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How Do You Understand a Book?

How do you understand a book? The most obvious answer is: “Ask the author,” — if they are still available, that is.

Once, Vissarion Belinsky, a Russian literary critic, asked Nikolai Gogol, the author of Dead Souls, about the meaning of his famous play The Government Inspector. Belinsky and the Russian intelligentsia in the mid-19th century interpreted it as a scathing social satire exposing the corruption and moral decay of the Tsarist regime.

To his utter amazement, Gogol’s own interpretation was quite different. He said he had written this story as a mystical parable about what awaits the soul at the Last Judgment. If the soul is “dead,” the “government inspector Khlestakov” — one’s inexorable conscience — will appear out of nowhere and expose the soul’s pettiness and vanity when it least expects it.

Belinsky was outraged and wrote Gogol an angry letter, accusing him of misinterpreting his own story. According to Belinsky, Gogol turned away from the truth of life and toward preaching church sermons.

When I first read this amusing anecdote, it was a revelation. Most of the Soviet-era films and theatrical productions of The Government Inspector that I had seen emphasized Belinsky’s interpretation — largely ignoring Gogol’s own rendering.

Apparently, Gogol’s meaning was too large for the Soviet ideological machine to swallow.

Who was right? It would seem obvious that Gogol’s meaning is the correct one. However, Belinsky’s meaning is not wrong in and of itself. The story reads quite well on the horizontal level as well.

This is why Soviet ideology loved the play so much. The Government Inspector could be read as a scathing social satire of bureaucracy and Tsarism. But it is much, much more than that. By largely ignoring Gogol’s vertical dimension of meaning, Soviet ideology turned The Government Inspector into a parody — as it did with the works of many other classical writers.

But how is it even possible to take something so deep and meaningful and reduce it to something lesser that still reads and sounds “true enough”?

George MacDonald says:

One difference between God’s work and man’s is, that, while God’s work cannot mean more than he meant, man’s must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is a layer upon layer of ascending significance. — The Fantastic Imagination

If Gogol touched upon something true and eternal in his play, it would always mean more than he intended. Every authentic work of art contains layers upon layers of ascending significance. The problem arises when we mistake a lower layer for the only one. That is when we open the door to a profound distortion of reality.

The Lord of the Rings can certainly be read as a blockbuster, because every spiritual adventure contains elements of one. But Tolkien never meant it to be a blockbuster. To reduce his work to one is to mistake a lower layer of meaning for the whole and give it more significance than it deserves.

The Hobbit can certainly be read as a children’s story, but to reduce it to one is to ignore the vertical dimension of Tolkien’s thought. At a deeper level, it is a story about embarking on life’s ultimate adventure and discovering who you truly are along the way.

Each higher level in this ascending order of significance encompasses all the levels below it, while none of the lower levels encompasses all the layers above it. Only the highest level contains them all, because it opens up into the Logos itself.

If you want to explore how the Logos expresses itself through human art, check out my book:

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How Can I Get Rid of Comparison?

How can I get rid of comparison? I recently worked as an interpreter at an event in Houston for young “math stars”—children and their parents from all over the country who gathered to connect, share experiences, and learn about opportunities for developing mathematical talent.

One of the speakers, who talked about math camps, offered the parents a piece of advise:

“Be prepared for your child to reach a point at one of these math camps where they suddenly hit a wall, encounter someone better than them, and become overwhelmed by comparison.

This can bring up a lot of uncomfortable feelings. Emotions triggered by comparison can be devastating and destructive. We want to guide students to a point where all comparison ceases. Believe it or not, such a point exists.

It’s the point at which we discover wonder for ourselves. When we find wonder, we realize we no longer want to compare ourselves to others.”

I couldn’t help but think of René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire as the main source of human conflict and violence.

According to Girard, mimetic desire arises in the heart not simply because we want the same object as someone else, but because we see that person wanting it. We imitate their desire, and suddenly, what they want becomes something we want, too.

“Rivalry does not arise because of the fortuitous convergence of two desires on a single object; rather, the subject desires the object because the rival desires it.” — René Girard

We want something not because we want something but because we see someone else wanting it. Such is the nature of mimesis and a source of violence. Is there a way out?

