Submission

The human spirit has a fundamental orientation towards decay. This is cosmic necessity made of the corporeal. To fight against cosmic law requires a surplus of energy. Family, culture, identity and belonging, this sense of being rooted - all sources for providing that energy. Problem: these sources are not promised, and some souls go without. Of those deprived of what enables flourishing towards God (or, towards material links to God such as geometry), most succumb to decay. A single mother who drinks at night, the gay homeless man addicted to drugs after familial exile, the tortured souls without roots. The deprived who flourish in spite of their malnutrition: a step below sainthood. In this scenario we ought to submit to the cutting of our roots. Only then we can grow like a flower in concrete.

The tangential line between acceptance and grief is the orientation of the spirit. "I can't believe my family won't talk to me because I'm gay", "They made their choice at my detriment, and so be it." The former orientated towards loss, the latter orientated towards gain. Sometimes all that can be said is 'so be it.' What is perceived as necessary versus what is truly necessary. The Stoics understood the latent violence that attachment can enact upon the soul. This is why surviving without roots is one step below sainthood.

This is a supernatural task which can only be made possible through either the implicit or explicit love of God. An impoverished soul whose roots were violently ripped from the earth can, given the correct orientation, find transcendent beauty in their survival. They should not have survived, yet they stand. They are a walking miracle; a flower in concrete. It appears as a greater miracle for those who implicitly love God (captivated by beauty, structure, wisdom; the logos) than those who explicitly love God. The alcoholic mother who goes to church and develops an intense connection with him also grows roots from nothing. But most who claim to love God only love their attachment to God and the roots it provides. This is why the virtuous atheist is, in most cases, more devout than the practicing Christian. God's love descends upon both equally.

Submission is the act of slaves. All humans are slaves.

Necessity at the scale of God's love, or the cosmos: death, decay, sublimation from individual into absolute, the release of consciousness. Necessity at the scale of human life (in most cases, created from ignorance of God's love): labor, taxes, interpersonal conflict, beauracracy. The rich who fight against death through lavish philanthropy and legacy-building are in a fight against cosmic necessity. They will lose; all do. The man cut off from loved ones, laboring under crushing conditions, may also be in a fight against human necessity. Those who do not accept that all that can happen will eventually happen, somewhere to someone, share a fate woven with anguish. Only those who submit to necessity with the soul's orientation towards the love of God will find peace, 'so be it.' The acceptance of slavery in the body but not in the soul. Roots growing through concrete. This is why the structures of the universe, such as gravity and other mechanisms, are accepting slaves to God's love. They act in adoration of God, which is to say love.