I’m not sure anyone who has met our second eldest has managed to forget her.  I like to say that I’ve never met anyone like her, and it’s still true.

Ruth is a child who has seemed to love life from birth; one assumes she was not unhappy in the womb, either.  For most of her life, she has run, nearly at a dead sprint, everywhere she wants to go.  When we have gone on walks, she runs.  Her wavy blond hair bobs behind her, and if I know anything about running, I’d say she has excellent form.

She was already trying to turn cartwheels…well, I’m not sure if anyone ever told her what one was.  I would not be surprised if she had invented them for herself.  All I can positively say is that, when she struggled at first to get them right, I gave her a little coaching.

A little.  I am not a gymnast, or a gymnastics coach.  I can’t do a cartwheel myself.  But a few words from an amateur about how to push and propel her body, and she was doing them end-over-end.  A complete natural.*

Ruth’s affections are over-the-top, and she was often in time-out for nearly smothering her siblings.  She has unbelievably good comic timing, bringing me to tears a number of times.  Ruth has made up languages and wants to know all about bodies and is very savvy about social cues…when she wants to be.

I could say as much as I want, but it is nothing like a few minutes of Ruth in her full strength.  Her presence is such strong stuff, her energy so potent, that many have come away amused, thrilled…

And they expect trouble for us, her parents.  She is the quintessential willful, wild child.  Ruth broke her leg when she was two, and while the doctor set up her cast, I said, “Is it ok if she walks on this?”

He was puzzled at first, then understood my meaning, and waved it off, “Oh, she won’t be able to walk with this cast on.”

“Well,” I insisted, “If she does manage it, is that ok, or should we prevent her from doing it?”

“With the way I’m setting it,” he said, with a hint of condescension, “she won’t be able to walk on it.”

Somewhere around her four-week appointment, I brought her in, and he watched her shuffling around the exam room…walking on the cast.  He was in disbelief, and told me we had to prevent her from walking on it, because it could mess up her gait.

Having known Ruth for two years, I was so completely nonplussed by this development that I did not bother telling the doctor, “Told you so.”

It’s easy to see why others are impressed – well, overwhelmed! – by Ruth.  She is a cyclone of enthusiasm, a three foot tall force of nature.  She will leap onto your lap without warning, ask some intimate question about your body or your relations, then pull you three directions to play cards, dress up, and do cartwheels, all at once if possible.

You will say something surprised you, or hurt, or that you need a break, and she will let up for all of three seconds.  Maybe.  But whatever you say, short of absolutely putting your foot down, she will not stop.  And even then, she will negotiate.

One hardly knows what to do with her.  One only expects that she will flit and flutter and positively burst in all directions at once, and naturally that gets more serious the older she becomes.  Naturally, eventually, that becomes actual trouble.

I utterly reject this conclusion.  I spit it out for the lukewarm drivel that it is.

First – Have you ever been called, “stubborn as a mule?”  Some mules have been dubbed, “stubborn as Ed.”

Where our guests are too polite or too timid to drop the hammer, I have few qualms.  Where Ruth pushes, I am all but immovable.  Where she might burst, I de-fuse.  Where she is sophisticated in her appeals, insistent on her intentions – I cut her designs at the root, and leave them stacked for the fire.

If she is a cyclone, I am the deluge, a 1,000 year flood.  (A father ought to loom large).

Second – why all this talk, anyway?  Do you think I boast?  Do you think I compare my strength with a child and thus exalt myself?

God love you, no.  I am about the serious, absurd, disruptive, epoch-making work of forming a Saint.  It is not about me at all, except that God has seen fit to give me the task.

And He has given it to you, too.

But think about Ruth – she really could be a wild child, no?  How if I simply threw up my hands, and no one loomed large in her life?  What then?

The very thought disgusts me.  Honestly, somebody bury me alive if I display such cowardice.  But first give me a chance, and simply slap me across the face.

No – I see St. Ruth, not Ruth the wild child.  I see the eternal youth of God in her uncontrollable enthusiasm.  I see the perceptiveness of the Oracle in her understanding of social cues and in her moral compass.  I see St. Teresa of Avila, chiding God Almighty, in her easy chiding of adults and parents alike.

