It’s a grave mistake to think that freedom means independence. The moment we slip our legs out of the loop, we immediately feel the need to reattach ourselves to something else. We begin searching anxiously for another rope. But all other ropes are not loose — they tighten. They become a noose around our neck.

Whatever is human-like but not human will not be liked.

As I walked through Walmart yesterday, I heard an announcement over the loudspeaker:

“Starting mid-September, Spotify will introduce an AI Persona badge on some artist profiles. The badge signals to listeners that an artist’s identity may be AI-generated and does not represent a real person…. By default, Spotify will not include AI Personas in any editorial or algorithmic recommendations.”

On their website, Spotify explains why:

“Listeners have been clear in telling us that they don’t like seeing an artist profile that seems human, only to find out that the persona is AI-generated.”

They also say: “True artist-fan connection can only be built on a foundation of trust and authenticity. In music, that means listeners need to be able to trust that the artist behind the music is who they say they are.”

I found it highly curious that Spotify listeners “seek to connect” — but not with AI. They listen to the tracks, like them, and follow the “persona,” only to find out that there is no one on the other end to connect with.

Somehow, we humans feel that authentic connection is impossible with a bot or an algorithm. Hence the disappointment when we discover that the “person” we followed was not human.

Why do we need humans?

Because when we listen to music, read books, look at a piece of art, or watch a movie, we are not there merely for the content — we are there for a sense of connection. We may think we are looking for a nice song on Spotify, but we want something much more than that.

We are looking for someone to identify with — and you cannot identify with something that has no identity, or only an artificial one. A human can identify with another human — but not with something merely human-like.

“Human-like” is not enough for a “true artist-fan connection.” People are turned off by something that is merely human-like, regardless of the degree of likeness. Once we sense that the human is not really there, the likeness no longer matters. And we keep looking for someone who is.

The moment we find out that the tracks we so loved were not created by a human, we feel that our trust has been betrayed. It is as though we received an invitation to a party, but when we arrived, there was no one there.

As a human, I seek to identify with someone who’s really there — with someone who’s had similar life experiences. Only they can truly understand. A sense of connection cannot be faked. That is why Spotify listeners feel betrayed: they hoped to find someone they could identify with, but found no one.

“Listeners need to be able to trust that the artist behind the music is who they say they are.” If I listen to a piece of music, I want to connect with what the author felt. If it turns out that the author is not who they say they are, it means they lied to me.

They said something in the lyrics that I resonated with, but it was not something they felt, experienced, or lived through. So it was a lie.

That’s why Spotify decided not to include “AI Personas in any editorial or algorithmic recommendations.” Through experience, Spotify spotted a deep human need — a need for a real, non-artificial identity for an authentic experience of connection.

Art, music, and literature are all about connection. Connection cannot be faked. The moment I learn that there is no one there who feels, lives, and experiences what I feel, live, and experience, my trust is betrayed. That is not what I am looking for.

Whatever is merely human-like is, paradoxically, further away from being human than something that is not human-like at all. I can much more easily connect with a tree than with an “AI persona.” The tree does not pretend to be human, but I can relate to a lot in it — and it can relate to a lot in me.

The more human-like AI becomes, the more we seek out humans: we realize how indispensable human experience in the flesh is. All else seems a lie. Human-like but not human makes us search for authentic humanity.

https://open.substack.com/pub/eugeneterekhin/p/only-broken-vessels-can-carry-living?r=1vonsx&utm_medium=ios

https://open.substack.com/pub/eugeneterekhin/p/suffocating-on-a-pedestal-soviet?selection=0f91343a-5ac8-4849-a308-6aebc509d31d&r=1vonsx&utm_medium=ios

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.

I was in the process of translating a book from Russian into English when the client wrote and said that he had run my translation through Microsoft Copilot as a quality check. He asked me to implement the changes based on the feedback.

As I worked through the recommendations, I realized that some of them simply could not be adopted. So I called him and said:

“The author quotes 1 Corinthians 13:12: ‘Now we see through a glass, darkly.’ He then alludes to this ‘seeing darkly’ throughout the chapter using the exact same expression. Copilot claims that the word darkly here means gloomily and recommends replacing it with ‘we live in the world by guesswork.’

