the day after yesterday
Dear Moira,
You do have The Apostle wrong, I believe, but I wouldn’t trust me to get him right.
But then, who can? You know my favorite quote on the subject: “Only Luther understood Paul, and he misunderstood him.”
But in this case (Romans 8:28), it doesn’t all work out for the good for those whom God loves; I wish it did. Instead, it works out for those who love God, and that means almost certainly for those who love God truly, aright. And that is The Apostle himself and those that understand him (period). I wouldn’t, then, go to him, to Paul, to find consolation.
And I wouldn’t go to him to find out what foolishness really means. Paul may write of the foolishness of God (as in 1 Corinthians 1:25), but he doesn’t understand it unless he knows far more about Jesus of Nazareth than I think he does. Or, unless he cares more for Jesus of Nazareth than he ever demonstrates in any of the letters. For the foolishness of God (in my opinion)* is not found in the triumph of the Christ but in the ill-designed and poorly implemented Jesus experiment.
So, I like “philomorer.” (I also like “seesay.”)
I still (decades later) can’t seem to get organized. So, before I sat down to write you, I found myself surfing the web for planning calendars. “I need to play,” I was thinking, “And I can’t do it by myself. I need help.” A crutch, I was thinking. Then: Not that a crutch can help if you have no legs. Maybe you could swing at someone going by, knock them down, and steal one of their legs — though then, to be fair, you would have to come up with a plan to share the crutch. Or, you could steal both of their legs. I know that sounds harsh; it’s why I was only going to steal one to begin with. Besides, now you have both, where do you go? You could steal their map! But if it has a route traced on it, it’s their route, not yours. Besides, assuming you do know how to read a map — because I do — if you don’t know where you are on the map, it’s useless, right?
You’re right, that’s what I do say, all the time, that it doesn’t all make sense. I’m never sure that any of it makes good sense. But that’s not the result of a position I have come to philosophically. It’s the result of a philomor(on)ic temperament: I have been dazed and confused from an early age, maybe from the first time Aunt Margaret asked me why I did something she didn’t like, and I didn’t know why. She would then always explain to me why it was a wrong, illogical, or stupid thing to do. But I couldn’t explain why it had made sense at the time. Because it hadn’t. I’d just did it.
And I’d do it again if I could remember what it was.
Love, Ted
08.10.21
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Illustration: “Dutch Oven.” Cell phone drawing by mel ball.
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