I Think Probably One Of The Important

Somebody Who Had Read Lila Asked Me, ‘why Do You Write About The Problem Of Loneliness?’ I Said: ‘it’s Not A Problem. It’s A Condition. It’s A Passion Of A Kind. It’s Not A Problem. I Think That People Make It A Problem By Interpreting It That Way.’ 

Well, But You Two Are Dancing Around In Your Iridescent Little Downpour, Whooping And Stomping As Sane People Ought To Do When They Encounter A Thing So Miraculous As Water.

Isaac Watts, Of Course, Is A Hymn Writer In The Tradition Of Congregationalism Who Lived In The Seventeenth And Early Eighteenth Century. He Is Very Interesting And Important Because He Was Also A Metaphysician. He Knew A Great Deal About What Was, For Him, Contemporary Science. He Was Very Much Influenced By Isaac Newton, For Example. There Are Planets And Meteors And So On Showing Up In His Hymns Very Often. But, Again, The Scale Of His Religious Imagination Corresponds To A Very Generously Scaled Scientific Imagination.

Often, When I Want To Read Something That Is Satisfying To Me As Theology, What I Actually Read Is String Theory, Or Something Like That - Popularizations, Inevitably, Of Scientific Cosmologies - Because Their Description Of The Scale Of Things And The Intrinsic, Astonishing Character Of Reality Coincides Very Beautifully With The Most Ambitious Theology. It Is Thinking At That Scale, And It Is Thinking That Is Invested With Meaning In A Humanly Evocative Form. That's Theology.

It All Means More Than I Can Tell You. So You Must Not Judge What I Know By What I Find Words For.