Why I Write
I write in the astonishing discovery of two independent but entangled moral and rational foundations underlying our reality and humane relationship with God, creation and cosmos. This is a conception of everlasting grace flowing into creation in two spirits where each is manifest in a separate world or body publics, each with its own distinctive narrative, welcome, missio dei, authority and creativity. In this way, these opposing but entangled worlds serve to support, enrich and challenge each to its greatest fruition, and both to fulfill and surpass the other and thereby come together in the twofold liberation, enchantment and complete communion, first, of individual persons and body publics and second, of whole humanity and creation in the flourishing and inclusion of our beloved good earth. This is based on both the liberal tradition broadly interpreted as a cumulative and expansive humanity and world civilization grand narrative that stretches across the 200,000 years evolutionary history of homo sapiens modern humans and the “utopian tradition” of humanity and world civilization, which is similarly a collective solidarity of ancient to contemporary utopian, romantic, radical, revolutionary and millennial traditions of every person and people, including Christian eschatology.
Christianity is my faith tradition and language and for me is one of generous welcome to resonate with all others, as heuristic, metaphor or interweaving of our eternal God. My intent is to offer this framework and corresponding ideas as a better way for understanding ourselves and each other, and more ambitiously to address the recurring crises that our liberal world increasingly generates in an accelerating devastating impact on our shared humanity and common home and to contribute to mobilizing an effective democratic solidarity and international community to act in overcoming them and to usher in the “new heavens and good earth” and all the promises, goods and truths liberal and utopian traditions cherish and every imagination, mind, heart, body and soul desires in the joyful triumphal complete communion, fruition love and whole shalom evolving from the past and emerging from the future. This is the rock of my faith conviction in the everlasting grace of God.
Consider what I write meditations, insights and experiments in creative and constructive criticism for exploring the promise of this new understanding. I find it offers overflowing vitality, creativity and “suffering joy” in the palpable impossibility of being in two worlds at the same time where each fulfills and surpasses the other. The first world intelligently organizes and provides coherent narrative structure, purpose and meaning; the second is one of unbounded creativity that illuminates all that is missing, excluded, disfigured, oppressed, dehumanized and beyond the capacity of this first world to know and even imagine.
I therefore write, if i may modestly propose, to reflect upon, fulfill and surpass our evolving contemporary market-based liberal world of “great liberation” and to imagine, evoke and usher in an emerging humanity-based social democratic one of “triumphal enchantment.” I seek to write about the palpable momentum and entangling communion in the impossibility of “two ways of being, seeing and relating” which can be applied fruitfully to every opposition and form of difference. Briefly, please trust that there is support from sources in the sciences, humanities and arts and across history and throughout the world. For example, the spirit of “divine comedy” and postmodern principle of charit (e.g. Alighieri Dante and Donald Davidson) both welcome individuals, when encountering opposing truths and mysteries in relationship with another, to seek to bring each other to their best possible argument and expression of these vital truths and thereby lead both in the more robust and enriching shared fruition of each and both together.
Ancient wisdom and Scripture also affirm the infinite grace of paradox in holding two opposing truths in creative and unfinalizable tension. This opens imagination, minds and hearts and resonates with irresistible desire to pursue and realize the promise of abundant life, justice, peace and other goods. And so with a little additional help from postmodern and still emergent sources, I extend this wisdom to our modern public life and proclaim our moral imperative and critical leap of faith is to dive into and cross the two opposing and ever recurring political cultural solidarities (i.e. liberal and conservative, progressive and traditional, classical and romantic, etc.) and open ourselves to explore a new possibility of building a world we all desire and need of inspiring futures, loving relationships, meaningful work and inclusive communities. Please come!
In addition to essays, poetry and a blog, I am also writing to share and complete a systematic political philosophy, vision, praxis and practice for a new “Democracy in America” and a similar systematic public theology, “An Unified Dialogic Theology of Doubling Grace for Everlasting Liberation and Utopian Enchantment for Complete Communion.” This is in the genre of public theology and is independent of individual faith traditions, though it seeks to draw upon what is most inspiring, enduring, humane, true, and ecumenical for all faiths, ecclesial or secular, materialist or spiritual. My hope this is helpful in inspiring an inclusive, humane, egalitarian and unifying democratic and international spirit.
Maybe I am somewhat bold and mad with a soul on fire, but ffterall why else write? My desire to write is born out of a lifelong struggle and joy with the powerful spontaneity and creativity of overflowing feelings and insights, to paraphrase Wordsworth, that I now grateful to share as my essential truth and inner light.
– Don Jessup Blake Long