I see the hope of ages, light in darkness.  I see the blistering, unrelenting love of Christ in her smothering kisses.

Think she is uncontrollable?  Cause her the least part of scandal, and watch what I do.  They’ll cast Jason Statham in the title role.**

I’ve told her, as we’ve told all our kids, that our goal is that they should be Saints.  I don’t know if she invented it, or if I did, but one day she declared that she would become “St. Ruthie the Silly.”

Amelia, her practical older sister, objected that this was not how Saints are named.  But I gently corrected her, “She can be St. Ruthie the Silly, if that’s what God wants.”

*It’s no joke.  We signed her up for gymnastics classes, and she was quickly invited to the advanced level.  I came to watch just one of her practices, and it’s for the best, because I hardly made it out without weeping.  I’m a sap, but she is gifted, and that’s beautiful to behold.

**Now I see what is meant by the “jealousy” of God.  It is ferocious.

The Pharisees made an art and a science out of observing the Law of Moses, cowing many followers into observing the endless minutiae and machinations they had devised.  It was indeed a heavy burden – was God really like this?

Or should the commandments of God liberate us from sin, and cut a path to His love and mercy?

Along comes Jesus, who earlier permitted his disciples to pick grain to eat on the Sabbath, and now was healing on the Sabbath.  How could he explain this over and above the endless strictures concerning the day of rest?  -which strictures certainly appeared to take the command “Keep holy the Sabbath” as seriously as possible.

Jesus’ justification is two-fold:  First, a man is more valuable than a sheep (and the Pharisees would certainly rescue their own sheep from harm on the Sabbath).

Second – of course it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.  The whole point – of all God’s commands – is that we ought to do good.  But we sin, so we require God’s mercy and guidance to do good rather than to sin.  The commandment regarding the Sabbath was directed toward being holy – not toward following a rule.

The commandments are not for nothing.  They are the pattern of behavior, the focus and discipline of a man’s spirit toward the will of God.  If you follow them because you love God, you will do well!

If you follow them because you love power and influence, because you leverage them so that men will grovel at your feet or struggle to be conformed to your image, now that you have sufficiently misshapen the Law…

Right then, it is time to turn back.  Immediately.  Turn around – you’ve gone far, far off the path.

But take heed… a viper would be found far off the path.

See it again, one more time:   If there had been no Fall, there would be no Law.  We would be inclined toward the Good, and thus “all things are permissible.”

As it is, there was a Fall – and therefore we are profoundly broken.  We see good, and perceive that it is evil.  We see evil and imagine it is good.  It is an honest mistake, or it would be a diabolical one.

To counter-act this, God established rules-laws-patterns of behavior that would settle all disputes within the will (and the community).  My fallen nature urges me toward an illicit act.  But it is powerful and feels genuine – why not act on it?

There might not be any reason to avoid doing so, except the Law.  Of course, even that was violated, but at least we could then recognize we had sinned, and were in need of a Savior…

Therefore, the Law was good – profoundly good, so that not one iota would be altered until heaven and earth disappear.

And it was this profound good that the Pharisees had appropriated for their own gain.  The promise of God, that one would find true peace and prosperity and joy in following the commandments (“Lord, I love your commands!”), became a long chain of shackles hammered together by men too small to let their brothers live free.  It became an admixture of their neuroses and scruples, their leverage from a distance of a great weight upon their brothers.

This weight they attempted to foist upon and trap Jesus, the Messiah.  As if to anticipate the old atheist riddle, they burdened the Son of God with a weight they imagined he could not handle.

Notice, though:  There is a rock so big that God cannot lift it.  That is, of despair.   And with so many laws, and laws upon laws, and consequences of laws that must be addressed by still more laws, one could easily find, say, lepers and paralytics and tax collectors laden with such an impossible weight.

