I Want for Nothing

“I do not desire The Captaincy. 

I am much more content with my scientific duties. 

And, I am frankly content to be a lesser target...

But if it should befall me, my operatives would avenge my death – and some of them are Vulcans.”

— SPOCK w.  Beard.

Int. Sleeping quarters.

KRYTEN, RIMMER, 

LISTER, HOLLY and CAT 

are in various positions -- 

sitting, lying down, standing, on screen.

RIMMER: 

Well, I should'a' guessed.  

It was all a mighty bit too strange. 

I mean, actually meeting someone who didn't want to vomit all over me in complete loathing and disgust.

KRYTEN: 

I shouldn't take it so personally, sir; it's the same for all of us.  

We've all been made to feel foolish, 

used, chewed up and spat out.

LISTER:

Look, she didn't mean us any harm.  She can't control how WE see her.  

She's -- A Mirror for Our Obsessions.

KRYTEN: 

Holly, what did you see?

HOLLY: 

I didn't see anything.  

I don't think I've got any Desires —

Either that, or me screen was foggy.

Ultra

Freed from Desire.

Falling in Love?

That didn't even occur to him? 



What sort of Man is that?!

The Fire Eyes of The Paralysed Cripple BURN with Terrible Hatred and Sinister Intelligence --

"So we meet at last, eh? It was inevitable that we should clash!"

The Superman : Who are You?

“The Head [geddit?] of a Vast Ring of Evil Enterprises -- Men like Reynolds are but My Henchmen. You have interfered frequently with My Plans, and it is time for you to be removed!"

The Superman : If What You Say is True, then thanks for giving me the opportunity to capture you!"

"You may not find that task as simple as it appears on the surface. You  may possess unbelievable strength -- but you are pitting yourself against A Mental Giant!

I am known as "The Ultra-Humanite". Why? Because a Scientific experiment resulted in my possessing The Most Agile and Learned Brain on Earth! - Unfortunately for Mankind, I prefer to use this Great Intellect for Crime. My Goal? DOMINATION OF THE WORLD!!

Human Sacrifice

Dog & Cats

Living Together 

•!!! MASS HYSTERIA!!!•

 The Believer

If you had come out of Egypt, 

you would have been destroyed in The Desert with all those who worshipped The Golden Calf. 

Then let Him Destroy Me Now. 

Go ahead. 

Kill me. Here I am. Do it. 

Danny. Glad you came back. 

I wanted to take up that discussion we were having. 

I can't right now. 

About Abraham and Isaac. 

You remember what you said? 

That Isaac actually died on Mount Moriah. 

I've been thinking, 

maybe you were right about that. 

You remember what you said? 

That Isaac actually died on Mount Moriah. 

I've been thinking, maybe you were right about that. 

Died... 

and then reborn in The World to Come. 

You remember what you said? 

That Isaac actually died on Mount Moriah. 

I've been thinking maybe you were right about that. 

Died... 

and then reborn in The World to Come. 

Danny, stop. 

Where Do You 

Think You're Going? 

Don't you know? 

There's nothing up there. 

"...Your Only Son Whom You Love, Isaac, and go unto The Land of Moriah and offer him there as A Sacrifice on A Mountain that I will show you." 

So... 

"I will show you." 

It was A Test of Abraham's Faith, 

of His Devotion to God. 

It's not about Abraham's Faith. 

It's about God's Power. 

Abstraction. 

They're obsessed with 

Abstraction. 

"Kill Your Only Son, 

because I'm everything 

and you're nothing.

You're nothing." 

Jews. 

Judaism. 

They're still just Jews. 

Differences exist, of course. 

All right? 

But they're irrelevant, 

'cause for a Jew, 

His Jewishness dominates everything. 

And even the ones 

who renounce it, 

and who hate its Strength 

and want to cut it 

out of Their Hearts...

Purity

Giles: 

I cannot believe that you are Fool Enough to do something like this! 

Xander: 

Oh, no, I'm twice The Fool it takes to do something like this. 

Jenny keeps staring at him while she plays with her necklace.

Giles: 

Has, uh... 