We cannot get rid of imitation. Nor should we. Girard argues that whom we choose to imitate makes all the difference in the world. When we imitate people, we fall into mimesis and violence. When we imitate Christ, the model cannot become a rival to be defeated.

Why doesn’t imitating Christ give rise to mimetic rivalry? Because Christ desires what cannot be owned or possessed. He desires communion with Being itself. When we look at Him and the same desire awakens in our hearts, we cannot compete with Him for the possession of Being.

A math student can look at their teacher’s achievements and feel mimetic rivalry. Yet the moment they discover the wonder of their own journey, rivalry dissolves, because Being is inexhaustible.

When you experience connection to Being, there is nothing to compete for. There is enough Being for everyone. Everyone who desires Being can experience Being in full.

Being does not diminish when someone discovers its wonder. It does not become less available for others when someone delights in it. We may envy a virtuoso who plays the piano beautifully, but that envy dissipates the moment we begin playing ourselves and discover the joy of music. Envy is incompatible with joy.

Whoever finds Being always finds it afresh. It is new every morning. The only way not to compare is to desire the Incomparable. Whether we explore mathematics, literature, philosophy, or music, the point is not to surpass someone else but to discover the inexhaustible wonder of Being for ourselves.

When our goal is to surpass, we cannot experience Being. When we experience Being, we cannot compare. Rivalry and violence cease when we imitate Christ’s desire of connection to Being.

We begin to see that whatever aspect of Being others delight in does not diminish our own delight in it. On the contrary, our delight is augmented!

Suddenly, we see all these delights enriching one another and creating a kind of symphony in which every voice is needed.

So, at the end of the session, the speaker fittingly concluded:

“Do not seek achievements; stoke the fire. Do not desire success — find joy.”

If you are interested in the topic of joy that awakens desire and motivation, check out my book:

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What is the Void in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion

What is the Void in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion? In The Silmarillion creation myth, Tolkien speaks of the Void, which he later calls Kúma.

Kúma is a Quenya term for the Void, which means the Night without form or time in which the world was set.

The Void is the Outer Darkness, a region devoid of the Flame Imperishable. But it is not a physical space. It is an existential reality symbolizing the absence of the Secret Fire that makes all things alive.

Yet, Melkor — the Satan of Tolkien’s world — goes often into the Void to seek the Flame Imperishable. Why? Because he craves to “bring into Being things of his own,” which would be separate from the Music of Ilúvatar. But he cannot find the Flame, because it is with Ilúvatar.

What happens in the soul when it cuts itself off from the Great Music? It plunges into the Void. Feeling its own consuming emptiness, it seeks to create something separate, something outside itself that might fill it from without — but it cannot.

The Void symbolizes the existential reality where the empty soul goes to to fill its own emptiness. But it cannot. All attempts to fill the inner void from within the Void are doomed. No void can be filled from within the Void.

We all seem to know that.

Tolkien conceived The Silmarillion in 1917, while on sick leave during the First World War. Christopher Tolkien recalled that his father began The Silmarillion “in army huts, crowded, filled with the noise of gramophones.”

In hindsight, Tolkien realized that the war had pushed him to imagine a world of beauty and wonder beyond the Void into which humanity was plunging. Yet, the Void doesn’t equal evil. It is the Absence of the Flame Imperishable — the Outer Darkness.

Amid the outer darkness of the trenches of World War I, Tolkien sensed most acutely that there was only one power capable of filling the Void: the Music of the Ainur.

“…and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.” — The Silmarillion

The inner void cannot be filled from within the Void. It is only filled from beyond itself — by “the music and the echo of the music.”

And then, lo and behold, what was empty is suddenly filled to overflowing. The Void itself is not void. If our inner void is filled but a little, it is no longer void. Something has entered it. An echo of some unnamable Beauty, which is also a call.

To Melkor, the Void became his doom. In the end, he was cast into the Outer Darkness — the endless roaming, forever seeking what he cannot find. For Tolkien, however, the Void became a mighty amplifier of the “echo of the Music.”

No problem — whether existential, political, or relational — can be solved from within the Void. When we feel empty, we begin roaming the Void, seeking relief, but we cannot find it there. It is not there. It is in the Great Music.

