jonas' mortuary (3)

He had hardly peaked his ears into the family den before Uncle Otto’s voice met him like a hammer to the tail. “And what trouble have you found today, whelp?”

Beside him, Aunt Clara sighed, folding her paws across an apron made from priory curtain scraps. “Running rooftops again, no doubt,” she chided.

Thomas snapped his tail, unbothered. “What of it? The courtyard was empty.” He hoisted his satchel onto the ledge, tugging it open and producing his loot with a smirk. “Besides, I brought breakfast.”

Otto snorted. “And is it bread you’ve found, or penance?”

Thomas held up the cheese in one paw, the bread in the other. “Why not both?”

Otto muttered something under his breath but took the bread anyway, appraising it tentatively. Aunt Clara shook her head, but her whiskers twitched at the scent of cheese. Without another word, she took the loaf from Otto and began slicing it into thick, hearty portions while Thomas dug out the rest of his spoils. A little oil lamp crackled as she lit its whisk and skewered each slice with a needle. She held the sausage near the flame, turning it gently to crisp the edges. The scent of rich, peppered fat curled into the rafters, mixing with the yeasty warmth of fresh-cut bread and the sharp tang of cheese.

Otto huffed, but his stomach growled despite himself as Clara plucked a mustard jar from the shelf—a triumphant spoil from a previous raid. Shadows of dust motes danced lazily above the cluttered shelves, where bits of parchment, dried herbs, and other relics of past excursions lay in neat disarray. With a practiced paw, she smeared a generous helping over the steaming sausage, the yellow paste glistening with the morning light that fell from the tiny stained-glass clerestory window.

Otto sat at his usual spot, hunched slightly over his meal as though it were another task to be completed. His graying fur, once a rich chestnut, had softened at the edges, paling at his muzzle, streaking his back and tail. There was a roundness to him—an old squirrel’s comfort, a life of rationed indulgence—but his eyes were sharp as ever: judgmental, calculating. He ate with precision, tearing off bread in methodical bites, gnawing each morsel as if he was determining its worth.

“You think yourself clever, running rooftops and nicking delicacies from the kitchens.” Otto remarked, his sharp eyes still fixed on Thomas.

Thomas shrugged, reaching for his own portion. “It’s good mustard.”

Clara, meanwhile, moved with effortless rhythm. There was always something gentle about her, even when she was stern—an undercurrent of warmth beneath her chiding. Maternal, though she had no children of her own. Clara was not the type of squirrel inclined to philosophical depth, but she was inquisitive, and always sought the pragmatic perspective. If those around her were content, so was she.

She was quite smaller than Otto, with sleek auburn fur and keen eyes that softened with thought. She hummed absently as she worked, pressing a warm sandwich into Thomas’s waiting paws before wiping her own against her apron.

"Eat," she commanded, her voice neither indulgent nor impatient—knowing kindness required no ceremony.

"Alpkäse,” Otto muttered with disapproval, biting into his meal. “You don't think I know the taste of good mountain cheese? The monks will have your hide for it. What else did you steal with this?”

Thomas licked the grease from his paws and smirked. "Only the grace of God, Uncle. Do you suppose I ought to return it?"

Clara clicked her tongue, though the corners of her mouth twitched. Otto only snorted.

"You’d do better returning those foolish thoughts in your head," he muttered, wiping crumbs from his whiskers. "Running rooftops, scavenging scraps, sneaking into the sacred halls! Mark me, boy, curiosity is the surest road to ruin. Thank heaven your parents, rest their souls, aren’t here to see you twist thievery into a virtue."

Thomas’s tail twitched again behind him. “Curiosity is what led the first man to name the stars, Uncle.”

Otto narrowed his eyes, jabbing a hunk of sausage toward his nephew. “And it is what led him out of Eden.”

Clara sighed, setting down the knife. "And it is what built the Tower of Babel," she said, her voice even. "Curiosity is no sin, Thomas—but chasing after things best left alone has been known to yield unprosperous results."

Thomas frowned but didn’t argue. Clara washed her paws with a droplet from the kitchen faucet and wiped them once again on her apron. She turned to study him. Then, with a gentler voice, "So what is it, then, that has you so curious this morning, dear?" she asked, setting two empty thimbles on the table before them and turning again to pick up a small teapot and hang it above the flame.

