“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” (1 Peter 1:3-12 ESV)

A thing of beauty, sycophants silence at the invocation of the sublime. Christ earned for us a Hearing, from the Most High, to have our appeal heard and our shook status assertively calmed. Christ gave game-day readiness, because all of us are participants, shareholders, in the Duty and the Right to duck out in the presence of Beauty. Quietly to say, let the Actions speak for themselves, the game-day Albatross reign for the day, no longer in contention with our loved Enemies, for whom we pray.

Because there is a win-win situation, on some level. Some common humanity, and the warrior rightly quantifies and legislates, measures and asserts, the game of numbers and of sacrifices: no longer cynical, but gone Beauty. Discovered Elegant. Asserted Minus Players, the sublime on its own and the business of war now one of collegial Preservation. Of the one Man’s, Woman’s outlay so artistic. Of the use of our very lives, and that of our responders, towards a Reward and an End before which angels weep.

Game-day readiness, you can hear the loving appeal from our neighbors, and life Persistent from those who would and should be, enemy’s calculations chiming in, down for the count. We are in a strange confluence, so that altogether War is afoot, but life springs forth abundantly, determinedly, assertively. Are we therefore conceding Anything to the devil? Are we therefore—because we are not in miserable foxholes during at least some of our days—a sell-out or lackluster Being? Hardly, for Christ’s war is fought in the playhouses and the saloons, in the coffeeshops and the conferences.

Christ’s war is Overcoming the reality each of us faces, that come workload, weariness can set in. It turns out, we were already operating on all cylinders. And then came the bleary-eyed mornings, because of strange Encounters with the Assertive, with the long and patient together Discovery of Beauty and Fact, found in the conversation pieces.

That is, to stay Pure and Pristine unto the Calling, it is to recognize a confluence of Ideologues and Worship most bizarre or different from our own; and then to be Certain, Christ is Alive, Risen from the Dead, precisely because we are no longer extracted from the crowds, no longer kept Pristine for the long vision and the fight, no longer sheltered. And see how we measure our deeds against the most recent Encounter or Conversations, things awkward or unbelieving jutting in, disrupting our happy place and our calm with the notion it was all a lark, all a fanciful Place.

But no, the game is give and take, the game is pull and ease out, because an enemy Mocks our game-day readiness, swearing off any and all Conflict such that we are left holding the gauntlet, disappointed our Prophetic warring readiness was so Silly and Unnecessary. And would that we would concede the Beauty, concede to a cinder block architecture uncostly and offensive, because Then, then and always then, the enemy will attack and take advantage of our concession. Concession to unreadiness, to self-blame, to a Christ who—let’s not debate—isn’t Risen. Indeed, go O soldier to the public house and listen, O colleague, to the music in the spheres and the Calling to stark Encounter, to friendships Forged at the cost of weariness and of self-blame or Questioning our own idylls.