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The World Exists, Not For What It Means But For What It Is. The Purpose Of Mushrooms Is To Be Mushrooms, Wine Is In Order To Be Wine: Things Are Precious Before They Are Contributory. It Is A False Piety That Walks Through Creation Looking Only For Lessons Which Can Be Applied Somewhere Else. To Be Sure, God Remains The Greatest Good; But, For All That, The World Is Still Good In Itself. Indeed, Since He Does Not Need It, Its Whole Reason For Being Must Lie In Its Own Natural Goodness; He Has No Use For It, Only Delight.

-Robert Farrar Capon

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The World Exists, Not

Robert Farrar Capon

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The World Exists, Not For What It Means But For What It Is. The Purpose Of Mushrooms Is To Be Mushrooms, Wine Is In Order To Be Wine: Things Are Precious Before They Are Contributory. It Is A False Piety That Walks Through Creation Looking Only For Lessons Which Can Be Applied Somewhere Else. To Be Sure, God Remains The Greatest Good; But, For All That, The World Is Still Good In Itself. Indeed, Since He Does Not Need It, Its Whole Reason For Being Must Lie In Its Own Natural Goodness; He Has No Use For It, Only Delight.

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Why Do We Marry, Why Take Friends And Lovers? Why Give Ourselves To Music, Painting, Chemistry Or Cooking? Out Of Simple Delight In The Resident Goodness Of Creation, Of Course; But Out Of More Than That, Too. Half Earth's Gorgeousness Lies Hidden In The Glimpsed City It Longs To Become.

A Good Time Occurs Precisely When We Lose Track Of What Time It Is.

A Silent Lover Is One Who Doesn't Know His Job.

Even To This Day, Grace Remains Hard To Swallow. Religiosity And Moralism Go Down Easier Than Free Forgiveness.

Jesus Came To Raise The Dead. He Did Not Come To Teach The Teachable; He Did Not Come To Improve The Improvable; He Did Not Come To Reform The Reformable. None Of Those Things Works.

We Are So Impressed By Scientific Clank That We Feel We Ought Not To Say That The Sunflower Turns Because It Knows Where The Sun Is. It Is Almost Second Nature To Us To Prefer Explanations . . . With A Large Vocabulary. We Are Much More Comfortable When We Are Assured That The Sunflower Turns Because It Is Heliotropic. The Trouble With That Kind Of Talk Is That It Tempts Us To Think That We Know What The Sunflower Is Up To. But We Don't. The Sunflower Is A Mystery, Just As Every Single Thing In The Universe Is.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Taste. Restore To Us Soups That Spoons Will Not Sink In And Sauces Which Are Never The Same Twice. Raise Up Among Us Stews With More Gravy Than We Have Bread To Blot It With... Give Us Pasta With A Hundred Fillings.

For All Its Rooted Loveliness, The World Has No Continuing City Here; It Is An Outlandish Place, A Foreign Home, A Session In Via To A Better Version Of Itself-and It Is Our Glory To See It So And To Thirst Until Jerusalem Comes Home At Last. We Were Given Appetites, Not To Consume The World And Forget It, But To Taste Its Goodness And Hunger To Make It Great.

At The Root Of Many A Woman's Failure To Become A Great Cook Lies Her Failure To Develop A Workmanlike Regard For Knives.

With Jesus, However, The Device Of Parabolic Utterance Is Used Not To Explain Things To People’s Satisfaction But To Call Attention To The Unsatisfactoriness Of All Their Previous Explanations And Understandings.

You Can Fold Up Spiritually, Morally, Or Intellectually And Still Be Safe. Because At The Very Worst, All You Can Be Is Dead —and For Him Who Is The Resurrection And The Life, That Just Makes You His Cup Of Tea.

Lord, Please Restore To Us The Comfort Of Merit And Demerit. Show Us That There Is At Least Something We Can Do. Tell Us That At The End Of The Day There Will At Least Be One Redeeming Card Of Our Very Own. Lord, If It Is Not Too Much To Ask, Send Us To Bed With A Few Shreds Of Self-respect Upon Which We Can Congratulate Ourselves. But Whatever You Do, Do Not Preach Grace. Give Us Something To Do, Anything; But Spare Us The Indignity Of This Indiscriminate Acceptance.

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The Reason For Not Going Out And Sinning All You Like Is The Same As The Reason For Not Going Out And Putting Your Nose In A Slicing Machine: Its Dumb, Stupid, And No Fun. Some Individual Sins May Have Pleasure Still Attached To Them Because Of The Residual Goodness Of The Realities They Are Abusing: Adultery Can Indeed Be Pleasant And Tying One On Can Amuse. But Betrayal, Jealousy, Love Grown Cold, And The Gray Dawn Of The Morning After Are Nobody's Idea Of A Good Time.

That, You Know, Is Why The World Exists At All. It Remains Outside The Cosmic Garbage Can Of Nothingness, Not Because It Is Such A Solemn Necessity That Nobody Can Get Rid Of It, But Because It Is The Orange Peel Hung On God's Chandelier, The Wishbone In His Kitchen Closet. He Likes It; Therefore, It Stays. The Whole Marvelous Collection Of Stones, Skins, Feathers, And String Exists Because At Least One Lover Has Never Quite Taken His Eye Off It, Because The Dominus Vivificans Has His Delight With The Sons Of Men.

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The Truth That Makes Us Free Is Always Ticking Away Like A Time-bomb In The Basement Of Everybody's Church.

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Older Women Are Like Aging Strudels - The Crust May Not Be So Lovely, But The Filling Has Come At Last Into Its Own.

Perhaps You See, Therefore, Why I Think Taste Must Come Before Nutrition? Our Infatuation For The Quasi-scientific Has Left Us Easy Marks For Con Men And Tin Fiddle Manufacturers.

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What Is Good Is Difficult, And What Is Difficult Is Rare.

One Real Thing Is Closer To God Than All The Diagrams In The World

But All The While, There Was One Thing We Most Needed Even From The Start, And Certainly Will Need From Here On Out Into The New Jerusalem: The Ability To Take Our Freedom Seriously And Act On It, To Live Not In Fear Of Mistakes But In The Knowledge That No Mistake Can Hold A Candle To The Love That Draws Us Home. My Repentance, Accordingly, Is Not So Much For My Failings But For The Two-bit Attitude Toward Them By Which I Made Them More Sovereign Than Grace. Grace - The Imperative To Hear The Music, Not Just Listen For Errors - Makes All Infirmities Occasions Of Glory.

The World Looks As If It Has Been Left In The Custody Of Trolls.

Man Was Made To Lead With His Chin; He Is Worth Knowing Only With His Guard Down, His Head Up And His Heart Rampant On His Sleeve.

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