Two Essays for Arrival

7/30/2019 Two Essays for Arrival

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Two Essays For Arrival

Michael Bolerjack


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Two Essays For Arrival 2012 Michael Bolerjack


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For Steve and Daniel


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Table of Contents

To Gather

Conclusion to the Arrival


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To Gather


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and to say I am it, is not incorrect, but should

not be noised abroad, for scandal, at the very

least uncomfortable controversy. It could bewriting. It is often written. Yet as everyone

knows, it is found more in the white blanks

and spaces, than in the linear script, but

occurs even more in the lability of the

combinatory aspect of the alphanumeric.

Let us call it provisionally a book. When God

is all in all we will be contained in The Book.

The book is limited. It is the limit. Bound,

restrained, the emblem of religion. Bookshave beginnings and endings, but the text has

none, writing is now without definition or

delimitation, it is everywhere, it is

everything. The book, ordered by logos,

observes word, reason, harmony, proportionand is one. Writing is none, disordered,

discordant, without proportion, a sin as they


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say in Spanish. The lack and absence of

writing is said to be really real, without ideal

or illusion, perhaps even without idea itself,being but the literal evacuation of meaning

by another wizened.

The book arrives, but writing is structurally

unable to do so, being the indefinite that

lubricates the machine of the world

contamination. Life is not that machine, but

has been caught up in that machine. Life is a

book, the mind of God, written in the Word

by the Spirit, which we read for our roles.And it is the Temple. The Temple observes

number. The measure is God, and as you

measure life out, so will it be measured unto

you. The machine world can no longer be

measured, having erased God, notthematically, but through structured taint,

through a contamination that appears to be


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connectivity, where we are all looking for a

good fit, but the question of the fittingness of

things has become itself inappropriate. Thereis no coherence.

If the answer is scripture, to open our Bible,

we are given it to 1) learn to read the morals

of life, 2) understand the truth in words, 3) to

be inflamed by the Spirit of holiness not to

pass away, and 4) to realize now the mind of

God.

The book is square, hierarchical, planned,

bound, held, numbered, and limited. But the

world has exceeded that more than

paradigm, that divine map, and now we are

liable to be caught unawares in the midst of

writing our cantos on the chaos, and enfolded

not securely in the great book, but

constrained in the garment of Nessus,

trapped and poisoned in the taint, our


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Herculean effort come to naught in the

closure of the antichrists.

In the icon, the Teacher holds a book. If the

truth can be contained in a book, then God

must be that book. If God is the book in which

we are all written, that book is the site of our

eternal gathering, which has always been, for

God did not write himself, but for us he is

written. Through begetting the word, a Son,

he read himself and understood who he is.

The Spirit of love is a communication of the

communion in the minds word, where thebook takes place. The son, the word, arose

from the desire that the book of life be read.

The Father will be, but without a son, he will

not have been read.

The Spirit of God is a spirit of understanding,

the unity of the son reading the Father, and

explaining him to himself. It was for this he


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was sent, with prophets, among patriarchs,

so that the Father would be understood. His

book became our literature. All is scriptured,and does not only describe and declare, but

disclose him. Now, there is a passing of the

book, into the past, and in an infinite

acceleration, we hurtle forward, or plunge

downward, and almost realize that what

began with a fall, could end with one as well.

But it need not be so.

Among the world of books, one points up,

while another points down, but as we have

read, the way up and the way down are one

and the same. In the same place we read that

the most beautiful thing is just the pile of

trash heaped on the ground. It speaks not of

nature, but more truthfully and charitably of

this human city, where our freedom is not

only to discard, but to pick through and


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gather what we will. Of what will these

wisdoms make us?

The task of being compelled with infinite

acceleration toward the end seems

impossible to fulfill. There was a man named

Jacques Derrida who spoke not un-

prophetically of these things. He wrote of the

impossible as such, on the one hand, as the

only thing worth attempting, though still

unattainable and in-deconstructible, while on

the other hand, in the very thoroughness of

his destruction, having in a sense alreadydestroyed the world in principle, he found a

remnant based on justice, democracy and the

odd-sounding hospitality. In the felicitous

discovery of what would remain, JD lived in

the conjunction of the signature effect withJude, saint of the impossible, of the difficult

and desperate, of lost causes, the saint of


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those who almost despair. The apocalypse

might seem to be that, but the infinite

acceleration we sense is true, and as the greattransformation takes place, it may be that

those novels, some pointing up, and some

pointing down, were true, too, and so our

infinite paths, as we rush to eternity.