Has Amy tried to reverse The Spell?

Xander: 

I get around Amy 

and all she wants to do 

is talk honeymoon plans. 

Jenny: 

(steps toward Xander) 

Rupert, maybe 

I need to talk to Xander alone. 

Giles: 

(pushes her back)

Do you have any idea how serious this is? 

People under a-A Love Spell, Xander, 

are-are Deadly. 

They lose all Capacity for Reason. 

BILL MOYERS: There are women today who say that the spirit of the goddess has been in exile for 5,000 years, since the events that you…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, not that… you can’t put it that far back. 5,000 years. She was a very potent figure in Hellenistic times in the Mediterranean. And she came back with the Virgin in the Roman Catholic tradition. I mean, you don’t have a tradition with the goddess celebrated any more beautifully and marvelously than in the 12th and 13th century French cathedrals, every one of which is called “Notre Dame.”

BILL MOYERS: What about the virgin birth? Suddenly the goddess reappears in the form of the chaste and pure vessel chosen for God’s action.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, in the history of Western religions, this is an extremely interesting development. The virgin birth comes in by way of the Greek tradition. When you read your four gospels, the only one with the virgin birth in it is the gospel according to Luke, and Luke was a Greek.

BILL MOYERS: And there was in the Greek tradition images, legends, myths of virgin births?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All of them. I mean, Leda and the swan, and Persephone and the serpent, and this one and that one and the other one. The virgin birth is represented throughout.

BILL MOYERS: This was not a new idea, then, in Bethlehem and…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: No. What is the meaning of the virgin birth? In India, there is this system of the kundalini, as it’s called, the idea of the centers, psychological centers up the spine. And they represent the psychological planes of concern and consciousness and action. The first is at the rectum, and this is that of alimentation. The serpent represents this, you know, a traveling esophagus going along just eating, eating, eating, eating. And all of us are — we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t eating. And then the second, the second center is at the sex organ center, and that’s the urge to procreation. The third center’s called, is at the navel, and this is where you eat and want to consume. And it’s not the alimentary eating, it’s the mastering and smashing and trashing of others, do you see? This is the aggressive mood.

Now, the first is an animal instinct, the second is an animal instinct, the third is an animal instinct, and these three centers are located in the pelvic base, do you see. The next one is at the level of the heart, and this is the opening of compassion. And there you move out of the field of animal action into a field that is properly human and spiritual. Now, in each of these centers there is a symbolic form. At the base, the first one, there is the form of the lingam and yeni, the male and female organs in conjunction. At the heart chakra, there is again the male and female organs in conjunction, but in gold. This is the virgin birth. It’s the birth of spiritual man out of the animal man. Do you understand?

BILL MOYERS: And it happens?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: When you are awakened at the level of the heart to compassion and to suffering with the other person. That’s the beginning of humanity. And the meditations of religion properly are on that level, the heart level.

BILL MOYERS: You say it’s the beginning of humanity, but in these Stories, that’s the moment when gods are born, the virgin birth, it’s a god who emerges from that chemistry.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah, and you know who that god is? It’s you. All of these symbols in mythology refer to you. You can get stuck out there and think it’s all out there, and so you’re thinking of Jesus and all the sentiments about how he suffered and all; what that suffering is, is what ought to be going on in you. Have you been reborn? Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation?

BILL MOYERS: Why is it significant that this is of a virgin?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, it is that the begetter is the spirit. It is a spiritual birth. The virgin conceived of the Word, through the ear.

BILL MOYERS: The Word came like a shaft of light.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes. And now, the Buddha was born from his mother’s side, at the level of the heart chakra. That’s a symbolic birth; he wasn’t born from his mother’s side, but symbolically he was.

BILL MOYERS: But the Christ came the way you and I come.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes, but of a virgin.

BILL MOYERS: Which is a power greater than…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And then, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, her virginity was restored. So nothing happened physically, you might say. It’s not a physical birth. It’s symbolic of a spiritual transformation, that’s what the virgin birth is about. And so deities are born that way who represent beings who act in terms of compassion, and not in terms of the lower three centers.

