'each man would, in his own way, be sort of gone'

Before leaving on this mission, many of the men in Colbert's platoon had said good-bye to one another by shaking hands or even by hugging. The formal farewells seemed odd considering that everyone was going to be shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped Humvees. The good-byes almost seemed an acknowledgment of the transformations that take place in combat. Friends who lolled around together during free time talking about bands, stupid Marine Corps rules and girlfriends' fine asses aren't really the same people anymore once they enter the battlefield.

[...]

This is not to say the terror goes away. It simply moves out from the twitching muscles and nerves in your body and takes up residence in your mind. If you feed it with morbid thoughts of all the terrible ways you could be maimed or die, it gets worse. It also gets worse if you think about pleasant things. Good memories or plans for the future just remind you how much you don't want to die or get hurt. It's best to shut down, to block everything out. But to reach that state, you have to almost give up being yourself. This is why, I believe, everyone said good-bye to each other yesterday before leaving on this mission. They would still be together, but they wouldn't really be seeing one another for a while, since each man would, in his own way, be sort of gone.

—Evan Wright, Generation Kill (2004)

The Eighteenth Century

It was the age when first appears that well-known character of the academic world, the scholar whose spider-ridden house is so piled with books that he cannot go to bed and has to sleep in an arm-chair: the little, personal, disorganized sign of the disinterested passion for truth about the past. It was the ago when first appears, as a type, the 'pedant', and when appeared also the first delicate satires upon pedantry. It was the age when the social status of the pure scholar had risen to heights hardly known since the days of Erasmus--...when the Guide-Book to Paris mentions a number of savants among the important and interesting sights of that city.

—Owen Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman (1957)

Samson finds repose

There is a point in the Samson story -- the moment when he falls asleep on Delilah's lap -- that seems to absorb and encapsulate the entire tale. Samson withdraws into his childish, almost infantile self, disarmed of the violence, madness, and passion that have confounded and ruined his life. This is, of course, also the moment when his fate is sealed, for Delilah is clutching his hair and the razor, and the Philistines outside are already relishing their victory. In another moment his eyes will be plucked out and his power extinguished. Soon he will be thrown into prison and his days will be ended. Yet it is now, perhaps for the first time in his life, that he finds repose. Here, in the very heart of the cruel perfidy that he has surely expected all along, he is finally granted perfect peace, a release from himself and the stormy drama of his life.

--David Grossman, Lion's Honey: The Myth of Samson (2005)

The Cross and the Lynching Tree

The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles, usually reserved for hardened criminals, rebellious slaves, and rebels against the Roman state and falsely accused militant blacks who were often called "black beasts" and "monsters in human form" for their audacity to challenge white supremacy in America. Any genuine theology and any genuine preaching must be measured against the test of the scandal of the cross and the lynching tree. "Jesus did not die a gentle death like Socrates, with his cup of hemlock.... Rather, he died like a [lynched black victim] or a common [black] criminal in torment, on the tree of shame." The crowd's shout, "Crucify him!" (Mark 15:14), anticipated the white mob's shout, "Lynch him!" Jesus' agonizing final cry from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34) was similar to the Georgia lynching victim Sam Hose's awful scream, as he drew his last breath,  "Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus."  In each case, it was a cruel, agonizing, and contemptible death....The crucifixion was a first-century lynching.

—James Cone, "Strange Fruit" (2007)

This Rhythm of What Passes Away

The final note is, at first hearing, the rhythm of what is passing away. To be sure, the creaturely is a "cascading torrent" ("a torrent...is gathered, overflows, thunders, runs and in running runs off," [Augustine]); indeed, one could even say that it only "was" or "will be," but never "is" ("before they might be they are not, and when they are they are fleeing away, and when they have fled they no longer are," [Augusgtine]). But it is just this "passing away" that gives the "whole" its particular resonance: just as a spoken work of art depends upon each verse, each syllable, each letter "passing away."...The only appropriate posture, then, is that of "flowing with what flows" to the point of an ever more rapid "trickling away."

But the final clarification of this "rhythm of what passes away" is based in this: that this rhythm is, more profoundly, a manifestation of the mystery of God: the God who works through and sustains this rhythm in its entirety; the God who hereby joins its "nothingness" to an "is"...

—Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis (1932)

'this fury to deface'

The wall of the burial-ground had fallen in: an angel had lost one of its stone wings, and what grave-stones were left undamaged leant at an acute angle in the long marshy grass. One image of the Mother of God had lost ears and arms and stood like a pagan Venus over the grave of some rich, forgotten timber merchant. It was odd—this fury to deface, because, of course, you could never deface enough. If God had been like a toad, you could have rid the globe of toads, but when God was like yourself, it was no good being content with stone figures—you had to kill yourself among the graves.

—Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (1940)

your light is not in yourselves

If...you are illuminated by drawing near to him and darkened by withdrawing, your light was not in yourselves but in your God... If you live by drawing near to him and die by withdrawing, your life was not in yourselves. For that which is your life is the same as that which is your light.

—Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 19:11 (419)

Seek His Face Evermore

Ut inveniendus quaeratur, occultus est; ut inventus quaeratur, immensus est. Unde alibi dicitur, ‘Quaerite faciem ejus semper’.

—Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 63:1 (419)

He is hidden in order that you might seek him; and in order that you might not cease in your search once you have found him, he is infinite. Thus it is said . . . “Seek his face evermore”.(Psalm 105:4).

—Translation by John Betz, "Beyond the Sublime" (2006)