Echoes of St. Augustine

(photo from Anhui, China)

St. Augustine spelling out my own thoughts in his Confessions over 1600 years ago...

"These things I did not at that time know, and I was in love with those lower beauties. I was sinking into the very depths and I said to my friends: 'Do we love anything save what is beautiful? What then is beautiful? and what is beauty? What is it that allures us and delights us in the things we love? Unless there were grace and beauty in them they could not possibly draw us to them.'"

"'...He made this world and is not far from it.' For He did not simply make it and leave it: but as it is from Him so it is in Him. See where He is, wherever there is a savour of truth: he is in the most secret place of the heart, yet the heart has strayed from Him... Where are you going, to what bleak places? Where are you going? The good that you love is from Him: and insofar as it is likewise for Him it is good and lovely... You seek happiness of life in the land of death, and it is not there. For how shall there be happiness of life where there is no life? But our Life came down to this earth and took away our death, slew death with the abundance of His own life...For He did not delay but rushed on, calling to us by His death, life, descent, and ascension to return to Him. And He withdrew from our eyes, that we might return to our own heart and find Him..." 

I'm always intrigued when people from the past seem to write what's on my mind. It's as if my thoughts were being echoed backwards through time. It reminds that my thoughts are nowhere near as original or as "my own" as I thought them to be. Still it reminds me at least that I'm not going crazy--a good thing for someone who thinks way too much! (For more detail of how this passage relate to my own thoughts, go to this post)