BILL MOYERS: If you go back into antiquity, do you find images of the Madonna as the mother of the savior child?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, what you have as the model for the Madonna actually is Isis, with her child Horus at her breast. This was the actual model for the Madonna symbol.

BILL MOYERS: Isis? Tell me that story.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: This is a prime myth in this period of the Goddess as the redeemer, the one who goes in quest of the lost spouse or lover, and through her loyalty and descent into the realm of death, recovers him. Isis and her husband Osiris were twins who were born of the goddess Nut. And their younger relatives were Seth and Nephthys, who were also twins born from Nut. Seth planned to kill his brother Osiris, and he took Osiris measurements secretly and had a wonderful sarcophagus built that would exactly fit Osiris. So there was a hilarious party in progress one time among the gods, and Seth trots in this sarcophagus, and he says, “Anyone whom this perfectly fits can have it as his sarcophagus.” And everybody at the party tried, and when Osiris got in, of course he perfectly fit. Just at that time, 72 accomplices come rushing out and they clap the lid on, strap it together and throw it in the Nile.

Now, this is the death of the god. Whenever you have a death of an incarnation, a god like this, you’re going to have a resurrection, you can wait for that. So he goes floating down the Nile and is washed ashore in Syria. And a beautiful tree grows up and incorporates the sarcophagus in its own trunk. So this is this wonderful tree with a glorious aroma. And the local king has just had a son born to him, and he is also at the same time going to build a palace. The aroma of this tree is so wonderful, he cuts it down and brings it in to be a central pillar in the main room of the palace.

Poor little Isis, whose husband has been thrown into the Nile, starts this wonderful quest for Osiris, So she comes to the place where the palace is, and learns of the wonderful aroma and she suspects this is Osiris. And she gets a job as nurse to the just-born little child. Well, she lets the child nurse from her finger. And she loves the little child, and she decides to give it immortality. So she does this by placing him in the fireplace in the fire, to burn away gradually his mortal body. But being a goddess she could keep that from killing him, you understand. And when that would happen, she would convert herself into a swallow, and fly mournfully around the pillar where her husband is.

Well, one evening the child’s mother came in to this room while this scene was in progress, saw her child in the fireplace, let out a scream, and that broke the spell, and they had to rescue the child from incineration. Meanwhile the swallow had turned into this gorgeous nurse, Isis, and the nurse gave an explanation of the situation, and she said, “By the way, it’s my husband that’s in that pillar there, and I’d he grateful if you could just let me take it home.” So the king came in and he said, “Certainly.” So he removes the pillar, gives it to Isis and it’s put on a barge. So on the way back to the Nile, she removes the lid, the cover of the sarcophagus and lies on top of her dead spouse and conceives of her dead spouse this is an image that occurs in Egyptian art all the time, out of death comes life and all this kind of business and when they land she in the papyrus swamp gives birth to her child Horus with the dead Osiris beside her.

This is the motif for the Madonna, actually, it becomes the Madonna. In Egyptian symbology, Isis represents the throne, the Pharaoh sits on the throne of Isis, as the child sits on the mother lap. And when you look in the cathedral of Chartres in the west portal, you will see the Madonna as the throne with the little child Jesus as the world emperor on her lap: That is the same image that’s come over.

BILL MOYERS: And you say the Christian fathers took this image?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Definitely, and they really say so. You read the second letter of Peter, and he says those forms which were merely mythological forms in the past, are now incarnate and actual in our savior. There was a mythology of the savior, the dead and resurrected god, and it’s associated with the moon, which dies and is resurrected every month. And you have the three nights dark, and you have Christ three nights in the tomb, and three days in the tomb, and all this kind of thing. It’s an intentional saying, that which was merely talked about is now fact. And no one knows what the date of Christmas ought to be, but it’s put on the date of the winter solstice, when the nights begin to be shorter and the days longer, the birth of light. And so there is an idea of death to the past and birth to the future in our lives and in our thinking all the time. Death to the animal nature, birth to the spiritual, and these symbols are talking about it one way or another.

BILL MOYERS: So when the…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And the goddess is the one who brings it about. The second birth is through the second mother. Notre Dame de Paris, Notre Dame de Chartres, our mother church, we are reborn by entering and leaving a church.

BILL MOYERS: And it doesn’t mean physically, it means…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Spiritually.

BILL MOYERS: That there’s a power that’s unique to the feminine principle.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It can be put that way. You can… it’s not necessarily unique to her, you can have rebirth through the male, also. But using this system of symbols, the woman becomes the regenerator.

BILL MOYERS: There’s that wonderful saying in the New Testament of Jesus. “In Jesus there is no male or female.” In the ultimate sense of things there is neither.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That would have to be. I mean, if Jesus represents the source of our being, we are all as it were thoughts in the mind of Jesus. He is the word that has become flesh in us, too.

BILL MOYERS: You and I would possess characteristics that are both male and female.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, actually the body does, And in that Yin-Yang figure from China, you know, in the dark fish or whatever you want to call it, there’s a light spot and in the light one there’s a dark spot. That’s how they can relate; you couldn’t relate at all to something that, of which you did not participate, into which you did not participate at all. That’s why the idea of God as the absolute other is a ridiculous idea, there could be no relationship to that which is absolute other.

BILL MOYERS: The question arises, in discussing the male-female principle, the virgin birth, the spiritual power that gives us the second birth. The wise people of all time have said that we can live the good life if we learn in fact to live spiritually. But how does one learn to live spiritually when one is of the flesh? Remember, Paul said, “the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.” How do we learn to live spiritually?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that was the in ancient times and in primitive times, the business of the teacher. He was to give you the clues to a spiritual life, that was what the priest was for. Also, that was what the ritual was for. A ritual can be defined as an enactment of a myth, by participating in a good, sound ritual, you are actually experiencing a mythological life. And it’s out of that that one can learn to live spiritually.

BILL MOYERS: These stories of mythology actually point the way to the spiritual life.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes. You’ve got to have a clue. You’ve got to have a road map of some kind, and these are all around us. They’re here.

BILL MOYERS: And the road map to which the goddess stories are pointing is the map of elevating the spiritual to an equality with the physical, so that you live in union with those two.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes. There you’ve come to the real sanctity of the earth itself, because that is the body of the goddess. When Yahweh creates, he creates the earth and breathes his life into it. He’s not there, she’s there. Your body is her body. And there’s that kind of identity.

BILL MOYERS: Well, that’s why I’m not so sure that the future of the race and the salvation of the journey is in space. I think it is well right here on earth in the body, in the womb of all of our being.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, it certainly is. I mean, when you go out into space what you’re carrying is your body and if that hasn’t been transformed, space won’t transform it for you. But thinking about space may help you to realize something.

BILL MOYERS: You certainly thought about space in this wonderful passage. You were describing a page out of the National Geographic Atlas of the World, but you read this and something happened to you.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: “What these pages opened to me was the vision of a universe of unimaginable magnitude and inconceivable violence. Billions upon billions, literally, of roaring thermonuclear furnaces scattering from each other, each thermonuclear furnace being a star and our sun among them. Many of them actually blowing themselves to pieces, littering the outermost reaches of space with dust and gas, out of which new stars with circling planets are being born right now. And then from still more remote distances beyond all these there come murmurs, microwaves, which are echoes of the greatest cataclysmic explosion of all, namely, the Big Bang of creation, which, according to recent reckonings, must have occurred some 18 billion years ago.”

That’s where we are, kiddo. And if you realized that, you realize how really important you are, you know, one little microbit in this great magnitude. And then out of that must come the experience that you and that are in some sense one, and that you partake of all of that

BILL MOYERS: And it begins here.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It begins here.

1999-2021

In a Palace of Dreams, 

A Queen stands alone. 

In Her Wisdom 

The One Chance 

to Save Her People. 

She is Strong.

She is Determined —

She is Their Only Hope.

“There are Things I Cannot Do.

I Cannot Watch while People Suffer, 

I  Cannot Sit when Something Must Be Done, 

I Cannot Judge Those Who are Different. 

There are Things I Cannot Do —Run, Hide, Ignore. 

