To The Reader

     . . . govern thou my Song, 
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
~Paradise Lost, VII-30-31

Paradise Lost was a threshold experience for me. And, as I stood on that threshold, I felt as though a channel to Milton’s muse opened for me, too, and that I caught whiffs of second-hand empyreal aire tempered by Urania still stirring in the portal. I sensed in Milton’s lines, something perfected by those flights on the “flying Steed unrein’d” (Milton VII-17). Without celestial guidance, how could the blind bard—even granting the years of studying, reading, writing, and preparing for his great work—have created Paradise Lost? It is this blend of the human and celestial that perfects his work. That is not to say that this process created a perfect work, if by perfect one expects black-and-white coherence. For, Paradise Lost was meant to be read by the fallen and is fraught with apparent clashes of logic, warring viewpoints, disturbing characterizations, and unresolved issues—all those Babel-like discontinuities that we see around us in our fallen world. And, I think this is just what Milton intended: ideas clashing, opinions warring, all views represented, for this is the arena where a stout mind might use intuition inspired by the Holy Spirit to divine Truth —with all it’s irreconcilable shades of grey and all its jarring edges.