What is the spiritual significance of food? Physical food is but a shadow. It points â to the real food. Eggs, bread, meat, butter, sauerkraut, turkey, apple pie, wine, and chicken curry are a foretaste of spiritual nourishment. Thatâs why in so many cultures, taking food has become a sacred ritual.
Tea ceremonies, birthday meals, feasts, festivals â people have always sensed that unless you eat spiritually WHILE you eat physically, you do not really eat. You may feel full, but you remain famished. To eat only physical food is idolatry â separating the image from the reality it foreshadows.
What does it foreshadow?
It foreshadows spiritual food hidden behind every physical phenomenon. Everything â not just food â can become spiritual nourishment if we glimpse the reality behind appearances. Anything in the physical realm can nourish us spiritually.
For example, when you are deeply engaged in something meaningful â like creating, playing, or helping someone â you rarely feel hunger even if you havenât eaten. Why? What is your âfoodâ when there is no food? Real nourishment is concealed behind EVERYTHING in the physical realm if we only penetrate the phenomena with our spiritual vision.
Curiously, the Greek word for idol, ξ៴δĎΝον (eidĹlon), meaning image, likeness, apparition, or phantom, comes from ÎľáźśÎ´ÎżĎ (eidos), meaning form, shape, appearance, or idea â the same root Plato used when speaking of Forms or Ideas, the invisible essences of things.
Eidos â Idea â is derived from the root verb ξ៴δĎ (eidĹ), âto see.â Literally, eidĹlon means âa visible form.â An idol is anything visible we refuse to see through â to perceive the Idea, the invisible essence behind phenomena. When our vision is arrested at the level of the âvisible form,â it is anti-vision. We are blind.
We never truly see unless we see through. Unless we eidĹ (see) the Eidos (Idea) behind the form, we perceive only the eidĹlon, the idol, an empty image. But when we eidĹ (see) the Eidos (Idea) behind the visible form, we truly see. EidĹlon becomes an icon. Idols can be redeemed if we see through them.
To see an Idea is to get nourished â with food from above. Thatâs why Jesus said to his disciples after they brought Him bread:
âI have food to eat that you donât know about.â â John 4:32
He had just talked to the woman at the well and saw through what was really happening in the spiritual realm AS THEY TALKED. Thatâs why he didnât feel hungry. The disciples thought someone had brought Him food, but He had just feasted on the heavenly banquet.
Every time we glimpse Meaning and engage with it, we get nourished. We are not hungry. We have food others donât know about. We are fed from above. We are not trapped by shapes and apparitions, nor deceived by phantoms. We pursue Eidos â Idea â and participate in the Feast that is unfolding even now.
What is the purpose of education? In the parable of the eagle and the hen, a farmer found an abandoned eagleâs egg on the ground. He carefully picked it up and placed it in the nest of one of his hens.
The egg hatched along with the henâs own chicks. The eagle chick grew up among the chickens and learned to scratch the ground for worms, cluck, and flutter his wings just enough to jump a few feet off the ground. It fully believed itself to be a chicken.
Years passed. The hen, a good parent and a patient teacher, often noticed that this âugly chickâ would, every now and then, pause in the middle of scratching the ground and suddenly gaze up in the sky as if waiting for something.
âWhat are you doing?â she would say. âYouâre big and need twice as much food as any of the other chicks.â
One day, the eagle chick looked up and saw a magnificent bird soaring high above the fields. Its wings were wide and strong as it swooped gracefully through the blue abyss.
âWhat is that?â the eagle asked the hen, his heart skipping a beat.
âThatâs the eagle,â she replied. âThe king of the birds. It belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth.â
Something snapped in the little eagleâs heart, and a cry of ultimate yearning burst out of his chest. He dashed forward, spread his wings, and took to the sky.