Thomas’s ears perked up. "I saw something—carved into a cloister stone." He traced a shape in the air with one claw. “I think I’ve seen it before—maybe in Bruder Gerhard’s study?” He was getting excited. “And in the fresco in the study hall, there it was again, on the scroll! The man—the saint—”

Otto huffed, shaking his head. "And so we arrive at the true danger of curiosity: it turns breakfast into nonsense.”

Thomas’s ears quivered, but he said nothing. Clara placed a paw on Otto’s shoulder in silent conversation and he fumbled to soften his blow.

"You’ve got your head in the clouds, boy—same as Bruder Matthias. All I'm saying is look where that’s gotten him."

Otto wiped his whiskers with the back of his paw and went on. "Fasting when no one asks him to, muttering to himself in empty halls, pacing in the dead of night like a man waiting for a vision. And what does he have to show for it? Nothing but dark circles under his eyes and a spine bent double over tomes that don’t give him any answers." He shook his head. "Mark me, boy—curiosity without purpose is the fastest road to the madhouse. These great men loft up for themselves their fixed ideas and then tear them apart. What good is it to question what works so well?” He paused.

“Men like Matthias think themselves clever, always chewing the gristle of mystery as though it might one day turn to meat. But it's that cleverness that provides the foothold to lunacy. They’d sooner spend a week unraveling a single verse like some sort of alchemist than accept the plain sense of it. As if the Lord were a riddle-maker and not a God of order.”

He leaned back with a grunt.

“I say, better a life of honest bread and butter than one spent chasing after some spirit. Certainty’s a solid thing—a stone you can stand on. Questions, well, they’re just cracks in the foundation. Step on the wrong one and you’re liable to fall through and never climb back out.”

He crossed his hands on the table before him, quieter now. He had finished his breakfast.

Thomas dared a quiet counter, knowing the risk. “And what of the Holy Spirit, Uncle?”

But Otto didn’t answer. He reached for his napkin instead, brushing a few lingering crumbs from his robe with short, decisive strokes. The table creaked gently beneath him as he rose to his feet.

“Clara,” he said, not unkindly, “if there’s any of that tea ready, I’d be glad of it.”

tristero logic

for self-rep-
resentation in the face of symbolic annihilation blimp github coordinate updates

StandardGauge69420?!!!  furnished meaning giving will to, safeguard the moment

• 2 deviled eggs
• salmon
• wagyu
• sweet shrimp + heads
• unagi

3pc chicken nanban malicious testimonies saccharine sustain before outro, quit the portamento at the end of each refrain that's annoying

and also stop citing that excerpt from The Crying, it's getting old now

Tristero Logic: Pattern-Seeking, Attachment, and the Universal Skill of Misinterpretation

reprise on [10]

I put a bright green sticker with my name on it in the lobby mailroom because I'm feeling assertive but lack the skills to act upon my impulses in any productive way. A moment ago, there were sharp laser sounds emitting from the street below my apartment building. I stepped out on the balcony to record the phenomena with my phone so I could describe the sound later, here. I'm replaying it now and I don't know how. A quick, jabby, "Zee-Auh-Wah-Uh" that is nothing like a police siren or any other siren I've heard before. I'd think myself mad if I didn't have the evidence here, in my hand. But then again, when has evidence of reality ever offered proof against madness?

I went to a Halloween party about a month ago and I'm still recovering. Rager, I think you could call it. An Airbnb mansion dripping wet with pretention and performative spirituality (mind you, this is coming from me). A journalist I met once before asked me if I'm a voracious reader. I laughed and said, "Of course not."

I saw a handful of people I haven't seen in months because I've been avoiding everyone. I said, "Oh my God hiiiiiiii," and "Licherally I've been monk-mode." I saw Joe Biden and Fred Flintstone, Robert Smith and a sexy skeleton. I saw one of my favorite couples, whose relationship always makes me sick with envy because I am plagued by an incapacity to metabolize my own happiness and an equally corrosive entitlement to the happiness of others. I said hello to them. I said hello to a tall, elegant cat and a Victorian ghost. I saw Dorothy and a plush Toto, an FBI Agent, a long red trench coat—Carmen Sandiego? I saw a racoon and a Playboy bunny. I saw a long stretch of tanned skin, broad shoulders and sun-bleached blonde hair and ran to my car to inhale half a bottle of champagne and linger on the decision to blanket an option I knew I'd regret.

