excerpt from a version of The Living

An excerpt from Annie Dillard's "The Living" as published in its longer short-story form:

He was aware that common wisdom counseled that love was a malady that blinded lovers' eyes like acid. Love's skewed sight made hard features appear harmonious, and sinners appear saints, and cowards appear heroes. Clare was by no means an original thinker, but on this one point he had recently reached an opposing view: that lovers alone see what is real. When he courted June he thought it a privilege to wash dishes with her in river sand. He thought it a privilege to hold her cutaway coat, to look at Mount Baker from her side; he thought it a privilege to hear her family's stories over tea and watch her eyebrows rise and fall. Now, he knew it was.

Is this too romantical? I don't think it is. For several years now I have been observing the mystery of beauty, and I don't believe I understand it any better now than I did when I began. I notice that love uncovers beauty. Infatuation, which carries with it an intrinsic lack of knowing, is what covers ugliness and blinds men's eyes. Love redeems the beloved in the lover's gaze, cherishing what is there even as it seeks for betterment. I think the conflict one experiences within marriage betrays a lack, or failure, of love, a lack that may only be made up when we ask God to let us see the beloved as He sees, and love them thus as well. And this too is love: the commitment to seek God's love when our own limited capacities for love fail.

I love, and cannot love, and this is a mystery as mysterious as beauty. That those who have rejected God can sometimes love as He does, this too is a mystery, though I believe it happens sometimes because of grace, and because of His mark upon them.

Is this mystical? It is. Articulated well? Perhaps, perhaps not. I can't say that I know, but I think it is true. I'm trying now to remember the Spanish phrase we translate into English as "so-so." Asi'-asi'?