What is passion? I'm sure if pressed, I could write an exposé long enough to cover all the paper in the world. I could . . . and you ask why? Why talk about something so intrinsic to human nature, so nitty-gritty, if you will, in such seemingly esoteric terms? But is talk only esoteric, removed, or is there some drop of innate passion in every syllable we speak?
Passion is life, second nature, human nature. It is in all of us: sleeping, waiting, wanted, feared. It rears its head at the most inopportune moments, lacing our being with terror and sometimes wonder. Passion provides color in our grey existence, fire to our love, and zeal for our faith.
Passion often follows in Muse's footsteps. At the supreme moment, they are bound irrevocably. Muse is the source; Passion the impetus. The tools are almost irrelevant. The product/offspring--Art--speaks volumes about its parent/s. Without Passion, Muse produces cold, hard, intelligent, impotent, calculating things, material yet inanimate representations. Without Muse, Passion is dumb, blind, hot, weak minded, incorporeal, fleeting.
Passion is the source of our highest joy, our sharpest pain--and our deepest folly. Passionate people easily fall in love and often, just as easily fall out. They feel too deeply, take things too much to heart, regret too much after they hate. They fear passion's wane, often loose themselves in the moment, loose the light, forget pain, desire pain, remember every pain ever experienced, find themselves after darkness. They argue, agree, kiss, abuse, gasp in awe, help the helpless, hate life, love life, embrace good, desire evil, and in essence, live.
People who are not passionate, sleep. They cannot love completely, cannot loose completely, cannot feel completely. Without passion, we would be hollow men. Ghosts of shadows.
Of course, passion hurts us beyond reason. At times, we feel like dumb beasts, falling beneath the blows of a cruel master. The thought of throwing off all feeling lures us like a cold siren's call. Without passion, we could achieve a state of perfect equilibrium. Wars would cease. Crime would drop. Lovers might be content. But would this be Truth? Good? What would be left, without passion?
The answer is clear when we intimately know the passions involved in God's story of salvation for mankind. In the face of perverted passion, that lust that drew the human head to desire "the knowledge of good and evil," the absolute passion of justice required recompense for sin. Just as impure passion was present at the fall, so was pristine passion present at our redemption. Christ hung on the cross, not for some esoteric ideal, or out of fear, or because He had no choice. Rather, He bore our sins because of His sinless passion: His passionate love for us, and His perfect, passionate desire to obey and glorify the Father.
The response, then, is not to eliminate passion. Properly ruled, it is one of our greatest weapons. Passion takes life, but it also creates it. Passion enables us to speak when we ought to be afraid, helps us stand before mighty men, and gives us fire for the battle. Passion, ruled by the knowledge of God, is power. When we are passionate rightly, Satan fears us. The world fears us. And when we are passionate righteously, we are a physical, emotional, spiritual, political, historical, spatial, temporal blinding light, a passionately blinding light that leads to the Father.
The world as my muse
4 comments:
Love it!
Interesting thoughts. You made me think of Thumos (also commonly spelled "thymos")From Wikipedia: (Greek: θυμός) is an Ancient Greek word expressing the concept of "spiritedness". The word indicates a physical association with breath or blood. The word is also used to express the human desire for recognition.
In Homer's works, thumos was used to denote emotions, desire, or an internal urge. Thumos was a permanent possession of living man, to which his thinking and feeling belonged. When a Homeric hero is under emotional stress he may externalize his thumos, conversing with it or scolding it [1].
Plato's Phaedrus and his later work The Republic discuss thumos as one of the three constituent parts of the human psyche. In the Phaedrus, Plato depicts logos as a charioteer driving the two horses eros and thumos (i.e. love and spiritedness are to be guided by rationality). "In the Republic (Book IV) soul ... becomes divided into nous (“intellect”), thumos (“passion”), and epithumia (“appetite”). To its appetitive part are ascribed bodily desires; thumos is the emotional element in virtue of which we feel anger, fear, etc.; nous is (or should be) the controlling part which subjugates the appetites with the help of thumos."[2]
Ah, me, the Greek philosopher. ;P
What happens to thumos when a man dies? is it possessed by the living body alone, or is it a result of the body/spirit synchronization? is there any connection to the spirit (soul)?
Rereading the original post, it sounds to me as though you are talking about incarnational living in slightly different terms. So I'm tempted to answer your question thus: thumos/passion is a possession of the living person only. But I have a feeling I'd have trouble backing that up since we are so used to thinking of the whole man and not in terms of dichotomies and trichotomies.
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