The family of three stones
Prayer is properly not petition, but simply an attention to God which is a form of love. With it goes the idea of grace, of a supernatural assistance to human endeavour which overcomes empirical limitations of personality. What is this attention like, and can those who are not religious believers still conceive of profiting by such an activity?
I reflect on this highlight, underlined in Kindle and so proven by mass appeal to be important: “prayer is an attention to God, which is a form of love”; I look up and notice how a typically off lamp is now on, casting a new shadow over our three statues, the three little stone people on the TV console, once called the “the three lawyers” by my father-in-law, though I see them as myself, my wife, and my daughter, in descending order of size, a reminder that even though these are not stone relics and were probably bought at SEARS pre-divorce in the early 90s, they have a tribal feel—though each is just a cone body with a circular head with two dots for eyes , and a vertical line for a nose (without a mouth), they represent the minimum form of a family, a primitive unit.
I see the statues and the shadows behind them and the yellow glow, all in a moment outside of clocked time. I hold in my body the idea that matter itself is the attraction of two things towards the birth of an offspring, and that I’ve participated in some early ritual of the universe. Also, a baby is sleeping on me. My presentation is over. The gyro is being delivered but I forget my hunger. Is this love? Is this a prayer?
I am not asking God for anything, nor do I imagine a conscious entity outside of space-time that can tilt reality towards even my best intentions. I see God instead as the cosmic engine itself, at a scale and temporality beyond me, and I see myself as effectively an insect, but with the ability to briefly imagine and grasp reality outside of my limits. I sense kairos and agape, the escape from chronos into the full saturation and non-selfishness of this moment. I turn to my wife and surprise her and tell her how much I love her as she finishes up her construction documents for the night.
Is it possible to always see like this? That is where “obedience” comes in. It’s not about rational deliberation in flash moments to do the right thing, but to permanently see like a mystic. Of course the ego has its uses, though.
I typically alternate between modes, of seeing through fixation and seeing with love. But can you oscillate fast enough so they become united? Can you harness a singular ego, a stubborn individual on a quest of your own, while remembering love in every frame?
This is the paradox and transcendence that I’m reaching toward in my personal theory of virtues. A deficiency of identity is alienated from themselves, an excess of identity is narcissism, and the Aristotelian mean is to be generally loving, a limited ego, focused on love for others. Nietzche would call this weakness. But the alternative would be a paradoxical fusion; to shape an ego in a way so that it is maximally individualistic and maximally loving.