Desiring The One That is Before Us
I’m was re-reading some parts of The Fidelity of Betrayal by Peter Rollins last night. His beautiful, romantic description of a Kingdom that is among us yet unseen is truly moving.
Following the image of the kingdom that was spoken of by Jesus, we encounter the idea that while it is still thought of as “to come” this does not mean that it will one day arrive at the end of a certain period of time, but rather that the kingdom is “to come,” i.e., the kingdom is already among us but in a manner that implies it is absent. Here the opening created by the eschatological kingdom of God is not an opening into the future but rather an opening into the present that acts much like the portable holes we see in cartoons that can be placed onto any solid surface, thus creating a gap. This view of the kingdom is something that we also find confirmed in the writings of Paul, such as when he speaks of the kingdom as both the now and the not-yet.
Is this initially bizarre logic not what we also find being played out when we contemplate the presence of those whom we love? Is it not a great romantic truth that the presence of our beloved is always of a spectral kind? To truly know and love someone involves acknowledging that person’s inscrutable eschatological depths, understanding that the presence of the one before us is always manifested as a type of absence, as an opening. For each person is a universe for us to explore. In this way it is wrong to imagine that we long for someone we love to enter into our world, to come. Rather, when the one we love arrives in our world we encounter that person as precisely the one who is “to come.”
This is why our desire for those we love is born in our encounter with them rather than satisfied there. We cannot desire the one whom we do not know, for the simple reason that we do not know that person. We can only desire the one who is before us, the one who remains mysterious in his or her presence. The other is both the origin and the unreachable destination of our desire, for there is always something Other about the other, something “to come” amidst the presence of those we love. In the eyes of the beloved a universe opens up and envelops us.
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