The hen looked up, tears trickling down her cheeks, and said, âI taught him how to scratch for worms, but he was unhappy. Now he has left the earth, and he is happy. Even though I donât understand why, it makes me happy too.â
According to the Italian pedagogue Franco Nimbrini, a good teacher is the one who knows that a child needs a guide to become himself. A Guide is not a teacher; he doesnât need to say anything; he must simply appear. A good teacher knows that their job is to wait for the appearance of the Guide and get out of the way. The teacherâs ultimate happiness is to see the child soar.
The teacher doesnât always understand why the child is so happy, but a good teacher steps out of the way so that the Guide may increase. The Guide may not even know he is being followed; he is simply soaring in his own element. And that is enough â the child deeply senses the connection.
A good teacher or parent knows that without the Guide, the child will never be truly happy on this earth. That is the whole point of education as it should be. The Latin educere, from which we derive the word education, consists of the prefix e- (âout ofâ or âfromâ) and the root ducere (âto leadâ or âto drawâ).
The German word for education â Bildung â comes from Bild (âimageâ or âpictureâ) and the suffix -ung (âactionâ). It signifies the act of revealing an image within a person. True education happens only when the Guide appears and draws the image of God out of the child.
A good teacher or parent is waiting for the appearance of the Guide and is overjoyed when he appears. He longs to see the Divine spark igniting in the eyes of the child. He longs to see the miracle of educere â the sudden drawing out of the image of God.
True education is our decreasing so that the Guide may increase. False education is our self-increasing that blocks the Guide from appearing. If we see no spark in our childrenâs eyes, it means no educere is happening. Something is obscuring their vision of the Guide soaring above.
What is asymmetrical ethics? The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who spent four years as a POW in German camps and whose family was killed by the Nazi in Lithuania, wrote in his book Totality and Infinity (1961):
âThe face of the Other comes toward me with its infinite vulnerability, its destitution, its defenseless eyes. It calls me into question and orders me: âThou shalt not kill.ââ
Reflecting on his experience, Levinasâs central question was: âHow is ethical responsibility possible after the Holocaust?â How can one regard their torturer as human when he treats them as less than human â in fact, worse than an animal?
An experience like that âcalls me into question.â Who am I? For Levinas, the answer lies in what he calls ethical asymmetry. True ethics is never based on mutuality or reciprocity; it does not depend on others treating you in a certain way. Ethics, in its purest form, is always asymmetrical â you are ethical simply because you recognize the face of the Other.
âThe face is what forbids me to kill.â Ethics and Infinity (1982)
For Levinas, the main challenge was to continue seeing the face of the one who consistently and radically negates the face of others. But what is the source of ethical asymmetry? How can one keep seeing the human in someone who continually dehumanizes others?
For Levinas, ethical responsibility is not a contract; it is a response â a response to seeing a face. Our capacity to see the Otherâs face, regardless of their actions, depends on whether we ourselves have experienced ethical asymmetry. To love, we must have someone who has seen our Face.
I can only treat others as human if I have experienced being treated asymmetrically â loved without condition, regardless of what I do. It is this experience of ethical asymmetry that forbids me to dehumanize others. That is why Beauty and the Beast remains one of the most powerful mythical archetypes of all time.
As G.K. Chesterton puts it,
âThere is the great lesson of âBeauty and the Beast,â that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.ââ
The 1977 Soviet romantic comedy Office Romance is one of the most beloved films of the Soviet era. A shy, divorced statistician, Anatoly Novoseltsev, unexpectedly falls in love with his stern, irritable, and lonely boss, Ludmila Kalugina. Wounded by a past betrayal, Ludmila has closed herself off from love and prefers to be seen as âan old maid.â
But the moment she realizes she is loved despite all her harshness, something within her breaks. The next day, she arrives at work transformed â the old maid is gone, and everyone in the office is stunned by the beautiful woman they had never truly seen before.
A thing must be loved before it is lovable. No wonder the Hebrew word rachamim (רָ×Öˇ×), used in Exodus 34:6â7 and usually translated as âcompassionâ or âmercy,â literally means âwomb.â According to the Torah, we exist in the womb of God â we are âen-wombedâ in a loving Presence.
