A Powerful Spring

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Final notes from Chance or the Dance? Ch. 8

"...it is in the nature of union to produce fruit, or, conversely, that the fruit owes its life to a prior union. Further, he might observe that it is in the nature of that union to be ecstatic, and he might thus conclude that joy is somehow written into the sources of life. And he will undoubtedly see that there are pain and agony involved and will have to come to terms with what he can see only as an intrusion or an ambiguity--that pain is somehow bound up in the whole process of joy. ... And he will see at work over a long, long span of time the difficult notion that reward or fulfillment commonly follows rigor and renunciation and austerity... and is not available on demand."

"It will occur to him that one of the oddities of love (erotic, paternal, filial, social) is that its motion is outward and away from itself, and that it experiences this motion as joy"

"...life issues from death--that spring rises from winter, and the oak from the dead acorn, and dawn from the night, and Pheonix from the ashes.

These are old moral saws. Nothing new here. Bromides. But then there is nothing new anywhere. The business of the poet and prophet has always been to take the saws and astonish and delight us into a fresh awareness of what they mean by discovering them suddenly in this image, and in this, and this. And the rest of us may see it all either as a pointless jumble of phenomena, or as the diagram of glory--as grinding tediously toward entropy, or as dancing toward the Dance."

More on blood and roses

On Wednesday my BP asked me to listen to a brilliant talk by Dr. Peter Kreeft (one of my uber-heroes, from whom I may be taking a class in October!) called The Culture War.

He finished the talk with a connection to my recent strange dream on blood and roses.

The whole talk concentrated on the fact that we are at war, and reminded us of our weapons.

Christ's weapons.

The weapon of the cross.

He talked about our nation needing to be spiritually pruned, as ancient Israel was so often pruned. He said that we -will- bleed, but that a second spring will come, bringing new buds. But that it would not be without blood.

It never happens without blood. Without suffering.

So... I'm not sure what our Lord's message is to me through this. I don't have a direct correlation between the blood and roses of my dream and the spiritual battles that I am engaging in. But I do accept the consolation and the encouragement that they provide.

And I thank you, Lord.

Spring

Spring hopes eternal.