We must catch and amplify its echoes in any way we can. These faint echoes are strong enough to enter the Void, and then it is no longer void. The Walls of the Night have been pushed back.

In the trenches of World War I, while Tolkien was immersing himself in the Kalevala, he was catching the faintest echoes of the Music. And he caught them. The Kalevala fed his imagination. He caught the reverberating echoes of Heaven amid the hell of human making.

Later he confirmed that the stories

“arose in my mind as ‘given’ things… I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’.” — The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Interested in exploring how the inner void can only be filled by the Music of Ilúvatar?

I am developing this theme in-depth in my book:

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What Is the Best Way to Start a Day?

What is the best way to start a day? A person once asked a monk, “What is the difference between a monk’s day and an ordinary person’s day?”

The monk answered, “When does your day begin?”

The person replied, “When I open my eyes in the morning, of course.”

The monk said, “It should begin when you close your eyes in the evening.”

“If you begin your day by opening your eyes, your mind is inevitably filled with activity. But when you begin your day by closing your eyes, your mind is inevitably filled with the surrender of control.”

If we begin our day by recognizing that we control nothing, our experience of the day will taste vastly different from what it would taste like if we began by believing we have some control.

If we begin our day with poverty of spirit, we will reap the blessedness of the poor in spirit.

If we begin our day with richness of spirit, we will reap the curse of the rich in spirit.

The monk also added, “If we begin our day by spending one-third of it in complete passivity, our activity throughout the rest of the day will be blessed indeed.”

That is why the week begins on Sunday — the Sabbath — a day of rest and inactivity. Curiously, the English word “week,” from the Middle English weke and Old English wucu, means “a turning point in a cycle” — a point of breaking.

The week starts when I break — literally and figuratively. When I come to the end of myself and release all control. At that breaking point, I begin to resurrect — taste true blessedness.

The most blessed activity is born from the most blessed passivity. The most cursed activity arises from the absence of blessed passivity.

“The mind is most creative when it knows nothing.” — Eckhart Tolle

Waking up each morning is a resurrection from the dead. One-third of our day is spent in death: we let go, we break, we fall into nothingness, entrusting our spirits fully to Another.

Then, suddenly, this nothingness changes the taste of life. As Madame Guyon writes:

“In this state of Resurrection comes that ineffable silence, by which we not only subsist in God, but commune with Him, and which, in a Soul thus dead to its own working, and general and fundamental Self-appropriation, becomes a flux and reflux of Divine Communion.”

Every day and every week must begin with breaking, which is the only way to experience wholeness.

The taste of life always strikes us at a breaking point — when some unimaginable power pulls us out of sleep and opens our eyes to see the world anew.

On December 22, 1849, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother Mikhail about what he experienced after his mock execution:

“…no more than a minute was left me to live. I remembered you, brother, and all yours; during the last minute you, you alone, were in my mind, only then I realised how I love you, dear brother mine! Finally the retreat was sounded, and those tied to the pillar were led back, and it was announced to us that His Imperial Majesty granted us our lives.”

When we wake up in the morning, our death sentence has been revoked. We have been brought back from the dead. Suddenly, everything tastes new.

We look at our brother and feel a love we never knew before.

Read more about the taste of resurrection in my book:

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What Is the Best Definition of Reading?

What is the best definition of reading? About a year ago, my wife and I looked at the quiz questions our son had received at school about Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. We were shocked. The questions focused on almost everything except what Ray Bradbury’s book was actually about.

“What type of drug did the Mechanical Hound inject into Montag’s leg?” “How did Montag reach the ‘book people’ — by train, bus, or on foot?”

What does it matter?

I started looking for questions about the meaning of the novel, but I found none. They all focused on technical details that had little or nothing to do with the text’s deeper significance.

I am sure the school’s goal was simple — to test the students’ “knowledge” of the book. But such a test also reveals something about the way the modern mind understands “reading.”

Based on what the school was testing, reading is seen as gathering and retaining “data points.” But is this reading?

As I thought about it, I looked for the origin of the verb “to read.” It comes from the Old English verb rǣdan, which meant “to counsel, advise, or interpret the signs.”

