u/PhilosophyOfLanguage

According to Gandalf, Sauron can’t help but project his own inner logic onto everyone else.

“For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.”

He who desires power above all else will never understand the actions of someone who does not. He judges all hearts on the scales of his own malice.

Gandalf, who does not desire power above all else, possesses a different kind of wisdom — the wisdom of folly.

“Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy!”

But why is folly a veil before the eyes of the Enemy?

We never see things as they are; we see them as we are. Someone bent on power cannot truly understand someone who rejects a tool for gaining power. In his eyes, such a person is simply foolish.

Who in his right mind would refuse a means of achieving quick and certain success? Only someone who understands the mind of the Enemy. Sauron can see those who desire what he desires. But he cannot see those who reject power in the form of the Ultimate Power Tool.

Those who reject power become invisible to the Lidless Eye. “Folly” is the perfect cloak, hiding us from the Enemy’s gaze. The Lidless Eye is a metaphor for total surveillance.

As we drove through Houston yesterday, my son pointed to a surveillance camera by the side of the road — an ALPR, or automated license plate reader.

“What are they for?” he asked.

“Someone wants more control,” I replied.

“What for?”

“Power. If you can get more power, why wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah. It seems foolish not to.”

“Exactly. We need to become fools if we want to remain unseen by Sauron. He believes everyone is like him — that no one in their right mind would refuse tools designed to maximize power. But this makes us completely visible to the Eye.”

“What makes us invisible?”

“Humility. The forces of spiritual darkness cannot see humility. The less we use their ‘power tools,’ the less visible we become. Our folly becomes our cover — and true wisdom from above.”

Gregory of Nazianzus once wrote about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:

“This latter was the Tree of Knowledge; not, however, because it was evil from the beginning… nor was it forbidden because God grudged it to men… But it would have been good if partaken of at the proper time; for the Tree was, according to my theory, Contemplation, which it is only safe for those who have reached maturity of habit to enter upon; but which is not good for those who are still somewhat simple and greedy.” — The Second Oration on Easter

The sin of our forefathers was not that they partook of the fruit, but that they partook of it at the wrong time. God never grudged knowledge to humans, but He withheld it — just like we withhold matches from three-year-olds. He didn’t allow us to touch knowledge before the right time.

Tools are not evil in and of themselves. They become evil when we, in our simplicity and greed, refuse to wait for the “right time.” When we grasp for power, it becomes our undoing. When we wait for it to come at the right time, it becomes an instrument for good.

Power can only be given to the one who doesn’t need it. Ultimately, only a hobbit is strong enough to save the world. When you think you can, you can’t. When you think you can’t, you can.

According to Heidegger, modern thinking has reduced intellectual mystery to intellectual mastery.

Modern thinking is conceptual, and a concept is, essentially, a form of grasping — from the Latin root conceptus, “to take in” or “to contain.” In our time, we speak of “grasping the material,” “retaining information,” “gaining knowledge,” and so on.

“In the modern age, through calculative thinking, we have long become accustomed to seeing in thinking, and demanding from thinking, grip [Zugriff], grasp [Griff], and concept [Begriff], i.e., we understand the “concept” on the basis of a grasping: conceptus — no longer ὁρισμóς. — The Event

Symbolically, grip [Zugriff], grasp [Griff], and concept [Begriff] evoke the gesture of seizing something in a clenched fist. Heidegger suggests that when thinking has been reduced to conceptus, it is no longer ὁρισμός (horismos) — the Greek word from which we derive “horizon.”

It is impossible to look at a horizon in a grasping way. The only way to truly see the horizon is to allow it to be what it is and to let it reveal itself. The moment we snatch something out of the horizon and trap it in a definition, we no longer see the horizon. It is gone. To see it, we must let it be.

Symbolically, Heidegger associates this with the opposite gesture: the open hand. He calls it Gelassenheit — releasement, or letting-be. Modern thinking becomes reductionistic because it has turned mystery into mastery. We see bits — broken pieces — but never the horizon.

