I wonder if you think that I love an image or idea of you, and not you, yourself. And maybe not just me, but anybody. Do you think that, if you open yourself up; let your heart out of that casket where it's locked away safe from the dangers of love, that you won't be able to live up to the expectations of the one who loves you, because he only knows the outside that you present, or the idea he's formed of you? That he'll be disappointed when he sees your flaws, or finds out about your sins? Or that he'll judge you when he learns that one deep, dark, secret thing of which you're most ashamed?

I do spend a lot of time and words praising you and your many virtues. And I get how it may sound hyperbolous or exaggerated, or even unrealistic, and how it might feel like it's too much to live up to. But it's just the language of love. When I say you're perfect, what I mean is that you're perfect to me, and for me. When I say you're the most beautiful woman in the world, what I mean is that you're my favorite--that of all the faces of all the women in the world, I like yours the best. I don't love you because I think you're the most beautiful; I think you're the most beautiful because I love you. If I go on about the luminous honey-gold of your hair and the sparkling aqua-blue of your eyes, it's not that I love you because honey blonde and aqua blue are my favorites: it's that they're my favorites because that's what yours are. To be honest, I used to prefer brunettes. My "type" was very different from you; you changed it. If your hair was black and your eyes brown; if you were taller or shorter, more willowy or more buxom; if your skin was darker, if your face was different, then whatever you were would be what I love. If you, like most girls, look in the mirror sometimes and think that you're ugly, then I will love your ugliness. If you think you've put on weight, then I'll love your fatness. If you get sick and your hair falls out, then I'll love your baldness. When you get old, I'll love your oldness.

You see, it's not any of those things, nor your charm, your intelligence, your giftedness, your grace, or any other of the thousand things that I love about you that makes me love you. It's you. It's your essence; your you-ness. I love you because you are you, and no one else will do. There's a you-shaped hole in my soul, that no one else could ever fill. I love you because the Voice that said to the Universe "Be," and it was, said to my heart, "Love her," and I did. Or, to be more accurate, He said first, "Will you love her?" It wasn't against or in spite of my will: He gave me a choice. He spoke into my heart one day, as I was kneeling in prayer, and he brought your image before my mind's eye. He said (in my heart, not audibly), "I am not commanding you to love her; I am asking you if you will." And I said that I would. Then He said, "Are you willing to love her, no matter what?" And I considered a moment, then said again, "Yes." And that was that. I made a covenant with God to love you, and He created in my heart a love so strong, so deep, so true, that it cannot be broken or diminished by any means other than His action or my choice to refuse it. It has survived every attack that the enemy of our souls, and all the darkest parts of my own mind, can levy against it. It has survived your rejection and your anger. It has survived the scorn and ridicule of the world. It has survived the judgment and patronizing condescension of everyone I know. It has survived five years of loneliness and isolation. And it has not grown one iota less for all that: on the contrary, it is stronger now than it was when I first told you about it. Much, much stronger.

I know that you're not actually perfect. Everyone has moods. Everyone has flaws. Everyone has sins. Everyone has that secret thing that they're afraid for anyone to know. God knows, I do: all the above, and more. I actually do see some of yours, and am prepared for the inevitable process of learning more, if we were together. But it doesn't matter. What I mean by that is not that I don't care, or that everything you do and are is right in my eyes. I'm not blind, or stupid, or a sap. What I mean is that none of it will make me not love you. I may not like some of it. I may even have a hard time dealing with certain things. But it won't stop me loving you: I'll work through whatever it is, with you, with God's help, and at the end love you even more. And hope that you do the same when you, inevitably, learn the things about me that you don't like.

Because what I really want from you, is just to be with you. What I desire is your presence in my life. Not some idea of what our lives could be, which I will be disappointed if we don't achieve. Just you, in my life, and to be a part of yours, wherever that takes us and whatever it turns out to be. Rich or poor, sick or healthy, in war or in peace, in hardship or in blessing, in grief or in joy. I would prefer rich, healthy, peaceful, joyful, and blessed; but I will take whatever comes, as long as it means being with you. I would rather be poor with you than rich without you. I would rather be sick with you than healthy without you; and if you were the one who was sick, then I would rather take care of you than live with another who was healthy. It's not any particular thing that I want; it's you. Just you. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.

