Just gosh darn beautiful

I've been thinking about vampire author Anne Rice's erm... deconversion? if that's the word, from atheist to Catholic to just plain Christian. If not an atheist again. Not quite sure about that last bit. She may have just simply lost her temper in a really bad way saying,

"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian."

Hmm... like I said, not too sure about her truly shedding the Christian mantle. Gnostics could claim all these things in her above quote. Some Gnostics call themselves Christians while others consider the word to be too ugly and tainted to use anymore as a true descriptive when speaking of spiritual gnosis. The Roman Catholic Church has spawned too many degenerate bastardized subsidiaries to know what's fact from fiction; the whole while claiming to have the patent and apostolic succession to divine grace. No wonder she's confused and pissed off! She may have sworn off the RCC but that does not mean she's an atheist once again.

Anyway, today I was sitting back a while ago and admiring my shelf of first editions from her vampire series (Thank you, hubby! XOXOXO you're the best! he's such an eBay whore. Very useful at times.) and a descriptive phrase from several of her books jumped into my mind.

"The totality of salvation."

Her vampire character, Lestat, uses the phrase several times throughout the series. The first time was, I believe, in Memnoch the Devil and the most recent was Blood Canticle. "The totality of salvation" is Lestat's personal vision of God. All mysteries solved and laid bare. The chaotic ripples and twists of the universe calm under the divine eye of Truth.

I like it. I've adopted it. It is now in my personal library of chosen ways to view the universe in all its complexity.

Statisticians have elegant formulas for supposedly solving 'chance encounters' and 'coincidence' problems but honestly, I can't think of anything more beautiful than this phrase. It rolls off the tongue like pure poetry and settles into the mind like a soothing balm.

The Totality of Salvation.

... even if, though gnosis, we don't really have anything to be saved from but our own inherent human blindness, it's still a beautiful credo.