For something to reveal itself, it must be released. We must open our hand and allow the horizon to open itself to us in a reciprocal gesture. If I listen to a melody or a song, for example, I cannot possess or seize any of its notes. To continue hearing and enjoying the song, I must allow each note to come and go so that the next one can appear.

If I try to grab, retain, or make use of a single note, the horizon of the song is lost. I may “grasp” the individual elements — I may learn the note’s position on the scale, its frequency, its intervals — but I will not hear or enjoy the song. I will never see the horizon.

I remember going to music school as a child — which I hated — and thinking: “I thought music was about playing songs, but it’s about scales, solfeggio, and learning about the lives of composers.” The only reason I went was because my mom insisted.

But one day, I saw a classmate sit down at the pianoforte and play a popular song. I was speechless. I loved the song. Suddenly, it occurred to me that what I had been doing at music school for two years had little to do with Music. It was a bitter-sweet discovery.

I realized that music was something entirely different from what I had been taught. It was a mystery.

And mystery never begins with mastery. Mastery always follows mystery.

Eventually, I dropped out of music school, and a few years later I taught myself to play the guitar — this time, driven by a sense of mystery.

Surprisingly, mastery came too, over time — as a side effect. I learned the scales, the notes, the intervals, the solfeggio. But this time, my interest was nourished by the mystery of music.

Unless we first embrace the horizon, we won’t know the meaning of the elements that fill it. The first gesture is never to grasp conceptually. The first gesture is always to become super attentive to what the horizon wants to reveal.

There is no need to attack, seize, grasp, or retain.

Reality will yield itself willingly to the one who is willing to wait for the revelation of its hidden beauties.

About a month ago, I came across a video exploring the ingenious solfeggio patterns behind Howard Shore’s musical themes in The Lord of the Rings films.

In the unforgettable Ring theme that plays during the opening scene of the forging of the three Rings - and then throughout the film - Howard Shore captures the central spiritual paradox of Tolkien’s entire legendarium. His score perfectly underscores the mind of Ilúvatar.

Ilúvatar created harmony - the Great Music - and gave His creatures the freedom to do as they willed. Some rebelled, disrupting the harmony by introducing cacophony - the discord of Melkor. Yet Ilúvatar did not destroy Melkor. He allowed the discord to continue - only to be woven back into the Harmony and to give rise to an even greater glory of the Whole.

Howard Shore follows the same pattern. In his Ring theme, the basic F-minor chord (F–A♭–C) is supplemented by one odd and entirely out-of-place note: the natural B. The natural B does not belong to an F-minor chord; it creates a painful dissonance, a cacophony. If you play F–A♭–C together with B♮, your ear will instinctively cringe.

This is exactly what Howard Shore intended. And then, he introduced a trick: the dissonance is immediately and beautifully resolved with a C, which does belong to the F-minor chord. In other words, the discord is not eliminated but woven back into the harmony.

More than that, the discord becomes part of the harmony in a way that actually augments the beauty of the piece. When we hear it, we experience two things at once: Light disrupted by darkness - and darkness swallowed up by Light.

Then the channel host showed how the composer followed the same solfeggio scheme throughout the score whenever he needed to musically portray the onset of evil and its eventual resolution into the greater Harmony.

There are two ways to love harmony and order. One is Sauron’s way; the other is Ilúvatar’s way. Sauron’s way is to eliminate discord by force - to subjugate other wills and rule them all, becoming an all-powerful, benevolent king who simply does not allow anyone to mess things up.

Sauron believed in order and hated the messiness of free will. His desire was to impose his own Order and restore the harmony by force. The Ring was the ultimate machine for eliminating the messiness of free will.

Yet, paradoxically, the moment we seek to establish order by exterminating evil, we end up perpetuating evil. By falling away from the Great Music, Sauron forgot one fundamental truth: evil is a no-thing; it has no independent being. Evil is a distortion of the good.