There are Things I Cannot Do.

But there are certainly 

Things I WILL Do."

Youssa People Gon'a Die..?

I don't know.

Gungans get pasted too, eh?

I hope not.

Gungans no dyin' without A Fight.

Wesa warriors.

Wesa got A Grand Army.

....dat's why you no liken us, mesa tinks.

This is the Penguin edition of Shelley, 

which was edited by a very fine lady of letters, 

a very nice Tory lady called Isabel Quigley. 

She says in her introduction that 

“No Poet better repays cutting [laughter]. 

No great poet was ever less worth reading 

in his entirety than Shelley.”

George Lucas Responding To Prequel Haters

Q. : How worried are you --

that The Critics 

are not going to Like! 

this new movie....?

A. : Not worried at all -- they haven't liked any of them, really.... 

And they especially haven't liked the last two, so.... It can't get any worse.

“….and what that came out of was…

….there is a group of “fans”, of the films - 

That Don’t LIKE Comic Sidekicks.

They Like the films to be tough, and like Terminator, and y’know, be real Guy Movies —

And they get  very, very upset  — and very opinionated — about anything that has anything to do with being Childlike — and 

The Movies are for CHILDREN, 

but they don’t want to admit that — 

Or, they don’t want to have Comic Sidekicks in these movies.

…..and in the first movie, they 

absolutely HATED Artoo and Threepio.

Now, Jar-Jar’s getting accused of the same thing.”

— George Lucas

Boss NASS : 

Yousa cannot bees hair.

This army of Mackineeks

up dare is new weesong.

Master QUI-GON : 

A Droid Army is about 

to attack The Naboo.

We must warn Them.

Boss NASS :

Wesa no like da Naboo.

(CLICKS TONGUE) 

Da Naboo tink day so smarty --

Day tink day brains so big.

Obi-Wan Kenobi :

Once Those Droids 

Take Control of The Surface,

They Will Take Control of You.

Boss NASS :

Wesa no tik so.

Day not know of uss-en.

Obi-Wan Kenobi :

You and The Naboo form

A Symbiont Circle.

What happens to one of you

will affect The Other --

You must understand this.

Boss NASS :

Wesa no carrrre-nn

about da Naboo.

Fear is The Path 

to The Light Side

Fear leads to Courage

Anger leads to Discipline

Hate leads to a Love of Virtue

Johnny-5

“GOD is Love,” says St. John. 

When I first tried to write this book I thought that his maxim would provide me with a very plain highroad through the whole subject. I thought I should be able to say that Human Loves deserved to be called Loves at all just in so far as they resembled that Love which is God. The first distinction I made was therefore between what I called Gift-love and Need-Love. The typical example of Gift-Love would be that love which moves A Man to Work and Plan and Save for The Future well-being of His Family which he will die without sharing or seeing; of the second, that which sends a lonely or frightened Child to its Mother’s Arms.

There was no doubt which was more like Love Himself. Divine Love is Gift-love. The Father gives all He is and has to the Son. The Son gives Himself back to the Father, and gives Himself to the world, and for the world to the Father, and thus gives the world (in Himself) back to the Father too.

And what, on the other hand, can be less like anything we believe of God’s life than Need-Love? He lacks nothing, but our Need-Love, as Plato saw, is “the son of Poverty.” It is the accurate reflection in consciousness of our actual nature. We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves.

I was looking forward to writing some fairly easy panegyrics on the first sort of love and disparagements of the second. And much of what I was going to say still seems to me to be true. I still think that if all we mean by our love is a craving to be loved, we are in a very deplorable state. But I would not now say (with my master, MacDonald) that if we mean only this craving we are mistaking for love something that is not love at all. I cannot now deny the name love to Need-love. Every time I have tried to think the thing out along those lines I have ended in puzzles and contradictions. The reality is more complicated than I supposed.

First of all, we do violence to most languages, including our own, if we do not call Need-love “love.” Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience. If you begin by flouting it, it has a way of avenging itself later on. We had better not follow Humpty Dumpty in making words mean whatever we please.