For some reason, I thought of a passage from Matthew 16:1-4, where Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for asking Him to show them a sign from heaven:

“You know how to read the appearance of the sky, but you can’t read the signs of the times.” — (CSB)

Here, to read clearly means “to interpret the signs.” Many English translations use the word “discern” or “interpret” here. Ironically, the pharisees were asking Jesus for a sign from heaven when the sign from heaven was standing in front of them!

They could “read” the face of the sky — they could gather data points — but they could not read the signs.

This seems to be the disease of our time as well: we see signs everywhere, but we are unable — or unwilling — to see beyond the external sign to what is being signified. We take those signs for the ultimate reality as if gathering information about a book were the same as reading the book.

What does reading mean? It means rǣdan — interpret the signs. The point of Fahrenheit 451 is not in How did Montag reach the ‘book people’ — by train, bus, or on foot? but that they were “book people.” The point of the story is the encounter with books incarnated in people.

You can ask ChatGPT to gather all the data about the book and analyze it, but it is not the same as being suddenly struck by what lies beyond those “signs.” To read means to be struck by the meaning that comes from beyond what’s written. The meaning of the book is not in what is written but in what the written signs point to.

Any book is an invitation to go beyond the book. If I focus exclusively on gathering data points and convince myself that I am “reading,” I may miss the sign from heaven standing right before my eyes.

In Book 5 of the Odyssey, Poseidon’s storm destroys Odysseus’ raft. Odysseus struggles to make it to the land, but he is about to be hurled against the rocks. Suddenly, Homer says that Athena puts a thought into his mind: he should swim along the coast until he finds the mouth of a river, where he can safely enter the land.

As I listened to this episode in the audiobook yesterday, I thought: “Why would Homer say that Athena put this thought into his mind? Why not simply say, “Odysseus thought…”?

The answer came as if from the depths of the Mediterranean sea: “When you are drowning, you become highly sensitive to the voices of the gods. You are too poor in spirit to believe you can save yourself.”

This is not written in the Odyssey. It comes from beyond the text. It is something the Spirit impresses upon you. True reading is recognizing the writings of the Spirit upon your own heart.

What if reading means seeing what isn’t written?

Explore how to “interpret the signs from beyond” in my book Eleven Hidden Gems in the Works of the Inklings

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What Does the Quote “The Soul Becomes Dyed With the Color of its Thoughts” Mean?

What does the quote “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts” mean? The chief psychiatrist of the Rehabilitation Center “Unbroken” in Lviv, Ukraine, once said to the volunteers who wished to work 12-hour shifts:

“If you work yourselves to death for twelve hours a day, you’ll end up in the psychiatric ward as my patients.”

These people were driven by the most natural instinct we all feel in times of crisis — to prioritize duty over joy. When you see so much need and suffering around you, you think: “I will put off joy and first do what must be done.”

And yet, according to the Ukrainian philosopher Alexander Filonenko, this is a grave mistake. Those who make duty their first priority never truly fulfill it. Duty is never accomplished from a sense of duty. Those who try to “white-knuckle” adversity inevitably fail.

Interestingly, after the war began, bookstores in Ukraine quickly ran out of books by the Stoics. The common misconception about the Stoics is that they teach how to endure adversity through willpower. It is not true.

Stoicism is more about joy than willpower.

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.16

Stoicism is not so much about self-denial as about changing your thoughts. Stoics are not the stone-faced people. They’re those who actively work on changing their thinking.

“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of things.” — Epictesus

The only way to endure a crisis is to do the most counter-intuitive thing — prioritize joy over duty. The only way to survive hell is to keep enough visions of heaven before your eyes. Those who focus on fulfilling their duty will never fulfill their duty. Those who focus on joy cannot help but fulfill it.

What do war-injured people need the most? Medical care? Supplies? Prosthetics? “UNBROKEN” answers: beauty. Beauty is the only force that revitalizes the soul and helps the body heal. It is the only power that can lift a person from the ashes. That is why UNBROKEN invites orchestras, ensembles, and individual musicians to perform for patients right inside the rehabilitation center.

They have hosted the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Lviv National Philharmonic, held various concerts connected to veteran and wounded-soldier rehabilitation, and, in one 2023 performance, classical musicians played beside wounded soldiers. More continue to come.