Therefore, evil cannot be exterminated without also exterminating something good along with it. Evil can only be rectified - set right. Evil is the ill-placed B note in the F-minor chord. It is completely out of place. It is a distortion of harmony, but it is still a note! And the only solution to the discord is not to destroy the note, but to take it and weave it into a greater beauty.

This is Ilúvatar’s way of dealing with discord: He resolves it. Eventually, all stray notes will be taken up and woven into the Final Chord.

Tolkien tells us that Ilúvatar is preparing a Final Music that will be greater than the one that was sung before the foundation of the world:

“…It has been said that a greater [Music] still shall be made before Ilúvatar by the choirs of the Ainur and the Children of Ilúvatar after the end of days. Then the themes of Ilúvatar shall be played aright, and take Being in the moment of their utterance, for all shall then understand fully his intent in their part, and each shall know the comprehension of each, and Ilúvatar shall give to their thoughts the secret fire, being well pleased.” - The Silmarillion

“I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” — C.S. Lewis

Friendship is something we can live without but not something worth living without. If life is reduced to mere survival, there’s little value in life. Our bios — biological life — means very little without zoe: life in its fullness.

According to C.S. Lewis, to possess Zoe — true life — we absolutely need the things we can absolutely do without.

Friendship begins only when I encounter someone I have no need for in order to survive — and they have no need for me either. We become friends the moment I discover that they genuinely share my sense of wonder.

“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’” — C.S. Lewis

Philosophy, friendship, and art are not born of necessity but of wonder. We can do without them but life loses its zest. The paradox is this: to experience life as zoe, we must move beyond life as bios — beyond mere necessity. Zoe comes only to those whose mind is free from the cares of the world. Zoe is the fruit of rising above dutiful living.

Philosophy, art, and friendship do not survive in our hearts when our goal is survival. When we live under the shadow of necessity, philosophy, art, and friendship wither because they appear worthless.

To survive both physically and spiritually, we need things that give value to survival. Historically, philosophy, art, and friendship have flourished the most in the darkest of times.

Boccaccio began lecturing on the Divine Comedy in 1373, not long after Europe had been devastated by the Black Death. Many historians see this period as the dawn of the Renaissance. In dire straits, people deeply sense that bread is not enough for survival.

They instinctively reach out for the unnecessary things like philosophy, art, and friendship. They need a reason to live more than the means to live. Bios cannot give you a reason to live. Zoe can. Paradoxically, when people struggle simply to survive, they eventually discover that survival itself depends on something beyond survival.

After Frodo was wounded by the Black Riders, his friends carried him toward the Ford of Bruinen. He was slipping into the world of shadows. Cold, exhausted, and overwhelmed by despair, he struggled against the growing darkness. Yet something within him enabled him to resist evil. What?

“Frodo… had time to gaze ahead and to think. He recalled Bilbo’s account of his journey and the threatening towers on the hills north of the Road, in the country near the Trolls’ wood where his first serious adventure had happened. Frodo guessed that they were now in the same region, and wondered if by chance they would pass near the spot.”

As they drew near Trollshaws, Frodo found himself thinking more and more about Bilbo’s adventures. His hand was lifeless, his body was shivering with cold, and yet, the bright light of Bilbo’s stories flooded his mind with light. Finally, as they bumped into the three stone trolls, everyone recalled his family history and laughed.

“They all laughed. Frodo felt his spirits reviving: the reminder of Bilbo’s first successful adventure was heartening.”

Frodo would never have made it if his friends and family didn’t give him enough reason to live. Frodo’s resilience to evil was rooted in the most unnecessary things in the world, like friendship, philosophy, and art.

What is the mystery of friendship, philosophy, and art? All three arise from Wonder. A heart alive with Wonder is wonderfully alive. When crisis hits, we survive only by reaching for what lies beyond survival.

“I have no duty to be anyone’s Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” — C.S. Lewis

Friendship is something we can live without but not something worth living without. If life is reduced to mere survival, there’s little value in life. Our bios — biological life — means very little without zoe: life in its fullness.

According to C.S. Lewis, to possess Zoe — true life — we absolutely need the things we can absolutely do without.