Secondly, we must be cautious about calling Need-love “mere selfishness.” Mere is always a dangerous word. No doubt Need-love, like all our impulses, can be selfishly indulged. A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing. But in ordinary life no one calls a child selfish because it turns for comfort to its mother; nor an adult who turns to his fellow “for company.” Those, whether children or adults, who do so least are not usually the most selfless. Where Need-love is felt there may be reasons for denying or totally mortifying it; but not to feel it is in general the mark of the cold egoist. Since we do in reality need one another (“it is not good for man to be alone”), then the failure of this need to appear as Need-love in .consciousness—in other words, the illusory feeling that it is good for us to be alone—is a bad spiritual symptom; just as lack of appetite is a bad medical symptom because men do really need food.

But thirdly, we come to something far more important. Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. But Man’s Love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love. 

This is obvious when we implore Forgiveness for our sins or Support in our tribulations. But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing — for it ought to be growing — awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose. 

I do not say that Man can never bring to God anything at all but sheer Need-love. Exalted Souls may tell us of a reach beyond that. But they would also, I think, be the first to tell us that those heights would cease to be true Graces, would become Neo-Platonic or finally Diabolical Illusions, the moment a man dared to think that he could live on them and henceforth drop out the element of need. 

“The Highest,” says the Imitation, “Does Not Stand without The Lowest.” It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast “I’m no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.” 

Those who come nearest to a Gift-Love for God will next moment, even at the very same moment, be beating their breasts with The Publican and laying their indigence before the only real Giver. And God will have it so. 

He addresses our Need-love: “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy-laden,” or, in the Old Testament, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.”

Thus one Need-Love, The Greatest of All, either coincides with or at least makes a main ingredient in Man’s Highest, Healthiest, and Most Realistic Spiritual Condition. 

A very strange corollary follows. 

Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least Like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?

This paradox staggered me when I first ran into it; it also wrecked all my previous attempts to write about love. When we face it, something like this seems to result.

We must distinguish two things which might both possibly be called “nearness to God.” One is likeness to God. God has impressed some sort of likeness to Himself, I suppose, in all that He has made. Space and time, in their own fashion, mirror His greatness; all life, His fecundity; animal life, His activity. Man has a more important likeness than these by being rational. Angels, we believe, have likenesses which Man lacks: immortality and intuitive knowledge. In that way all men, whether good or bad, all angels including those that fell, are more like God than the animals are. Their natures are in this sense “nearer” to the Divine Nature. 

But, secondly, there is what we may call nearness of approach. If this is what we mean, the states in which a man is “nearest” to God are those in which he is most surely and swiftly approaching his final union with God, vision of God and enjoyment of God. And as soon as we distinguish nearness-by-likeness and nearness-of-approach, we see that they do not necessarily coincide. They may or may not.

Perhaps an analogy may help. Let us suppose that we are doing a mountain walk to the village which is our home. At mid-day we come to the top of a cliff where we are, in space, very near it because it is just below us. We could drop a stone into it. But as we are no cragsmen we can’t get down. We must go a long way round; five miles, maybe. At many points during that detour we shall, statically, be farther from the village than we were when we sat above the cliff. But only statically. In terms of progress we shall be far “nearer” our baths and teas.

Since God is blessed, omnipotent, sovereign and creative, there is obviously a sense in which happiness, strength, freedom and fertility (whether of mind 01 body), wherever they appear in human life, constitute likenesses, and in that way proximities, to God. But no one supposes that the possession of these gifts has any necessary connection with our sanctification. No kind of riches is a passport to the Kingdom of Heaven.

At the cliff’s top we are near the village, but however long we sit there we shall never be any nearer to our bath and our tea. So here; the likeness, and in that sense nearness, to Himself which God has conferred upon certain creatures and certain states of those creatures is something finished, built in. Wha1 is near Him by likeness is never, by that fact alone, going to be any nearer. But nearness of approach is. by definition, increasing nearness. And whereas the likeness is given to us—and can be received with or without thanks, can be used or abused—the approach, however initiated and supported by Grace, is something we must do. Creatures are made in their varying ways images of God without their own collaboration or even consent. It is not so that they become sons of God. And the likeness they receive by sonship is not that of images or portraits. It is in one way more than likeness, for it is union or unity with God in will; but this is consistent with all the differences we have been considering. Hence, as a better writer has said, our imitation of God in this life—that is, our willed imitation as distinct from any of the likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or states—must be an imitation of God incarnate: our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the Divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the Divine life operating under human conditions.

