He who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the assembly of the LORD.
— Deuteronomy 23:1
And the eunuch said, “See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?” Then Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
— Acts 8:36-37
His disciples said to Him, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry. But He said to them, “All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given: For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.”
— Matthew 19:10-12
The eunuch for the kingdom of heaven “makes” himself so by holding a standard of beauty so lofty that all become beautifully unworthy. All having become beautifully unworthy, the infinitely flawed completeness of the particular is forgotten. The flaws and beauty of the particular forgotten, there is only one left to love; rather, that already loves: The formlessness of the heaven.
To do nothing at the sight of beauty, we must remember the time when we knew nothing— a Nothing so overwhelming that the beauty is consummate, and the desire, irrelevant.
Love must not be, but take a body too; And therefore what thou wert, and who, I bid Love ask, and now That it assume thy body, I allow, And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought, And so more steadily to have gone, With wares which would sink admiration, I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught; Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
— From John Donne’s Air and Angels
Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; The sage is ruthless, and treats the people as straw dogs.
— Tao Te Ching, Chapter 5
The power of sin is the law
— 1 Corinthians 15:56
The Eunuch for the kingdom of heaven is ruthless and treats the people (himself) as straw dogs. In love with all and desiring nothing. Not through castration, for nothing can be removed from ourselves with a “no” and we can never overcome through negation and legalism, nor others for us. Only some string of yes’s beyond the wet dawn of the feminine ameliorates us. Grace. Unspoken yes’s that deliver from familiar strifes and plagues before an attempt to rid oneself is even remembered. A yes in which fear and expectation have no room. A yes in which the horizon of the particular becomes as distant and equivocal as the laying down of oceans.
But sweeter still, than this, than these, than all, Is first and passionate love—it stands alone, Like Adam’s recollection of his fall; The tree of knowledge has been pluck’d—all’s known— And life yields nothing further to recall.
— From Lord Byron’s Don Juan
A eunuch for love is the same. Made a eunuch in the love’ oblivion and sweetly vast annihilation. In true love you’re a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven. Everything is beautiful and nothing is grasped for. All is the continual pouring forth of old wine from familiar skins.
When you’re a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven, to love anything but God is to deign. When you’re a eunuch in love, to remember anything else is to deign. To deign is to trespass. The eunuch, whether for heaven or earth, has forgotten the possibility of ‘bad’ in his objects of adoration. May we emulate the eunuch.
“To tell a lie is impossible because every statement has its reason”. The forty year old woman says she is 35. She speaks the truth of her aversion to aging. She lies supine and flayed in her meandering truth and only love can mend. If you saw a broken vase you wouldn’t say it was “lying”, you would just say it is.
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made be manifest in him.
— John 9:3
A large house contains not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay. Some indeed are for honorable use, but others are for common use.
— 2 Timothy 2:20
The cripple is the greatest miracle of a benevolent God. Ugliness begets pity and pity begets the miraculous. The ugliest girl in the world will soon be approached by a man with nothing but love. She will become as the most beautiful and the next ugliest will follow. There are streams of love for the lowest. Cigarette butts and the abuse of the children, the guardian angel of the tripedal doe.
But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.
— 1 Samuel 16:7
Blessed are the ugly for are the glory of God.
Blessed are the lame for they are the potential of God