Friendship begins only when I encounter someone I have no need for in order to survive — and they have no need for me either. We become friends the moment I discover that they genuinely share my sense of wonder.

“The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’” — C.S. Lewis

Philosophy, friendship, and art are not born of necessity but of wonder. We can do without them but life loses its zest. The paradox is this: to experience life as zoe, we must move beyond life as bios — beyond mere necessity. Zoe comes only to those whose mind is free from the cares of the world. Zoe is the fruit of rising above dutiful living.

Philosophy, art, and friendship do not survive in our hearts when our goal is survival. When we live under the shadow of necessity, philosophy, art, and friendship wither because they appear worthless.

To survive both physically and spiritually, we need things that give value to survival. Historically, philosophy, art, and friendship have flourished the most in the darkest of times.

Boccaccio began lecturing on the Divine Comedy in 1373, not long after Europe had been devastated by the Black Death. Many historians see this period as the dawn of the Renaissance. In dire straits, people deeply sense that bread is not enough for survival.

They instinctively reach out for the unnecessary things like philosophy, art, and friendship. They need a reason to live more than the means to live. Bios cannot give you a reason to live. Zoe can. Paradoxically, when people struggle simply to survive, they eventually discover that survival itself depends on something beyond survival.

After Frodo was wounded by the Black Riders, his friends carried him toward the Ford of Bruinen. He was slipping into the world of shadows. Cold, exhausted, and overwhelmed by despair, he struggled against the growing darkness. Yet something within him enabled him to resist evil. What?

“Frodo… had time to gaze ahead and to think. He recalled Bilbo’s account of his journey and the threatening towers on the hills north of the Road, in the country near the Trolls’ wood where his first serious adventure had happened. Frodo guessed that they were now in the same region, and wondered if by chance they would pass near the spot.”

As they drew near Trollshaws, Frodo found himself thinking more and more about Bilbo’s adventures. His hand was lifeless, his body was shivering with cold, and yet, the bright light of Bilbo’s stories flooded his mind with light. Finally, as they bumped into the three stone trolls, everyone recalled his family history and laughed.

“They all laughed. Frodo felt his spirits reviving: the reminder of Bilbo’s first successful adventure was heartening.”

Frodo would never have made it if his friends and family didn’t give him enough reason to live. Frodo’s resilience to evil was rooted in the most unnecessary things in the world, like friendship, philosophy, and art.

What is the mystery of friendship, philosophy, and art? All three arise from Wonder. A heart alive with Wonder is wonderfully alive. When crisis hits, we survive only by reaching for what lies beyond survival.

What strikes me most in Book 1 of the Odyssey is the sudden change of heart that overtakes Telemachus at the end of his first conversation with Athena, who appears to him in guise — as a man named Mentes.

Before that conversation, he is shy, uncertain, and accommodating in the presence of Penelope’s suitors. When Athena asks him about the feasting and revelry in the palace, he speaks from the standpoint of a victim.

He is not yet sure who he is talking to. But then, something changes. The transformation is not gradual — it comes all at once, as he watches the stranger turn into a bird and fly away.

“With these words she flew away like a bird into the air, but she had
given Telemachus courage, and had made him think more than ever about
his father. He felt the change, wondered at it, and knew that the
stranger had been a god, so he went straight to where the suitors
were sitting.”

He goes back to the suitors, and everyone can feel the change in his voice. They wonder what has happened? Only an hour earlier he was little more than a timid boy; now there are notes of steel in his voice.

Telemachus’ speech betrays him — he invokes the gods constantly. Not so the suitors. They know of the gods, but they have never actually encountered them. They don’t care about their signs.

When in Book 2, Halitherses interprets a prophetic omen of two eagles sent by Zeus, Telemachus’ heart soars — he recognizes it as a sign from heaven. The suitors ignore the warning of Halitherses that Odysseus will return and put them to death.

One of the suitors, Eurymachus, openly mocks the prophet, saying that birds fly everywhere without meaning.

