The Action : The Relationship Between God and Man The ultimate most holy form of theory is action.

Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to generation , but to leap and to burn with it! Our profound human duty is not to interpret or to cast light on the rhythm o f God's arch, but to adjust, as much as we can, the rhythm of our small and flee ting life to his. Only thus may we mortals succeed in achieving something immortal, because th en we collaborate with One who is Deathless. Only thus may we conquer mortal sin, the concentration on details, the narro wness of our brains; only thus may we transubstantiate into freedom the slavery of earthen matter given us to mold. Amid all these things, beyond all these things every man and nation, every p lant and animal, every god and demon, charges upward like an army inflamed by an incomprehensible, unconquerable Spirit. We struggle to make this Spirit visible, to give it a face, to encase it in words, in allegories and thoughts and incantations, that it may not escape us. But it cannot be contained in the twentysix letters of an alphabet which we string out in rows; we know that all these words, these allegories, these though ts, and these incantations are, once more, but a new mask with which to conceal the Abyss. We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circ le God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolut e Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Sil ence. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons, can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic. Within this gigantic circle of divinity we are in duty bound to separate and perceive clearly the small, burning arc of our epoch. Unsourced variant or paraphrase: ... We might have given it any name we wished: Abyss, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But never forget, it is we who give it a name. I do not care what face other ages and other people have given to the enormo us, faceless essence. They have crammed it with human virtues, with rewards and punishments, with certain ties. They have given a face to their hopes and fears, they have submitted their anarchy to a rhythm, they have found a higher justifi cation by which to live and labor. They have fulfilled their duty. But today we have gone beyond these needs; we have shattered this particular mask of the Abyss; our God no longer fits under the old features. Our hearts have overbrimmed with new agonies, with new luster and silence. T he mystery has grown savage, and God has grown greater. The dark powers ascend, for they have also grown greater, and the entire human island quakes. Let us stoop down to our hearts and confront the Abyss valiantly. Let us try to mold once more, with our flesh and blood, the new, contemporary face of God. For our God is not an abstract thought, a logical necessity, a high and harm onious structure made of deductions and speculations. He is not an immaculate, neutral, odorless, distilled product of our brains, neither male nor female. He is both man and woman, mortal and immortal, dung and spirit. He gives bir th, fecundates, slaughters death and eros in one and then he begets and slays on ce more, dancing spaciously beyond the boundaries of a logic which cannot contai n the antinomies. God is imperiled. He is not almighty, that we may cross our hands, waiting f

or certain victory. He is not all-holy, that we may wait trustingly for him to p ity and to save us. Within the province of our ephemeral flesh all of God is imperiled. He canno t be saved unless we save him with our own struggles; nor can we be saved unless he is saved. We are one. From the blind worm in the depths of the ocean to the endless ar ena of the Galaxy, only one person struggles and is imperiled: You. And within y our small and earthen breast only one thing struggles and is imperiled: the Univ erse. We must understand well that we do not proceed from a unity of God to the sa me unity of God again. We do not proceed from one chaos to another chaos, neithe r from one light to another light, nor from one darkness to another darkness. Wh at would be the value of our life then? What would be the value of all life? But we set out from an almighty chaos, from a thick abyss of light and darkn ess tangled. And we struggle plants, animals, men, ideas in this momentary passa ge of individual life, to put in order the Chaos within us, to cleanse the abyss , to work upon as much darkness as we can within our bodies and to transmute it into light. We do not struggle for ourselves, nor for our race, not even for humanity. We do not struggle for Earth, nor for ideas. All these are the precious yet provisional stairs of our ascending God, and they crumble away as soon as he ste ps upon them in his ascent. In the smallest lightning flash of our lives, we feel all of God treading up on us, and suddenly we understand: if we all desire it intensely, if we organize all the visible and invisible powers of earth and fling them upward, if we all battle together like fellow combatants eternally vigilant then the Universe migh t possibly be saved. It is not God who will save us it is we who will save God, by battling, by c reating, and by transmuting matter into spirit. Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we set out as crusaders to free not the Holy Sepulchre but that God buried in matter a nd in our souls. Every body, every soul is a Holy Sepulcher. Every seed of grain is a Holy Se pulchre; let us free it! The brain is a Holy Sepulchre, God sprawls within it an d battles with death; let us run to his assistance! My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you. My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did toda y, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are th e obstacles I encountered, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow. My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling ra in. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and converse. "Leader!" I cry. He turns his face toward me, and I shudder to confront his anguish. Our love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we dri nk the same wine in this low tavern of life.