"The eyes of an animal have the capacity of a great language. Independent, without any need of the assistance of the sounds and gestures, most eloquent when they rest entirely in their glance, they express the mystery in its natural captivity, that is, in the anxiety of becoming (Bangigkeit des Werdens). This state of the mystery is known only to the animal, which alone can open it up to usfor this state can only be opened up and not revealed. The language in which this is accomplished is what it says: anxietythe stirring of the creature between the realms of plantlike security and spiritual risk. This language is the stammering of nature under the initial grasp of spirit, before language yields to the spirit's cosmic risk which we call man. But no speech will ever repeat what the stammer is able to communicate," - Martin Buber, Ich and Du.
2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan