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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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Why Did Tolkien Cut Out All References to Religion in The Lord of the Rings?

Why did Tolkien cut out all references to religion in The Lord of the Rings? Tolkien once wrote to his friend Father Robert Murrey:

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world.”

This seems to be the only way to create something intrinsically religious — cut out all references to religion. Paradoxically, the surest and quickest way to ruin religion is to mention it. True religion has very little to do with cults or practices. It has everything to do with one’s state of being.

When religion is spoken of, it usually disappears; when it remains unuttered, it always transpires. No wonder there is no temple in the New Jerusalem: “And I saw no temple in the city” (Revelation 21:22). When God is all in all, everything is a temple. The temple is not a place but Divine Being present in all things.

When God is all in all, you no longer need a source of light — neither the sun nor the moon. Since God shines through everything, everything becomes a source of light.

C.S. Lewis once called this phenomenon donegality. During his visit to County Donegal in Ireland, he was struck by the unique feel of its landscape. He coined the term to describe the distinctive atmosphere or mood that gives a place — or a narrative — its unmistakable feel.

Donegality is when a mystery becomes lucid by remaining unspoken. It cannot be pointed to directly, yet it permeates everything. It is never the subject of the story but some ineffable mood in which the story is soaked.

When dogmas speak, donegality remains silent. When dogmas fall silent, true religion speaks the unutterable.

For example, Eru Ilúvatar is never spoken of in The Lord of the Rings, yet the Music of Ilúvatar is heard in all things. In Lothlórien, this transcendence becomes almost palpable:

“Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. When he had gone and passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire would walk there, upon the grass among elanor and niphredil in fair Lothlórien.”

Lothlórien was permeated with the Music of Ilúvatar — the unspoken, ineffable harmony that made all things alive. There is no temple, because worship is not something the Elves do; it is something they are.

By attuning themselves with this ineffable Music, they become “it” — part of it. They become keenly aware of its presence in all things, and worship unfolds of itself, ceaselessly. Whatever they touch, begins singing with the primordial Chant.

That’s why all they make becomes “magical.” As the leader of the Elves explained to Pippin who asked him whether the cloaks they received were magical:

“They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.’”

In other words, whatever the Elves do becomes “magical” by virtue of the land’s unending Worship and their love of it. Explicit religion would shatter this invisible yet all-pervasive Chant that makes all things enchanting.

In On Fairy Stories, Tolkien explains that the art of the Elves is Enchantment — not magic proper, for that is the domain of the Enemy.

“…the more potent and specially elvish craft I will, for lack of a less debatable word, call Enchantment.”

The true religion of heaven is unspoken — yet, it is heard, seen, smelled, tasted, and touched in all things because all things exist “in Chanting.” It is in this Chanting that they have their being.

When the Elves participate in the Chanting, whatever they do becomes Enchantment. And Enchantment is true Art that the Enemy has no power over.

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What is Heidegger’s View on Technology?

What is Heidegger’s view on technology? Often, we fail to recognize the extent to which our language shapes our thinking. For example, what happens when we habitually call people human resources?

Heidegger writes in The Question Concerning Technology:

“…he [man] comes to the brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve.”

Those who work in HR habitually refer to people as “resources.” Yet the moment someone views us as a resource, we immediately cringe. We instinctively sense that we are being degraded.

Heidegger argues that in our age, being reduced to mere standing-reserve is almost inescapable. Whether we recognize it or not, this reduction is embedded in the very language we use. But where does this language — and the thinking behind it — come from?

In his exploration of technology, Heidegger concludes that modern technology is no longer a tool, even though it is presented as one.

“The essence of technology is by no means anything technological.”

Modern technology is a Gestell — Enframing — a conceptual framework that we cast upon reality. Technology is a way of thinking. It reveals how we see everything. Heidegger illustrates this with the example of the Rhine.

Before the twentieth century, numerous watermills stood along the river, each built into the natural flow. In the twentieth century, however, a power plant was constructed at that very site, and the river was locked into it. Now the river is built into the power plant.

This illustrates what has happened to technology. In the past, technology was built into nature. Today, nature is built into technology. In fact, almost everything is built into technology. The question is: Who serves whom?