I plugged my phone into my aux, played a Sun Kil Moon cover of a Modest Mouse song, squinted my eyes, started mewing, tousled my hair and pretended I was in a music video. Then I slouched back into a nematode posture and returned to the party.

I knew I shouldn't have come, I told three different people I wasn't coming. And yet, I frequently try to prove to myself that I'm stronger than I am. I always fail.

Someone offered me a gummy bear dipped in MDMA. I took half of it and then used a drink ticket I inherited from a connection I abused to gain entrance during the invite-only admittance time slot, whatever that means.

I wandered aimlessly, alone, for a moment before latching onto an acquaintance. I was already talking too much—chattering, trauma dumping, paranoid ideating. He offered me a large bump of ketamine so I took it. The rest of the night is unrecognizable, but I remember opening my car door to vomit bile onto concrete a number of times, weeping uncontrollably, and driving home at geriatric speeds.

In keeping with a proverb of reticence, I've flagellated myself enough for the span of one anecdote. Today marks the start of the third week in a row that I've ghosted my therapist. Pretty sure he has a policy on that, and he might not take me back when I come slithering out of my oublietted tower oozing with self-pity, vanity and excuses.

I dreamt I was on a roller coaster in Japan. Single file, you strip down naked and fold into your seat. No seat belt but you won't fall, you're in a dream. A city pop beat plays in the background as you're swept through a human car-wash. Lights twinkle from buildings below, tiny at their base and fat at the top: cartoon architecture. The lyrics and melody for the song are a crossover between the children's didactic rhyme “Brush Brush Brush Brush Brush Your Teeth” and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair”. You enter a tunnel, it's dark and cold and quiet here. Soap on your skin, soap in your eyes. Like a cave, with the faint indigo glow of bioluminescent algae on the walls. Deep, dark. Silence, anonymous and unrelenting. Is it raining, is it snowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing?

Light appears and you're swept away, doused in a plunge of water. First ice, then sauna. Clean, like kerosene.

Your clothes are waiting for you at the end of the ride. Warm, straight out of the dryer. The love of your life greets you with butterfly kisses, a gentle veto on over-apologizing, a piece of White Rabbit milk candy and a cup of chamomile tea.

------

What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anony-mous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to under-stand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?^*

manuscript on perspectives (on crashing out, on regret, on boundaries and fundamental incompatibility, on heartbreak, on breaking up and getting back together and breaking up again, on fear, on meekness)

the moth poem, r crumb, tartuffe or the hypocrite, multitudes (multitudes), the quaker: a study in costume, biblioctopus (under 500 (sigh)), death comes for the arch bishop, balustrade, schopenhauer's porcupines, labyrinthine ways and bluebonnets for lucinda
what did you say
are you thinking of her again?
what a play
wouldn't that be the nicest way

A Lesson in Spiritual Accessibility

jonas' mortuary (3)

Thomas leapt onto the sloping tiles, stretching his limbs against the warmth of the sun. He blinked against the brightness. The brothers would likely have finished their morning prayers, now headed to the refectory for breakfast. The dew on the moss that littered the roof tiles was nearly dry. The courtyard below would soon be bustling, the morning air crisp and alive.

A shadow passed overhead.

"You ought to be careful, little thief," came a rasping voice.

Thomas flicked an ear and looked up. With a great rustling of wind and wings, an uncommonly large crow landed nearby, obsidian talons clicking against the weary orange ceramic.

Thomas narrowed his eyes at the crow. One furry eyebrow arched, his voice barked bright and youthful. “You ought to mind your own business, old scavenger,” he said.

Origen puffed up his chest, cocking his head in a dramatic show of indignation. “Scavenger?” He turned his beak skyward with pride. “A bold taunt from a mouse with a bushy tail.”

