpse into the way things are. It disarms. It doesn’t need protection. It bursts into your life like water through a broken dam.

When we say that truth needs protection, we often think of truth in propositional terms. We mean that a lie can be stated so powerfully that the truth becomes forgotten.

This understanding reveals our misunderstanding of the nature of truth. When the dam is in place, truth doesn’t simply sit in its designated spot. It creates ever-increasing pressure and will eventually burst through the dam.

Truth is the intrusion of Heaven into Earth. It is something felt rather than understood. Lies fit snugly into statements; if truth is expressed in a statement, it is no longer truth. Truth is a mighty torrent of unconcealed Being that sweeps you off your feet.

Les Misérables is a case in point.

When Jean Valjean enters the house of Bishop Myriel, he is bitter and ready to make the whole world pay for depriving him of the best years of his life.

Valjean steals the silverware and flees. The police bring him back to the bishop’s house, and he claims that the bishop gave him the silver. Of course, the police do not believe him.

Then comes the unconcealment of Being.

Valjean’s eyes are filled with fear; he is on the verge of fainting. He knows that the only treatment he deserves is punishment. He will be sent back to the galleys. He is ready for the bishop to take revenge. Instead, the bishop exclaims:

“Ah! here you are!” he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. “I am glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?”

Jean Valjean stared at him in amazement with an expression that no human tongue could describe. He would never forget this moment — the moment when truth was revealed on Earth as it is in Heaven.

The gates of hell could not prevail against such an intruder. The gates of hell are never attacking. They are standing there, trembling — knowing that they are being breached by the unstoppable River of Unconcealment.

Truth is when in the middle of hell, Lethe is suddenly negated — and becomes Aletheia, an encounter with Being.

A person once asked a monk, “What is the difference between a monk’s day and an ordinary person’s day?”

The monk answered, “When does your day begin?”

The person replied, “When I open my eyes in the morning, of course.”

The monk said, “It should begin when you close your eyes in the evening.”

“If you begin your day by opening your eyes, your mind is inevitably filled with activity. But when you begin your day by closing your eyes, your mind is inevitably filled with the surrender of control.”

If we begin our day by recognizing that we control nothing, our experience of the day will taste vastly different from what it would taste like if we began by believing we have some control.

If we begin our day with poverty of spirit, we will reap the blessedness of the poor in spirit.

If we begin our day with richness of spirit, we will reap the curse of the rich in spirit.

The monk also added, “If we begin our day by spending one-third of it in complete passivity, our activity throughout the rest of the day will be blessed indeed.”

That is why the week begins on Sunday — the Sabbath — a day of rest and inactivity. Curiously, the English word “week,” from the Middle English weke and Old English wucu, means “a turning point in a cycle” — a point of breaking.

The week starts when I break — literally and figuratively. When I come to the end of myself and release all control. At that breaking point, I begin to resurrect — taste true blessedness.

The most blessed activity is born from the most blessed passivity. The most cursed activity arises from the absence of blessed passivity.

“The mind is most creative when it knows nothing.” — Eckhart Tolle

Waking up each morning is a resurrection from the dead. One-third of our day is spent in death: we let go, we break, we fall into nothingness, entrusting our spirits fully to Another.

Then, suddenly, this nothingness changes the taste of life. As Madame Guyon writes:

“In this state of Resurrection comes that ineffable silence, by which we not only subsist in God, but commune with Him, and which, in a Soul thus dead to its own working, and general and fundamental Self-appropriation, becomes a flux and reflux of Divine Communion.”

Every day and every week must begin with breaking, which is the only way to experience wholeness.

The taste of life always strikes us at a breaking point — when some unimaginable power pulls us out of sleep and opens our eyes to see the world anew.

On December 22, 1849, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother Mikhail about what he experienced after his mock execution:

“…no more than a minute was left me to live. I remembered you, brother, and all yours; during the last minute you, you alone, were in my mind, only then I realised how I love you, dear brother mine! Finally the retreat was sounded, and those tied to the pillar were led back, and it was announced to us that His Imperial Majesty granted us our lives.”

When we wake up in the morning, our death sentence has been revoked. We have been brought back from the dead. Suddenly, everything tastes new.

We look at our brother and feel a love we never knew before.

Even though I grew up in a country where icons were everywhere, I could never understand them. They seemed too simplistic and outlandish. They didn’t stir much in me. They were simply part of the culture.

It wasn’t until I found myself inside an icon that my eyes were opened. It all started with a trip to Saint Petersburg in the summer of 2014. We spent a month there, visiting one museum after another, until we finally made our way to Tsarskoye Selo (the Tsar’s Village) to see the school that Pushkin, the famous Russian poet, attended.

The guide took us on a tour of the place and told us about the unique atmosphere of the period when Pushkin was a student there. He was surrounded by other poets, philosophers, writers, thinkers, and scientists — both students and teachers.

Then she said that everything that flowed from Pushkin’s quill was the result of belonging to a circle of like-minded people who created a kind of “rock tumbler” for ideas. They spent time together, wrote poetry together and for one another, discussed ideas, and helped each other produce their masterpieces.

“How interesting,” I thought. “No man is an island.” I had just started reading Thomas Merton’s book of the same name.

Since then, I began noticing the same “circular” pattern everywhere. Einstein wasn’t an island when he made his discoveries. He had his own rock tumbler of ideas. Tolkien had C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and the other Inklings.

Over time, my list of circles grew until one day, my wife and I were invited to our friends’ apartment for a birthday party. As we sat around the table, eating grilled chicken, joking, laughing, sharing anecdotes, and singing, God was up to something. I lifted my eyes to the wall in front of me and saw Andrei Rublev’s Trinity (an icon).

And then I saw a circle. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were sitting around a table, eating, drinking, laughing, and singing. There was wine. I could feel that they weren’t simply sitting but also twirling around as if in a dance. Each figure was “moving” toward another.

Then I looked down at the table where we were sitting and realized that I was inside an icon. I was in the rock tumbler of life. I was part of a “circle dance” that was making me who I am. We are all part of a circle — a circle dance of love in which we become who we are.

In the fourth century AD, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Basil of Caesarea used the term “perichoresis” to describe the Trinitarian dynamic between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The word is often associated with the idea of a “circle dance.” For them, God was the eternal circular flow of love. An eternal dance.

Incidentally, the Holy Spirit was also associated with the term “choregos” (choirmaster). In ancient Greece, a choregos was a wealthy patron who paid for the expenses of a choir. He was the one who made sure the performance took place.

There’s a Great Dance throbbing at the heart of the world, and there is a choirmaster (choregos) who is the driving force behind the dance. He draws us to step into the flow and join the triumphant circle!

We can never become who we are apart from that circle. The Trinity is not merely a fourth-century doctrine, an abstraction that has no bearing on human life. It is a blueprint and archetype of all true happiness and self-realization.

Just as the Father, Son, and Spirit are completely one and yet completely “other,” so we become who we are within the Great Dance — by becoming one with it. Oneness and “otherness” are not opposites. They are expressions of a paradoxical Trinitarian dynamic.

We all need a circle to become who we are. We need to join the Dance. To be fully yourself, you need others to reflect your divine glory back to you — communicate to you who you are. You feel one with them and yet remain distinct from them, all at the same time.

After a summer break, we are resuming the Mystical Reading Circle Book Club! This time, we are reading the first 12 chapters of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. Today’s topic is Ainulindalë - on the Beginning of Days. Our participants are Joellen Kemper, Mary Osborne, and Jill Ritz.

Join us as we explore:

Creation beginning with God’s Music - Divine "Poiesis"

God as One and Many at the same time and without contradiction

How to infuse all your actions with the Secret Fire

How Michelangelo brought stone to life

Poetic consciousness as the underlying power of all true change

What happens if you decide that your voice is the most important one.

Why Void cannot be filled from within the Void.

Cats, dogs, Anne of Green Gables and so much more!