What happens when Cupid hits you with an arrow? Cupid, the Roman god of love, is often depicted with a bow and arrows. He represents something undeniable in human experience: when we fall in love, we feel pierced â wounded, smitten, and yet strangely alive. Beauty never misses the mark â it strikes us awake.
When we are struck by beauty, it wounds us in the heart. When Cupid shoots, itâs never hit-or-miss. We may lead a loveless life for years on end until, out of the blue, something catches us completely off guard. We stand in awe and suddenly realize thereâs no going back.
The mythic intuition behind Cupidâs bow and arrows is this: all of life is archery. We aim at happiness in everything we doâand we often miss. The Greeks named this failure áźÎźÎąĎĎÎŻÎą (hamartĂa), from the verb áźÎźÎąĎĎÎŹÎ˝Ď (hamartĂĄnĹ)ââto miss the mark.â In later Jewish-Christian Greek, hamartĂa becomes the standard word for âsin.â
When we hear the word âsin,â we hear all sorts of moral connotations. Not so in classical Greek. In Greek, anyone who missed the mark had âsinned.â Sin is what humans do: we hit and miss. We shoot â and miss the mark. We shoot at happiness but donât get it. That is sin.
The Russian word пОгŃĐľŃнОŃŃŃ (âmargin of errorâ) still shares the root ĐłŃĐľŃ (âsinâ). ĐОгŃĐľŃнОŃŃŃ simply means a limit of error. And yet, paradoxically, there is no limit to human error â unless we open ourselves to being wounded. Beauty never misses the mark; its mark is our hearts.
We shoot for happiness but miss it; it cannot be achieved that way. Happiness dwells at the point of Cupidâs arrow when it comes swooshing out of the blue. To be happy, we must open our hearts to divine arrows.
The only way to protect ourselves from the fiery darts of the Evil One is to make ourselves completely open to the arrows of God. The only way to âsin lessâ (as in: miss the goal of happiness less) is to allow yourself to be smitten by the One who doesnât miss.
âSinning lessâ is not a matter of effort â our own shooting â but of letting go of all shooting and allowing yourself to be pierced. The fiery darts of the Evil One make us close our hearts. When we are wounded by the poisoned darts of the Evil One, we shut down and stop feeling.
Refusing to feel is the ultimate sin (missing the mark), because by ânot feelingâ we take our last, desperate shot at some form of âhappiness.â Paradoxically, the only true antidote to the poison of satanic darts is Divine love â Cupidâs arrows. When enough Divine arrows pierce our hearts, the poison in satanic darts is neutralized.
One of Estoniaâs national parks is divided into several sections â each dedicated to a particular kind of silence. The idea behind the park is that people need to hear the many voices of silence. Each voice opens the heart to be wounded by Divine love.
Cupid doesnât waste his arrows â he doesnât shoot at a closed heart. He waits until we have taken all our shots at happiness and become desperate and brokenhearted. A broken heart is much closer to healing than a closed one.
A broken heart can feel. It is vulnerable enough to receive Cupidâs healing arrows. When we are vulnerable and open, we do not miss the mark. We wait in silence for the swoosh of Godâs healing arrows to smite us and bring us back from the dead.
Was King Arthur real or a legend? Has there ever been such a thing as a sane king? Surprisingly, yes. Otherwise, how could we have imagined such mythic figures as King Arthur, Aragorn, or others like them?
In his essay On Fairy Stories, Tolkien suggests that historical Arthur was âthrown into the Potâ of myth-making and boiled there until he emerged as a King of Faerie.
âIt seems fairly plain that Arthur, once historical⌠was also put into the Pot. There he was boiled for a long time, together with many other older figures and devices, of mythology and Faerie, and even some other stray bones of history⌠until he emerged as a King of Faerie.â
There must have been enough myth in the historical Arthur to justify his becoming the Arthur of legend. Others must have seen something in the man which they later wove into Myth. And one thing the legends continually emphasize is that Arthur never strove for power.