For love of them – the lost – Jesus flares up with indignation.  His Law – an instrument of liberation – bent back upon itself and sharpened into an instrument of condemnation.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

No – the purpose and the end are God.  They always were.  It was always – dimly – the Beatific Vision, the “well done, good and faithful servant!”  The Fall was a happy fault, because God would not, even then, abandon us.  He would find a still more incredible way to point us back to Him, and deliver us.

And we might say – He’ll be damned if His own rules are going to be used against Him.  How true.

“The condition of human nature … is such that it has to be led by things corporeal and sensible to things spiritual and intelligible.”  – St. Thomas Aquinas

As always, St. Thomas has not only arrived where we want to go centuries in advance, but he has done so with precision and the poet’s flourish.

Still, every generation must grapple with the world as they find it.

The contemporary search for proof of God’s existence often runs through the sciences, namely physics, though the atheists fancy that biology can do their work for them.  Neither is necessary to show that God exists, nor can either possibly show that He doesn’t exist.

Rather, what grew out of that search, for me, were the ready analogies that physics offers for spiritual phenomena.  I learned, for example, that the very laws of physics break down as one approaches the first instant of creation, the Big Bang.  Seeing the Universe issuing forth from the command of God, I found it remarkable that there was nothing but the spiritual realm, when all of the sudden laws, mathematics, particles, energy, space and time came “screaming” into existence.  The abstract realities – laws, mathematics – reached terminal velocity, like a satellite re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, and the resulting fire and fury resulted in forces, space, time, and matter, immediately and inexorably falling into order.

That analogy is not exactly what I mean, but a bridge to it.

That spiritual realm persists – it has to – even while our physical world lives and grows, fights and loves, and decays and dies into the matter that forms new life.  And how do we know the spiritual realm exists?  The first analogy…

It would be odd for any creature to have a sense which senses falsely.  Biologically speaking, this would be extra baggage, more body to protect and feed.  There are even instances of fish which had sight, when a group of them came to be effectively trapped in a a cave for many years.  In order to save energy, they evolved the loss of their eyes.

In other words, there was first light, and so the eyes developed and were useful.  Then there was no light, and the eyes were not useful, and soon they atrophied away.

Now when many billions of people around the planet claim experience or evidence of the spiritual realm, are they like fish with eyes and no light?  Why haven’t we evolved the loss of this spiritual sense?

What if, instead, the organ (the soul) survives because there is something that it detects, which proves useful for living in a physical reality?

There is much here; we will explore it.

Another great example of a natural metaphor to explain a supernatural phenomenon is evidenced by the manifold answers to the following question:

What, exactly, did Jesus accomplish on the Cross?

It is cast as ransom for a prisoner, as redemption of a slave, as rescue from behind enemy lines, as a jailbreak from the gates of Hell, as vicarious suffering of a punishment, as repayment of a debt, as a lamb being led to slaughter, as a new Passover (itself somewhere between physical/historical and spiritual)…and this is just off the top of one’s head.

What is interesting is that one is often taught that no single metaphor captures it.  In fact, some are downright scornful for some scholars, except that they appear in Scripture, and so must be addressed.  The redemption of a slave received this treatment recently.

I am personally of the view that we should not be so quick to judge Scripture, and that whatever the case may be just is the case.  If God Himself would tell us to imagine we were slaves (to sin) and that He came to redeem us for a price (His suffering and death), what exactly is my objection?  That He did not order the Universe properly so as to avoid a slave analogy?  That He did, in fact, redeem me?  Nonsense.

Anyway, this great spiritual reality strains all analogies, which is a lesson that the spiritual realm is truly a different realm.  Just as new formulas and rules govern 2D geometry and 3D geometry (and beyond), so are there new rules in the spiritual which we can hardly begin to imagine by way of the physical.

One of the more acute ways of demonstrating this point follows:  Imagine you are speaking to a man who has been blind since birth.  How would you describe a beautifully cut, flawless diamond?

You could approach it – perhaps some exquisite smell, like a rose, with an almost geometric perfection – or perhaps by means of heat and texture, as well as construction that might be conveyed by touch.  You see the point, though.

In no way have you shown this man the diamond.  And we left you the benefit of four senses.

Likewise, in no way do we really understand what Jesus accomplished by His Passion and death.  Yet even a child can understand it was marvelous, miraculous work, and precious to possess.