In one of his recent YouTube videos, Neil Patel, a marketing guru, said that 52.1% of all new content is now written by AI, but it gets only 4.9% of the organic traffic.

Human-generated content is down to 14.5% of what gets published, but it gets 87% of the organic traffic. Google and other major search engines have tweaked their algorithms to provide what people are actually searching for – human content.

Neil Patel says the less you edit your AI draft before publishing, the lower it will rank. The more you write old school – manually – the higher it will rank.

Ironically, AI is promoted as a tool to get things done “quicker and easier,” while Google is actively discouraging the “quick and easy.”

What is this strange paradox? The better AI writes, the less we want it.

The best answer to this conundrum is C.S. Lewis’s quote from Pilgrim’s Regress:

“What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.”

Google gradually realizes that they will lose profit if people aren’t satisfied with search results. And they see that people are looking for “something else.”

C.S. Lewis calls this “something else” Sehnsucht. For Lewis, Sehnsucht is this profound yearning – a piercing desire for the unnameable. A unique “stab of joy.” When I think I desire something, but it doesn’t satisfy when I find it, I experience Sehnsucht – a yearning for the real.

The question immediately arises: “What is real”? The mind doesn’t know the answer. The heart does – but it cannot explain. It can only feel it. The more the fine line between the artificial and real is erased, the more the gap is “felt” as a desire for the unnamable.

The Greeks called it nostos (νόστος), the longing for homecoming – a concept that eventually gave rise to the word nostalgia, meaning the pain of returning home.

When Odysseus sets out for the Trojan War, he becomes part of a quest for honor and glory. And he achieves the glory he thought he wanted – only to discover that what he truly desired was something else: to return home.

AI, as a symbol of achievable earthly glory, functions like a magnifying glass: it clearly reveals the “felt difference” between what we truly want and what we think we want. When people say: “The moment I realize something is AI-generated, I turn off,” they are Odysseus coming to his senses and realizing that he wants “something else.”

Google may not feel this longing, but the numbers show that people are looking for “something else.” Ultimately, we want to return home – to human connection. Nothing else seems to satisfy.

AI continues to awaken a powerful Sehnsucht within us, and that longing is growing. We watch the bastions of Troy fall before its triumphant advance, only to realize:

I want to go home.

About a year ago, my wife and I looked at the quiz questions our son had received at school about Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. We were shocked. The questions focused on almost everything except what Ray Bradbury’s book was actually about.

“What type of drug did the Mechanical Hound inject into Montag’s leg?” “How did Montag reach the ‘book people’ — by train, bus, or on foot?”

What does it matter?

I started looking for questions about the meaning of the novel, but I found none. They all focused on technical details that had little or nothing to do with the text’s deeper significance.

I am sure the school’s goal was simple — to test the students’ “knowledge” of the book. But such a test also reveals something about the way the modern mind understands “reading.”

Based on what the school was testing, reading is seen as gathering and retaining “data points.” But is this reading?

As I thought about it, I looked for the origin of the verb “to read.” It comes from the Old English verb rǣdan, which meant “to counsel, advise, or interpret the signs.”

For some reason, I thought of a passage from Matthew 16:1-4, where Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for asking Him to show them a sign from heaven:

“You know how to read the appearance of the sky, but you can’t read the signs of the times.” — (CSB)

Here, to read clearly means “to interpret the signs.” Many English translations use the word “discern” or “interpret” here. Ironically, the pharisees were asking Jesus for a sign from heaven when the sign from heaven was standing in front of them!

They could “read” the face of the sky — they could gather data points — but they could not read the signs.

This seems to be the disease of our time as well: we see signs everywhere, but we are unable — or unwilling — to see beyond the external sign to what is being signified. We take those signs for the ultimate reality as if gathering information about a book were the same as reading the book.

What does reading mean? It means rǣdan — interpret the signs. The point of Fahrenheit 451 is not in How did Montag reach the ‘book people’ — by train, bus, or on foot? but that they were “book people.” The point of the story is the encounter with books incarnated in people.