Gradually, we have shifted from using tools to being used by them. According to Heidegger, one consequence of such a shift is that we tend to view everything as standing-reserve. Humanity stands “on the brink of a precipitous fall” because we are unconsciously turning ourselves into fuel for the Machine.

No one likes being reduced to standing-reserve, yet we continue to use the very language that produces such reductionist thinking.

As a translator, I see more and more agencies replacing personal communication with automated systems. In the past, project managers contacted me directly to offer work. Now I simply receive a notification that a job has appeared on an online platform, and I have to claim it immediately because hundreds of other translators are competing for the same assignment.

I understand why agencies do this. They have built a vast Machine, and everything —including people — must serve it. Yet there are still companies, usually smaller ones, that prefer talking to people. Those are the companies I prefer to work with.

They may sacrifice some profit, but they refuse to treat people as standing-reserve, and they refuse to become it themselves.

Modern technology enframes us to think of everything as a resource. It gives us a language that reduces both nature and humans to fuel for the Machine. We use this language almost unconsciously, yet we still recoil when a boss treats us as an expendable resource.

What is the alternative? Refuse to build our lives into technology! We must have a full and rich life without it. Only then can we build technology into the mainstream of our lives. When we use it less, we can use it some. When we use it all the time, it uses us.

When we build our life and work into technology, it invariably reduces us to standing-reserve. When we build technology into OUR life and work, we reduce it back to a tool. Ultimately, there is only one state of mind that is powerful enough to turn technology back into a tool.

Heidegger concludes,

Essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it. Such a realm is art.

Explore Tolkien’s view on art and the machine:

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What Does It Mean to Enter into the Joy of Your Master?

What does it mean to enter into the joy of your master? When I first read the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25, it sounded somewhat transactional:

“Well done, good and faithful servant… Enter into the joy of your master.”

It sounded as though the master were saying, “Good job. You have done what you were told — here is your reward. You may go home now.”

Yet the phrase “enter into the joy of your master” did not sound like a reward in the usual sense of the word. It sounded more like an invitation to remain — not to receive a reward and go.

Entering someone’s joy is not a payment in the proper sense of the word. I cannot ask my children to do the dishes or mow the lawn and promise my joy in return. This action, in and of itself, cannot bring them into my joy. Entering someone’s joy is not a transaction.

I grew up with an absent father who did not have much joy. I sensed it deeply. There was nowhere for me to enter. There was nothing in his way of life so appealing that I wanted to share in it.

In the parable, however, the master clearly has joy, and this is obvious to the servant; otherwise, the invitation to enter it would make no sense.

The servant obviously wants the joy, not the payment. He senses that joy from afar. And he realizes that the only way to enter the joy is to use his talents.

The joy comes over him the more he exercises those talents — or, to use Aristotle’s phrase, the more he “performs activities inherent in his being” (Eudemian Ethics). Aristotle understood happiness as the overflow of inner harmony: a person flourishes when he acts in accordance with who he is.

When we do what we were made to do, we enter the Maker’s joy.

Does the Maker have joy?

We know the answer only by getting in touch with our inmost self and “performing the activities inherent in our being.” The Maker’s joy is revealed and confirmed in us only when we do what we were made to do.

We know the Maker’s joy because it is already present in what we do. It motivates us not because of some external reward awaiting us in the future but because of what we are experiencing now.

That is what children secretly long for when they look at their parents. Their silent question is: “Is there a joy that I can enter?”

They watch and wait. If they see our joy, they long to participate in it — by becoming more of themselves. When a child catches a glimpse of the father’s joy, they can’t help but want it. They begin to instinctively search within themselves something that taps into that joy.

The vision of the father’s joy draws out the best in them. The more they become who they are, the more they enter into their father’s joy. The father’s joy is our primary reality in which we become ourselves.

Perhaps that is why the ancients called the brightest star in the sky Jupiter — literally, the Bright Father. They understood that without contemplating the father’s joy, we cannot be ourselves. They portrayed Jupiter as a ruddy-faced, joy-beaming merry fellow.

As Franco Nembrini, an Italian pedagogue says, the secret of raising children lies in not being preoccupied with raising children. It lies in pursuing your own joy and inviting them to share in it. When we are focused on the children, they sense our misplaced focus and go somewhere else.

We are all searching for the Bright Father—and the Bright Mother. The pursuit of joy is not optional; it is essential. Genuine joy is contagious. When we encounter it in someone, we suddenly realize that we want to stop pretending and become ourselves.

For we can enter that joy only by tapping into our own being and acting from that invisible source.

Plunge into two months of spiritual reflections.

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What is the Best Thing About Getting Older?

What is the best thing about getting older? In an old parable, a man carried two water jars suspended from a pole across his shoulders.

One jar was new and perfect; the other was old and cracked and leaked water along the path.

Every day, by the time the man reached his master’s house, the cracked jar was almost empty. The new jar boasted of its usefulness, while the cracked jar was ashamed of its flaws.

One day, the cracked jar said to the man apologetically:

“I am defective. I lose most of the water through my cracks before you reach the house.”

The man replied:

“Yes, but when was the last time you looked at your side of the path? I know all about your cracks, so I scattered seeds there. Every day, when you thought you were merely leaking water, you were watering flowers. Look at this road now!”

The jar looked and was amazed. His side of the path was covered with the most beautiful flowers imaginable.

“Because of you, the master always has fresh flowers on his table. Your cracks have leaked so much beauty into the world that people come from far away just to walk along this path. They say it fills them with joy like nothing else.”

Old age is the perfect time to leak beauty into the world. We think our cracks make us useless; nothing could be further from the truth. The older we get, the more wounds, flaws, and imperfections we carry — but these are the very cracks through which the light pours out.

Little do we know that someone has sown seeds along our path. These seeds can sprout only if we water them through our wounds. Our wounds are sacred. They are conduits of living water — unique life experiences that can nourish the seeds of new life.

Whole jars carry ordinary water; broken jars carry living water.

“One of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side… bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.” — John 19:34

By that water, we have been healed. The mystery of healing is that it can come only through the Wound. The older we get, the more sacred our wounds become — and the more healing beauty we can spill.

For the world to flower, people must leak the beauty of their cracks. If we hide them or patch them up with tape, our beauty cannot flow out. When we hide our cracks, our path remains dry and barren. We become rigid and closed in on ourselves — crackpots rather than cracked pots.

When we open them, streams of living water gush forth, and everything begins to blossom.

We do not think much of old age. We think of it as diminishing. And it is diminishing — but in an enlarging way. As G. K. Chesterton put it:

“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it.”

— Orthodoxy

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What Does It Mean to Greet Each Other With a Holy Kiss?

What does it mean to greet each other with a holy kiss? Every time I read the Apostle Paul’s phrase, “Greet each other with a holy kiss” in Russian, the word “kiss” stands out — because “целование” literally means “to make whole.” Kiss is something that makes whole what was broken.

In English, that sense of “wholeness” is less explicit, but it is still there. The word kiss comes from Old English coss, meaning an embrace or a greeting. So in Old English, Paul’s words read:

Halsiað eow betwux mid halgum cosse.

Here, the sense of wholeness comes through in the word halgum —“holy,” which is related to whole and health. So the phrase may be rendered: “Greet one another with a whole-making embrace.”

In Purgatorio, Dante shows us something striking. The souls circle the mountain in their slow ascent, still burdened by their sins, each step a struggle. And then, in Canto 26, he describes an unexpected scene: two groups of souls meet — and instead of passing by, they rush toward one another.

They greet each other with kisses and embraces — looking somewhat funny — like ants touching antennae as they pass.

“Coming down the middle of that road of flames was another group of souls approaching those who had spoken to me. As I watched, both groups rushed to greet each other with a brief hug and kiss. I was reminded of how ants nose up to each other when they meet, as though to find out which way to go, or how they have fared.”

When a soul is on its way to Paradise, it longs to be embraced — to be made whole. Every step along the way reminds us that something within us is still broken. And when we become too fixated on that brokenness, we stop moving. When our gaze is fixed on what is wrong, we forget Heaven — and betray our calling: to become light, to fly.

We long for someone to run toward us, to embrace us, and to say:

You have done well. Do not give up. I know who you are. Believe me: you must fly.

These words make us whole. That is why, in Purgatorio, the souls on the mountain rush to greet one another with a “whole-making” kiss. They know they need friends who believe in them.

As the saying goes, the road is yours alone — but you can never walk it alone. We can only fly when others see us flying, and say: “Drop everything that weighs you down. You belong to the skies!”

