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The Holy is the Yearning to be the sons & daughters of God, expressed by conscious beings who - if they are conscious of anything at all - are conscious of not being the sons & daughters of God.

The Failure of our efforts creates the chain of History, and gives rise to our past. Our present imperfection makes us acutely aware of Living Now as imperfect beings who yearn to be perfect, and thus creates the Present with its Discontents.

The Future is the far off goal which creates the chain of the Future, with its promise of becoming as the Lilies of the Field.

Religion is the past, present, and future of yearning to be perfectly free...not free from a particular and specific injustice and suffering, but God's infinite yearning to be infinitely free. It is ended at that time when you will know it, and when you will see it; not before.

It is Weird and Paradoxical precisely because it is not a desire to be free of one thing, but an infinite yearning for an infinite freedom, and - hence - to be free of the yearning for freedom! It is only a paradox for reason, not the spirit!

We love our paradoxes, whether expressed as slogans:

"Freedom Is Not Free !"
"If You Wish Peace, Prepare For War !",

or in our behavior where we believe the weapons of violence, equitably distributed throughout society and the world, will give us greater safety from violence, or when a natural catastrophe occurs, to wonder on the nature of a Good God who Allows Bad Things to happen.

Paradoxes are the dead ends of reason; that's why we have so many of them. Our minds are filled with them and puzzles and jokes and puns...palindromes, anagrams, and sight-gags. Or the sound and the fury. But the Narrative of the Future has been shown to me to be the Story Plain & Simple, wherein it is a gift to be simple... a gift to be free... where we lay down our burdens,  and we are renewed.