IN PLACE OF PROLOGUE - Identity Crisis

The short work you are now holding in your hands reveals an identity crisis: because it appears to be one thing but in reality is something else. The many verses from the New Testament it contains give a person thumbing through it the impression - and justifiably so - that it is yet another religious book. One of the many, the countless, one could even say, which in their vast majority rehash certain elements of Christ’s teachings which, according to some, must be learned if one wants to enter Paradise. (Of course, they don’t come right out and baldly admit that, but to anyone studying the matter a little more carefully no great effort is required to see how things stand).
The present text emanates from a completely different source: a human being (one like all the others) finds himself face to face with the problems of existence (what am I and where am I going) and seeks some kind of answer to them.
The fact I was born and raised a Christian has made things somewhat more difficult. Just as someone who wants to paint and decorate a surface finds it easier if it is unpainted (tabula rasa), so in the present case the surface, shall we say, must first be carefully cleaned (and with a certain amount of pain) of its pre-existing Christian veneer. Right from the start, the writer must make his own design there and paint it the way he wants it, taking material from his own ideas but from others as well, and then passing them through his own personal conceptual filter; these will include the various ideas introduced down through the centuries as life proposals (at least for all those who after dealing with the dire necessities of survival, which require their daily labor to insure themselves a modicum of dignity, they still have time to study and learn about, if only in a rudimentary fashion).
At its inception, this effort received its impetus from the fact that the original Christian substratum did not satisfy the author, because he had already verified for himself that although love is an attractive value for each and every human existence, and furthermore is the nucleus of Christian proposal, it has nonetheless been brushed aside and adulterated down through the long course of time, covered over with the corrosion of this world.
But when of necessity he had recourse to the study of other proposals (all those he was able to study), which had been suggested as possible solutions to these painful questions, he was forced to admit that none of these satisfied the deepest and most essential needs of humankind either, needs that were interwoven with his very existence.
So like another prodigal son, who finally “came to himself”, he took the difficult and arduous path in order to advance toward, and at last, approach, in his own way, this neglected and even abused transcendent value which had always comforted his mind and given meaning to his life.
Saying “in his own way” is not meant to suggest, of necessity, an egocentric and autonomous point of view, but without overlooking his essential incorporation, and not just in words, into the solace of the “communion of persons”, he thus came to find himself in harmony, with the, “in spirit and in truth”, responsible course of each unique and unparalleled human being.

Is it perhaps time for us to rethink the concept of “one flock one Shepherd”? There is of course only one Shepherd, but is the flock then something which shares one belief, homogenized, pulped and ground up, as it were, with the immeasurable host of sacred texts and consolidated with the issuing of a certificate of authenticity by experts, connoisseurs and, more generally, those authorized to deal with this matter? Or is perhaps a matter of each individual course, done according to how the person himself feels, unique and unparalleled? And the only criterion for this authenticity is the ministration of love?
As a joy shared is a joy doubled, the invitation to participate in the joy of this course followed by all those who have this virtuous intention of sharing, was considered by the author to be a self-evident obligation.
“Love Seems To Be Something Like That” does not lay claim to being a collection of “poems” (because the author does not consider himself to be a poet, in the usual sense of the term), but rather consists of fragments of thoughts which, however, are not meant to wound anyone, and certainly not kill, nor even cause pain. The only thing they are able to do is to hint at, through their keen points, the sheath, the casing, around certain formerly sensitive souls, who time, routine and the merciless daily hammering they must sustain from the cares of life, coupled with the “vein repetitions” they are forced to listen to, and the excesses of religious propaganda they are exposed to, have blunted their sensitivity.
The author nourishes in his bosom no self-deception that people will raise an outcry, that their awareness will awaken and that groups will rise up, masses revolt, and that thereby the world will change. The only ambition of this text is that it might serve as a modest contribution to a vision of love, freedom and peace (which has very little relationship to what the person living today is bombarded with and must consume without appetite). Its aim is to keep love alive (as it is still alive in the hearts of so many anonymous and ordinary people) and, perhaps, (why not?) have it find some reinforcement there, and thus grow even stronger.

Andreas Thomas

December 2004