In that embrace, something mysterious happens. Wholeness is restored before it is restored. We stop looking down — and lift our eyes to the Sun and other stars.

Awaken imagination with Forty-Four Mystical Insights:

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What Are the Long-Term Consequences of AI?

What are the long-term consequences of AI? They say: “If you meet the Buddha by the road, kill him.”

It simply means that if you worship any fixed idea outside your immediate experience, it is an illusion — destroy it. Don’t worship the map; walk the path. If something or someone hinders your “direct seeing,” let it go.

In an article I found on LinkedIn titled “Every Company Now Sounds Like ChatGPT— and That’s the Biggest Brand Opportunity in a Decade,” the author says that an analysis of 73 corporate documents has revealed the consistent use of the same syntactic constructions across multiple brands. Brands begin to sound the same:

Language models are trained to produce the statistical average of everything ever written, so when enough companies route their communications through them, every company starts sounding like the average of every other company.

Ahrefs analyzed 900,000 new web pages and found 74% contained AI-generated content. As more and more brands use ChatGPT, more and more brands begin sounding like ChatGPT.

The author concludes: “Today, sounding different becomes the rarest competitive advantage a company can have. The company with real personality, earned conviction, and concrete specificity stands out like a bonfire in a field of flashlights.”

AI makes you sound like AI — and makes you lose your voice. When we allow AI to speak for us, we become mute. When we meet a new person, we instinctively look for something unique about them. We call a person interesting only if they have a voice — not when they sound like everyone else.

Having a voice means to see and describe things in a way no one else does. I don’t want my friends to sound the same today as they did yesterday. If they are alive, they must have new experiences today worth sharing. And when they do, it makes me come alive too.

When we meet someone who sounds average, we quickly forget what they say. Yet we know — almost instinctively — that there are no average people. If someone sounds average, it simply means they have lost their voice: for some reason, they don’t speak from their own experience.

Unlike AI, we have direct experience. We are not merely a database of theoretical knowledge. We have cooked an omelet a thousand times — and we know how to make it, not as information, but as an embodied practice. And we can speak of it in our own voice.

The world desperately lacks voices because we keep delegating our voice to the Buddha by the road. If something doesn’t allow you to speak from your own heart, life, and experience — kill it. The world doesn’t need the average — only the real.

The real will be remembered. Real people are remembered, real names and brands are remembered. They can’t help being remembered — because they call. Interestingly, the word voice is related to the Latin vocare, “to call.”

To have a voice means to call. If I encounter something or someone and nothing calls to me, I will quickly forget it. We are living in a unique time — people are beginning to sense that being fully human pays, while being less than human doesn’t.

If I want to have a voice — to call, to awaken — I must speak from my direct experience. Without reference to any Buddha on the road.

“Memory favors the company that said something pointed… something that made them think ‘these people actually know what they’re talking about.’ Corporate America is converging on a single voice. The brands that opt out will own the next decade.” — Quote from the above-mentioned article on LinkedIn.

This reflection is part of a much larger vision… Check out my Mystical Vision of the Inlkings Series

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What Does Thomas Aquinas Say About Angels

What does Thomas Aquinas say about angels? The word gospel is peculiar. In most languages, “Good News” closely resembles the Greek euangelion. English is the exception. Gospel comes from the Old English gōdspel (gōd meaning “good,” and spel meaning “news,” “story,” “word,” or “message”).

The word spel once meant both a story and a spell. When an ancient ear heard gōdspel, it heard two things at once: a good story — a good word — and a spell, an enchantment.

They must have called it gōdspel because that is how it felt — a good spell. When they heard the good news, they felt a good spell coming over them. The story and the enchantment were one.

The modern mind has largely lost the sense of the “spell.” For us, a good story is merely information — something coming from the outside in. But for the ancients, the Good Story was good because of how it felt, because it worked its magic from the inside out.

And yet, we rediscover the “spell” every time we hear bad news. Scroll through your news feed for a day, and you will begin to feel bewitched. By the end of the day, you will feel hate, craving, envy, lust, fear, or despair — or all of them at once. Why?

Word and spell are never separate. Every word casts a spell — whether for good or for ill. And yet, the mystery of the spell goes even deeper.

The Greek euangelion consists of eu (“good,” “well”) and angelos (“messenger”). For the Greeks, the angelos — the bearer of the message — was not just a function, but a being, an angel.

When they heard angelos, they heard both meanings at once: a message and the bearer of the message. They did not think, “These are just words.” They were aware that a living, spiritual intellect stood behind the words.

As Thomas Aquinas said:

“Not everyone who is enlightened by an angel knows that he is enlightened by him.”

Every time we hear good news, we are addressed by beings — ministering spirits. The reverse is also true: every time we hear bad news, we are addressed by fallen spirits.

It is either gōdspel or a devil’s spell. There is no neutral ground in the universe. We are either enchanted or bewitched — depending on whom we listen to. Whose stories am I giving my attention to? Words are not labels — they are forces. How I feel reflects the spell I am under.

If I feel unwell, it is likely because I have been listening to the wrong stories — and the wrong storytellers.

As Thomas Aquinas writes:

“The world of pure spirits stretches between the divine nature and the world of human beings; because divine wisdom has ordained that the higher should look after the lower, angels execute the divine plan for human salvation: they are our guardians, who free us when hindered and help to bring us home.”

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What Was Saint Barbara’s Miracle?

What was Saint Barbara’s miracle? According to the legend, Saint Barbara was a beautiful young woman who lived in the 3rd century AD. Her father, Dioscorus, was a pagan and kept her locked in a tall tower to protect her from the world. Barbara didn’t mind — until one day, she made a strange request.

There were only two windows in her tower, and Barbara asked for a third one. In G.K. Chesterton’s poem The Ballad of Saint Barbara, she addresses the servants:

And cried through the lifted thunder of thronging hammer and hod

‘Throw open the third window in the third name of God.’

Upon his return from Africa, her father was surprised and asked her,

Hath a man three eyes, Barbara, a bird three wings,

That you have riven roof and wall to look upon vain things?”

Barbara’s answer is strange, to say the least. In the voice of one “whose soul has drunk of the rivers of liberty,” she replies that “there are more wings than the wind knows, and more eyes than see the sun.” She explains that from the first window she will see the sea; from the second, she will see dry land.

But out of the third lattice under low eaves like wings

Is a new corner of the sky and the other side of things.

As G.K. Chesterton poignantly said, “spiritual sight is stereoscopic, just like physical sight.” Our two physical eyes perceive two different images of reality. If you close one eye and then the other, you’ll notice objects shift position — each eye sees its own version of the world. But when we open both eyes, we see those two images at once.

Together they create depth — the third picture. Stereoscopic vision means seeing two pictures combined into one — the third one. That’s why we all need the third window— to see “the other side of things.” For St. Barbara, the other side of things is “the third name of God.”

What is the third name of God? The Wind, the Spirit, the Breath. Before her father beheaded her, Barbara rose and bore witness to what she saw through her third window:

‘I have looked forth from a window that no man now shall bar,

Caesar’s toppling battle-towers shall never stretch so far.

The slaves are dancing in their chains, the child laughs at the rod,

Because of the bird of the three wings, and the third face of God.’

She saw that birds always fly on three wings, not two—the third one is the Spirit. Man sees with three eyes, not two — the third one is the Spirit. When we see depth, we see Spirit everywhere. He is behind it all — “the Third One.” The third name of God allows us to see. Without the “Third One” we see only a flat world — no depth.

Looking through the third window, which “no man now shall bar,” Barbara saw slaves dancing in their chains and children laughing at the rod. She saw the other side of things. She saw what Isaiah saw,

“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid.” Isaiah 11:6

She saw opposites engulfed by the Kingdom of God. The third window allows us to see past dualities and perceive the breath of the Third One behind all things. Before the “third face of God,” all idols of divided consciousness are transcended. Barbara rose above her father’s idolatry — his refusal to break open the “third window.”

If we see the world in twos, our consciousness will always be split between the two. If we break open the third window, we will gain a mystical vision and grasp the unity of all things. Ironically, Dioscorus, who saw the world in twos and beheaded his own daughter, was split in two by a sudden lightning bolt that came out of the blue.

“But the blue sky split with a thunder-crack, spat down a blinding brand,

And all of him lay back and flat as his shadow on the sand.” – G.K. Chesterton