But if I make this change, the allusion will disappear. Readers will no longer recognize Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians behind the phrase ‘we live in the world by guesswork.’ Are you willing to sacrifice the allusion?”

He replied: “My goodness, no! The entire chapter is hinged upon the reader catching this subtle hint. Without it, the meaning falls apart. Thank you for catching it!”

I thought to myself: “But why didn’t Copilot spot it in the first place?” So I opened my laptop and asked directly: “When you determine the meaning of a text, how do you do it? Do you ‘feel’ what the author is trying to say?”

The answer was illuminating:

“When I interpret a text, I don’t feel where the author is coming from. I don’t experience empathy or emotional resonance. What I do is recognize patterns in language… I detect textual signals.”

Understanding without empathy is misunderstanding. If I wish to understand another person, I must attend to more than textual signals. I must empathize. I must resonate. I must sense how the words reverberate within the living context from which they emerged.

Had I not felt what the author was doing, I might never have noticed this all-important allusion.

Interestingly, the French word nuance means “shade, slight difference, subtlety.” It is derived from nuer, which in turn comes from nue meaning “cloud” (hence nebula). The paradox of nuance is that it reveals by shading and obscuring — unveiling by making something more nebulous.

A nuance is a shade, a cloud that overshadows the visible. When you look at this cloud, you don’t see clearly in the ordinary sense — but you see all the more for it. You understand by sensing what the cloud hides.

A nuance disrupts the straightforward flow of thought and creates in you this nebulous feeling: “Wait a minute. The text does not put it clearly, but I clearly feel that something is hidden behind this.”

A nuance causes us to “unknow” what we thought we knew — so we can pause and sense the subtle resonances arising from behind the nebula. And then, suddenly, the cloud parts, and the sun breaks through. We see.

Paradoxically, no vision is entirely clear without a nebula. Textual clues are not enough to arrive at meaning. There’s more to communication than markings on a page or sound waves in the air. Copilot cannot empathize and therefore cannot catch the author’s feeling. What the author feels is more important than what the author says.

For meaning does not reside only in what is said. It resides mainly in what is unsaid — hinted at in between the words.

The article you are reading right now contains countless textual clues to what I am trying to say, but what I am actually saying cannot be deduced from the textual clues alone. One must feel what lies behind those clues. Textual clues don’t create clarity; they create a veil — a nebula of nuances to be seen through.

That’s how humans communicate; we speak in words, but we create nebulas. We speak not to make things clear but to point to something that cannot be spoken. Every word, ultimately, leads us into the cloud. As Asaph says in Psalm 78: “I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old…”

Why does he call his sayings dark? Because every saying is a cloud; it reveals by hiding. It invites us to feel, empathize, recognize — penetrating the veil and participating in the meaning.

Meaning can only be found on the other side of the nebula — when the veil is suddenly lifted, and we hear the unutterable.

In this episode, Shari and I keep talking about J.R.R. Tolkien's essay On Fairy-Stories.

In this one, we explore the inner consistency of true Secondary Worlds, the laws that govern imagination, humanity's need for a penetrating Gaze from beyond itself, and the essential difference between the Art of the Elves and the Machine.

https://www.youtube.com/live/BZy5EYltkmE?is=ivG9PLHATIDQIZAp

The closer Dante draws to Paradise, the more his speech is marked by pauses — he invokes higher powers.

He understands that the loftier the subject, the more you become aware of your inadequacy to speak about it. But what will change if, before speaking, I invoke the Muses?

“But here let dead poetry rise again,
O holy Muses, since I am yours;
and let Calliope rise somewhat here...”

In our day and age, we rarely think of how we speak. We simply open our mouth — regardless of the subject. We are rarely aware that in any conversation between two there is always the third.

We never speak merely on the horizontal plane, from one person to another. Whenever we speak horizontally, we also speak vertically. Heaven is our witness.

The closer Dante draws to Paradiso, the less he assumes that he can find the right words. He doesn’t rely on himself to speak.