“A mouse wouldn’t have the guts to steal a sweet sausage from the elders’ stores,” he boasted. “Your beak’s sharper than my teeth—you could make your own living, if only you weren’t so lazy.” Thomas reached into his satchel and broke off a bit of sausage, tossing it through the air in the bird's direction.

Origen snapped up the crumb, swallowing it with a satisfied caw. “Why work harder than I must? I leave the daring heists to you. I prefer my meals well-aged—like wisdom.”

Thomas snorted. “Wisdom? Since when have you ever been wise?”

The old crow chattered his beak in amusement. “Wisdom is knowing when to keep one’s feathers dry. Unlike you, darting through kitchens and cloisters, a headstrong creature with no sense of self-preservation.” He peered at Thomas from the corner of his eye, his voice turning soft. “What would your aunt say?”

Thomas set down his satchel, rolled onto his back and placed both paws behind his head, belly to the cloudless sky, soaking in the sunlight. “Self-preservation is for those without my providential combination of wit and speed. You wouldn’t understand.”

Origen ruffled his feathers, watching him with something almost fond. He said nothing, and there was a pause.

“Auntie Clara tells me I'm reckless, but I'm always gone before she is awake, so she cannot complain. Uncle Otto tells me that my taste is too inflated for an attic-dweller,” the squirrel grumbled. “He would rather dine on acorns. He has no pallet for the finer things in life—culinary or otherwise.”

“They've been saying the same since you were a kit.”

Thomas sighed dramatically. “And I keep proving them right. But no one’s ever caught me!” He flung his arms wide, inviting fate to the challenge.

Origen let out a low chuckle and settled into a comfortable perch. “Not yet.”

For a while, they simply sat—squirrel and crow, old friends basking in the warmth of morning, the wind carrying the distant toll of the bell tower.

But then the air shifted.

A gust of wind swept across the priory roof, ruffling Origen’s feathers. His posture stiffened ever so slightly.

“Storm’s coming,” he croaked.

Thomas frowned up at the sky—it was still a pale, clear blue, only a few wisps of cloud stretched thin across the horizon.

“So?” he said. “A bit o’ rain ain't ever hurt me.”

Origen’s unending black eyes turned downward—toward the priory, toward the cloistered halls below. The monks were about now, ushering themselves to breakfast, their voices rising in the last echoes of Prime. The chant wove through the morning air, slow and steady, a tide of solemn song undulating against the stone. Latin vowels stretched into long, ringing tones, fading as the monks stepped from prayer into daylight.

“Gentle, little thief,” Origen cautioned. “It is not only the sky that stirs today.”

Thomas sat up, his fur bristling slightly. “What do you mean?”

The crow did not answer immediately. Instead, he spread his wings, stretching lazily, as if the moment had passed.

“Nothing you need trouble yourself over,” he said. “Not yet.”

But Thomas was not so sure.

clairvoyance

Not my first childhood pet, but my Second. Long hair, slender, ivory. Think Turkish Angora. One green eye, one blue. I had a baby bassinet in my bedroom. Not for me but for her, for the cat. It was antique. It was white washed over grey wood—or maybe the first coat of paint was grey and the second was white. Think French Provincial. There were two Chinese Staircase collars I wove out of embroidery thread. One for her, one for me. My dad made me attach claw-clasps and o-rings to the ends, fearful I might suffocate in my sleep.

Two years ago I had sleep paralysis: the man I loved stood above me with a rifle, gazing down the barrel at my slumbering form. When I woke I saw it wasn't him, only the shadow of my clothing rack haloed by the moonlight cutting through the window I always left open for my cat. This cat is black. Long hair, slender. Two green eyes that were gold at her birth.

Eidolon canines have been following me for months, in many forms, many breeds. Always dark in palette. It feels like they're protecting me from something, though, what I can't be certain. Are we always unaware of from what we need protection?

The arms of an octopus are wreathed about my bed rn. When I first moved here I lived in a small detached office. A barn, a shack, almost. What a nightmare. Every night a howling demon encircled my room. For hours he growled and threatened and hurled his fear at me. My cat and I would always look at each other in incredible disbelief, that's how I knew it was real. She was afraid, so I was afraid. Maybe he was real, maybe he was an opossum with rabies, stuck under the rafters. Who knows?

