ThinkBlog

Martin Heidegger seeks to throw out those old notions of time that start with Augustine’s analogy in which we live in the present, walking on that knife-blade of the Now, with the past behind us and the future yet to come. Heidegger says we are historical beings, and must necessarily look at the future as where the Dasein resides.

You know what? This post isn’t about Heideggerian temporality. I’m going to nod respectfully in his direction, but then sit down with my favorite African—St. Augustine of Hippo—and borrow his notion of time long enough to mention a phenomenon that happens very seldom in my life.

Let me set this up for you. I know a lot of people who live in the moment, whether they are soldiers or Buddhists or just concrete thinkers and feelers. I don’t live in the moment, per se: I dwell in ideas, am at home among halls of metaphor and towers of theory. I am most at home thinking about something, or idealizing—ever abstracting from what IS to what that Thing represents, what it has been and shall be. That “it,” that Thing, can be an idea, an item, a person (but of course we must be careful when speaking of the objectification of people, lest we violate that Kantian Christian maxim of treating people as ends and not means doing unto others as we would have them do unto us), and so forth.

It is therefore second nature to “wax poetic,” you might say, about any number of things. Ask me to describe my apartment, for instance, and I will compare its layout—from door through bookshelves to external window—to a Platonic progression toward the higher things, not merely an arrangement of items. Ask me to describe the face of my lover and I will tell you not of the arrangement of features qua facial characteristics, but rather how the molten bronze starbursts in her eyes remind me of the quiet peace of Christ; how the curls in her locks the color of the finest coffee (no cream or sugar necessary) bespeak visually of the vivacity and strength within her;—and yes, so you see.

This is fun for me; but what’s more, it’s home. Christ grants us each to be most comfortable either in the abstract or in the concrete, one toward which we most tend, even if but by a hair; it is where we can best serve.

Think of Tyler Durden and “Jack” in Fight Club, right after Tyler kisses Jack’s hand and pours lye on it.

“What’s this?” asks Jack.

“This,” says Tyler, pouring the lye onto the moist kiss on the back of Jack’s hand (know that lye plus water equals obscene heat), “is a chemical burn.”

Now, Jack at this point tries to escape the pain of the burn by retreating into that which is not at-hand: into the abstract—he imagines things. At which point Tyler slaps him and shouts, “Stay with your pain. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time! Without pain, without sacrifice, you would have nothing.”

Quite a few times in my life, I have been aware of a moment like that, and it has been that abrupt, that jarring. Oftentimes it comes in moments of boredom, when the Void seems to be staring right back at me, and I can’t escape into the ideal because all I can see is straight down the knife-blade of the Present.

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But tonight, I was granted a moment of awareness wholly apart from—indeed, the exact opposite of—that kind of pain or boredom. It was awareness of grace, the likes of which Hollywood could not duplicate. Movies (and books) like Fight Club can exist and be enormously popular because everyone this side of innocent knows anguish like that to some degree, the destructive kind of pain. But no book or movie can capture (echoes of “no ear has heard, no eye has seen, no mind conceived”) the constructive pain of grace, coming from the Word of God speaking a Word into His Spirit within us.

It’s difficult to put to words, obviously, but perhaps you’ll know what I mean. Tonight, exhausted but content, I looked in her eyes and they were her eyes, not (just) symbols of joy and peace. I held her hand and it was her hand. I beheld the moment as a moment granted a mortal, not something to be eschewed in favor of the “bigger” Idea of the Future or the Abstract or what have you. Standing still on the knife’s edge, feeling its ecstatic cut.

In that moment, there was forgiveness unearned; there was an understanding of what it really means to “Be still and know that I am God.” It was as though to say, “No, Michael, you haven’t earned it; you don’t deserve it; but I grant you this moment to behold, to enjoy. Will you hide behind self-deprecation or will you take My gift to you?” I partook.

I have never before been in a relationship where the mutually reciprocal love for/of God and for/of a lady were wholly separate but mutually edificial, one to another. I have never dared partake of a moment of grace in-time such as it was tonight, too frightened to feel the pain of Christ’s love, too proud to sacrifice the self-deprecatory “I’m unworthy” attitude.

Brothers and sisters, when we’re granted the grace of a moment, let us not fear the pain of His dying-on-the-cross love. “God desires to give good gifts to His children” (Mt 7, Lk 11).

