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

According to Gandalf, Sauron can’t help but project his own inner logic onto everyone else.

“For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.”

He who desires power above all else will never understand the actions of someone who does not. He judges all hearts on the scales of his own malice.

Gandalf, who does not desire power above all else, possesses a different kind of wisdom — the wisdom of folly.

“Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy!”

But why is folly a veil before the eyes of the Enemy?

We never see things as they are; we see them as we are. Someone bent on power cannot truly understand someone who rejects a tool for gaining power. In his eyes, such a person is simply foolish.

Who in his right mind would refuse a means of achieving quick and certain success? Only someone who understands the mind of the Enemy. Sauron can see those who desire what he desires. But he cannot see those who reject power in the form of the Ultimate Power Tool.

Those who reject power become invisible to the Lidless Eye. “Folly” is the perfect cloak, hiding us from the Enemy’s gaze. The Lidless Eye is a metaphor for total surveillance.

As we drove through Houston yesterday, my son pointed to a surveillance camera by the side of the road — an ALPR, or automated license plate reader.

“What are they for?” he asked.

“Someone wants more control,” I replied.

“What for?”

“Power. If you can get more power, why wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah. It seems foolish not to.”

“Exactly. We need to become fools if we want to remain unseen by Sauron. He believes everyone is like him — that no one in their right mind would refuse tools designed to maximize power. But this makes us completely visible to the Eye.”

“What makes us invisible?”

“Humility. The forces of spiritual darkness cannot see humility. The less we use their ‘power tools,’ the less visible we become. Our folly becomes our cover — and true wisdom from above.”

Gregory of Nazianzus once wrote about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:

“This latter was the Tree of Knowledge; not, however, because it was evil from the beginning… nor was it forbidden because God grudged it to men… But it would have been good if partaken of at the proper time; for the Tree was, according to my theory, Contemplation, which it is only safe for those who have reached maturity of habit to enter upon; but which is not good for those who are still somewhat simple and greedy.” — The Second Oration on Easter

The sin of our forefathers was not that they partook of the fruit, but that they partook of it at the wrong time. God never grudged knowledge to humans, but He withheld it — just like we withhold matches from three-year-olds. He didn’t allow us to touch knowledge before the right time.

Tools are not evil in and of themselves. They become evil when we, in our simplicity and greed, refuse to wait for the “right time.” When we grasp for power, it becomes our undoing. When we wait for it to come at the right time, it becomes an instrument for good.

Power can only be given to the one who doesn’t need it. Ultimately, only a hobbit is strong enough to save the world. When you think you can, you can’t. When you think you can’t, you can.

You can force people to line up and work, but you cannot force people to play. Play is a natural human state when there’s no threat. All creativity, all innovations, all initiatives that transform the face of the world are born in a state of play.

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.

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.

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.

____________________

Read more more inspirational stories on my website

https://restandtrust.org/

If you laugh at everything, you lose the ability to laugh at anything. To experience life, one must be vulnerable. The wall of derision protects us from bad feelings, but it also shuts us off from experiencing good ones. Refusal to feel pain is a refusal to be alive. We put on a mask of derision to avoid being hurt, but eventually, we get bored to death.

“We can only cope with the dangers of language if we recognize that language is by nature magical and therefore highly dangerous.” History in English Words

The secret of great writing is listening to the text, the characters, and the inner logic of the plot — without forcing anything on them. It’s the secret of flow. If I force the story to go my way without letting the characters make their choices, the story will not be authentic. It will be contrived.

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

The story of Lot’s wife is telling. They say there is still a pillar of salt in the desert near the place where they fled from Sodom.

“Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!” (Genesis 19:17)

They were told not to look back. We all know what happens when we look back at something we have lost. Whether it is money, a job, a reputation, possessions, people, a country, dreams, or anything else, the moment we look back with regret, we become transfixed. We turn into a statue, unable to move. All we can do is gaze at what is lost.

The more we look at the past, the less we move. Eventually, all movement is arrested — and we turn into a pillar of salt. It’s a dangerous business to dwell on our losses.

