This essay is strong testimony along our pilgrimage to Bethlehem. So many good things to talk about:
The Incarnation makes visible “salvation as the gradual clarification of love.” This realization gets at it so nicely.
Love as life’s animation. Yes! The rocks and stones cry out in love. Augustine speaks with the earth and its creeping things, the sky and its birds, the heavens and their planets and hears from them that they are not his God. Marshall Sahlins recounts Augustine’s conversations and playfully (?) calls him a “pure animist.”
The Incarnation as “the unveiling of a love that sustains creation by allowing nearness without collapse and communion without control.” What a wonderful description of love’s private and public lives.
And this is a beautiful invitation into Advent’s dynamic: “Advent draws us into patience rather than control. Love does not announce itself with certainty or arrive by force. It asks only for room—room for freedom, surprise, and change. To wait in this way is not passive but attentive: a readiness to receive what we did not plan.”
By the way, I love Char. Arendt’s fascination with a line of his Leaves of Hypnos pointed me to him.
Your reading beautifully extends the essay’s claim that love animates all things—Augustine’s “animist” earth is a striking lens. I’m grateful for how you hear nearness without collapse as both cosmic and concrete. And yes—Char keeps reminding us that waiting is already a form of attention. Thanks!
This essay is strong testimony along our pilgrimage to Bethlehem. So many good things to talk about:
The Incarnation makes visible “salvation as the gradual clarification of love.” This realization gets at it so nicely.
Love as life’s animation. Yes! The rocks and stones cry out in love. Augustine speaks with the earth and its creeping things, the sky and its birds, the heavens and their planets and hears from them that they are not his God. Marshall Sahlins recounts Augustine’s conversations and playfully (?) calls him a “pure animist.”
The Incarnation as “the unveiling of a love that sustains creation by allowing nearness without collapse and communion without control.” What a wonderful description of love’s private and public lives.
And this is a beautiful invitation into Advent’s dynamic: “Advent draws us into patience rather than control. Love does not announce itself with certainty or arrive by force. It asks only for room—room for freedom, surprise, and change. To wait in this way is not passive but attentive: a readiness to receive what we did not plan.”
By the way, I love Char. Arendt’s fascination with a line of his Leaves of Hypnos pointed me to him.
Your reading beautifully extends the essay’s claim that love animates all things—Augustine’s “animist” earth is a striking lens. I’m grateful for how you hear nearness without collapse as both cosmic and concrete. And yes—Char keeps reminding us that waiting is already a form of attention. Thanks!