Friday, November 25, 2005

[255.1] RISKY HOPE, NOT DEADLY CERTAINTY

A modern Jewish poet, whose name eludes me for the moment, once versified to the effect that "where we are right, no flowers grow". The tendency of the religious imagination (so different to the sanctified imagination) to wish to 'know it all', to revel in a 'correctess' that knocks others down, is not a sign of faith but its denial. Rather than trusting in the God whose transcending of our limitations is given in the passionate brokenness and vulnerability of flesh, history and textuality, it substitutes a rationalist idea of a god who is the final justification of our version of being. The God of Jesus is the one who confounds this crucifying logic by absorbing it and living beyond it.

(Cartoon via Weary Pilgrim. I used to own a poster where Snoopy sagely observes, "the world can't end today, because it's already tomorrow in some countries.")

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