That moment came

when words were smite

not messengers of life

So, I stopped the words

and listened to life

to hear and read

what had not been read

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -The Church is always in need of...followers of different ways of believing, whether they are prophets, contemplatives, or people with a special vocation.

  -...prophets and contemplatives need the institution, for without it they have nothing against which to rub.

  -I have great love and reverence for the institution.  In fact, the more I try to follow the way of believing that I've been describing the more I appreciate the ordinary life of the Church.  It is a question of balance.  The more I follow the apophatic way, the more I need to be nourished by the images from the Bible and from the Liturgy.

  -These images point me in the direction I wish to go, but they are not the way itself. The way is a contemplative one, which simply means looking at someone or something without absorbing them into our little world of ideas and values.  Contemplation means seeing what is there and refusing to hallucinate so that we see only what we want to see.  We then wait to receive what chooses to reveal itself (as in the Greek work aletheia, which literally means to uncover.  The truth then, is that which reveals or uncovers itself). It means being attentive to whatever and whoever is there as truly other than ourselves.  This is what is suggested by the word aesthetic, which strictly means seeing thing in such a way that the viewer is changed by what he or she sees.  Perhaps that is why artists in totalitarian countries are often locked up.  They help people see a new world through their art, and that is dangerous to the existing totalitarian political system.