... A Less Than Perfect

There Is No Substitute For The Comfort Supplied By The Utterly Taken-for-granted Relationship.

I Think The Novel Is Essentially A Comic Form (tragedy Is For The Theatre), Not Meaning By That Full Of Jokes, But That It Is About The Absurd Detail Of Human Life, The Way In Which One Cannot Fully Understand What Is Happening. Life Is Muddle And Jumble And Ends Inconclusively, And When This Is Presented With Great Comic Art The Sorrows Of Human Life Can Be Truthfully Conveyed; One Is Moved By The Spectacle, And Feels That Something Truthful Has Been Told In A Magic Way.

Almost Any Tale Of Our Doings Is Comic. We Are Bottomlessly Comic To Each Other. Even The Most Adored And Beloved Person Is Comic To His Lover. The Novel Is A Comic Form. Language Is A Comic Form, And Makes Jokes In Its Sleep. God, If He Existed, Would Laugh At His Creation. Yet It Is Also The Case That Life Is Horrible, Without Metaphysical Sense, Wrecked By Chance, Pain And The Close Prospect Of Death. Out Of This Is Born Irony, Our Dangerous And Necessary Tool.

The Priesthood Is A Marriage. People Often Start By Falling In Love, And They Go On For Years Without Realizing That Love Must Change Into Some Other Love Which Is So Unlike It That It Can Hardly Be Recognized As Love At All.

It Is In The Capacity To Love, That Is To See, That The Liberation Of The Soul From Fantasy Consists. The Freedom Which Is A Proper Human Goal Is The Freedom From Fantasy, That Is The Realism Of Compassion. What I Have Called Fantasy, The Proliferation Of Blinding Self-centered Aims And Images, Is Itself A Powerful System Of Energy, And Most Of What Is Often Called 'will' Or 'willing' Belongs To This System. What Counteracts The System Is Attention To Reality Inspired By, Consisting Of, Love.