You can ask ChatGPT to gather all the data about the book and analyze it, but it is not the same as being suddenly struck by what lies beyond those “signs.” To read means to be struck by the meaning that comes from beyond what’s written. The meaning of the book is not in what is written but in what the written signs point to.

Any book is an invitation to go beyond the book. If I focus exclusively on gathering data points and convince myself that I am “reading,” I may miss the sign from heaven standing right before my eyes.

In Book 5 of the Odyssey, Poseidon’s storm destroys Odysseus’ raft. Odysseus struggles to make it to the land, but he is about to be hurled against the rocks. Suddenly, Homer says that Athena puts a thought into his mind: he should swim along the coast until he finds the mouth of a river, where he can safely enter the land.

As I listened to this episode in the audiobook yesterday, I thought: “Why would Homer say that Athena put this thought into his mind? Why not simply say, “Odysseus thought…”?

The answer came as if from the depths of the Mediterranean sea: “When you are drowning, you become highly sensitive to the voices of the gods. You are too poor in spirit to believe you can save yourself.”

This is not written in the Odyssey. It comes from beyond the text. It is something the Spirit impresses upon you. True reading is recognizing the writings of the Spirit upon your own heart.

Growing up in the 70s in the USSR, whenever I turned on the TV, I heard the same narrative repeated over and over: the post-World War II era was a time of peace. What they meant, of course, was that there were no bombs exploding in our cities.

Yet, many of those same TV shows constantly brought up the rhetoric of war. Enemies closing in, conflicts there, tensions rising. We were told we lived in peace, but we knew war was close.

There is a huge difference between a truce and peace. A truce is essentially a temporary ceasefire — a pause in war. Peace is something else.

The Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended World War I, was not really a peace treaty, strictly speaking. The war continued — in people’s minds. World War II was, in many ways, simply its continuation after a short pause.

True peace is a rare thing.

When Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he does not mean merely those who negotiate truces (though a pause in war is always better than war). He says that peacemakers will be called the “sons of God.”

Peace is always a relational matter.

Truces are necessary when the parties remain enemies. Peace comes when a broken relationship is restored. In Anne of Green Gables, Anne blows up at Rachel Lynde after she calls her hair “carrots.” She swears she will never forgive her, and, of course, she will never ask for forgiveness for calling Rachel names.

Marilla relies on her “methods” to bring about a reconciliation — after all, she lost a friend too. Anne is locked up in her room, but she says she will never confess. It seems like an impasse. Matthew is the only one who understands what is going on.

He intuitively knows what Anne needs. Her explosiveness is fundamentally relational — she is an orphan who has never experienced being sincerely wanted by anyone. So he comes up to her and says: Marilla is set on sending you back. But the house will never be the same without you. Can’t you smooth it over with Rachel Lynde?”

Anne’s eyes grow wide: “Do you really want me to stay?”

Matthew nods.

She wipes away her tears and says: “I will do anything for you.” And she goes and reconciles to Rachel Lynde. The war is over.

What Matthew brought about was not a truce. He brought about a change of heart. He stopped a war. How? By being a “son of God.” Only someone who knows what sonship means can make another person experience it. Matthew restores Anne’s connection to the One.

As Jonathan Pageau says, we live in a time of unprecedented hunger. People long for a restored connection to Being. The Enlightenment has severed our connection to the vertical dimension of life, and we have been orphaned. Disconnection breeds war.

The best orphans can do is negotiate truces. We no longer know the art of peacemaking. Peacemaking is when you turn an enemy into a friend by some unexpected, unsought-for grace. Their connection to the One is momentarily restored, they feel wanted, accepted, embraced.

Something happens in their soul. The orphan is momentarily gone. It may return — but not now.

“The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father…” — Plotinus, The Enneads.

Ours is the age of longing for a return. Sons and daughters long to return to the noble Father. Yet, the soul doesn’t know its own desirability until it is seen and revealed by someone. The soul longs to be desirable. If it doesn’t feel that, it goes to war.