To survive, one must thrive. Survival can never be achieved by aiming at survival. When our world crumbles, we must do the most counter-intuitive thing — turn our gaze to Beauty. Beauty is the only thing that truly “changes our thoughts.”

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius

What is the color of my soul today? It takes on the color of my thoughts — always. No war is won by endurance alone. It is won when I immerse my soul in the colors of joy and allow meaning to transform my thoughts.

Why does beauty matter when everything is falling apart?

The soul cannot live on duty. It needs something beautiful to look toward. Beauty does not distract us from suffering; it attracts us to something transcendent so we can thrive.

This is one of the questions I explore throughout my writing: how beauty, imagination, myth, and meaning can transform the way we see reality – and, in doing so, transform us.

Explore The Mystical Vision of the Inklings Series →

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What is the Symbolism of Sauron’s Lidless Eye?

What is the symbolism of Sauron’s lidless eye? According to Gandalf, Sauron can’t help but project his own inner logic onto everyone else.

“For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.”

He who desires power above all else will never understand the actions of someone who does not. He judges all hearts on the scales of his own malice.

Gandalf, who does not desire power above all else, possesses a different kind of wisdom — the wisdom of folly.

“Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy!”

But why is folly a veil before the eyes of the Enemy?

We never see things as they are; we see them as we are. Someone bent on power cannot truly understand someone who rejects a tool for gaining power. In his eyes, such a person is simply foolish.

Who in his right mind would refuse a means of achieving quick and certain success? Only someone who understands the mind of the Enemy. Sauron can see those who desire what he desires. But he cannot see those who reject power in the form of the Ultimate Power Tool.

Those who reject power become invisible to the Lidless Eye. “Folly” is the perfect cloak, hiding us from the Enemy’s gaze. The Lidless Eye is a metaphor for total surveillance.

As we drove through Houston yesterday, my son pointed to a surveillance camera by the side of the road — an ALPR, or automated license plate reader.

“What are they for?” he asked.

“Someone wants more control,” I replied.

“What for?”

“Power. If you can get more power, why wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah. It seems foolish not to.”

“Exactly. We need to become fools if we want to remain unseen by Sauron. He believes everyone is like him — that no one in their right mind would refuse tools designed to maximize power. But this makes us completely visible to the Eye.”

“What makes us invisible?”

“Humility. The forces of spiritual darkness cannot see humility. The less we use their ‘power tools,’ the less visible we become. Our folly becomes our cover — and true wisdom from above.”

Gregory of Nazianzus once wrote about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:

“This latter was the Tree of Knowledge; not, however, because it was evil from the beginning… nor was it forbidden because God grudged it to men… But it would have been good if partaken of at the proper time; for the Tree was, according to my theory, Contemplation, which it is only safe for those who have reached maturity of habit to enter upon; but which is not good for those who are still somewhat simple and greedy.” — The Second Oration on Easter

The sin of our forefathers was not that they partook of the fruit, but that they partook of it at the wrong time. God never grudged knowledge to humans, but He withheld it — just like we withhold matches from three-year-olds. He didn’t allow us to touch knowledge before the right time.

Tools are not evil in and of themselves. They become evil when we, in our simplicity and greed, refuse to wait for the “right time.” When we grasp for power, it becomes our undoing. When we wait for it to come at the right time, it becomes an instrument for good.

Power can only be given to the one who doesn’t need it. Ultimately, only a hobbit is strong enough to save the world. When you think you can, you can’t. When you think you can’t, you can.

Read more about Tolkien’s metaphors:

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Do The Valar Have Gender And Why?

Do the Valar have gender and why? In The Silmarillion, the Valar — the spirits of Ilúvatar through whom the visible world was made — are male and female. But how can spirits have gender?

Each Vala chose a bodily form, male or female, according to the “difference of temper they had even from their beginning.”

“But when they desire to clothe themselves, the Valar take upon themselves forms, some as of male and some as of female. For that difference of temper they had even from their beginning, and it is but bodied forth in the choice of each, not made by the choice, even as with us male and female may be shown by the raiment but is not made thereby.”

Since the Valar are described as “the offspring of Ilúvatar’s thought,” does this mean that divine thoughts possess an innate gender?