"A delightful serenity diffused itself through my heart. I worshipped the magnificence of the God of nature  and I thought of you. These two sensations always arise in my heart in the quiet of a rural landscape  and I have often considered it a proof of the purity and the reality of my affection for you, that it always feels most powerful in my religious moments. And this is very natural  Are you not the greatest blessing Heaven has bestowed upon me?" 

-- Leigh Hunt

"I am not so sure that there are no fairies, and I am only too well aware that the best 'history stories' are not true."

-- Andrew Lang

Psalm 23: The Original Hebrew Melody Deciphered

This is an even more fascinating (and deeply spiritually moving) entry on the ancient music of the Bible. Here is an explanation of how the musical notation was deciphered, by the same musician and researcher quoted in my last post, Michael Levy:

"Following the tragic destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, the entire musical legacy of the Temple, both vocal and instrumental, seemed to be forever lost. However, the Masoretic scribes preserved (along with the biblical consonantal text itself) an ancient "reading tradition" dating back (according to themselves) to the Second Temple Era; and beginning about 1,200 years ago, they painstakingly copied that tradition out in exacting detail. The Masoretic Text is still the oldest complete copy of the Hebrew Bible that we have.

Part of the 'reading tradition' the Masoretes preserved was a series of 'accents' ("Te Amim"), which occur throughout the entire Tanakh (Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim) in two systems. The Masoretes did not understand the meaning or the monumental significance of these accents, and for centuries, there have been countless theories as to what their original meaning was.

Most theories have started from the assumption that they were to emphasize precise points of grammar in the text. Leaving aside all these debates, Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura concentrated solely on finding a musical meaning of these "accents".

Through countless experiments and a laborious process of irrefutable verification (using the Hebrew verbal phrase structure itself as her 'Rosetta Stone'), she finally realized that all these symbols represent musical tones: the 7 degrees of a heptatonic scale, or else ornaments of one to three notes! The accents, were, in fact transcriptions of hand gestures - which formed the ancient musical notation system of cheironomy, whereby a specific hand gesture represented a specific change in the pitch of a melody."

"The astonishing significance of Haik Vantoura's musical accomplishment , if true, is that not only does Haik Vantoura reveal to us such magnificent music of such incredible spiritual worth, but in doing so, she also revealed to us the only surviving example so far known, of the world's complete art music - written maybe 1000 years earlier than the 2000 year old ancient Greek 'Skolion of Seikilos'; the only other piece of written music from antiquity to have survived completely intact, in its complete, original form."

Of course, it is not certain that this hypothesis is correct, and there's really no way that it ever could be. But in addition to being a perfectly logical and self-consistent theory, the fact that it actually works, musically, is, in my opinion, a very strong argument in its favor. And it also is consistent with the best explanation of other anomalies which appear in the Psalms and do not appear to be part of their actual poetry, such as the frequently-found "To the director of music" and the even more frequent appearance of the word "selah", whose meaning is unsure. The best theory of its meaning is "pause", and it is thus translated in the Septuagint which, in my view, is fairly conclusive, since that translation was made during the second temple period by learned Jewish rabbis from Jerusalem. And that would, as I said, coincide perfectly with the existence of musical notation in the text.

What did Ancient Biblical Music sound like?

From the musician, Michael Levy: "Another track from my album "Lyre of the Levites: Klezmer Music for Biblical Lyre" which hopefully demonstrates my hypothesis, that the ancient musical modes still heard today in traditional instrumental Jewish music (klezmer) fit the 10 strings of a modern evocation of a Biblical lyre (kinnor) so perfectly, that just maybe, these very same distinctive scales may well have had their ultimate origins on the 10 strings of the original Biblical kinnor itself?"

This is fascinating. Well, to anyone with an interest in ancient music and/or Biblical history, anyway (guilty on both counts). In case you didn't catch it, the Jewish surname Levy means "Levite", so the musician/scholar is an actual descendant of the Levites of Israel, who were in charge of the music at the Temple.

Thoughts on not returning to school

It is clear to me now that the purpose of my attempt to return to grad school was not to actually go, but to expose and eliminate that deep root of emotional cancer which was sapping my strength and stealing my focus. Just as the true purpose of my attempting the Appalachian Trail was not to complete it, but to push me to my absolute physical limits, so that I could see and follow a new and better path in regard to my physical health. In both cases, what may have seemed on the surface to be a relatively minor issue was actually the key to identifying and addressing something gigantic and critical. It would be difficult to overstate how important it has turned out to me that I confronted and defeated those issues which surfaced when I had to expose my fear of rejection to those people. And now that I think about it, I see that it was actually better that they did reject me, because now I know that I have truly slain that giant, by the fact that it didn't devastate me or cause me to fall apart. I tried something, it failed, so be it. Let's move on to the next thing.