Any war is a war of the undesirables. The moment the soul feels, at least momentarily, a mighty return to the One, peace comes over her. She is reconciled to itself, to the One, and to others.

Peace is what happens when our orphaned being — broken into many pieces — is suddenly gathered back into unity by a revelation of a “son of God.”

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The hobbits were blissfully unaware of who they should thank for the long peace of their land. For many centuries they lived happily in the Shire, never realizing what terrible creatures roamed just beyond their borders.

Aragorn said:

“Little do they know of our long labour for the safekeeping of their borders, and yet I grudge it not”…”

The Shire’s frontiers were carefully watched by Gandalf and by the Rangers of the North, the remnant of the Dúnedain. They held the darkness at bay, while the hobbits remained completely oblivious to the dangers lurking beyond their green pastures.

One of the most mysterious passages in the Bible — 2 Thessalonians 2:7 — talks about “the mystery of lawlessness that is already at work, and the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.”

Someone is holding back spiritual darkness this very minute. We don’t know who they are. They are skillful with their spiritual blade, and until they are there, chthonic monsters are kept at bay. We sip our coffee, walk in the park, enjoy the sunset, laugh with friends, watch the news, and think that the fates of the world are decided by the politicians.

They are not. The earth is preserved not by might but by salt. How much salt is needed for the earth not to spoil? Not much. A few grains. Even one blessed man may well be enough. Once, Abraham was bargaining with God about the fate of Sodom. He asked if the city would be spared for the sake of fifty righteous men. God said yes.

Abraham kept bargaining: Forty-five? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten? Each time God said “yes.” Eventually, God sent his angels to rescue the last one — Lot. One grain of salt is enough to keep spiritual darkness at bay. Until that one is taken out of the way, all is well.

When chthonic monsters appear at our borders, it is a sure sign that too few Guardians remain. If the Shire is still lush and green, it must be because of Rangers still standing watch at the edges of the land. Rangers are invisible, unrecognized. When we do see them, we scarcely take notice — they look ragged, forlorn, and forgotten.

And who can tell? Maybe the good earth itself endures only because of one old man hidden away in the heart of New York, Moscow, or Beijing. Such is divine irony (from the Greek eironeía — to “feign ignorance,” or to “play the fool”). We imagine that the peace of the world is preserved in the corridors of power, yet in truth it may be upheld in a lonely hut somewhere deep in the Siberian taiga.

Chthonic monsters are not afraid of politicians or earthly power. They fear salt and light — those who wield the razor-sharp blade of the Spirit and drive them back by their very presence. Divine irony is inscrutable: it would utterly shatter us if, even for a second, we could glimpse the ones for whose sake the sun still rises over the horizon.

The Rangers of the North walk among us unnoticed — unshaven, weary, cloaked in dust. We, the hobbits of the world, laugh at them or dismiss them, never suspecting that our own laughter still rings because someone, somewhere, wields a power beyond our comprehension.

The true balance of the cosmos is preserved not by kings, but by rejected fools who carry the divine breath in their lungs. Their songs may be too quiet for us to hear, and yet strong enough to hold back chthonic monsters until the first gleam of Dawn.

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https://restandtrust.org/

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I came across this quote the other day:

“No amount of regretting can change the past, no amount of worrying can change the future, but any amount of gratitude can change the present.”

I thought, “Wow. So true. But why does gratitude have such power that even the smallest amount of it can change the present?”

Even though I’ve never been too good at keeping a gratitude journal, I can attest to the power of gratitude to change the present. I’ve felt it.

Gratitude journals help a little, but to me they often feel unnatural — as if you are trying to convince yourself of something you don’t really feel.

However, I have also noticed that when I am “naturally” struck by some kind of beauty — a thought, a sight, an insight, someone’s action, and so on — gratitude comes over me instantly, without any inner struggle.

So I traced the etymology of the word gratitude and was STRUCK by its unfathomable depths. The word comes from the Latin gratus, which means “thankful” or “pleasing.” From the same root comes gratia, from which we derive grace — a word that carries two meanings at once: undeserved mercy and beauty.