This seems to align well with the curious fact that, in many languages, words have grammatical gender. In Russian, for example, every noun has grammatical gender, and adjectives and past-tense verbs agree with it. A table (стол) is always masculine. A cat (кошка) is always feminine. And so on.

Even in languages that lack grammatical gender for nouns, such as English, gender is often implied. A ship, for example, is traditionally referred to as “she.” The sun is a “he.”

According to Tolkien, the Valar chose their “raiment” based on what had already been in them from the beginning. Their gender was bodied forth by their particular choice — not made by it. Gender seems to be an innate characteristic of God’s thought.

Divine thoughts are not neutral. They possess innate gender polarity — a potential for bearing fruit. It is this gender polarity, inherent in every thought, that engenders the current of life. The Valar’s gender corresponds to the kind of energy each of them brings into the world.

What is gender polarity? Gender polarity is a mode of God’s self-revelation in the world. God reveals Himself as the Trinity — One in Many, Unity in Multiplicity. He is not just Unity, and He is not just Multiplicity. He is a constant tension between oneness and otherness.

The Trinity is a never-ending dance between One and Many, Likeness and Otherness. The Persons of the Trinity are One and yet totally Other. When God brings Eve out of Adam, He creates the perfect Other. By becoming Adam’s “other,” she is like him and yet totally distinct from him.

The result is life-engendering polarity — a perfect reflection of the dynamic within the Trinity itself. Adam and Eve were to engender life just like the Trinity engenders life within itself. The Trinity engenders life as a tension between Oneness and Otherness.

Each Person of the Trinity exalts and glorifies the Other. Each makes the Other as distinct as possible. Yet the more distinct they become, the more deeply united they are. And the more perfectly one they are, the more fully they reveal their otherness. Life springs from this paradoxical union of oneness and otherness.

Oneness without otherness is sameness. Sameness is sterile. Only polarity between oneness and otherness is fruitful. Life is engendered wherever likeness and difference meet. To engender life, I need someone who is like me, yet not me.

Each thought of God is “gendered” — that’s why each divine thought/breath is fruitful. Each bears within itself a unique potential, a particular form of oneness and otherness. Heaven and earth are one, yet utterly other. Their union engenders life.

Even as I write these words, my own thoughts are “gendered” as well. If they are to give birth to meaning, I must catch how the seemingly disparate thoughts intertwine into one beautiful pattern. I must discover likeness within otherness, oneness in otherness, as I weave a tapestry of words from a palette of diverse impressions.

Gender is the mystery of divine fruitfulness. God is the Sower. He sows thoughts. And His thoughts are “gendered.” His thoughts are either seeds or wombs. Some are from heaven, some from the earth. Some carry male energy, some female.

Like the Valar in The Silmarillion, they enter the world to shape it and prepare it for the coming of the Firstborn. And so their great labors begin. The Valar saw that…

“…the Great Music had been but the growth and flowering of thought in the Timeless Halls, and the Vision only a foreshowing; but now they had entered in at the beginning of Time, and the Valar perceived that the World had been but foreshadowed and foresung, and they must achieve it. So began their great labours…”

Read more about The Silmarillion and other related topics:

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How Did C.S. Lewis Define Friendship?

How did C.S. Lewis define friendship? He writes:

“I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” — C.S. Lewis

Friendship is something we can live without but not something worth living without. If life is reduced to mere survival, there’s little value in life. Our bios — biological life — means very little without zoe: life in its fullness.

According to C.S. Lewis, to possess Zoe — true life — we absolutely need the things we can absolutely do without.

Friendship begins only when I encounter someone I have no need for in order to survive — and they have no need for me either. We become friends the moment I discover that they genuinely share my sense of wonder.

“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’” — C.S. Lewis

Philosophy, friendship, and art are not born of necessity but of wonder. We can do without them but life loses its zest. The paradox is this: to experience life as zoe, we must move beyond life as bios — beyond mere necessity. Zoe comes only to those whose mind is free from the cares of the world. Zoe is the fruit of rising above dutiful living.

Philosophy, art, and friendship do not survive in our hearts when our goal is survival. When we live under the shadow of necessity, philosophy, art, and friendship wither because they appear worthless.

