Publictakeover's Weblog

Character Is Fate

Thus spake “The Philosopher,” as Thomas Acquinas used to call him:  Aristotle.  When Pagliaccio murders Nedda at the end of I Pagliacci, he seals his fate as the very fool he seeks to outstretch by taking his pathetic vengeance.  Of course, Oedipus is the prime example.  In fleeing his destiny he unwittingly enacts it.

But what of the stars?  What is the character of starlight, spanning millions of light years to reach the imaginations of  humans, bedazzled by the messages expressed in night’s chorus of vision?

It is the message of longing beyond fear, beyond sorrow–the longing of love to be love for all forever for love’s just sake alone.  It’s the message of the longing that refines in the fires of want beyond hopelessness and despair, emerging as love, purged of all but the purest love of all, pure, innocent and unadorned starlight, chaste and splendid beyond all else in creation, admired and sought beyond the reach of the highest imaginings.

Because my life is a life of earthly longing, of longing in pain, in fear, in weakness, I long unto death and in despair of resolution or salvation, and look upon the object of longing with resignation that love beyond gain, beyond pleasure, beyond terrestrial being, not my love but the love of the Creator, the love of the stars, the light, emerges from my dissolution in the longing that is my sin, my lie, my falsehood, my utter despair.

Even my pathetic, ignoble death from consuming, human longing will be redeemed by the company of patient, loving heavenly bodies and the holy spirit of truth that emerges beyond all we are, bearing me up, finally, into the starlight, to become the message of falsehood and corruption purged by longing, endless human longing ended, at last, in pure light and the message of simple, infinite healing love, gently soothing the fiery want  of human longing forever from the beginning to the end of all.