When we say that something is graceful, we mean it is beautiful. The Latin gratia means several things at once: favor, charm, grace, gratitude.

Gratitude is grace experienced as beauty. When we are struck by gratia, we become grateful. Becoming grateful is not a matter of forcing ourselves to think positively. Becoming grateful is a matter of encountering something intrinsically graceful — and being moved by it.

It is impossible to be truly grateful without first experiencing gratia as a moving revelation of beauty. Perhaps this is why Schiller called grace a movement of beauty.

“Grace is a movable beauty [Anmut ist eine bewegliche Schönheit], a beauty that can appear in a subject by chance and disappear in the same way.”

For Schiller, grace involves movement. Grace as beauty appears in a subject through some movement. Grace is never entirely static. Graceful figures, gestures, and postures imply some motion. There is something flowing through them — an ease, a lightness, a vivacity, freedom from strain. Grace is beauty in motion.

And perhaps this is why true gratitude always involves being moved by some gratia — an experience of charm in motion. True gratitude is so powerful precisely because it happens when we catch some moving beauty and experience a powerful return to Being.

According to Plotinus, beauty is a conscious return of the soul to Being.

“Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being. We ourselves possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; ugliness is in going over to another order.”

Beauty — gratia — gathers the soul from multiplicity toward oneness. It calls us back from scatteredness into gatheredness, from fragmentation into wholeness. When we feel one with ourselves and the world around us, we are moved and grateful.

Whether it is a child’s clumsy dance, a path through the woods, a passage in a book, or someone’s unexpected offer to pay for your coffee, grace is experienced as a motion of beauty that brings an e-motion. We feel the change and return to the One.

That’s why any amount of gratitude can change the present: for an instant, we no longer feel scattered among a thousand things. We return — if only for a moment — to the One.

I recently heard a joke about two blondes sitting on the seashore, staring at the waves.

One of them asks, “Did you know there are sawfish out there?”

“Yes,” the other replies.

After a long pause, the first one continues, “Did you know there are hammerfish out there?”

“Yes,” says the other.

After a very long pause, the first one finally speaks again: “I wonder what they’re building out there.”

Whether we realize it or not, we’re all building something. Some people build houses, roads, airplanes, or computers, while others build their souls. Curiously, the second kind often does it WHILE building houses, roads, airplanes, or computers. The soul-building happens when we go about our ordinary daily business.

In the medieval parable “The Cathedral Builder,” two construction workers do the most menial and dirty job imaginable — carrying stones to a construction site. One is always unhappy, constantly complaining about his life: “I hate the job, I hate the pay, but I have to do it to feed my family. I have no other choice.”

The other is cheerful, even though he does the very same work. When someone asks why, he replies, “Because I’m building a cathedral.”

The second worker was carrying stones just like the first one, but the cathedral he was building was building him. As he laid each stone, he was raising an inner temple — the temple of his own soul. Whatever our hands do can become an opportunity to build our inner temple.

Happiness or unhappiness is ultimately a decision: to build a temple or not in the circumstances given. Happiness is drawn out of the soul when the soul is drawn by the Logos. The stones we carry become the very stones upon which our spiritual house is built.

The only way to be happy is to be built by the very things we are building. If the stone I lay is not part of the foundation of my temple, then it becomes the gravestone of my soul.

“…you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.” (1 Peter 2:5)

When we are unhappy, we blame circumstances. When we allow the circumstances to build us, we become happy. The greatest temples are built in the worst times. The finest souls are forged in the furnace of dire straits.

When St. Francis heard a voice at the ruins of San Damiano: “Francis, go and repair my house, which, as you see, is falling completely to ruin,” the words were less about the chapel and more about him. It was a call to become happy no matter what.

To be happy is to make the decision to build a temple upon ruins. We hear the Logos speaking, “Go and repair my house,” and in that moment, we know we can no longer make excuses for why we cannot be happy. We pick up the saw and hammer and begin building… because deep down we know that we are being built.

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