Nota bene:  Naturally, these metaphors do not refer to purely physical phenomena.  The social construct of slavery, for example, does not appear to have any parallel in the animal kingdom, and relies on abstractions such as dignity (or lack thereof) and power.  The spiritual analog is, therefore, a next-level abstraction.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

– John 1:1-2, 4-5

Supposing you had a real but indescribable experience – how do you go about sharing it with a friend or confidant?

Consider an epiphany you’ve had.  There was some problem, some riddle of existence which you could not answer.  Perhaps for days, perhaps for years, you sought the answer and could not find it.  (We are already speaking in metaphor, but hang with me).

And then, quite unexpectedly, you had it.  The answer.

Now the physical phenomenon of an epiphany might be described as a new neuro-pathway, the literal (physical) firing of synapses across particular neurons in a particular order which rendered the new thought to your consciousness (whatever that is).

For one thing, this is a quite dull and tedious way of telling the story of your epiphany, but let it pass.

For a second thing, it is anything but clear that thought is, our could be, a purely physical phenomenon.  Never mind this, too.

The salient point is that the truth discovered, the object of the epiphany, the objectiveness of the truth, is non-material.  Insomuch as we engage with it, then, we are operating in the abstract/spiritual realm.

So when you say something like, “And then I saw it…” or “That’s when the light bulb came on…” – which functionally mean the same thing – you are pulling an abstract experience through the filter of a physical experience.

Or, you are reaching up to understand the abstract by means of the physical, which is the thesis here.

Now what if (literally) God came to Earth and became (literally) man, and dwelt among us?  What if this God-man taught and demonstrated a doctrine which corrected our moral and intellectual (spiritual) deviancies, healed and exalted our wounded bodies (literally) so that we might transcend them to a greater reality?  How would you describe this experience?

You might call Him the Light of the world.  You might describe Him as irresistible, unassailable, like a light in darkness – in no way can the darkness overcome the light.  Just so, in no way could evil overcome Him or His mission.*

And if you’ll accept the Gospel and believe in Him, that same invincibility – on the spiritual level – is conferred upon you.

Next example…

*Arguably, even mission is a metaphor.

We have laid out three ways of knowing the spiritual realm, which is further proposed as the true realm.  The physical realm is but an echo.

The difficulty remains that – ordinarily –  we know the physical realm with a higher degree of confidence than the spiritual.  It feels more real because it is more obvious and less deniable.

There is a reason, after all, that apostates are made by imprisonment and torture.

So if there are three ways of knowing the spiritual, which are nevertheless nebulous to the populace; and if we have a systematic and reliable way of learning about the physical; what could ground us more firmly in true knowledge of the spiritual?

Here is my thesis:  The spiritual realm is the source of the physical.  It is often analogous to, but not an exact emanation of, the spiritual.

In some ways this sounds like Plato.  I said before – honestly – that I don’t know whether the world of Forms is real.  Nevertheless, we are not saying that there are forms, per se.  We are saying that, if one imagines that forms exist, it gives us a useful way of learning about the spiritual from our experience of the physical.

Indeed, suggesting that humans have a spiritual sense captures what we’re about here – that one’s physical senses are analogous to one’s spiritual sense.

But what if your spiritual sense is dull, or inoperative?  Or what if you simply don’t trust it?

What if you think Plato is interesting, but he’s mostly talking ho-bunk?

If, still, you wish to learn something about the spiritual realm, I suggest you can learn it by a careful study of the physical realm.  We’ll take some examples next time.

There is a reason, after all, that saints are made by imprisonment and torture.

We have established that humanity, over and above the emus, has an innate sense of the spiritual realm, and this is demonstrated by the persistence of religion in human life, among other things.  Against the naturalist, we see the impossibility that human life could have been purely physical, because of the ease with which humans engage in abstractions.

In other words, a single kiss from my daughter is the kiss of death for Naturalism.  Requiescat in pace.

This frees us to advance:  What do we know about the spiritual realm, anyway?  What can we know?

