Through all the contradictions

Christ in Majesty from the Lorsch Gospels

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"The four animals thus signify men who recount the holy, saving riches of Christ."
(My translation of the inscription above. "Men" used because it reads "viros" and not "homines.")

There was definitely a "What??????????" response--from me; I cannot vouch for others--to Padre Mickey's naming me for the Manny (see, no respect, already). In my response to him, however, I wrote: "I give thanks that God is the fixed point around which all I am and all I experience dances."

This remains true, through all the contradictions, the gross impiety and the yearning for holiness. I rely on that fixed point and my relationship to it. I do not rely on myself, or hopes for human progress, or my chums for that deep certainty, though I do rely on them in countless subsidiary ways and in the faith that we are all grasped and held and cherished and assured by that same still point. Those who might think of me as a secular humanist (my conservative family, perhaps) thus miss the mark. If I believe in my fellow humans (and I do) it is because I profoundly believe that God believes in us. And I put far more weight on God's belief in us than in our belief in God.

So there, at the crossing point, in the center of the Medicine Wheel sits Christ enthroned. From each cardinal direction goes out a voice to proclaim the Word that all the world may hear God's eternal Word, God's eternal Yes.

If, in any sense, I am faithful to that Word and its proclamation, my life is well spent.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor
towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

—From T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” stanza II, in Four Quartets

My acrostic poem using the last line and a half of that passage is posted below (for any newcomers).
--the BB