I find myself in the apartment on occasion, wandering around seeking productive activity. On occasion, I write myself a list in the morning, of tasks to accomplish, so they can be checked off in turn. Everywhere I find myself there is some small task asking to be completed. Pick up the carpenter’s glue, scrub the coffee stains off the wall (go figure – ask the dog), take a shower, check the schedule, look for things. The screen, somehow, this little space charged -from time to time- with potential more *actual*, in some sense, than the world from which it is removed.

So it calls and I come. I think there is a place here that invites appreciation and reflection, in a complementary way to the real world seems to demand attention and action. A good space to think back and offer it up to His grace for redemption. As much as I try to make moves that appear to be called for, I know there is a much larger context which I cannot percieve or even concieve, and it is this widely unrecognized relationship which imbues all “progress” down here with that bleached-out tone of insufficiency.

It’s pride which does it, the father of every sin, accounting for every degree of separation. The manifestations of which, even when named and categorized, appear boundless – a frozen wasteland of self-love, incapable of any true emotion or nourishment of others. The connection between pride and futility used to be so close that the words were synonymous – vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

Now we seem to have broken that link – vanity is now seen as *excessive* pride, pride by itself is just self-esteem, important for healthy emotional development. The former capital sin is now a fully-respected member of a balanced emotional cohort. It is disturbingly easy to recognize – once you realize that everything you can see is simply an appearance, pride is not hard to recognize. What life would be like without it, that is what is very hard to recognize.

We see glimmers of selflessness all the time, like stars in a silky black sky. It’s mind-blowing to think what a world of selfless people would really be like. I think it’s unimaginable, except for those barest and most fleeting of moments where there is an eruption of kindness – like a recent diner in New Jersey where customers paid for the next check at their table, one after another, for hours – started by some angel, who knew.