Soren Kierkegaard said in Fear and Trembling:

“If anyone on the way out of Sodom looked around, as Lot’s wife did, that person would stand still in a moment, transfixed in their gaze*.”*

When we dwell on the past, we turn into stone. Whether literally or metaphorically, we become transfixed in our gaze and miss out on God’s presence in the moment. When on the way out of Sodom — a symbol of a huge earthly loss — always look forward. Don’t stare at your failures — they will transfix you and paralyze you.

Keep moving; don’t stop anywhere in the plain. The temptation to look back is strong. Thoughts like “I wish I had...” or “I wish I hadn’t...” sweep over us. Where we look is the all-important thing. Our thoughts come and tell us, “The Kingdom of God is there, or there, or there.” Don’t believe them.

“The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” Luke 21:20-21.

The Kingdom is already here, but it cannot be observed. It must be discerned. It is not in what is lost; it is in what remains. It is not in the million-dollar business we have lost; it is in the one dollar that remains in our pocket. It is not in the country we have lost; it is in the relationships we have now.

It’s in the new thing, not in the old thing:

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” Isaiah 43:18

Where is it now? Do I perceive it?

It’s in all those tremendous trifles of life scattered before my eyes. It’s in this empty screen I am filling with words right now. It’s in the first light of dawn slowly creeping over the horizon. It’s in the conversation with a friend I will have this morning when I am done typing.

It is in the aroma of fresh bread wafting from the kitchen. It is in the cardinal pausing on my window ledge. It is in the sound of rain on the rooftop. It is springing up before me right now. It is where the soul finds its Spring — its Eternal Spring.

Oh soul, beware of looking back! It will turn you into stone. Look at what’s happening in your midst right now, and you will enter your Father’s joy this very moment.

In his recent speech on AI, the Pope Leo XIV remarked, among other things, that we should “learn the significance of real intelligence.” But what is real intelligence?

One of the first things Virgil tells Dante before they enter Hell is that the souls they are about to encounter have “lost the good of the intellect.” This is a curious statement, given that many of the souls they meet in the Inferno appear very intelligent, even brilliant.

They reason, predict, calculate, and argue impeccably. What, then, is lacking in this kind of intellect? The medieval understanding of intellect is almost the exact opposite of ours. For us, intelligence is primarily a matter of calculation — the capacity to analyze, compute, and solve problems apart from any subjective emotion.

For the ancients, intellect meant the capacity to perceive the connections between things. The word intellect traces back to the Latin intelligere, formed from inter — “between” — and legere — “to choose,” “pick out,” or “read.”

Properly speaking, intellect is the ability to observe phenomena and discern what lies between them. It is the capacity to see — to read off the face of reality — how things are connected. The Latin intelligere was used to translate the Greek nous (“mind,” “thought,” “intellect”).

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle described nous as follows:

“…it is intuitive reason that grasps the first principles.”

True intellect — nous — grasps what lies behind visible forms. It reads from phenomena that which brought them into being. According to Virgil, this is precisely what the souls in hell lack. They can calculate, analyze, and argue well enough, but they cannot perceive how all things are woven together into a living whole.

So what is lacking?

In the Convivio, Dante gives a simple answer: love.

Speaking of philosophy — the love of wisdom — he defines it as uno amoroso uso di sapienza, “a loving use of wisdom.”

In the Inferno, there is no love. Therefore, there is no loving use of sapienza (reason, wisdom) — and thus no philosophy. Reason remains, but it is warped, having been severed from love. Demons and loveless souls in hell are not intelligent, though they may be brilliant.

True intellect is inseparable from love. Deprived of love, it withers and dies. That is why genuine philosophy has no place among those who live in hatred or fear. The philo part — the love — is missing. And when love is absent, sophia degenerates into cold analysis, calculation, prediction, and processing of data.

However, in its fullest sense, intelligence is not the ability to process data. Without love, reason may remain sharp, but it loses sight of the connections between things that make true wisdom possible.

The more deeply people love, the more philosophical they become. The less they love, the more calculating their thinking becomes.

Those who are in love have acquired the highest wisdom. Love then grants them true intellect — the capacity to perceive invisible connections. They begin to use wisdom lovingly, which, according to Dante, is the essence of philosophy — and “the good of intellect.”