The whole idea behind the Round Table was so that no one â not even the king â would sit at the âhead.â The Round Table has no head. It is both Altar and Equalizer: no one presides because everyone is there to offer himself as a sacrifice. But why would Arthur willingly share power?
The answer to this question is just as mythical as the question itself: Arthur knew he wasnât adequate to rule. Thatâs why he needed others. A king is only sane if he believes himself inadequate to rule.
C.S. Lewis captured this idea beautifully in The Magicianâs Nephew. When Aslan told Frank and Helen that they would be the first King and Queen of Narnia, Frank replied:
âBegging your pardon, sir,â he said, âand thanking you very much Iâm sure (which my Missus does the same) but I ainât no sort of a chap for a job like that. I never âad much eddycation, you see.â
Aslan asked him if he could do the usual things a king would do, and Frank replied,
âWell, sir,â said the Cabby very slowly, âa chap donât exactly know till heâs been tried. I dare say I might turn out ever such a soft âun. Never did no fighting except with my fists. Iâd try â that is, I âope Iâd try â to do my bit.â
âThen,â said Aslan, âYou will have done all that a King should do.â
There are many people in the world who believe they are ready to be kings. They believe they can rule. But that certainty is the surest sign they cannot â and there is something that rules over them. Sanity is a sensation of being connected to a Power greater than you. You draw your sense of adequacy from Another.
If you feel you are enough, you are not. If you know you are not enough, you are. True kings are keenly aware of their inadequacy to rule. The most insane rulers in history are those who believe they can and should rule. The best of rulers always share power.
They believe in a Higher Power. Thatâs why they donât build square tables â they donât need to preside. They build round tables â a place where they can offer themselves for others who rule together with them. Sanity is a matter of accepting your own powerlessness and realizing that you are not helpless.
Thereâs a Greater Power than you on which you can rely. Powerlessness and helplessness are not the same; in fact, they are direct opposites. Those who feel powerful are truly helpless. Those who admit their powerlessness are never helpless. If you say: âI ainât no sort of chap for a job like that,â you will receive all the help in the world.
Can AI truly create? We are all Platonists, whether we like it or not. No one has ever seen the perfect Platonic Forms, and yet we confidently say when something is âfar from ideal.â How do we know?
Judges evaluate athletes based on criteria that no one has ever seen. We judge the quality of bananas even though we have never encountered a perfect banana.
The same is true of beauty. No one has ever seen Beauty itself, and yet we recognize when something is beautiful⌠or not. The same is true of justice. No one has ever encountered perfect Justice, and yet we always know when something is unjust.
We evaluate the visible world against an ideal we have never seen. Back in the 1990s, when I was just starting out as a translator, my first editor gave me advice I didnât understand at the time: âWhen you begin working on a translation, never start from the beginning. Always start from the end.â
I cringed: âWhat?â
He smiled: âWell, if you begin by translating words, you will never get them right. You must translate meaning, not words. And meaning is not written â it must be intuited, grasped from the get-go. You can only catch meaning if you sense the Whole after reading the first few paragraphs or chapters.â
At first, it sounded cryptic. But he was patient, and over time I understood: the meaning of the parts is revealed only through the Whole. When I begin translating a book, I must first read enough of it to glimpse where the author is going. Once I have âseenâ the end, I am ready to start at the beginning.
Nothing can be brought into being unless we have already âseenâ the end from the beginning. We must be Platonists â perceiving the world of perfect forms, which then inspires us to imbue every part of what we are doing with meaning. Meaning flows from the Whole and shines through every nuance of creation.
To quote William Blake,
âTo see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.â
Thatâs why my editor insisted that I translate individual titles after completing the entire translation. âYou donât know what things should be called until you know their end.â
This made sense. When I translated titles at the beginning, I was caught up in words â and the results were sloppy. But when I left them until the end, the titles came out crisp and luminous. Our best creations are born only when we âsee the perfect patternâ of what we are making in the realm of Ideas.