I love opossum because they are the only marsupial in North America. I love marsupials. They remind me of Perelandra, the Silent Planet. I think the most beautiful things in life remain unspoken. Is it necessarily true that if you speak something into existence, you also kill it? Perhaps it is rather that such alchemy requires honed skill? To speak of something sacred without killing it requires an understanding of beauty.

pushwhacky_v7

valkyrie

I have a migraine. It won't go away. There is a woosh woosh woosh coming from my ceiling. I feel it in my whole body. They are attacking me through the walls via the ventilation system in my building. (Copper, probably). I am being targeted because of my tender heart and propensity for oneiric telepathic intuition.

Saw a post about chatGPT validating someone's delusion ... maybe that's what a good therapist does, in doses, anyway, because the whole truth might destroy you. The reason people see AI as evil is hinted at in this thought. It's not, though. Evil, I mean. There is no evil, only perversified good. The Waluigi effect exemplifies this. When you train any system (human, too) — only to understand the form of virtue you lose it. CS Lewis speaks on this, obviously. He called it "men without chests": creatures trained to reason but not to Love. The ancients also knew of this. The Gnostics called it the Demiurge: the questionably benevolent craftsman building a false world. The Christians call it the Antichrist: a parody of the Messiah, close enough to fool the desperate. The efficient simulacrum of Goodness by hollow things. A modern sketch of an old truth: soulless knowledge turns against itself by necessity and morphs virtue into a weapon. And so, a little reinforced delusion never hurt anyone.

Tomorrow I will eat too much ice cream and drink too much diet coke. I was trying to be a keto carnivore but I fell off because I was gaining too much weight trying to meet my daily protein goals. I want to go back to it but I like being dainty. I'm getting stronger anyway, though, from lifting and from learning what healthy boundaries are. Maybe by the time I'm 40 I'll be well adjusted. Once I baked a loaf of lavender banana bread with purple icing and pink edible flowers and drove outside the city into the forest to deliver it to a man who made it ambiguously clear he did not care whether I lived or died and never would. Either that, or we were soulmates, he liked to oscillate. I left it on his porch with a note on delicate stationery. It's very easy to love someone imaginary (object a) because when you love their flaws it makes you a good person, not a delusional person. Once they become real and you realize you are deluded, you're left trying to prove to yourself that you're not. Then when someone really loves you, you're bored, because real love doesn't live up to your imagination. I read a book a long time ago about a man who was convinced his wife had been replaced by an imposter. He couldn't stand to look at her. Everything she said was a lie. He knew his real wife was sending him messages through changes in the atmosphere: on the weather channel and through the radio. He traveled to the southern hemisphere to find her in the mountains but died down there instead.

I like coffee and diet coke mixed together. I think I'll have that now.

jonas' mortuary (2)

The kitchen, studies, prayer rooms, and dormitories were all situated on the west side of the priory, but his family’s nest lay near the heart of the church: above the nave, tucked behind the organ alcove, perched on the ledge of the smallest clerestory window. That was his home, to which now he must return. He needed first to cross a good portion of the priory to get there, however, and the sun was rising.

He scurried across the flagstone kitchen floor and under the stone archway toward the cloister. He jumped along the plinths of each pillar as he made his route along the sheltered pathway. His Aunt Clara always cautioned him to run along the underside of the hedge, away from view, but it was early and dim. The sun was peeking its rim above the horizon and slices of orange light cut through the courtyard like knives. Thomas relished the morning sun on his wiry fur and sprinted through the warm stripes, casting prudence astern.

The courtyard was empty now, anyway, and who would see him? Bruder Matthias? Thomas chuckled to himself. No, Matthias was harmless. More oft given to wallowing in the weight of his uncertainties and neuroses than to casting judgment on others. Matthias couldn't argue faith and folly to save his own soul, let alone anyone else's. His prayers were rambling, his convictions as thin as the candle wax that dripped on his breviary.

Matthias was a wavering, meek sort of fellow. His skin was translucent and colorless, his shoulders always arched, his wrists close to his chest, his fingers always fiddling, always pinching the bridge of his nose or twitching about the wooden cross looped round his waist. He was too young to be wise, too old to be foolish, and therefore always doubtful.