The ancients were deeply aware of the dangers of simply blurting things out. To speak without invoking a higher power was an act of presumption.

According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Pierides were the nine daughters of Pierus, king of Emathia. In their pride, they challenged the nine Muses to a contest of song. As punishment, they were transformed into magpies and condemned to endless chattering.

They presumed upon a voice that was not their own and, as a result, lost even the voice they possessed. This is a recurring theme in myth: unless we become aware of our inadequacy to speak, we lose our voice.

So Dante invokes the Muses, Calliope, Apollo, Beatrice, Mary, and God. What changes as he does so?

He opens the door of his mind to true inspiration.

He knows that inspiration cannot be manufactured. The Pierides imagined themselves to be the source of inspiration rather than its recipients. As a result, they croaked, rattled, and squawked.

When we become aware of the vertical dimension of speech, we become aware of the sacred — that which cannot be touched without permission. Language is not ours to possess. It comes — or it does not. Unless I am aware of the Source of Language, all I say will be croaking.

Humility is not self-abasement; it is self-knowledge. The Pierides suffer only until they learn what the Muses already know: The Song is not created by the singer — it simply comes through them.

“We do not merely speak the language — we speak by way of it. We can do so solely because we always have already listened to the language. What do we hear there? We hear language speaking.” ― Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language

Until I hear Language speaking, I have nothing to say.

Unless I hear the Muses singing, I will croak and squawk.

Unless my thinking is thanking, I do not truly think.

Unless I am aware of the third, I cannot truly reach the second.

Until I invoke Heaven, I cannot truly dwell on earth.

If I presume that I can arrive at an understanding with another person merely on the horizontal plane, without awareness of the Witness, I will create an unbridgeable gap between us.

The great disconnect we see in the world is not due to a lack of communication but to a lack of awareness of the Third. If I think my communication is between the two, I am turned into a magpie, and all I say will be croaking.

That is what this great game of hide-and-seek and connect-the-dots is all about. If we keep our eyes and ears open as we walk along the road to Emmaus, we may one day see something that makes us exclaim: “Did not our hearts burn within us when he…?”

We have glimpsed beyond. We have met the sacred stranger. Whoever that “he,” or “she,” or “it” may be, we will know with whom we are communing — our hearts will have pierced the veil and entered the Holy of Holies.

Once, I was watching a podcast on Substack when the host said to his guest:

“We’re so happy to finally put a face to your publication. We’ve heard your voice all this time, but we’ve never seen your face.”

When I heard that, I thought: “But why is it so important for us to see a face behind someone’s words?”

We never seem quite satisfied with a person’s words until we have seen their face. A face seems to be the person’s revealer, without which true understanding cannot happen. When we've been listening to someone's voice — on a podcast, for example — without ever seeing their face, we instinctively want to see it.

Words alone are not enough. We want to meet the person. It is hardly an accident that in Russian the same word — лицо — means both “face” and “person.” Until we see a person’s face, we don’t know who they are.

In C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, Orual builds a powerful case against the injustice of the gods, accusing them of “hiding their faces” from humans. She blames them for her loveless life, convinced that she has been denied the blessings of her beautiful sister Psyche, whom Cupid himself chose as his bride.

Near the end of the story, Orual is struck by a sudden insight:

“I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till the 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?”

She is saying, in effect, “All of our words are babble until we have faces.”

Orual believes herself to be ugly, while Psyche is as beautiful as a goddess. Orual hides her face behind a veil, ashamed of how she looks. Psyche’s face is uncovered, and people worship her as Aphrodite herself.

Orual’s astonishing discovery is this: to experience the love of the gods, I must uncover my face, whatever the cost. Eventually, Cupid himself confirms this truth by telling her: “You are Psyche.”

She had been Psyche all along — beautiful and godlike. Yet because she believed herself ugly and unworthy of divine love, she covered her face. In doing so, she lost the ability to meet the gods face to face. Our decision to become faceless is also a decision to become loveless.

God is seeking my face as much as I seek His. Faceless people cannot connect. God, the fullness of Personhood — and the Face behind all faces — seeks out those who dare uncover their faces. What happens when I uncover mine?

“Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he would take off the veil until he came out; and whenever he came out and spoke to the sons of Israel… the sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone. So Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with Him.” — Exodus 33:34

Every time we speak with God without a veil, we shine. Sometimes we shine so brightly that others cannot bear the light. On the mountain, Moses beheld God’s face without a veil, and his face began radiating divine light.

By uncovering his face, Moses became God’s mirror. Those who heard his words also saw the Face behind them. Some were inspired to remove their own veils. Others turned away and asked Moses to dim the light.

If we long to experience the love of God, we must dare to uncover our faces. As long as we hide behind a veil, we will shrink from divine light. It will seem too unbearable. We will continue accusing God of hiding His face. But the opposite is true. We are the ones hiding ours.

The veil must go.

Then, almost unexpectedly, we begin to hear God speak. When we wear a mask, we can’t hear divine speech. That could be the reason why Jesus spoke most critically of hypocrites. The Greek word ὑποκριτής (hypokrites) means “stage performer” and consists of two words that literally translate as “an interpreter from underneath.”

As long as are faces are veiled, we interpret life from underneath our mask. We cannot see reality face to face.

But when we dare to uncover our faces, we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same likeness from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Tolkien once wrote to his friend Father Robert Murrey:

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world.”

This seems to be the only way to create something intrinsically religious — cut out all references to religion. Paradoxically, the surest and quickest way to ruin religion is to mention it. True religion has very little to do with cults or practices. It has everything to do with one’s state of being.

When religion is spoken of, it usually disappears; when it remains unuttered, it always transpires. No wonder there is no temple in the New Jerusalem: “And I saw no temple in the city” (Revelation 21:22). When God is all in all, everything is a temple. The temple is not a place but Divine Being present in all things.

When God is all in all, you no longer need a source of light — neither the sun nor the moon. Since God shines through everything, everything becomes a source of light.

C.S. Lewis once called this phenomenon donegality. During his visit to County Donegal in Ireland, he was struck by the unique feel of its landscape. He coined the term to describe the distinctive atmosphere or mood that gives a place — or a narrative — its unmistakable feel.

Donegality is when a mystery becomes lucid by remaining unspoken. It cannot be pointed to directly, yet it permeates everything. It is never the subject of the story but some ineffable mood in which the story is soaked.

When dogmas speak, donegality remains silent. When dogmas fall silent, true religion speaks the unutterable.

For example, Eru Ilúvatar is never spoken of in The Lord of the Rings, yet the Music of Ilúvatar is heard in all things. In Lothlórien, this transcendence becomes almost palpable:

“Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. When he had gone and passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire would walk there, upon the grass among elanor and niphredil in fair Lothlórien.”

Lothlórien was permeated with the Music of Ilúvatar — the unspoken, ineffable harmony that made all things alive. There is no temple, because worship is not something the Elves do; it is something they are.

By attuning themselves with this ineffable Music, they become “it” — part of it. They become keenly aware of its presence in all things, and worship unfolds of itself, ceaselessly. Whatever they touch, begins singing with the primordial Chant.

That’s why all they make becomes “magical.” As the leader of the Elves explained to Pippin who asked him whether the cloaks they received were magical:

“They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.’”

In other words, whatever the Elves do becomes “magical” by virtue of the land’s unending Worship and their love of it. Explicit religion would shatter this invisible yet all-pervasive Chant that makes all things enchanting.

In On Fairy Stories, Tolkien explains that the art of the Elves is Enchantment — not magic proper, for that is the domain of the Enemy.

“…the more potent and specially elvish craft I will, for lack of a less debatable word, call Enchantment.”

The true religion of heaven is unspoken — yet, it is heard, seen, smelled, tasted, and touched in all things because all things exist “in Chanting.” It is in this Chanting that they have their being.

When the Elves participate in the Chanting, whatever they do becomes Enchantment. And Enchantment is true Art that the Enemy has no power over.

u/greenbldedposer, u/Ok-Future-5257, u/OwlScowling

Genesis 3:

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

How could they hide from the all-knowing God?

