and the Spirit hovered

I have been returning in my mind to the opening words of the Bible lately, for various reasons. The book of Genesis opens with the beautiful, mystic words

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

Some translations render it hovering, brooding over the dark deep waters. Regardless, I find it a truly imagination-capturing image. It is the first glimpse of the Trinity, of God being not a solitary isolated God, but one who is in some vastly mysterious way in communion: The Father in perfect and eternal union with the Son, which unity breathes forth, or spirates, the Spirit.

And God said . . . First, He says, Let there be light. Reach forth in time, and the opening words of the Gospel of St John (which are read at the close of the Tridentine Mass in supreme fittingness) expound this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. He was in the beginning with God , and all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 

And so: God the Father, who creates through speaking His Word, His one and perfect Word, Who is Jesus, Yeshua, and this act of speaking is spirating, or breathing forth, the Spirit.

I have been thinking of these things so much lately. Speech was broken at Babel into our thousands of babbling imperfect languages, but before then . . .
My tenth-grade physics teacher told us how they were discovering that the smallest particles vibrated constantly, that essentially they are sound. Whether they are or not, in fact, the smallest particles, I don't know, but certainly there is the fact that everything has a vibrating point, that every object will answer, respond to, a certain frequency.
We are separated from the spiritual realms, in this fallen state at least, by our bodies . . . Christ's glorified body was not: even as the Son of God, His body still respected the bounds of physical limitations. After He rose again, however, He was walking through locked doors and such, because His body was glorified. I do believe after the Second Coming and Final Judgment, we in our glorified bodies still will be physical beings, but untainted any longer by the restrictions, the limitations, of sin--also why some of the saints have overcome some of these bonds and have levitated, bilocated, &c.
Likewise, because of sin our words were broken, limited, bonded to and by speech. Like bodies, they can be corrupted, disappear, shift meanings as our bodies change with age . . . but what is perfect speech?

God spoke . . . the Word was with God, and the Word was Go d . . .

Many many many know the power of music. Hans Christian Anderson phrased it, "When words fail, music speak." My mind half-remembers a quotation I ran across in high school along the lines "When all else fails,  when art has nowhere left to go, people turn to music."
What then is this draw to, this pining for, relief in music?
I think it is the closest thing we have to the unbroken, perfect Word. Somehow, when all is said and done in irrevocable finality, when our bodies are glorified and the world made new, our speech will be no longer bounded by these cumbersome letters and phrases, but will be akin to music.

Contemplation

The dispute over beauty is a manifestation of the dispute over what the purpose of a person is.  For Bentham, it is to create a happy stable politeia where everyone is fed and warm and happy and amused so we don't get bored or angry and start killing each other.  For Pater, it is pleasure:  art is useful because it provides pleasure and then we contemplate our own pleasurable experience and so don't notice that our life is passing away.

For Aristotle, which is whom Pater is most distorting, what is "peculiarly human" is to be "a being-at-work in accord with reason" formed by virtue so that we can choose right actions, and this is what is most beautiful.  Virtuous action in accordance with reason is most beautiful because it is most fitting to what a human being is.  The next questions then, will involve the nature of virtue (in brief, the mean between two extremes) and of contemplation.  I am so excited about this, because it cuts down Pater and modern emoters right at the root:  life, and art, are NOT about our own feelings or experiences.  This is a good place to begin to know reality, but a terrible place to end.  Contemplation is NOT about one's own self, and it is NOT sterile.  Rather, contemplation is the ultimate action of which a properly formed human being is capable.  It is not some sissy irrational thing, or even something to which the elite few are called.  It is the fulfillment of our existence, and seeking beauty is the shortest way there.