I often perseverate. Just a few days ago I was perusing my library and pulled out two copies of the work of poet/essayist Wendell Berry and shared a couple of thoughts here. But this casual, even random perusal of my books has done what literature should do, it has stimulated me along a certain vein of thought. Thus my current “perseveration” which will lead me soon to even an heavy-duty German/American theologian of the 20th century, Paul Tillich. But first, from yesterday the notion of a sparrow being but “organized energy” has really grabbed me, as I realized that some similar “organized energy” grabbed me at birth…and even before…and is still here today. This is some vestige of primordial will operating through me which has led me to this phase of my life in which I bring emphasis to the metaphorical dimension of life. And there is no escape from this central entelechy in one’s body and soul, only modification so that we might more or less fit in which the entelechy that is guiding our species. Let me illustrated with the wisdom of poet Stanley Kunitz who once said in a poem entitled, “Layers” that, “I have walked through many lives, some of them my own. I am not the one I was though some remnant of being remains from which I struggle not to stray.” That “remnant of being” is a way of describing the very core of our soul, a primal energy that has been “harnessed” as is with the sparrow so to bring us to this moment in our life. The same could be said of our species.

This indomitable, irrepressible will, in my daily “perseveration’ in life, has brought me this morning to the aforementioned kindred spirit of mine, Paul Tillich. My next post, if this current flow of “perseveration” continues with me, will be his observation about human will and the complexities of “harnessing” it.