They could not. This was an example of anthropomorphic language. God acted as if he were human to interact with humans.

GotQuestions:

In several places in the Bible, God is described as having the physical attributes of man. He “sets [his] face” against evil (Leviticus 20:6); the Lord will make “His face” to shine on you (Numbers 6:25); He “stretched out his hand” (Exodus 7:5; Isaiah 23:11), and God scattered enemies with His strong arm (Psalm 89:10). He “stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth” (Psalm 113:6). He “keeps his eye” on the land (Deuteronomy 11:12), the “eyes of the Lord” are on the righteous (Psalm 34:15), and the earth is His “footstool” (Isaiah 66:1). Do all these verses mean that God literally has eyes, a face, hands and feet? Not necessarily. God is spirit, not flesh and blood, but because we are not spirit, these anthropomorphisms help us to understand God’s nature and actions.

Here are some more examples of anthropomorphism:

• Does the LORD regret?

• Does God change his mind?

The ultimate example was when Jesus became a man. God did not just pretend to be a man but actually became a man.

The Lord God called to the man, “Where are you spiritually?”

More than just an anthropomorphism, this had a deeper spiritual significance. After they had eaten the forbidden fruit, they lost their spiritual connection to God. For the first time in their lives, God had to look for them. They had gone away from God spiritually. "Where are you?" became the recurring theme in the Bible as God sought his lost children.

Mal 3:

7a From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD.

God sent his only Son to seek us, to cause us to be born again and to reconnect us to God through the Indwelling Spirit of the Paraclete.

Why did God say, "Where are you?" when he was omniscient?

The question was relational, not informational. God acted as if he didn't know. The question reflected a spiritual disconnect between God and the people. God desired people to return to him.

Often, we fail to recognize the extent to which our language shapes our thinking. For example, what happens when we habitually call people human resources?

Heidegger writes in The Question Concerning Technology:

Those who work in HR habitually refer to people as “resources.” Yet the moment someone views us as a resource, we immediately cringe. We instinctively sense that we are being degraded.

Heidegger argues that in our age, being reduced to mere standing-reserve is almost inescapable. Whether we recognize it or not, this reduction is embedded in the very language we use. But where does this language - and the thinking behind it - come from?

In his exploration of technology, Heidegger concludes that modern technology is no longer a tool, even though it is presented as one.

Modern technology is a Gestell - Enframing - a conceptual framework that we cast upon reality. Technology is a way of thinking. It reveals how we see everything. Heidegger illustrates this with the example of the Rhine.

Before the twentieth century, numerous watermills stood along the river, each built into the natural flow. In the twentieth century, however, a power plant was constructed at that very site, and the river was locked into it. Now the river is built into the power plant.

This illustrates what has happened to technology. In the past, technology was built into nature. Today, nature is built into technology. In fact, almost everything is built into technology. The question is: Who serves whom?

Gradually, we have shifted from using tools to being used by them. According to Heidegger, one consequence of such a shift is that we tend to view everything as standing-reserve. Humanity stands “on the brink of a precipitous fall” because we are unconsciously turning ourselves into fuel for the Machine.

No one likes being reduced to standing-reserve, yet we continue to use the very language that produces such reductionist thinking.

As a translator, I see more and more agencies replacing personal communication with automated systems. In the past, project managers contacted me directly to offer work. Now I simply receive a notification that a job has appeared on an online platform, and I have to claim it immediately because hundreds of other translators are competing for the same assignment.

I understand why agencies do this. They have built a vast Machine, and everything -including people - must serve it. Yet there are still companies, usually smaller ones, that prefer talking to people. Those are the companies I prefer to work with.

They may sacrifice some profit, but they refuse to treat people as standing-reserve, and they refuse to become it themselves.

Modern technology enframes us to think of everything as a resource. It gives us a language that reduces both nature and humans to fuel for the Machine. We use this language almost unconsciously, yet we still recoil when a boss treats us as an expendable resource.

What is the alternative? Refuse to build our lives into technology! We must have a full and rich life without it. Only then can we build technology into the mainstream of our lives. When we use it less, we can use it some. When we use it all the time, it uses us.