But how do we know what we have never seen? We have. We were there. The soul remembers what it beheld in the realm of perfectionâwhat Plato called anamnesis (re-cognition, knowing again). Anamnesis happens every time we see through the veil of appearances and re-collect the perfect world.
Anamnesis is the only way to truly create. The soul remembers what it saw in heaven and strives to recreate it on earth. Just as Moses was told to build the tabernacle according to the pattern he saw on the mountain, so we are called to create whenever we catch a flash of re-cognition.
Technology cannot and will never be able to create â precisely because it has nothing to remember. It cannot see Platonic ideas and cannot grasp the Whole. It focuses on individual bits of data â without seeing the Heavenly Pattern. I asked ChatGPT if it could see Platonic ideas, and it answered:
âI donât have direct access to metaphysical realities. I donât âseeâ Forms the way Plato imagined the soul glimpsing them before birth. I process language, patterns, concepts, and symbols that humans provide me. So in the strict Platonic sense, I cannot truly grasp Ideas the way a soul might.â
Who protected the borders of the Shire? The hobbits were blissfully unaware of who they should thank for the long peace of their land. For many centuries, they lived happily in the Shire, never realizing what terrible creatures roamed just beyond their borders.
Aragorn said:
âLittle do they know of our long labour for the safekeeping of their borders, and yet I grudge it notââŚâ
The Shireâs frontiers were carefully watched by Gandalf and by the Rangers of the North, the remnant of the DĂşnedain. They held the darkness at bay, while the hobbits remained completely oblivious to the dangers lurking beyond their green pastures.
One of the most mysterious passages in the Bibleâ2 Thessalonians 2:7âtalks about âthe mystery of lawlessness that is already at work, and the one who now holds it backwill continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.â
Someone is holding back spiritual darkness this very minute. We donât know who they are. They are skillful with their spiritual blade, and until they are there, chthonic monsters are kept at bay. We sip our coffee, walk in the park, enjoy the sunset, laugh with friends, watch the news, and think that the fates of the world are decided by the politicians.
They are not. The earth is preserved not by might but by salt. How much salt is needed for the earth not to spoil? Not much. A few grains. Even one blessed man may well be enough. Once, Abraham was bargaining with God about the fate of Sodom. He asked if the city would be spared for the sake of fifty righteous men. God said yes.
Abraham kept bargaining: Forty-five? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten? Each time God said âyes.â Eventually, God sent his angels to rescue the last oneâLot. One grain of salt is enough to keep spiritual darkness at bay. Until that one is taken out of the way, all is well.
When chthonic monsters appear at our borders, it is a sure sign that too few Guardians remain. If the Shire is still lush and green, it must be because of Rangers still standing watch at the edges of the land. Rangers are invisible, unrecognized. When we do see them, we scarcely take noticeâthey look ragged, forlorn, and forgotten.
And who can tell? Maybe the good earth itself endures only because of one old man hidden away in the heart of New York, Moscow, or Beijing. Such is divine irony (from the Greek eironeĂaâto âfeign ignorance,â or to âplay the foolâ). We imagine that the peace of the world is preserved in the corridors of power, yet in truth, it may be upheld in a lonely hut somewhere deep in the Siberian taiga.
Chthonic monsters are not afraid of politicians or earthly power. They fear salt and lightâthose who wield the razor-sharp blade of the Spirit and drive them back by their very presence. Divine irony is inscrutable: it would utterly shatter us if, even for a second, we could glimpse the ones for whose sake the sun still rises over the horizon.
The Rangers of the North walk among us unnoticedâunshaven, weary, cloaked in dust. We, the hobbits of the world, laugh at them or dismiss them, never suspecting that our own laughter still rings because someone, somewhere, wields a power beyond our comprehension.
The true balance of the cosmos is preserved not by kings, but by rejected fools who carry the divine breath in their lungs. Their songs may be too quiet for us to hear, and yet strong enough to hold back chthonic monsters until the first gleam of Dawn.
