Chapter 21

I am sitting in a downtown cafe, after, thinking. I have just spent most of an afternoon with him. Our encounters always leave me weary of the glum contentment that characterizes my life. What were those words he used that struck me? Ah, yes: "dry, yeastless factuality" "the better story." I take pen and paper out and write:

Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.

I pause. What of God's silence? I think it over. I add:

An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose.

  第二十一章

    之后，我坐在闹市区的一家咖啡馆里，思考着。我刚刚花了大半个下午的时间和他在一起。我们的相遇总是让我对毫无坐气的满足感感到厌烦，这种感觉是我生活的 特点。是他用的什么词给我留下了深刻印象？啊，对了：“干巴巴的、丝毫不能引入激动的真实性”，“更好的经历”。我拿出笔和纸，写到：对神圣觉悟的词语： 道德升华；持续的高尚和兴高采烈的感觉；加快拥有道德感，这让人强烈地感到比通过智力了解事物更加重要；把宇宙放在道德的范围内，而不是智力的范围内；对 存在的基本原则是我们所谓的爱的认识，这样的认识有时并不能让人立即完全清楚明白，但最终必然会让人明白的。

    我停顿了片刻。上帝的沉默怎么解释？我仔细考虑了一会儿。我补充道：困惑的智力然而却是对存在和最终目的的信任感。