I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

- Queen Elisabeth I

I am once again fascinated by Augustine's insight.  This simple one line from his work has kept me thinking for most of the week.  I suppose I could dig around and find out what school of philosophy lay behind his thought - and probably find that he got it from somewhere else (which, actually, would be the point Augustine is making here), but I don't really see the point of chasing that rabbit trail at this time.

Augustine says this in reference to knowledge.  Knowledge cannot be properly possessed by someone until they share what they know with someone else.  The implications for teaching are strong.  I can know a lot of things, but if I do not share what I know with others, then I do not actually fully possess that knowledge.  What Augustine is saying is that it is in the nature of something like knowledge to be shared because, you don't have less knowledge when you tell someone what you know.  Since something can be so freely shared, without it going away, then its part of its nature to be shared.  So, if it is not shared, then one has lost out on an important, fundamental aspect of what that thing is. 

As a pastor, I find this interesting.  There seems to me to be a great deal of fear in inviting "the lay folk" into deep theological conversations.  Such conversations are dismissed as not being important, because what people want to know is about things that are relevant. And while I would agree that people are interested in how things apply to them, I think there is also a general hunger to know more about God.  So why not talk about the development of the Doctrine of the Trinity?  No, I wouldn't label a class that and slap that title on some bulletin announcement.  The title is intimidating - but isn't that conversation really about knowing God?  Wouldn't "Knowing God" be an OK title for a class?  I guess my point is that we, as pastors, have been entrusted with the shape or form of teaching [about the Faith] - see Romans 6:17.  If we are not passing that along, then we do not yet rightly possess that shape of the Faith.

So teaching and knowledge is one area....

The other that I have been thinking of, that is not an immediate application by Augustine, is love.  Love is also something that can be shared without diminishing.  In this way, this becomes a strong statement against a self-centered love.  We cannot only love ourselves - And we cannot be loved if we only love ourselves.  That is, love cannot be something we possess in its fullness if our love is kept to ourselves or directed only at ourselves.  If we are in a relationship that only suites ourselves then its not a real relationship.  That relationship is not properly ours because it is not shared, we have avoided a fundamental part of what a relationship means - and therefore it not fully part of our lives.

I am aware that there are ways in which this may lead one to be rather self critical.  But I do not think that this is the intent.  Rather, I think this should be a word of encouragement.  The risk we take in sharing such things as these is that they will become something which we more fully possess rather than something we might lose.

I have been reading, working on a paper, and bumped into a study of Augustine's (of Hippo) understanding of friendship and how it progressed over his lifetime.  Augustine is normally, I think, understood as a very heady person - A thinker.  I found a quote that is rather personal.  Augustine is reflecting on the death of his good friend, Nebridius.  And for him, friendship seems to be more broad than we might typically use it.  Friendship could include, or rather be included in (and in perhaps foundational way) things like, what we might call, dating, betrothal and marriage (not that I think Augustine's friendship included that kind of attraction for Nebridius).  Augustine did  have an apparent tendency to focus on the things that stood in the way of friendship.  But in his reflection on the passing of his dear friend, he is rather quite hopeful: