I heard this on my way to church, and it really… resonated much like the “sounding brass” (bronze vessels that amplified actors’ voices in the ancient theater of Corinth) mentioned in the reference link near the bottom.

NPR : The Holy Life of the Intellect

I believe that the human intellect is the closest thing we have to the divine. It is the way we can join one another in spirit.

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If we can experience another’s mind in our own, we know that love is possible. We understand why the great poet Shelley wrote a poem to what he called “Intellectual Beauty,” and called it an invisible power that moves among the things and people of this Earth.

It descended on him when he was a youth looking for wisdom from the words of the dead. Intelligence literally means “choosing among.” Shelley called it the spirit of delight. It is the gift of wit, which literally means the kind of seeing that makes you smile and clap your hands together. I believe that this provokes what the Greeks called agape, the Romans called caritas, and what we settled for as love. It’s greater than hope and faith, according to St. Paul of Tarsus in an otherwise questionable letter to the Corinthians.

If you want to hear it happen rather than suffer any more of my apostolic prose, listen to the improvisation by John Coltrane in his immortal album called “A Love Supreme.” There we are: A fine intellect, a tenor saxophone and a reach for perfect prayer.

[tags]NPR, This I Believe, intellect, prayer[/tags]