Homer makes his point clear from the very beginning: it’s all about one’s relationship with the gods. The Odyssey opens not with human action but with the divine council on Mount Olympus, where the gods deliberate over the affairs of mortals.

For Homer, the Odyssey is not primarily a horizontal story about human adventures and heroic feats. His point seems to be more subtle: when people fall into hubris and lose sensitivity to the divine guidance, calamity becomes inevitable. When they remember the gods, they are blessed and rise above their circumstances.

Telemachus, who has grown up without a father, is especially sensitive to the voice of the gods. When Penelope tries to stop the bard from singing about Odysseus, he gently rebukes her:

“Mother, let the bard sing what he has a mind to; bards do not make the ills they sing of; it is Jove, not they, who makes them, and who sends weal or woe upon mankind according to his own good pleasure.”

He is looking for a father in everyone. After hearing Mentes’ (Athena’s) counsel, he says:

“Sir, it has been very kind of you to talk to me in this way, as though I were your own son.”

His grief made him highly aware of divine presence. He recognized Athena’s visitation by its aftertaste. “He felt the change, wondered at it, and knew that the stranger had been a god.”

Our own Odyssey is not about us or our adventures either. It is all about our sensitivity to divine resonances that happen around us every day. Who is this total stranger we met in the grocery store this morning?

If we never even entertain the possibility that it might be God Himself — or His angel — we may as well miss a divine visitation.

What is this song, or this piece of music, that suddenly stops me in my tracks and makes me wonder, “What in the world am I hearing?”

Like Telemachus, we recognize God not by His familiar form but by the sudden change of heart that comes over us, as though from nowhere. In that moment, we know in our heart of hearts: we are on the way to the Father.

Reading the chapter “Many Meetings” in The Lord of the Rings was, in some ways, anticlimactic. After the high-adrenaline, pulse-racing, breakneck flight from the Ringwraiths, we find Aragorn helping Bilbo compose a poem about Eärendil.

Why?

Apparently, Strider was not bad at poetry at all — the Elves couldn’t tell which lines were written by Bilbo and which by the Dúnadan. The next surprising thing was that Bilbo, apparently, had enlisted Aragorn as a poet before. This seemed even more anticlimactic. The future king of Gondor, a mighty warrior, was a poet! He doesn’t just recite poems; he writes them.

Yet, if you consider what kind of realm Rivendell is, everything falls into place. The chapter “Many Meetings” is more about a certain ambiance than action. In this place, you rest, sleep, feast, sing, recite poetry, reminisce, think, write, and listen. Rivendel allows you to simply be.

Time is irrelevant here. It’s a house of healing. Everything you see, smell, taste, and touch is permeated with a healing power. That is why Rivendell is filled with poetry. The Greek word poiēsis, from which we derive poetry, means “making.” Rivendell itself is spun out of poiēsis — out of making. That is why it heals.

Aragorn grew up in Rivendell. He knew what it felt like to be made by words. He grew up hearing lays, ballads, and songs that cast a spell on you. As Frodo listens to the Lay of Eärendil the Mariner,

“… the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell… Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him…”

The words created worlds before his very eyes:

“There he wandered long in a dream of music that turned into running water, and then suddenly into a voice. It seemed to be the voice of Bilbo chanting verses.”

When you are tired and weary of life, you need to hear certain words. They heal better than medicine. You need poetry — the making. That’s how God made the world — He spoke it into being. Arda was sung into being by Ilúvatar, and it still exists in the Song. The world is woven out of poetry — the making.

When you are broken, you need to be remade — reforged like the shards of Narsil. When you throw yourself into the healing flames of words, you become whole. Your name changes. You become Andúril, the Flame of the West.

Aragorn was weary and burdened by decades of fighting evil. He needed to be reforged. The shards of his soul needed the flame of the fiery, pre-Babel tongue — the tongue that still rang with the Music of the Ainur.

He yearned for the right words. He knew those fiery words would reforge the sword of his heart. The shards of Narsil would become the Flame of the West.

