What is glory but an ecstasy, an incomprehensible event that
arrives in a passing glimpse as one views the full moon while descending a swirling ravine? Too stupendous for us to stay fixed upon, our realization is that the
glory remains, yet we cannot linger long before it.
Should we actually be allowed to behold glory, no longer
would it be, for that which becomes comprehensible to us is no longer glory.
That which is comprehensible to us becomes the corruptible, for our
understanding of a thing is the same as conquering it; the things we
understand, we cause to be subordinate, as now they serve us.
But glory will never serve us, any more than the ocean will
serve the stream. We are under a great belonging to glory, like a molecule of water
that will eventually arrive at the vast waters. But we cannot remain as we are
at that conclusion without experiencing a transformation, of fresh water to
salt, and here the comparison must end, because we will not remain in glory’s
ocean while we dwell as mortals.
To say we know glory is a paradox, because glory is a
wonder, a mystery awesome and reverent to our souls. A glimpse of glory is an
intimation that the best is yet to come, even as we freely admit that we
haven’t any idea what the best might be.
While we are obliged to momentarily behold glory, we still
see less than the whole, for glory is actually the radiation from its source.
When we look at the sun, are we seeing its combustible gases, or are we seeing
the light of the flames leaping from the orb?
In the sun’s case we would not value it so much without its
glory, but in glory’s true case we will always believe that something terrific
exists beyond the wall of flames.
Glory has its flings with the temporal, but its thoughts are
set with the eternal, so that one might peer into a small glass from one end
and gaze upon the universe from the other. . . glory for us is teemingly
magnified degrees of the temporal in a confident expectation of the eternal.