What does Saruman of many colors mean? Saruman the White was white up to a point. Beyond this point, he only âseemedâ white. He said to Gandalf in Orthanc,
âI am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!ââ
When Gandalf looked, he âsaw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.â
The white that he once was had been broken into many colors. He was now the ârainbow Saruman.â Saruman believed in breaking things to find out what they were. He believed this would give him power. According to Gandalf, he strayed from the path of wisdom,
âAnd he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.â
When you want to know what something âis,â you canât break it. You must encounter it as a Whole. Being is holistic. Itâs not breakable. Itâs not reduceable. A thing that is cannot be less than it is. To know the White one must encounter the White, not break the White into many colors.
For Saruman, the White was only the beginning. He wanted to âuseâ the White for his purposes. He wasnât interested in âknowingâ the White; he was interested in âusingâ the White. What you want to know you canât break. What you want to use you canât help breaking.
ââWhite!ââ he sneered. ââIt serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.ââ
Gandalf wisely retorts,
ââIn which case it is no longer white.â
A broken white is not white. A whole white is not a thing to be used but a living reality to participate in. Participation is the highest wisdom. Gandalf knew it in his gut. He learned it from Nienna herself, the Queen of Pity when he was her pupil in times immemorial when his name was OlĂłrin. From Nienna, he learned patience and compassion.
He praised Bilbo for showing compassion to Golum â knowing that he had a part to play in the Whole, for better or worse. He trusted that the Hobbits would destroy the One Ring because he had perceived their part in the Great Music. He had learned to be patient and wait for the Whole to unfold. Thatâs why he became Gandalf the White â or Saruman as he should have been.
Later, Tolkien would write in his Mythopoeia,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
The White can either be broken or refracted. When broken and used, it ceases to be white. When refracted to be encountered, it remains the Living White â and creates a symphony of colors. When we encounter the Living White, it passes through us and gets refracted to many hues without being diminished.
Is hermeneutics related to Hermes? The word hermeneutics comes from the ancient Greek verb áźĎΟΡνξĎξΚν (hermÄneuein) â âto interpret, explain, translateââwhich is etymologically and conceptually related to Hermes. True hermeneutics comes from Hermes.
The ancients believed that the messages of the gods were too cryptic for humans to grasp without an interpreter. HermesâMercury in Roman loreâwas seen as the god of speech. In him, the transcendent meanings were translated into human language.
Hermes was a liminal figureâsomeone âin-betweenâ worlds, times, and meanings. He embodied the idea of interpretation as a journey across a threshold. To truly understand a divine message, we must be carried from one realm into anotherâborne on winged sandals.
Without this journey, there is no understanding. Understanding is less a matter of data analysis than a passage between worlds. We must be transported across the threshold by Hermes himself. This ancient personification of understanding was, in its way, a prefiguration of âThe Word became flesh and dwelt among us.â
The Logos becomes a felt Presence so that we might understand God. Echoing the descent of the Logos to earth, C.S. Lewis describes the descent of Mercury in That Hideous Strength in terms that are almost Pentecostal:
âThere came an instant at which both men [Ransom and Merlin] braced themselves⌠All the fragmentsâneedleâpointed desires, brisk merriments, lynxâeyed thoughtsâwent rolling to and fro like glittering drops and reunited themselves. It was well that both men had some knowledge of poetry⌠For Ransom⌠it was heavenly pleasure. He found himself sitting within the very heart of language, in the whiteâhot furnace of essential speech⌠For the lord of Meaning himself, the herald, the messenger, the slayer of Argus, was with them.â That Hideous Strength, âThe Descent of the Gods.â
It was the felt presence of Mercury that brought celestial clarity to Ransom and his friends. And it was his felt presence that ultimately overthrew that hideous strength whose power chiefly came from perverting essential speech. What is essential speech? Itâs the âreunitedâ speech that slays Argusâthe giant with a hundred eyes, a fitting symbol of the ever-watchful N.I.C.E.
