QUESTIONS:

-Does prayer, according to the author of the excerpt, according to its provider and commentator, or according to you, do anything else but illuminate/reveal?

-Is the love that must always succeed a love that can only happen in prayer?

-Why might Reesa have chosen this text? That is, why are "the chills" good for creative writing?

-Reesa distinguishes the object of love from the object of desire, though the word "desire" is not mentioned in the passage. Perhaps there is a difference, or even a gap between God's vision of love and "ours"? Is the messianic vision - rescues "goal of love" - to bring these loves together? When/if that happens, what will be the place of the body?

-The commentator gives a gender to the pray-er in the passage, even though the text remains engendered. Why? And does it matter?

-Ultimately, is this text meant to be read (by us) as instruction?

Prayer of course, when it illuminates, shows the eye the farthest goal; but since the man at his prayers stands on the definite stand-point of his personality, this farthest goal common to all appears behind a foreground of an entirely personal perspective, the perspective precisely of this standpoint. The immediacy then with which, instead of the felt nearness of the nearest, the sighted distance of the most distant is now experienced--for this distance does not appear to the eye opened wide by the desiring purposeful will, bu to the eye illuminated in the receptivity of prayer--this immediacy of course makes it possible for love to be prepared immediately for this object. It is as near to the illuminated eye as is to the feeling heart its nearest near. But since in the illumination the road is simultaneously illuminated for it, namely in contrast to the generality of the goal, its personal road, so it is prepared first of all for the halting places of the road. And it hurries as fast as possible to these sighted halting-places, fearing any delay, indeed imagining all danger in delay. What is nearest now of feeling is leapt accross; the halting-place that is recognized in illumination as the first on the road to what is farthest now takes the place of that nearest one; love would like to rush to the halting-place in one bound. The second nearest takes the place of the nearest for love. The second nearest drives away the nearest from love. Love neither sees nor hears the one in order to reach the other in a forcible leaping over. And because it is love and therefore always effective, it must also succeed.

The last sentence in this passage gives me chills each time I read it, which is why I decided to choose this piece as a starting point for seven-point-six. The components here are simple once you sort them out. The passage describes the act of prayer as an act of love. The object of love is the universal goal revealed through prayer. It's that process of revelation, of 'illumination' that makes the object of love different from an object of desire, a willed goal. Thus the passage suggests that the goal that is revealed through prayer is a real goal, possesses a reality that the fantasized goal of the individual might not. The goal of love is a kind of redemptive or messianic horizon. It's the focal point, where all lines, all loves, eventually converge.

The author worries, though, that the glitter of the far-off, universal, transformative goal makes the individual, the lover, forget the things next to him. The eye's vision replaces the heart's sensation. For this author the heart has a kind of tactile love, that can love bodies, can love what it touches. Not so for the eye which gazes at the far horizon. It isn't restrained by its environment, by the who, the what, the when and where that make up its surroundings. And this eye that leaps over its surroundings without touching them, without acknowledging them, is dangerous. Why dangerous? Because it succeeds in loving what is far away and belongs to everyone instead of what is close and personal and warm to the touch.

Start here.