Becoming whole is always a matter of speaking and hearing the right words. It’s all about plunging yourself into a Rivendell where every bubbling brook tells a story of wholeness. You will feel you are being refashioned.

You have walked into the fiery furnace of the pre-Babel language. You are touched and reforged by the tongues of Pentecostal fire.

Reading the chapter “Many Meetings” in The Lord of the Rings was, in some ways, anticlimactic. After the high-adrenaline, pulse-racing, breakneck flight from the Ringwraiths, we find Aragorn helping Bilbo compose a poem about Eärendil.

Why?

Apparently, Strider was not bad at poetry at all — the Elves couldn’t tell which lines were written by Bilbo and which by the Dúnadan. The next surprising thing was that Bilbo, apparently, had enlisted Aragorn as a poet before. This seemed even more anticlimactic. The future king of Gondor, a mighty warrior, was a poet! He doesn’t just recite poems; he writes them.

Yet, if you consider what kind of realm Rivendell is, everything falls into place. The chapter “Many Meetings” is more about a certain ambiance than action. In this place, you rest, sleep, feast, sing, recite poetry, reminisce, think, write, and listen. Rivendel allows you to simply be.

Time is irrelevant here. It’s a house of healing. Everything you see, smell, taste, and touch is permeated with a healing power. That is why Rivendell is filled with poetry. The Greek word poiēsis, from which we derive poetry, means “making.” Rivendell itself is spun out of poiēsis — out of making. That is why it heals.

Aragorn grew up in Rivendell. He knew what it felt like to be made by words. He grew up hearing lays, ballads, and songs that cast a spell on you. As Frodo listens to the Lay of Eärendil the Mariner,

“… the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell… Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him…”

The words created worlds before his very eyes:

“There he wandered long in a dream of music that turned into running water, and then suddenly into a voice. It seemed to be the voice of Bilbo chanting verses.”

When you are tired and weary of life, you need to hear certain words. They heal better than medicine. You need poetry — the making. That’s how God made the world — He spoke it into being. Arda was sung into being by Ilúvatar, and it still exists in the Song. The world is woven out of poetry — the making.

When you are broken, you need to be remade — reforged like the shards of Narsil. When you throw yourself into the healing flames of words, you become whole. Your name changes. You become Andúril, the Flame of the West.

Aragorn was weary and burdened by decades of fighting evil. He needed to be reforged. The shards of his soul needed the flame of the fiery, pre-Babel tongue — the tongue that still rang with the Music of the Ainur.

He yearned for the right words. He knew those fiery words would reforge the sword of his heart. The shards of Narsil would become the Flame of the West.

Becoming whole is always a matter of speaking and hearing the right words. It’s all about plunging yourself into a Rivendell where every bubbling brook tells a story of wholeness. You will feel you are being refashioned.

You have walked into the fiery furnace of the pre-Babel language. You are touched and reforged by the tongues of Pentecostal fire.

Once, I was watching a podcast on Substack when the host said to his guest:

“We’re so happy to finally put a face to your publication. We’ve heard your voice all this time, but we’ve never seen your face.”

When I heard that, I thought: “But why is it so important for us to see a face behind someone’s words?”

We never seem quite satisfied with a person’s words until we have seen their face. A face seems to be the person’s revealer, without which true understanding cannot happen. When we've been listening to someone's voice — on a podcast, for example — without ever seeing their face, we instinctively want to see it.

Words alone are not enough. We want to meet the person. It is hardly an accident that in Russian the same word — лицо — means both “face” and “person.” Until we see a person’s face, we don’t know who they are.

In C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, Orual builds a powerful case against the injustice of the gods, accusing them of “hiding their faces” from humans. She blames them for her loveless life, convinced that she has been denied the blessings of her beautiful sister Psyche, whom Cupid himself chose as his bride.

Near the end of the story, Orual is struck by a sudden insight:

“I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till the word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

She is saying, in effect, “All of our words are babble until we have faces.”

