Day 084g: Agape in Agápē … (July 07, 2019)
It was only 5 miles further on that I came to the lovely city of Granon. The day’s loose plan was to flow all the way to Tosantos that evening (one of the handful of peaceful stopovers from my 2008 Camino that I definitely wished to revisit), so I had no intention of stopping here at all, and yet the stunning swarm of swallows swooping around Granon’s central church summoned me (fortunately) quite clearly to pause here all the same …
“The human species – mammalian primates though undoubtedly (s)he is, and wholly made out of the dust of long-since exploded suns – does indeed have the need for the transcendent, the numinous, even the ecstatic, and I wouldn’t trust anyone who hadn’t felt likewise. This calling (which some errantly call ‘spiritual’) is innate to all who live, and has to do with our combined experience of landscape and light and music and community; a combined awareness of the transience of all beings, the interconnectedness of all things, and the throbbing hope & melancholy that invest the same. So this appreciation for the sacred isn’t just gaping happily at the sunset while listening to one’s favorite composer, and doing the same while knowing that it all can’t & won’t last very long. It is far more interactive – and thus far more potent – than that. And yet there is no need for the supernatural to inspire or validate the same, just as there is no dimension of the supernatural of which this reverie gives one a share. In truth what gives us a portion of the Divine is not standing agape at the wondrous beauties of life, but rather those moments when we choose to reach out with courageous caring to share the same with another (agape in agápē, as it were) … In essence, then, people may talk as much as they like about their God or their religion, and yet if that dogma does not encourage them to be good and kind to man and beast alike, it is all nothing but a celestial sham.” ~ inspired by Christopher Hitchens & Anna Sewell
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