When Something Ought To Be True Then

When My Mother Left Me Waiting For Her, [she] Established In Me The Habit Of Waiting And Expectation Which Makes Any Present Moment Most Significant For What It Does Not Contain.

To Crave And To Have Are As Like As A Thing And Its Shadow. For When Does A Berry Break Upon The Tongue As Sweetly As When One Longs To Taste It, And When Is The Taste Refracted Into So Many Hues And Savors Of Ripeness And Earth, And When Do Our Senses Know Any Thing So Utterly As When We Lack It? And Here Again Is A Foreshadowing - The World Will Be Made Whole. For To Wish For A Hand On One's Hair Is All But To Feel It. So Whatever We May Lose, Very Craving Gives It Back To Us Again.

There Is So Little To Remember Of Anyone - An Anecdote, A Conversation At A Table. But Every Memory Is Turned Over And Over Again, Every Word, However Chance, Written In The Heart In The Hope That Memory Will Fulfill Itself, And Become Flesh, And That The Wanderers Will Find A Way Home, And The Perished, Whose Lack We Always Feel, Will Step Through The Door Finally And Stroke Our Hair With Dreaming Habitual Fondness Not Having Meant To Keep Us Waiting Long.

Theologians Talk About A Prevenient Grace That Precedes Grace Itself And Allows Us To Accept It. I Think There Must Also Be A Prevenient Courage That Allows Us To Be Brave - That Is, To Acknowledge That There Is More Beauty Than Our Eyes Can Bear, That Precious Things Have Been Put Into Our Hands And To Do Nothing To Honor Them Is To Do Great Harm. And Therefore, This Courage Allows Us, As The Old Men Said, To Make Ourselves Useful. It Allows Us To Be Generous, Which Is Another Way Of Saying Exactly The Same Thing.

I Am Interested In Scripture And Theology. This Is An Interest That I Can Assume I Would Share With A Pastor, So That Makes Me A Little Bit Prone To Use That Kind Of Character, Perhaps, Just At The Moment. Then There Is Also The Fact That, Having Been A Church Member For Many Years, I Am Very Aware Of How Much Pastors Enrich People's Experience, People For Whom They Are Significant. I Know That It's A Kind Of Custom Of American Literature And Culture To Slang Them. I Don't Think There Is Any Reason Why That Needs To Be Persisted In.