Orual believes herself to be ugly, while Psyche is as beautiful as a goddess. Orual hides her face behind a veil, ashamed of how she looks. Psyche’s face is uncovered, and people worship her as Aphrodite herself.

Orual’s astonishing discovery is this: to experience the love of the gods, I must uncover my face, whatever the cost. Eventually, Cupid himself confirms this truth by telling her: “You are Psyche.”

She had been Psyche all along — beautiful and godlike. Yet because she believed herself ugly and unworthy of divine love, she covered her face. In doing so, she lost the ability to meet the gods face to face. Our decision to become faceless is also a decision to become loveless.

God is seeking my face as much as I seek His. Faceless people cannot connect. God, the fullness of Personhood — and the Face behind all faces — seeks out those who dare uncover their faces. What happens when I uncover mine?

“Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he would take off the veil until he came out; and whenever he came out and spoke to the sons of Israel… the sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone. So Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with Him.” — Exodus 33:34

Every time we speak with God without a veil, we shine. Sometimes we shine so brightly that others cannot bear the light. On the mountain, Moses beheld God’s face without a veil, and his face began radiating divine light.

By uncovering his face, Moses became God’s mirror. Those who heard his words also saw the Face behind them. Some were inspired to remove their own veils. Others turned away and asked Moses to dim the light.

If we long to experience the love of God, we must dare to uncover our faces. As long as we hide behind a veil, we will shrink from divine light. It will seem too unbearable. We will continue accusing God of hiding His face. But the opposite is true. We are the ones hiding ours.

The veil must go.

Then, almost unexpectedly, we begin to hear God speak. When we wear a mask, we can’t hear divine speech. That could be the reason why Jesus spoke most critically of hypocrites. The Greek word ὑποκριτής (hypokrites) means “stage performer” and consists of two words that literally translate as “an interpreter from underneath.”

As long as are faces are veiled, we interpret life from underneath our mask. We cannot see reality face to face.

But when we dare to uncover our faces, we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same likeness from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Once, I was watching a podcast on Substack when the host said to his guest:

“We’re so happy to finally put a face to your publication. We’ve heard your voice all this time, but we’ve never seen your face.”

When I heard that, I thought: “But why is it so important for us to see a face behind someone’s words?”

We never seem quite satisfied with a person’s words until we have seen their face. A face seems to be the person’s revealer, without which true understanding cannot happen. When we've been listening to someone's voice — on a podcast, for example — without ever seeing their face, we instinctively want to see it.

Words alone are not enough. We want to meet the person. It is hardly an accident that in Russian the same word — лицо — means both “face” and “person.” Until we see a person’s face, we don’t know who they are.

In C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, Orual builds a powerful case against the injustice of the gods, accusing them of “hiding their faces” from humans. She blames them for her loveless life, convinced that she has been denied the blessings of her beautiful sister Psyche, whom Cupid himself chose as his bride.

Near the end of the story, Orual is struck by a sudden insight:

“I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till the word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

She is saying, in effect, “All of our words are babble until we have faces.”

Orual believes herself to be ugly, while Psyche is as beautiful as a goddess. Orual hides her face behind a veil, ashamed of how she looks. Psyche’s face is uncovered, and people worship her as Aphrodite herself.

Orual’s astonishing discovery is this: to experience the love of the gods, I must uncover my face, whatever the cost. Eventually, Cupid himself confirms this truth by telling her: “You are Psyche.”

She had been Psyche all along — beautiful and godlike. Yet because she believed herself ugly and unworthy of divine love, she covered her face. In doing so, she lost the ability to meet the gods face to face. Our decision to become faceless is also a decision to become loveless.

God is seeking my face as much as I seek His. Faceless people cannot connect. God, the fullness of Personhood — and the Face behind all faces — seeks out those who dare uncover their faces. What happens when I uncover mine?

“Whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he would take off the veil until he came out; and whenever he came out and spoke to the sons of Israel… the sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone. So Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with Him.” — Exodus 33:34

Every time we speak with God without a veil, we shine. Sometimes we shine so brightly that others cannot bear the light. On the mountain, Moses beheld God’s face without a veil, and his face began radiating divine light.