I must now explain why I have found this distinction necessary to any treatment of our loves. St. John’s saying that God is love has long been balanced in my mind against the remark of a modern author (M. Denis de Rougemont) that “love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god”; which of course can be re-statead in the form "begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.” This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God.

I suppose that everyone who has thought about the matter will see what M. de Rougemont meant. Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. Its voice tends to sound as if it were the will of God Himself. It tells us not to count the cost, it demands of us a total commitment, it attempts to over-ride all other claims and insinuates that any action which is sincerely done “for love’s sake” is thereby lawful and even meritorious. That erotic love and love of one’s country may thus attempt to “become gods” is generally recognised. But family affection may do the same. So, in a different way, may friendship. I shall not here elaborate the point, for it will meet us again and again in later chapters.

Now it must be noticed that the natural loves make this blasphemous claim not when they are in their worst, but when they are in their best, natural condition; when they are what our grandfathers called “pure” or “noble.” This is especially obvious in the erotic sphere. A faithful and genuinely self-sacrificing passion will speak to us with what seems the voice of God. Merely animal or frivolous lust will not. It will corrupt its addict in a dozen ways, but not in that way; a man may act upon such feelings but he cannot revere them any more than a man who scratches reveres the itch. A silly woman’s temporary indulgence, which is really self-indulgence, to a spoiled child—her living doll while the fit lasts—is much less likely to “become a god” than the deep, narrow devotion of a woman who (quite really) “lives for her son.” And I am inclined to think that the sort of love for a man’s country which is worked up by beer and brass bands will not lead him to do much harm (or much good) for her sake. It will probably be fully discharged by ordering another drink and joining in the chorus.

And this of course is what we ought to expect. Our loves do not make their claim to divinity until the claim becomes plausible. It does not become plausible until there is in them a real resemblance to God, to Love Himself. Let us here make no mistake. Our Gift-loves are really God-like; and among our Gift-loves those are most God-like which are most boundless and unwearied in giving. All the things the poets say about them are true. Their joy, their energy, their patience, their readiness to forgive, their desire for the good of the beloved—all this is a real and all but adorable image of the Divine life. In its presence we are right to thank God “who has given such power to men.” We may say, quite truly and in an intelligible sense, that those who love greatly are “near” to God. But of course it is “nearness by likeness.” It will not of itself produce “nearness of approach.” The likeness has been given us. It has no necessary connection with that slow and painful approach which must be our own (though by no means our unaided) task. Meanwhile, however, the likeness is a splendour. That is why we may mistake Like for Same. We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred.

Our Need-loves may be greedy and exacting but they do not set up to be gods. They are not near enough (by likeness) to God to attempt that.

It follows from what has been said that we must join neither the idolaters nor the “debunkers” of human love. Idolatry both of erotic love and of “the domestic affections” was the great error of nineteenth-century literature. Browning, Kingsley, and Patmore sometimes talk as if they thought that falling in love was the same thing as sanctification; the novelists habitually oppose to “the World” not the Kingdom of Heaven but the home. We live in the reaction against this. The debunkers stigmatise as slush and sentimentality a very great deal of what their fathers said in praise of love. They are always pulling up and exposing the grubby roots of our natural loves. But I take it we must listen neither “to the over-wise nor to the over-foolish giant.” The highest does not stand without the lowest. A plant must have roots below as well as sunlight above and roots must be grubby. Much of the grubbiness is clean dirt if only you will leave it in the garden and not keep on sprinkling it over the library table. The human loves can be glorious images of Divine love. No less than that: but also no more—proximities of likeness which in one instance may help, and in another may hinder, proximity of approach. Sometimes perhaps they have not very much to do with it either way.