Somewhere along the way I came across St. Thomas Aquinas and his vast attempt to explain Man, the World, God and Everything called the "Summa Theologica". Mercifully, I was spared the reading of this by coming across Henry Miller around the same time, in which I read:

"How I love the dying words of St. Thomas Aquinas: 'All that I have written now seems so much straw!' Finally he saw. At the very last minute. He knew --and he was wordless. If it takes ninety-nine years to attain such a moment, fine! The ninety-eight years are so much sticks of wood to kindle the fire. It is the fire that counts."

--Henry Miller--

This reminded me that the best things about life are knowable (experiential) but not describable.


Yesterday Ruger Scruton brought all this up for me again, beautifully, as is his wont (See his slim volume "Beauty" as an example). I leave here a snippet that is chosen to excite the taste of a few here on RfM, in hopes that they might peruse the entire but humanely short article. Please, if you haven't the five minutes requisite to read the article please refrain from indulging yourself the minute to respond to the snippet only.

Snippet:

"The temptation to take refuge in the ineffable is not confined to philosophers. Every inquiry into first principles, original causes and fundamental laws, will at some stage come up against an unanswerable question: what makes those first principles true or those fundamental laws valid? What explains those original causes or initial conditions? And the answer is that there is no answer — or no answer that can be expressed in terms of the science for which those laws, principles and causes are bedrock. And yet we want an answer. So how should we proceed?

There is nothing wrong with referring at this point to the ineffable...

I too am tempted to eff the ineffable. Like my philosophical predecessors, I want to describe that world beyond the window, even though I know that it cannot be described but only revealed. I am not alone in thinking that world to be real and important. But there are many who dismiss it as an unscientific fiction. And people of this scientistic cast of mind are disagreeable to me. Their nerdish conviction that facts alone can signify, and that the “transcendental” and the eternal are nothing but words, mark them out as incomplete. There is an aspect of the human condition that is denied to them."

http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/columns/roger-scruton/effing-the-ineffable


Cheers

Human

Exactly. This is exactly what I have come to understand.
This is why I don't try to journal or write about all my experiences or take so many pictures any more.
I experience things like flying an airplane, and I don't feel a need to try to describe the experience. The experience itself is all that matters.

Thanks, BadGirl.

About that journaling, I know exactly what you're talking about.

As a kid we were taught to keep a journal, often receiving one on our 8th birthday and/or after baptism. Nothing killed scoring a crucial basket or hitting in a timely run or finally kissing the girl I'd been crushing on for oh say too long than the thought that I'd have to find the words to describe the feeling and write them down before I went to bed that night.

I've 'effed' at god, quite a few times

"......."

I could write it down, but it's too eff'ing ineffable.

Serves me effin' right, posting this kind of stuff on a Friday...

I hope at least someone has read the article. It's an effin' good article.

...on his deathbed didn't use the word "straw", but it DID start with "s"...