Liking and Knowing

Vision of Love

1990-- by Mariah Carey

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Treated me kind, sweet destiny

Carried me through desperation to the one
that was waiting for me

You took so long, still I believed

Somehow the one that I needed would find me eventually

Somehow the one that I needed would find me eventually

I had a vision of love and it was all that you've given to me

I had a vision of love

And it was all that you've given to me

Prayed through the nights, felt so alone

Suffered from alienation, carried the weight on my own

Had to be strong, so I believed

And now I know I've succeeded in finding
the place I conceived
I've realized a dream

And I visualized the love that came to be

Feel so alive, I'm so thankful that I've received

The answer that heaven has sent down to me
You treated me kind, sweet destiny

And I'll be eternally grateful, holding you so close to me

Prayed through the nights, so faithfully

Knowing the one that I needed
would find me eventually...

"Every person is indescribably complex, and so to speak, an uneven good."  --Karol Wojtyla, later John Paul II

Liking a person is very closely connected with knowledge, "who you turned out to be...," records the lyrics. The base of attraction is an impression, a disposition to regard the other as a value; it is the developed commitment to think of that person as a certain good. Such commitment can only be enacted by the will.
 'I want,' is implicit in 'I like.' Thus the will is committed by attraction, and attraction commits the will. This may be difficult to grasp intellectually; yet the song Vision of Love  makes this point emotionally, poignantly.

"Every person is indescribably complex, and so to speak, an uneven good," writes theologian Wojtyla. "Man and woman alike are by nature bodily and spiritual beings; they are such a being, seen by one another; in this way, each attracts the other.
All the potential goods or values that a given person may respond to derive from the object of this attraction. Each, then, attracts the other. For example, in y's attraction to x, the value most strongly in evidence is one which y finds in x, and to which y reacts most strongly."This one could say is the visioning, the imaging that the lyrics here speak to.

Also there's fact that y is particularly sensitive to it, particularly quick to perceive and respond to it. The mind, the thinking process, therefore plays a part in attraction, combined together with the emotions, such that a potent guide emerges in the mix as an important feature, strikingly evident in attraction.
"But this fact creates a certain internal difficulty in the sexual lives of persons. This difficulty is inherent in the relationship of experience to truth." Feelings often arise spontaneously. Where feelings are functioning naturally, they are unconcerned about truth. This is lust.
Truth for a man is a task of both his experience and his reason. This is why in any attraction, especially one of a sexual nature, the question of the truth about the person towards whom attraction is felt for, is so important.

Often people "generally believe that love can largely be reduced to a question of genuineness of feelings; although this is impossible to completely deny, we must still insist, if we are concerned about the quality of the attraction and the love of which it is part, that the truth about the person who is its object, play a part at least as important as the truth of the sentiment.'

"These two truths, properly integrated, give to an attraction [wholeness], the elements of a genuinely good, and genuinely cultivated love. Thus the object of attraction is seen whole, as a good, as a thing of beauty.
A human being is beautiful and may be revealed as beautiful to another human being." Love is a commitment to the good of each other. "For power is made perfect in weakness."
--2 Corinthians12:9-10

Believe and be Free

Sadeness part 1

by Enigma
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Let us go forth in peace
In the name of Christ, So be it

We shall find the faithful in the
company of angels and children

Lift up your heads and your glorious gates,
and be lifted up your everlasting doors,
and the king of glory shall come in.
Who is the king of glory?

Sade, dis-moi,
(Sade tell me)

Sade, donne-moi 

(Sade give me)

We proceed in peace
In the name of Christ, 

I believe.

Sade tell me
what are you going to seek?
The rightness through wrong?
The virtue through  vice?
Sade tell me 

why the Gospel of Evil ?
What is your religion? Where are your faithful?
If you are against God, you are against man

Sade tell me, why blood for pleasure?
Pleasure without love?
Is there no more feeling in the worship of man?
 

Sade are you diabolical or divine?
Sade, tell me.
Pray for us.

Sade, give me.
Pray for us

Sade give me
Hosanna

Sade tell me
Pray for us.
Sade give me
Pray for us.

In the name of Christ.

I believe.

The very popular song Sadeness, written in Europe in the early 1990's was a phenomenon for several reasons, first due to its lyric, then its content, and the inclusion of overtly secular and sacred song into a single composition. Apparently intended to co-exist, the two-as-one sounds of chant and modern beats, serve to reinforce the simple thought that the world is one. There is not a world for Sade, and another for the angels. 

Angels, for that matter, tradition teaches have no physical bodies, therefore are limitless. And they have a will which does not always incline to the good. As the song concludes: Hosanna, Pray for us! Amen, I believe.