Space is no longer experienced as a homogeneous void, but reveals itself as this vast and richly textured field in which we are corporeally immersed, this vibrant expanse structured by both a ground and a horizon. It is precisely the ground and the horizon that transform abstract space into space-time. And these characteristics—the ground and the horizon—are granted to us only by the earth. …
It would seem, then, that the conceptual separation of time and space—the literate distinction between a linear, progressive time and a homogeneous, featureless space—functions to eclipse the enveloping earth from human awareness. As long as we structure our lives according to assumed parameters of a static space and a rectilinear time, we will be able to ignore, or overlook, our thorough dependence upon the earth around us. Only when space and time are reconciled into a single, unified field of phenomena does the encompassing earth become evident, once again, in all its power and its depth, as the very ground and horizon of all our knowing.
Should the emancipation and secularization of the modern age, which began with a turning-away, not necessarily from God, but from a god who was the Father of men in heaven, end with an even more fateful repudiation of an Earth who was the mother of all living creatures under the sky?
The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition, and earthly nature, for all we know, may be unique in the universe in providing human beings with a habitat in which they can move and breathe without effort and without artifice. The human artifice of the world separates human existence from all mere animal environment, but life itself is outside this artificial world, and through life man remains related to all other living organisms. For some time now, a great many scientific endeavors have been directed toward making life also “artificial,” toward cutting the last tie through which even man belongs among the children of nature. […]
This future man, whom scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.
Our Life himself came down into this world & took away our death. He slew it with his own abounding life, & with thunder in his voice he called us from this world to return to him in heaven. From heaven he came down to us, entering first the Virgin’s womb, where humanity, our mortal flesh, was wedded to him so that it might not be for ever mortal. Then as a bridegroom coming from his bed, he exulted like some great runner who sees the track before him. He did not linger on his way but ran, calling us to return to him, calling us by his words & deeds, by his life & death, by his descent into hell & his ascension into heaven. He departed from our sight, so that we should turn to our hearts & find him there. He departed, but he is here with us. He would not stay long with us, but he did not leave us. He went back to the place which he had never left, because he, through whom the world was made, was in the world & he came into the world to save sinners. To him my soul confesses & he is its Healer, because the wrong it did was against him. Great ones of the world, will your hearts always be hardened? Your Life has come down from heaven: will you not now at last rise with him and live? But how can you rise if you are in high places and your clamour reaches heaven? Come down from those heights, for then you may climb &, this time, climb to God. To climb against him was your fall.
The recognition that friendship must necessarily be particular and preferential, that, as Aristotle said, “it is quite obvious that it is impossible to live together with many people and divide oneself up among them” — all that finds an important place in Augustine’s description of friendship. At the same time, however, these particular friendships are placed in a larger con-text, seen as a call toward and preparation for a love more universal in scope. And both aspects are incorporated into Augustine’s theological vision. Particular friendships are justified because, in the simplest sense, God gives them to those whom he has created to live within the constraints of finitude. Particular friend; ships are qualified because this same God intends that they should lead us toward the love of God in which all the redeemed will share and be a school in which that love is learned. Hence, Augustine’s understanding of friendship is transformed when it is placed within his vision of human life as pilgrimage. One is sustained by the vision of universal love toward which one is drawn, but the way to that goal leads through particular bonds of affection and attachment. For, as Augustine himself put it, “it is one thing to see from a mountaintop in the forests the land of peace in the distance. and it is another. thing to hold to the way that leads there.”