                           19970816.00

     As I read over the correspondence between Michael and Steven
concerning "the resolution", I try to reconstruct for myself
their respective views and to reflect on my own relevant
experiences.

     Immediately the question arises whether I should give my
free rein to my musings until they have coalesced in some sort of
formal text that lends itself to dissemination on this maillist,
or whether I should scotch my literary propensities and spend my
time in more constructive enterprises.  Almost invariably,
however, the contemplation and the ideas seem preferable to
other, more gainful employment to which I might put my mind; and
almost invariably I end up writing, as irresponsibly and as
inconsequentially as Kierkegaard's bird singing its song:

    Naar han har gjort det i al Stilhed
    og med Forelskelsens Svaermerie,
    der altid s/oger Eensomhed,
    da beh/oves Intet videre;
    da skrive han sin Bog frisk vaek
    som Fuglen synger sin Vise,
    er der Nogen, der har Gavn eller Glaede af den,
    saa meget desto bedre;
    da udgive han den sorgl/os og ubekymret,
    uden al Vigtighed, som afsluttede han Alt,
    eller som skulde alle Jordens Slaegter velsignes i hans Bog.

    Hat er das getan in aller Stille
    und mit der Schwaermerei der Verliebtheit,
    die stets die Einsamkeit sucht,
    so bedarf es keines weiteren.
    So schreibe er frisch weg sein Buch.
    wie der Vogel sein Lied singt;
    ist da jemand der Freude oder Foerderung davon hat,
    nun, umso besser;
    alsdann gebe er es heraus,
    sorglos und unbekuemmert,
    ohne alles Wichtigtun,
    so wie wenn er alles zum Abschlusz braechte,
    oder wie wenn in seinem Buche gesegnet wuerden
    alle Geschlechter auf Erden.

     To the extent that one can never know who, if anyone, will
read what one has written, Writing to the list is like publishing
a memorandum; but writing to the list is also like writing a
letter to some individual with whom one is friendly or sometimes
not so friendly; all the while it remains unclear to what purpose
one is writing, whether to contradict or to persuade; whether to
expand or to protect ones intellectual (academic) turf, to
establish or to fortify some dogma a doctrine, to secure
confirmation or support for ones own conceptual enterprises, to
try out to test or to develop a new idea, to see ones name in
print or to know ones ideas to be discussed.

     And then of couse, there is the effect of ones message on
other list members, those whose notions one addresses
specifically, honoring or flattering them to the extent that one
endorses or amplifies such notions, or making them feel bad my
misinterpreting or misconstruing their ideas, inadvertently or
otherwise; not to speak of the great silent majority of list
members whose thoughts (if any) remain inscrutable behind the
electonic veil of silence.  All this, while above us all there
hovers our patron saint, whom we venerate to be sure, for the
profundity of his insights, for the imaginativeness of his
poetry, but not least also for the unconvential role which he
played on the stage of literary and philosophical history whose
eclatant idiosyncrasies even today should make socially
respectable, (salonfaehig) at least in a discussion list bearing
his name, our own intellectual and spritual extravagances and
idiosyncracies.

     The issue under discussion is well summarized by Michael who
writes: "There is no continual choosing, but there is continual
being."  It seems to me, that the two are not only not exclusive,
but are in fact complementary one to ther other. Choice is not
the invention or creation, but the discovery or affirmation of
being.  One becomes what one is.

     In the first place, when we speak of "choosing", we ought
not be oblivious of the uncertainties surrounding the question
whether we are in fact capable of choosing, whether we have free
will; whether it does not make more sense, and demonstrate a more
profound faith or a more secure relationship to God to ask not
what we should choose to do but what we should choose to pray
for.  In any event, I think we should make up our minds (i.e.
choose): if we consider choice in the context of atheism, then we
must come to terms with the psychic mechanics of intention and
action.  If on the other hand, we deem that or him whom we call
God to be integral to our existences, then the coice if made by
or through him, and we are but the observers of the scene.
Perhaps the contunual being that appears to displace choice is a
reflection of the God relationship; an expression of faith.

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