By uncovering his face, Moses became God’s mirror. Those who heard his words also saw the Face behind them. Some were inspired to remove their own veils. Others turned away and asked Moses to dim the light.

If we long to experience the love of God, we must dare to uncover our faces. As long as we hide behind a veil, we will shrink from divine light. It will seem too unbearable. We will continue accusing God of hiding His face. But the opposite is true. We are the ones hiding ours.

The veil must go.

Then, almost unexpectedly, we begin to hear God speak. When we wear a mask, we can’t hear divine speech. That could be the reason why Jesus spoke most critically of hypocrites. The Greek word ὑποκριτής (hypokrites) means “stage performer” and consists of two words that literally translate as “an interpreter from underneath.”

As long as are faces are veiled, we interpret life from underneath our mask. We cannot see reality face to face.

But when we dare to uncover our faces, we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same likeness from glory to glory.

When Pippin used the word “hill” for a mountain in the Common Tongue, Treebeard was puzzled. Why such a short name?

“Treebeard repeated the words thoughtfully. ‘Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped.’”

For the most part, contractions are “hasty” words. Cutting words short means we don’t want to hear their story. Hastiness in words, just like hastiness in movement, annihilates one of the most precious gifts we have been given — the gift of depth.

C.S. Lewis once noted something similar about the gift of distance:

“The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it ‘annihilates space.’ It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten.’” — Surprised by Joy.

Hastiness in travel dulls one’s sense of liberation and pilgrimage. When we rush along in a car, we miss the gift of the Tao — the Way that changes us from the inside out. We return to ourselves only by walking the Way.

There is a time and place for rushing under the sun, but when we are always rushed, we cease to experience the Way. We become wayward.

Similarly, hastiness in words dulls our sense of depth. We scrape the surface. We receive the calories of data but not the nutrition of Speech. We gain knowledge but not transformation. We are fed more and more information, yet become famished for meaning. We say LA instead of Los Angeles to save time — but we can no longer hear the angels singing.

In our fast-moving world, we have created a shorthand language without realizing what it has cut us off from. We write bc for because, plz for please, w/o for without, IMHO for in my humble opinion — and then wonder why life grows noisier and less musical.

By contracting words, we cut ourselves off from the music of language. FOMO, IDK, FYI, TBD are maimed, limping words. They do not sound. They fall from the mouth and drop dead on the floor without stirring the soul.

At the dawn of the Soviet era, in post-revolution Russia, a whole corpus of abbreviations and contractions was imposed by the Bolshevicks. According to Pavel Florensky, the new language sounded “like a splinter in the tongue.” He called this practice “linguistic deformity,” the “mangling of words through deliberate disfigurement.”

What is annihilated in our hasty contractions? The gift of sound. Its power to transform. The less Sound we hear, the less we are moved.

Interestingly, the word sound comes from the Proto–Indo-European root swen- / swon-, from which we also derive song and swan.

True sound is a bird — a singing bird. True sound flies and calls. IDK and TBD do not fly. In The Silver Trumpet by Owen Barfield, the heroes encounter true sound every time the Silver Trumpet is played.

Each time, they are stunned — and called. Called where? To return to the Music from which the world came.

The sound of the Silver Trumpet is a metaphor for true Speech — a performative, Logos-infused language that effects what it names.

“And at the very first note of the trumpet, Princess Violet forgot the Prince and the garden and Princess Gamboy and Mountainy Castle and the sky above her and dreamed she was afloat beneath tons and tons of clear green water near the bottom of the sea, and — oh, yes — far away someone was booming a huge bell.” — The Silver Trumpet

The more rushed we are in our language, the more our world shrinks. As Treebeard said to Pippin about fair Lothlórien:

Do not risk getting entangled in the woods of Laurelindórenan! That is what the Elves used to call it, but now they make the name shorter: Lothlórien they call it. Perhaps they are right: maybe it is fading, not growing.”