A Brother of Such Tears

I'm clearly a blog-slacker.

Briefly: Paul is back. He begged his way back in on Monday night. "Please... I'm your brother... It's so hard living on the streets. Please."

It's been a difficult week. You get used to the constant crunch of Fruit Loops underfoot in the kitchen. You get used to the doors being left open even though it's below freezing outside. You even get used to the constant anti-social presence, and to money disappearing out of your wallet when you're stupid enough to leave it lying on your dresser instead of well hidden among your underwear. But you never get used to the irrationality; you always assume that there is a point to the carelessness or the anger, as there would be with someone else. It's hard to get away from the sense, evident to us since Aristotle at least, that humans always act for an end.

Better Augustine than Aristotle tonight, though. In City of God, he is considering what an astounding gift the intellect is, but he pauses to reflect upon those in whom the gift is shattered. He says that when we stop and really reflect on what such a loss means for a person, we almost cannot hold back our tears. And then he adds: "in fact, we cannot."

Surely that's right. But it also fails to name adequately what that loss is.

I have felt like crying all day, though I haven't really. But I woke up to Paul moaning and sobbing loudly enough to wake me. He either could not or would not give a reason for his crying, but it went on for at least two hours this morning before I went to church and then out to lunch with friends. I came back 3 or 4 hours later and the crying had stopped, but pretty recently from the look of his face.

I have a line from the Confessions, slightly twisted, echoing in my head tonight. It is, oddly, at a point where Monica has considered kicking Augustine out of her house because he is a Manichee (or "a dirty rotten heretic," as I like to tell my students). But she has sought the wisdom of a former heretic, now bishop, who advises her that Augustine will think his way out of the heresy eventually. He knows that she has cried and agonized over her son's salvation. It is his line to her that is echoing in my head, with slight modification: it is not possible that a brother of such tears should perish.

I don't know that his perishing is what I'm afraid of, but the assurance that he won't gives me hope nonetheless.