and the son of man that thou dost care for him? (Ps. 8: 4)
- For David has begun to perceive that life flows, not from the surface of things, as Goliath supposed, but from the spiritual depths of reality. And from this gaze into the source of life will be bom the poetry of the psalms: the poetry of spiritual longing and desolation, and the poetry of praise and reverence. To be sure, David will fail repeatedly to achieve authentic spiritual maturity, which can come about only by suffering the conflicts and calamities of great and contradictory desires.
- For the human inclination to evil and self-love, which dwells in the innermost parts of affectivity and will, requires a dying to the self many times over, until a purely spiritual relation of freedom takes root in the soul.