Martin Heidegger seeks to throw out those old notions of time that start with Augustine’s analogy in which we live in the present, walking on that knife-blade of the Now, with the past behind us and the future yet to come. Heidegger says we are historical beings, and must necessarily look at the future as where the Dasein resides.

You know what? This post isn’t about Heideggerian temporality. I’m going to nod respectfully in his direction, but then sit down with my favorite African—St. Augustine of Hippo—and borrow his notion of time long enough to mention a phenomenon that happens very seldom in my life.

Let me set this up for you. I know a lot of people who live in the moment, whether they are soldiers or Buddhists or just concrete thinkers and feelers. I don’t live in the moment, per se: I dwell in ideas, am at home among halls of metaphor and towers of theory. I am most at home thinking about something, or idealizing—ever abstracting from what IS to what that Thing represents, what it has been and shall be. That “it,” that Thing, can be an idea, an item, a person (but of course we must be careful when speaking of the objectification of people, lest we violate that Kantian Christian maxim of treating people as ends and not means doing unto others as we would have them do unto us), and so forth.

It is therefore second nature to “wax poetic,” you might say, about any number of things. Ask me to describe my apartment, for instance, and I will compare its layout—from door through bookshelves to external window—to a Platonic progression toward the higher things, not merely an arrangement of items. Ask me to describe the face of my lover and I will tell you not of the arrangement of features qua facial characteristics, but rather how the molten bronze starbursts in her eyes remind me of the quiet peace of Christ; how the curls in her locks the color of the finest coffee (no cream or sugar necessary) bespeak visually of the vivacity and strength within her;—and yes, so you see.

This is fun for me; but what’s more, it’s home. Christ grants us each to be most comfortable either in the abstract or in the concrete, one toward which we most tend, even if but by a hair; it is where we can best serve.

Think of Tyler Durden and “Jack” in Fight Club, right after Tyler kisses Jack’s hand and pours lye on it.

“What’s this?” asks Jack.

“This,” says Tyler, pouring the lye onto the moist kiss on the back of Jack’s hand (know that lye plus water equals obscene heat), “is a chemical burn.”

Now, Jack at this point tries to escape the pain of the burn by retreating into that which is not at-hand: into the abstract—he imagines things. At which point Tyler slaps him and shouts, “Stay with your pain. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time! Without pain, without sacrifice, you would have nothing.”

Quite a few times in my life, I have been aware of a moment like that, and it has been that abrupt, that jarring. Oftentimes it comes in moments of boredom, when the Void seems to be staring right back at me, and I can’t escape into the ideal because all I can see is straight down the knife-blade of the Present.

---

But tonight, I was granted a moment of awareness wholly apart from—indeed, the exact opposite of—that kind of pain or boredom. It was awareness of grace, the likes of which Hollywood could not duplicate. Movies (and books) like Fight Club can exist and be enormously popular because everyone this side of innocent knows anguish like that to some degree, the destructive kind of pain. But no book or movie can capture (echoes of “no ear has heard, no eye has seen, no mind conceived”) the constructive pain of grace, coming from the Word of God speaking a Word into His Spirit within us.

It’s difficult to put to words, obviously, but perhaps you’ll know what I mean. Tonight, exhausted but content, I looked in her eyes and they were her eyes, not (just) symbols of joy and peace. I held her hand and it was her hand. I beheld the moment as a moment granted a mortal, not something to be eschewed in favor of the “bigger” Idea of the Future or the Abstract or what have you. Standing still on the knife’s edge, feeling its ecstatic cut.

In that moment, there was forgiveness unearned; there was an understanding of what it really means to “Be still and know that I am God.” It was as though to say, “No, Michael, you haven’t earned it; you don’t deserve it; but I grant you this moment to behold, to enjoy. Will you hide behind self-deprecation or will you take My gift to you?” I partook.

I have never before been in a relationship where the mutually reciprocal love for/of God and for/of a lady were wholly separate but mutually edificial, one to another. I have never dared partake of a moment of grace in-time such as it was tonight, too frightened to feel the pain of Christ’s love, too proud to sacrifice the self-deprecatory “I’m unworthy” attitude.

Brothers and sisters, when we’re granted the grace of a moment, let us not fear the pain of His dying-on-the-cross love. “God desires to give good gifts to His children” (Mt 7, Lk 11).