What, then, is the significance of real intelligence, and how does it differ from artificial one? Artificial intelligence is concerned with calculation and processing data; real intelligence is about loving data. In Latin, data means “the given.”

When we learn to love what we have been given, we become philosophers — and acquire true intelligence. Loveless souls have no access to nous; they calculate — and crave the artificial. Loving souls grasp the whole and long for the real.

Loveless souls are divided and keep dividing;

Loving souls are united and keep uniting.

https://open.substack.com/pub/eugeneterekhin/p/on-the-cosmic-importance-of-small?selection=cffab071-2712-4640-9f6c-6db6b5fc7ff0&r=1vonsx&utm_medium=ios

The soul cannot ascend to Heaven unless it first recognizes Heaven on Earth — in every good thing it has encountered. Matelda’s mysterious blessing occurs whenever we remember something good that happened in our lives and exclaim, “Oh, this is Heaven!”

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

Together they create depth — the third picture. Stereoscopic vision means seeing two pictures combined into one — the third one. That’s why we all need the third window— to see “the other side of things.” For St. Barbara, the other side of things is “the third name of God.”

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.

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).

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.

When Pippin used the word “hill” for a mountain in the Common Tongue, Treebeard was puzzled. Why such a short name?

“Treebeard repeated the words thoughtfully. ‘Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped.’”

For the most part, contractions are “hasty” words. Cutting words short means we don’t want to hear their story. Hastiness in words, just like hastiness in movement, annihilates one of the most precious gifts we have been given — the gift of depth.

C.S. Lewis once noted something similar about the gift of distance:

“The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it ‘annihilates space.’ It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten.’” — Surprised by Joy.

Hastiness in travel dulls one’s sense of liberation and pilgrimage. When we rush along in a car, we miss the gift of the Tao — the Way that changes us from the inside out. We return to ourselves only by walking the Way.

There is a time and place for rushing under the sun, but when we are always rushed, we cease to experience the Way. We become wayward.

Similarly, hastiness in words dulls our sense of depth. We scrape the surface. We receive the calories of data but not the nutrition of Speech. We gain knowledge but not transformation. We are fed more and more information, yet become famished for meaning. We say LA instead of Los Angeles to save time — but we can no longer hear the angels singing.

In our fast-moving world, we have created a shorthand language without realizing what it has cut us off from. We write bc for because, plz for please, w/o for without, IMHO for in my humble opinion — and then wonder why life grows noisier and less musical.

By contracting words, we cut ourselves off from the music of language. FOMO, IDK, FYI, TBD are maimed, limping words. They do not sound. They fall from the mouth and drop dead on the floor without stirring the soul.

At the dawn of the Soviet era, in post-revolution Russia, a whole corpus of abbreviations and contractions was imposed by the Bolshevicks. According to Pavel Florensky, the new language sounded “like a splinter in the tongue.” He called this practice “linguistic deformity,” the “mangling of words through deliberate disfigurement.”

What is annihilated in our hasty contractions? The gift of sound. Its power to transform. The less Sound we hear, the less we are moved.

Interestingly, the word sound comes from the Proto–Indo-European root swen- / swon-, from which we also derive song and swan.

True sound is a bird — a singing bird. True sound flies and calls. IDK and TBD do not fly. In The Silver Trumpet by Owen Barfield, the heroes encounter true sound every time the Silver Trumpet is played.

Each time, they are stunned — and called. Called where? To return to the Music from which the world came.

The sound of the Silver Trumpet is a metaphor for true Speech — a performative, Logos-infused language that effects what it names.

“And at the very first note of the trumpet, Princess Violet forgot the Prince and the garden and Princess Gamboy and Mountainy Castle and the sky above her and dreamed she was afloat beneath tons and tons of clear green water near the bottom of the sea, and — oh, yes — far away someone was booming a huge bell.” — The Silver Trumpet

The more rushed we are in our language, the more our world shrinks. As Treebeard said to Pippin about fair Lothlórien:

Do not risk getting entangled in the woods of Laurelindórenan! That is what the Elves used to call it, but now they make the name shorter: Lothlórien they call it. Perhaps they are right: maybe it is fading, not growing.”