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CONCLUSION

TO THEARRIVAL


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The point of life is to arrive. To arrive means

to acquire the stability and openness

necessary to be receptive to the grace of Godthat completes us in this life and fulfills us in

the life to come. The arrival can be seen at

both the level of the individual and of what

we loosely term the culture. It is necessary

as individuals to prepare one self by several

means. First, we must think outside the

temporal dimension, into the eternal, the

fourth that completes the dialectical past-

present-future. Second, one must escape

from the bind of the dichotomy of necessity

and fantasy to achieve freedom and reality,

through work and through love, combined as

one act. Third, one must put aside the idea

that deconstruction is viable. It is theprojection of death or self-destruction into a

form of logic that paralyzes thought and

transforms it into an endless indefinite series


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of manipulations of the written word. Fourth,

one must be willing to learn substantially, not

cognitively. To learn substantially is to bewhat you believe. Knowledge that does not

lead to such transformation is not wisdom

but only information. Words, because they

are based in the Word of God, have the power

to transform us substantially, to

transubstantiate us, in a way similar to our

transformation by the reception of the

Eucharist. The word too is Spirit and Life.

Those in the Catholic Church are afforded the

grace of transubstantiation through the body

and the blood, but also through the Word.

Those outside it have the Word alone, but

that is the one thing necessary now.

Fifth, one must learn limitation. We mustlimit ourselves in order to arrive, not only

ourselves but our creations, logic, economy,


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direction. One must go straightly, toward the

goal, in a restricted economy through a

limited dialectic, not a general economy oftextuality. One must make something true

and good and useful for the building up of

others, not to merely enjoy, or for

aggrandizement, or honors, or place. Sixth,

one must learn to give, give until it hurts, as

Mother Teresa said. Such giving can be hard

to do, but only, for instance, by giving up the

notion that I already am the way I am meant

to be, can I be transformed into what God

wants me to be. There is much that must be

given up in order to arrive. As long as our

desires and passions lead us around by the

nose, our preconceptions and prejudices, our

inclinations and fantasies, we will continue tolive in the world phantasm. Seventh, we must

tell the truth. We must not lie. We must not

tolerate the abuse of truth by a culture that is


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in denial regarding such things as abortion

and other lesser crimes against the person.

We must love the truth. We must get to knowourselves, the truth about ourselves and be

honest with ourselves, with God, and with

one another. In doing these things we may

find ourselves ready. And readiness is all.

Ripeness is all, for the day comes, the hour

comes, and one must be prepared for it, as

individuals, as a culture, as a church. If one is

transformed before that great day, before the

apocalypse, personal or communal, one may

welcome Christ rather than cry out to the

mountains to fall and cover us.

The study of moral beauty I once wrote drew

a precise map of how to get to the place of

arrival, but presented itself as a kind ofdisclosure of that arrival, in addition to its

descriptions and declarations. Something


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took place in me in the writing of that book

and I believe in the writing of this current

one that I believe may do the same for you asit did for me. In both the logic and the poetry,

and the revelations of the apocalypse, arrival

actually happens.

While I have presented programs for the

reform of dialectical thinking, and of

deconstruction, and most of all for the reform

of the Catholic Church, something else was

occurring. You, the reader, and I, did not

simply communicate, but commune, because

gathered around the word of truth, next to

God, with our attention directed to the light

of revelation, withdrawing from our worldly

pursuits, raising our minds to things not of

this world, that it does not perceive, because


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it cannot consume them. To be transformed

is not to consume but to be consumed.

Transubstantiation is the key. As long as only

accidents are changed, ideas or opinions

exchanged for other ones, the substance has

not been altered. By giving you, hopefully, a

new way to think, a new logic, which is really

not of this world, I gave you a new form. I

transpose the idea of the new man from the

letters of Paul, of being transformed by the

renewal of the mind, into my writings, that

were more than mere criticism or poetry.Through the transformation of the texts on

which I wrote, when I wrote of other texts, I

may have brought about another

transformation in you and in me, in the

church and in the world. That we mustchange most agree on, but that we can

change is something we almost despair of


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today. I think if you want to arrive at a better

word, a better church, a better you, I say be

creative, be thoughtful, give, be honest, havea critical faith that believes and thinks in

eternal terms, turned away from judgment, to

love, from destruction and deconsecration,

falsehood and denial and fantasies, to the

work of reality, to make a church and world

to be.

Why should we wait? All are called. All have

the vocation. To arrive means to be what you

are meant to be, what God intends each of usto be. It is not always obvious, as my work

witnesses.

Our arrival is seen in our readiness for

completion and fulfillment, to prepare for the

coming apocalypse, soon, so we may one day

rejoice, as we cast out fear by perfect love.

Two Essays for Arrival

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