I should also add that there was a profound spiritual experience which accompanied this process. Or really I should say that the  external events were part of the spiritual process, which was, I think, the whole point of the thing, and the real source of the healing.

When I thought about going back to school, it wasn't really with the intention of taking a new course in life. It was more of an alternate road to the same destination. A lot of it was just a desperate need for a change, and for something tangible to do with my time and energy, after over a year of rest and recovery, which left me seven orders of magnitude beyond stir-crazy. But ironically, the process of preparing to sell my house and move, and make a change, forced me out of the rut that I'd sunk into by that long slough of nothing, and has now sparked a new energy and enthusiasm for my current life. I suppose that was another of the purposes of this episode: to shake me out of the lethargy which I'd been forced into by the previous one. 

Whether I pursued further formal education or not, as I said, my end goal is still the same. I have found my calling, and my vision is clear. Many traditional cultures had some variant of the Vision Quest, wherein a young man would go into the wilderness or in some other way isolate himself, fast or engage in some other ascetic practice, and meditate and pray until he received a vision for his life. When I entered into my time of fasting, abstinence, and isolation, it wasn't with the intentional goal of pursuing such a Vision Quest: it was simply to Find God. But a vision for my life was one of the things that came out of it. 

The vision I received came in the form of a dream. In it, I was exploring an ancient, abandoned church--the former temple of some long-dead order of chivalry, like the Templars. It had been the site of a fight, when the knights had been arrested and the order disbanded, and the place had been empty ever since, so that all its treasures and relics were intact. I found a phial which had been shattered, but the oil it had contained was still standing wet on the floor, and when I held the torch I was carrying close to examine it, the oil caught fire.

The ancient church in this vision is the ancient faith: the Christianity of the Fathers, the Apostles, the Creeds, and the Councils, which I have been exploring and discovering for years. The oil from the shattered phial is the Holy Spirit. What this means is that my vision is to try and bring the ancient faith to life--that is, to Zoe, to the Life of the Spirit. This is akin to the way that good musicians devoted to Early Music bring that music to life in their performances: their goal is not to be stuck in the past or to eulogize something dead, but to breath a new life into it, so that others can experience and appreciate its beauty and power. Bad musicians play ancient music in a way that it feels dead, like a dusty artifact from a museum storage room. Like those terrible old-school opera singers who stand like a statue with their hands clasped in that weird circle thing, stony, expressionless faces, and way, way too much vibrato as a substitute for any real emotion in their music--the kind of singers who make people hate opera. And much of the religion which tries to be faithful to the ancient traditions suffers from the same disease: it feels dead, lifeless, dusty, dull, and powerless. And entirely foreign and inaccessible to the majority of moderns. So what I want to do is twofold: to help those Christians who have a real passion and life for the Lord discover the treasures of the ancient faith; and to help those Christians who have the treasures of the ancient faith rediscover the life--the fire of the Spirit of God. In other words, to help others find the way to the kind of very real, very deep relationship with God that I have found. The means of doing this will be my writing and, perhaps, at some point, speaking or teaching.

So the question was never where I was going, just how I was going to get there. I opened myself up to a path and explored it, and it didn't work out. So I'll try another.

Aside from that, all I really want out of life from this point forward is to find the hidden treasures, the good and the beautiful which remain here and there in the endless wasteland of modernity; and to do some good in the world, in whatever way I am able.

The Real Ten-Second Tom

I've always loved the move 50 First Dates: in case you haven't seen it, it's about a man who falls in love with a woman with a form of amnesia such that she forgets every night everything that happened to her that day. And so, he has to get her to fall in love with him all over again, every day.

I always thought, though, that the premise was a bit far-fetched; I couldn't see how that type of brain injury could be real. Especially when they go to the hospital and meet Ten-Second Tom.

But it turns out it is real. This man's memory gets wiped blank every seven seconds.

His and his wife's story is simultaneously heartbreaking and inspiring. And their love is beautiful and humbling.

"Never get on the bad side of small-minded people who have a little authority."

from the movie Gifted