To survive both physically and spiritually, we need things that give value to survival. Historically, philosophy, art, and friendship have flourished the most in the darkest of times.

Boccaccio began lecturing on the Divine Comedy in 1373, not long after Europe had been devastated by the Black Death. Many historians see this period as the dawn of the Renaissance. In dire straits, people deeply sense that bread is not enough for survival.

They instinctively reach out for the unnecessary things like philosophy, art, and friendship. They need a reason to live more than the means to live. Bios cannot give you a reason to live. Zoe can. Paradoxically, when people struggle simply to survive, they eventually discover that survival itself depends on something beyond survival.

After Frodo was wounded by the Black Riders, his friends carried him toward the Ford of Bruinen. He was slipping into the world of shadows. Cold, exhausted, and overwhelmed by despair, he struggled against the growing darkness. Yet something within him enabled him to resist evil. What?

“Frodo… had time to gaze ahead and to think. He recalled Bilbo’s account of his journey and the threatening towers on the hills north of the Road, in the country near the Trolls’ wood where his first serious adventure had happened. Frodo guessed that they were now in the same region, and wondered if by chance they would pass near the spot.”

As they drew near Trollshaws, Frodo found himself thinking more and more about Bilbo’s adventures. His hand was lifeless, his body was shivering with cold, and yet, the bright light of Bilbo’s stories flooded his mind with light. Finally, as they bumped into the three stone trolls, everyone recalled his family history and laughed.

“They all laughed. Frodo felt his spirits reviving: the reminder of Bilbo’s first successful adventure was heartening.”

Frodo would never have made it if his friends and family didn’t give him enough reason to live. Frodo’s resilience to evil was rooted in the most unnecessary things in the world, like friendship, philosophy, and art.

What is the mystery of friendship, philosophy, and art? All three arise from Wonder. A heart alive with Wonder is wonderfully alive. When crisis hits, we survive only by reaching for what lies beyond survival.

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Is God Defined in the Bible?

Is God defined in the Bible? As Sergei Averintsev, a Russian literary scholar, once wrote, in all of Scripture, there’s only one clear instance where Aristotelian logic “A=B” is used.

Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Faith equals confidence.

All the other instances of “this is that” are metaphors or similis: “This is like that.”

When Jesus says “I am the door,” He doesn’t mean “I equal the door.” He means “I am like the door.” The door is a metaphor of Jesus, not definition.

What is the difference between a metaphor an definition? Definitions seek to explain. Metaphors reveal what is hidden.

When we want to make something clear, we usually say: “Define this…” We rarely say: “What is it like?” Yet Scripture consistently favors metaphor over definition. Why?

Because definitions often miss the nature of reality. Reality is a sign. It points beyond itself.

Every door points to Christ. Every breath of wind points to the Spirit. Every human being is an icon of God.

Definitions try to make things clear, yet miss the point. The point is not what Kingdom of God is; the point is what it is like.

Only when we know what it is like, do we know what it is. The river rustling beneath my feet in Estes Park this morning is a mysterious sign. It is like something else.

What?

I must look for a metaphor, not a definition.

Today the river rustles with newness. Ever flowing, never stopping, always washing, always refreshing, never the same — it is the River of Life.

The river is the metaphor for life. Not simply as a flow of time, but as a never-ending flow of newness. You can never step into the same river twice. It’s always new.

In the same way, I have never seen this day before. I have never seen this sun, this mountain, this aspen. They are brought before my eyes by the River flowing from an invisible Source.

I have never before been baptized — immersed — into the River of Today. I have not yet been washed anew by this flow of invisible newness. But it’s coming. I must have eyes to see and ears to hear. The river of life is bubbling beneath my feet.

Every coming moment is pregnant with rebirth. Every moment rustles with metaphors and similies. The only way to know is to be reminded of likeness. The moment we know what something is like we know what it is.

The moment we define a thing, we reduce it to less than it is. The moment we are struck by a metaphor, reality opens itself to us.

When God says, I AM WHAT I AM, it’s not a definition, even though it looks like A=B.

“I AM WHAT I AM” is not a definition but a refusal to be defined.

That God is Being cannot be explained — it must be caught. Like a fish in the river of time. Like a trembling leaf on an aspen. Like the sleepy face of a child.

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