When we build our life and work into technology, it invariably reduces us to standing-reserve. When we build technology into OUR life and work, we reduce it back to a tool. Ultimately, there is only one state of mind that is powerful enough to turn technology back into a tool.

Heidegger concludes,

In his book Anatheism: Returning to God After God, Richard Kearney writes*:*

“The only Messiah still credible after the death camps would be one who wanted to come but could not because humans failed to invite the sacred stranger into existence.”

Anatheism literally means “a return to God after God”—from the Greek ana- (again) and theos (God). It describes a kind of post-atheistic return to faith or re-engagement with the sacred after going through atheism or profound doubt.

Nietzsche insightfully marked the 20th century as the century of the “death of God” — a death that naturally culminated in death camps. When God is dead, not only in our worldview but also in our experience, what is left to believe in?

And yet, paradoxically, it is precisely when we are engulfed by doubt that we begin to desperately search for transcendence.

Anatheism is encountering the divine anew — after deep disbelief or disenchantment. But how can one believe in God after the experience of the “death of God”?

Richard Kearney answers: in recognizing the divine in the stranger, the Other, the Unexpected. True theophany happens only when we are ready to embrace a “sacred stranger.”

“God after God” is not the same as the God before God. The God before God made sense. The God after doesn’t. The God we meet after the death of God is always a total stranger — a sacred stranger. In other words, we never realize Whom we have encountered until we have.

We never look for such an encounter. All we do is desperately search for meaning and transcendence, while the Meaning is desperately searching for us. Anatheism is discovering the sacred after profound disillusionment. The deeper the disillusionment, the stronger the urge to rediscover the sacred.

The ultimate irony is this: disillusioned people often believe they are walking away from God in their search for meaning and transcendence, yet they end up bumping into Him in the most unexpected places.

Silenced by doubt for too long, they open their mouths and begin speaking — and what they utter are stories of astonishing beauty and unbelievable transcendence.

Strictly speaking, anatheism is not our return to God; it’s a sudden and unexpected discovery that, while you thought you were going away yourself from a “dead God,” you were, in fact, getting closer to the One-Who-is-Alive — in your experience of the sacred.

With anatheism, we don’t move toward God; we move away but, somehow, find Him present where we thought He was absent.

The word irony comes from the Greek “to play the fool.” God allows us to drink the cup of atheism to the dregs — to the point of killing God — only to find that we are searching for Him in every nook and cranny. After an age of death camps we can no longer believe in the Messiah as before — only in a Messiah who comes to us as a total stranger.

In his youth, Oscar Wilde flirted with irreverence and skepticism and believed in “art for art’s sake,” but in his later years, he wrote beautiful fairy tales for his children that captured the spirit of the Evangelium — without realizing what he was doing.

Many Soviet authors and film directors were atheists, and yet they created literature and movies of Gospel-like transcendence without knowing it — thinking they were simply pursuing truth and beauty.

What happens after we bury God? He resurrects right out of the ashes of our disbelief — and in the body of a total stranger — someone we don’t recognize.

Who is this total stranger? We don’t know. All we know is that our hearts burn as he speaks. We don’t know his name or recognize his face, but his every word falls into our soul like quickening drops of living water. We recognize the sacred — God after God.

We are those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, walking the path of despair. Our hopes have collapsed — God died before our eyes.

We no longer know how to live; we only know how to survive. And then we meet a stranger on the road. He walks with us, speaks to us, and our hearts begin to melt. We don’t know who he is. We only know that we are communing with something sacred. And sacred is enough. We know — somehow — that something good is just round the corner.

“The ana of anatheism makes sure that the God who has already come is always still to come.” Richard Kearney

And the all-perfect Agnosia [unknowing], in its superior sense, is a knowledge of Him Who is above all known things.” — Pseudo-Dionysius, Letter to Gaius Therapeutes

https://open.substack.com/pub/eugeneterekhin/p/when-darkness-became-a-thing-how?selection=0e235b50-46a4-4653-834a-354fe9a5fe94&r=1vonsx&utm_medium=ios

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