(no subject)
"If humans were no longer in the business simply of reproduction and replication (and they had not even had this in the Garden of Eden!) if they had to struggle for their living, then was this not a mercy that they were thus part of a nature red in tooth and claw: otherwise, how boring! But in this set-up what would be a state of grace? There was still a natural world to be redeemed, to be put right, was there? Humans had felt that they were chosen by God for such a task (or they had chosen such a God to explain their feelings of being chosen: what was the difference!) but now this whole knot, this tie, was unravelling: so what was it to be human? If they had no task, then indeed what were humans except particular lumps of matter. What had seemed to define them had been a relationship to God--whether this had been a dream, a fabrication, something to be denied, or conceivably a reality--but what had been their experience? In so far as they had felt the world was wrong, there was the implication that it might be put to rights; or at least that there might be a way of enduring it rather than not. And glimpses, experiences, of this, might be a state of grace?"
nicholas mosley, the hesperides tree p.149 (dalkey archive press)
nicholas mosley, the hesperides tree p.149 (dalkey archive press)