When St. Paul speaks of leaving behind the things of a child, I do not think most of us have any idea how radical and difficult that is. It is the equivalent of being knocked off one's horse on the way to Damascus.
I think it is the very essential basis of blood in religion, blood sacrifice, blood letting, and the more severe asceticisms.
To give up the things of a child...that is to give up your childhood; it is to give up the child, you, which still lives with you. It is painful, and it is difficult. It is losing the security of childhood. If you had a miserrable childhood, then it's giving up the very basis of your hates and dysfunctions which provide the structure of your life.
If my life is like a house, God is demolition and excavation, then re-filling in so there's no trace left of the home that had been there.
God is the Leviathan to our Ahab, and He tasks us severely, even when our spirit has been reduced to the barest of framework of a battered ship, floating aimlessly within the ocean's expanse. He never stops.
At that point - so I am told - we see forever.
pix: bernard alapetite
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