day 25

I believe, the faithful could be hiding in places I know not of.
Perhaps, they have already gone to heaven, leaving us poor souls vying for places no longer available.
Perhaps, they could not reach us, cursed with dumbness they suffered for having their names written in blood.
Logocentricism's preoccupation seems to suggest that the Word is dead; a done deed. I cannot be dead certain.

Instead, I could sense the coarseness of my skin that reminds me of my perpetual presence that could, in a swift and accidental moment, be taken away from me; at least biologically speaking.
Of course, there is nothing biological of the things that we speak of in abstract. The attraction of certain debates lies in their inexplicability. We say what we can imagine, replacing the unfathomable; making visible the invisible.
Perhaps, biology seems equally abstract to me. I cannot see and observe cells splitting and viruses destroying. The whole sphere of our existence is so complex and unfathomable by mere human comprehension that I cease thinking about these questions.
Let us return to the first statement.

I believe, the faithful could be so quiet, that their passive inactivity is a resistance to this world, so profoundly silent that it is oppressive.
The priest's engraved laws are not oppressive.
The rituals repeated infinitely are not oppressive.
The incitements of prosperity doctrines are not oppressive.

The cameras capturing every image of us are not oppressive.

It is the absolute non-representation of the faithful that is oppressive.

I cannot find them.
I cannot know them.

I cannot see them.

I cannot hear them.

It is as if they disappear without a trace, even if they are supposedly known, translated, repeated and preached all over again as saints, apostles, prophets, and the voices of yester-years.

Faithful, who we think we know.

There is one concept that I cannot understand.
Everytime I try to measure it, it immediately escapes me.

Faith.

I cannot understand how one can preach of absolute goodness.

One speaks of the Gift.

One writes of the Gift.

The gift of salvation has a precursor to the actuality of salvation.

That is to suggest that we are already cursed; or we are in need of saving.

You give, but in giving, you sacrifice my humanity; my finitude that makes me all so human.

I muse, again:

You give, but in giving, I am no longer the former self; I sacrifice myself to be less of myself in order to be more of someone else.

You give, but in giving, I know that I have to be given unto; without asking, You give, what I am in need of but know not of until You give.

This gift, is such a double-edged sword.

To receive the gift, you are saved.
to reject the gift, you are cast away.

I cannot explain this paradox.

It is an aporia that remains the most elusive of all paradoxes.

But let us return to something more fundamental, which is the absolute mistrust I have of my humanity.
But that is precisely why I trust to not trust myself, that I can in some sense, reach out to the gift in its duality.

I am oppressed.
and yet, I am free.

In some sense, most of us do not acknowledge the oppression and pursue freedom.

Others seek diligently the almost ritualistic oppression to reach the infinite freedom that is eternal salvation.

Whatever our purposes may be, there is never a way that is narrow enough to encompass the duality.

But is this duality essential?

The essential and fundamental observation I can safely make is my own subjective human experience.

And I know that, one is always capable of faith in this realm.

It almost comes without thinking.

Or perhaps, it does come with thinking, but one does not know exactly how and why we must think of faith.

You believe, as you go to bed, that you will wake up the next day.
you believe, as you think, that you should be able to think of the object in the manner useful to you.

You believe, that what you speak should in some sense be understood.

You believe, you are alive, since you are conscious of your existence.

I'm not absolutely sure.

To believe is really to be beyond that pain that haunts me, safe in the knowledge that I can believe what I believe.

But believe me, I don't know myself.

And it is because of this ambivalence that makes me positively sure that faith is a human principle and act.

It is the last given gift to us that makes us almost divine.

And yet, it is this faith that makes me so vulnerable and capable of failing and falling.
What is the worth of faith if it fails you?

Faith attempts no such thing.
Faith instead demands something so simple and deep of us that I cannot describe it adequately.
My feeble attempt is to just suggest that faith demands our surrender of life and death as a concept.

Instead, faith demands that you die each day such that the struggle is not a objective experience in which you can reason, but to die is to find no word to say, when all that could be said has already been said and done.
you find absolutely nothing to say to the burning bush.

You hide.

With Him.

As if the will of the world could strive in all ecstasy and euphoria to be what she desires and yet she will not be able to seduce the faithful.

I believe that - where the faithful dwells, there will be no towers and universal language. There will only be diversity and ambuigity that remind us of how small we are.

It isn't even about how abstract ideas.
There are no Platonic ideas or materialism.

There will only be silence, in which you wait faithfully for the trumpets of glory.

But it is not glory the faithful seek.
It is not even about christmas trees or passion plays.

The real passion that moves me, breaks me,

is the Gift, the blood on the void that is nothing, which nothing came out of nothing and the Word was the beginning right through to the end.

I am almost ready to speculate that the first Word God uttered was

Silence.

so quiet that it hurts.

like the tomb that is empty.

like the Second coming on the white horse with a wail of divine punishment.

obliteration at its most divine best.

I wouldn't know.

But I know that the Word is blood, flesh blood that begins the body.

Do not slit your wrist.
That blood is precious.

It is deeper than the ocean.

It is in the air.

It is in the water.
your father's blood.

your father's father's blood.

Add the blood of every human that once lived, is living and will live together.
I am sure, that is as deep as hell and heaven.

There are too many words in the world.
So I am tempted to talk about the Word as the dried blood that will never be represented again.

It is the Word that evaporated and never to be seen again.
And yet, this Word is imprinted in us; the mark of faith.
I wouldn't know.

But imagine, how the blood dries up when we die.

As if the Word left us.
All I can have faith of, is that the drying of my blood in future, would disappear forever

because the Blood that I want left in me, is the eternal Blood that faith has donated to me.

The book is finished. I am finished.

And no other book needs to be written (with blood).

Anything else written (including my passages) is nonsense.
(I'm not making sense)