Our difficulty is that the physical realm seems so…well, obvious, immediate.*  When we want to say something about the physical realm – the sun is shining, the tree is blooming – these things are generally provable by observation.  Humans broadly agree about the facts right in front of them, in this sense – we don’t argue with the weatherman about whether it’s raining, nor the traffic reporter, for that matter, who sees down the road and looks upon other roads.

The spiritual realm is not verifiable in the same way.  It is not engaged with by means of the physical senses…though, it can be indirectly verified that way.  Let us return to that another time.

For now, the grievance of the naturalist is more important than his arguments:  If beliefs aren’t scientifically verifiable, then anyone can believe anything they like!  How can this rise to the level of knowledge?

That’s true.  That’s a good point.

One argument, which we have alluded to already, is that humans have a spiritual sense.  It “looks” upon the world and detects certain abstractions, like good and evil, beauty, even truth.  The philosopher Alvin Plantinga says we have a “sense of the divine” which justifies our belief in God.

For another argument, we derive from Plato the world of “forms,” which are abstract and ideal molds from which the physical instances are derived.  Is there an ideal form of a chair?  I don’t know, but there is something remarkable about the ability to make a chair without explicit instructions, as though the idea exists as a universally accessible concrete entity.

Let’s take a third.  That is, the natural order appears to be governed by laws, which laws have no physical properties.  These laws are often expressed by mathematics, which is the highest point of agreement between the naturalist and the supernaturalist – math works, is practically the most reliable form of knowing that there is.

Whereas the naturalist may agree that mathematics is the language of the Universe, the supernaturalist goes further and says that information does not simply occur, but is articulated by someone or something.  Math is preceded by Logos, which gives the Universe structure and predictability and knowability.

And so, we can have knowledge of the spiritual realm by direct experience of it (the spiritual sense), by abstraction from the physical structures to a spiritual ideal, and by observing that the physical realm operates according to non-physical laws, which laws must have their own reality.

Any of these, arguably, is more reliable that the physical world itself as a deliverer of truth.  You will find people who claim to have seen the spirit world in a vision or a near death experience.  You will find others who hold to the Platonic view of the world.  And still others construct reality on a foundation of abstractions – arguably, all of modern science, for a start – and build a monument of knowledge thereupon.

*Who stops to wonder – is this by design?

A basic biological creature – an emu, perhaps – only deals in the physical.  Life is all hatching and growing and foraging and mating and running and dying.  Often it’s not quite that good.

By the naturalist’s account, this ought to be everything for humanity, and we may as well enjoy it while it lasts.

It would be everything, except for that pesky “brain virus” that clings to religion, that continues to believe old fairy tales against all experience and evidence…or so they would have you believe.

I don’t notice the godless being all that critical about paganism.  They will tell you this is because the pagans do not trouble them, but they are ignorant of history and human nature besides.

It is more a case of making allies with a common enemy.  If modern religion disappeared, Paganism would immediately gain from it.  We know this by looking back before Christianity emerged, and noting that human nature has not changed.

But Paganism is the bellwether of Naturalism’s demise – its miscarriage, really.  If Naturalism could not dam up religion from the earliest days, it never had a chance.*

Why is this significant?  The question is the answer.

That is, significance is the first handhold out of the physical realm.  If physical objects can be imbued with meaning beyond their physical utility, then we are also engaging in a realm beyond physical activity.

Think of a flower, for instance.  It has physical utility, a place in the natural order.

Now think of giving a flower.  One is not offering the flower in order to pollinate another flower, or for ingestion, or for composting or anything else.  Instead, the giver and the receiver both perceive an abstract (roughly, a spiritual) significance to the flower and the act of giving the flower.

This is what the naturalist could not prevent from happening, never could prevent from happening.

*The usual line is that humanity has sufficiently advanced, or will inevitably advance, such that religion will be seen for the fraud it is.  They believe we will see Christianity like we now see Roman paganism.

As a matter of fact, the sword has another edge – if the Stoics and the Enlightenment could not free the world from the grip of religion, it is doubtful that anything else could.  Rather, one religion comes to dominate another at any given point in time.