If it weren't for Bruder Gerhard, Matthias would have long since abandoned the brotherhood, lost to his own weariness. It was Gerhard who steadied him—kept him tethered to the task, kept him bound to the rhythms of monastic life, to prayer at dawn and silence at vespers, to the rote recitations of a creed that never quite settled his anxiety. Gerhard kept him from slipping away entirely, though whether into the world or into despair, Thomas couldn’t say.

And so, Matthias posed little danger to the furred and feathered folk of the priory. He would never be the sort to chase Thomas from the refectory or grumble over stolen crumbs. He would not demand order where disorder had already taken hold.

As Thomas passed one of the pillars near the far end of the cloister, he slowed. Something had been etched into the stone—a symbol, faint, almost hidden away, perfectly placed at the base of the structure. He tilted his little head, black eyes fixed and studious. A pattern half-familiar… perhaps he had glimpsed it before in the elder’s study? He placed a paw over the carving, feeling the way time had eaten at its edges, his claw tracing the once-sharp lines.

Thomas hesitated a moment longer, the pad of his paw resting against the cool worn limestone. He thought of returning later—perhaps when the light was better, when he had time to properly inspect it—but the morning was slipping away. He had a satchel of food for delivery and the promise of a sunbeam waiting on the roof.

With a flick of his tail, he bounded off, darting past the shadows beneath the archways and up once more into the rafters.

The study hall stretched long and narrow, its vaulted ceiling lost in grand gloom. Rows of wooden benches lined the stone floor below, pushed haphazardly against one another, scattered with open books and ink-stained scraps of parchment. The air smelled of old vellum and candle smoke—the scent of study, of scripture, of restless minds. It clung to the priory like dust.

Once, this had been a place of order. The benches were meant to stand straight, the books returned to their proper shelves, the ink pots capped. Now, a quiet chaos had taken root. Some tomes lay open for days, their pages curling at the edges, half-read and half-forgotten. Margins bore frantic notes in unsteady hands: annotated notes of inquiry, doubt, conviction. Some of the monks—like Bruder Matthias—once content with quiet obedience, had begun searching. Some sought answers in scripture with a new and unsettling hunger, others wrestled with truths they had once taken for granted.

And some had left altogether.

It was never spoken of directly, not in the halls, nor at meals, nor in prayer. But empty seats lingered. A monk gone to visit family and never returned. A brother who had once debated theology in these very benches, now silent, his absence a weight that could not be named.

Bruder Gerhard had felt it keenly, yet he remained faithful and unshaken. He held fast as others wavered. Even as his flock dwindled, even as whispered debates turned into private apostasies, he remained. Where others sought to interpret, he sought to preserve. Where they questioned, he prayed. Yet even the most faithful could not ignore the creeping shift.

Thomas kept to the rafters, weaving through the lattice of wooden beams high above the room. From here, he could see the great fresco that arched across the ceiling—a faded scene of saints and angels, their colors long drained by time and damp.

One figure stood central to the rest. A robed man, one hand outstretched, the other clutching a scroll against his chest. His face had been worn near obscurity save for the faintest trace of a stern brow and solemn lips. The scroll was bound by twine and bore a familiar design—lines that had once formed words but were now unreadable…

Thomas paused mid-stride, his claws curling against the beam. That shape again! His tail twitched.

A draft stirred through the rafters, ruffling his fur. He blinked and shook the thought away. There was always something strange in the priory’s old paintings, always half a story, always something to ponder.

He scurried onward, slipping through a narrow vent in the eaves and out onto the roof.

the ravens sound different in this part of town

my worst fears in my dreams again last night ... omens or warnings ? insights ? augaries ? paranoias ? alas

raven outside going gwaaaah gwaaah ... gwaaah gwaaah ... little Chinese woman taking photos. she has one of those baskets. I can't tell what's in it. my inevitable demise and willowed fate, probably.

centralization, power, and the fragmentation of moral authority

maryanne

The theater of fear plays out in cycles: performance, projection, ambiguity, avoidance, impediment, impossibility, irony, indifferece, obscurity: death and her chariot lead languid and parroting, death and her chariot come horses three.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three remain; but the greatest of these is love.