Or, I should say, so long as I keep them under her gaze. For I am the one recording the thoughts, I am the one ordering and articulating them; and the one who is responsible for where they go, and what relation they have to that which precedes them, and that which will follow them.

They will always return to her, these thoughts and associations, but she will allow them to meander as far as they want, so long as they remain under her gaze.

I’ve said that I wanted to write here about Our Lady, and that is true, but insofar as these things that I’m writing are tending toward the short, and loosely connected, I’ve begun to regard them as impressions and associations that will originate with her, as the subject of my attention, but that at times will wander away from her.

Which isn’t to say there’s nothing to be gained by contemplating them, for there is, especially in prayer.

To be sure, the paradoxes by which providence achieves its ends are many, and in some sense are incomprehensible to us.

Meaning, it would seem that one ‘needs’ Pilate, providentially, in the same way that one ‘needs’ Judas. Which isn’t to say that one is pleased with what these men did, or what they are remembered for, but that one recognizes the necessity of their function in what might be called the divine plan.

One cannot say, after all, that the redemption of humankind, by providence (if you are willing to grant such a thing), is brought to fruition without Pilate doing precisely what he does.

Not that I view Pilate entirely without sympathy. His position is unenviable, and his role in the cosmic story (in which the Logos becomes incarnate, is put to death, and is resurrected) is a monumental admixture of fate and free will.

Which is what we are doing every day, in every instance of sincere or ‘good faith’ interaction with others, whether we’re aware of it or not.

Rather than granting to those terms a stability that one must grant, on some level, when one wants to help in the continuance of the project that is civilization.

Knowing that the terms we use to describe reality are unstable, and taking advantage of that fact.

Wishing to use ‘truth’ (or its slipperiness) as a whirlpool to escape the predicament he has found himself in, with regard to Jesus.

Which is what Pilate, in that moment, does.

Or, I should say, further than it needs to go.

And which I think of now because of what I was saying, a moment ago, about the ‘whirlpool of metaphysics’ into which a person can vanish if they follow a particular thought as far as it will go.

Which Jesus, no doubt, is aware of.

Jesting, because one sees that Pilate does not expect an answer to his question, and that he has asked it merely to illustrate the impossibility of answering it.

“What is truth?” is the question that Pilate puts to Jesus (after Jesus has told him that “whoever belongs to the truth, listens to my voice”) in a verse from the Gospel of John that has come to be known as the ‘jesting Pilate’.

Or, anyway, will find that its end is merely a restatement of its beginning, if sometimes in different terms.

Meaning, I suppose, that we can go on and on with a certain line of thinking, and be sure that we will never arrive at its end.