About two days ago, I emailed a good friend I haven't seen in a while, and in the letter I shared with him a moving portion from Augustine's Confessions, among the best books I've read thus far. (I've been using the John K. Ryan translation, which is just wonderful.) You judge me, O Lord, for although no one "knows the things of man but the spirit of man which is in him," there is something further in man which not even the spirit of man which is in him knows. But you, Lord, who made him, knows all things that are in him. Although I despise myself before your sight, and account myself but dust and ashes, yet I know something of you which I do not know about myself. In truth, "we see now through a glass in a dark manner", and not yet "face to face." Therefore as long as I journey apart from you, I am more present to myself than to you. Yet I have known that you are in no wise subject to violation, whereas for myself, I do not know which