The Circle Dance of Time

Contents

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pp. v-

Preface

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pp. vii-xi

“Death is long,” the ghost of Darius says, “and there is no music.”¹ If there is life, on the other hand, and there is music at journey’s end, then the journey of life is a circle dance where “In my beginning is my end,” as T. S. Eliot says, and “In my end is my beginning.”² I was originally going to call this book Faith Seeking ...

Reasons of the Heart

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pp. 1-20

When it comes to faith, “The heart has its reasons that reason does not know,”¹ Pascal says. Those reasons, though, can become known to the mind, I believe, and insight or understanding is what happens when reasons of the heart do become known to the mind. “Faith seeking understanding ...

God Sensible to the Heart

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pp. 21-40

“It is the heart that senses God and not reason,” Pascal says. “Here is what faith is: God sensible to the heart not to reason.”¹ As I understand it, the heart senses God and God is sensible to the heart when the heart is kindled, and when that happens the mind is also illumined. Faith ...

The Vision of Emanation

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pp. 41-61

Emanation was the ancient vision of the origin of things, and evolution is the modern vision, and yet the one is the reflection of the other, like the return of a light ray from a surface it encounters into the medium it has already traversed. Evolution rising from matter to life to intelligence ...

The Vision of Return

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pp. 63-82

“An enchanted region where everything belonging there returns to that in which it rests.”1 That is how Heidegger describes what he calls the Realm (die Gegnet). There is a vision of return (epistrophe in Greek) in every vision of the origin of things, creation and emanation and ...

The Far Point on the Circle

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pp. 83-113

If “the love is from God and of God and towards God,” as the old Bedouin said to Lawrence of Arabia, then there is a far point on the circle where “even love must pass through loneliness,”¹ where even light must pass through darkness, where even life must pass through ...

The Vision of God with Us

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pp. 115-128

“My life is a journey in time, and God is my companion on the way.” So I wrote years ago in a diary when I was setting out on a journey through Latin America. Now I realize how bold these words were. One of my graduate students said “Dante had Virgil and Beatrice ...

Circle Songs

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pp. 129-134

Notes

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pp. 135-157

Index

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pp. 159-163