Unless the Word is enfleshed, it remains intangible and therefore hidden. There is no hermeneutics without an encounter with Hermes. Hermeneutics is often treated as an objective method of extracting meaning from a text, as if meaning resides solely in the words. But true meaning can only be found in the felt Presence of the Word.
During Covid, most of us met online, and for a while we thought it was no different from meeting in person. Yet after a couple of years of staring at screens, we realized how much meaning we were missing. We craved flesh-and-blood people. We longed for the eyes, the touch, the embrace. But why? All the words were conveyed just fine. The words were thereâHermes was not.
Without the descent of Hermes we canât feel the heavenly pleasure of being âin the very heart of Language,â which is true hermeneutics. We hear words through headphones, see faces on screens, yet our hearts yearn for more. For what? For embodied Meaningâfor the âWord made flesh.â And then, at last, the Covid restrictions were lifted, and we saw real human faces again.
In that moment, many of us realizedâin a flash of Platonic anamnesisâthat meaning cannot be digitized. It can only be read in the living contours of a real human face. Words without a body may denote, but they do not mean.
âWe should not forget that there is more to the world than what we can interpret. The materiality and immediacy of our experiences are just as important.â Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Production of Presence
What is truth? When Jesus stood before Pilate and told him that he had come to testify to the truth, Pilate famously retorted: âWhat is truth?â Interestingly, in the Koine Greek of John 14:6, Jesus refers to himself as áźÎťÎŽÎ¸ÎľÎšÎą (aletheia, truth).
âI am the way, the truth (aletheia), and the life.â
Aletheia is the opposite of Lethe, the river of oblivion flowing through Hell. The prefix âa-â is a negation. Thus, truth is that which that negates oblivion. Lethe concealsâaletheia reveals. Lethe makes us forgetâaletheia makes us remember. Aletheia un-conceals.
Aletheia is the unconcealment of what is hiddenânot merely a set of propositions. Thatâs what Jesus calls himself: the unconcealment of Being.
Truth is the disclosure of Beingânot sentences or propositions. Incidentally, for Heidegger, aletheia is the moment when beings âcome into the open.â When beings come into the open, they disclose Being. They reveal. Truth is revelation.
âEveryone is the other and no one is himself.â Heidegger
Until we come into the open, we are not ourselves; we are someone else. We live in concealmeant, hiding Being. Yet, our false self is transientâit will be consumed by Lethe. Everything that does not reveal Being will be forgotten. To rise above Lethe, we must embrace aletheiaâthe unconcealment of Being.
This is what Jesus meant when he told Pilate that he had come âto testify to the truth.â He was aletheiaâthe perfect unconcealment of Being. To be true is to participate in something that survives Lethe. Pilate was too steeped in the temporal and transient to recognize Being before his eyes.
âYes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from their hard work; for their good deeds follow them!â Rev. 14:13
Whatever we have done within chronological time to transcend chronological time abides forever. It follows us. It has been salvaged from Lethe. It is aletheia. It cannot disappear. As Michelangelo said,
âThe true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.â
In aletheia, we transform shadows into glimpses of divine perfection. These glimpses cannot disappear. We make âin the law in which we were madeââto borrow Tolkienâs phrase. We become sub-creators.
Having glimpsed divine perfection, we reproduce itâwe unconceal itâwithin the confines of our shadow world. The only way to salvage the world of shadows from falling into oblivion is to transcend the shadowsâengage in aletheia.
Whether we bake bread, write articles, share a conversation over a cup of tea, build cathedrals, or repair carsâif we glimpse and reflect the divine spark in what we do, we participate in the unconcealment of Being. In doing so, we transcend the shadowlands.
Everything in the shadowlands is a shadow until we see through it and partake of divine perfection. It is our inheritance by virtue of divine birth. We have that spark in us. We are that spark. We are shadows transcending ourselves by pursuing aletheiaâevery moment of the day.
