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From: colonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: What does BORN AGAIN mean?
Message-ID: <244@gloria.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Jun-84 09:52:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: gloria.244
Posted: Mon Jun 18 09:52:18 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jun-84 09:46:35 EDT
References: <1465@inmet.UUCP>
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
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Just to provide a psychological view of this phenomenon, here's Robert Louis
Stevenson, writing in another context:

	     This simple accident of falling in love is as beneficial
	as it is astonishing.  It arrests the petrifying influence of
	years, disproves cold-blooded and cynical conclusions, and
	awakens dormant sensibilities.  Hitherto the man had found it
	a good policy to disbelieve the existence of any enjoyment
	which was out of his reach; and thus he turned his back upon
	the strong sunny parts of nature, and accustomed himself to
	look exclusively on what was common and dull.  He accepted a
	prose ideal, let himself go blind of many sympathies by
	disuse; and if he were young and witty, or beautiful, wilfully
	forwent these advantages.  He joined himself to the following
	of what, in the old mythology of love, was prettily called
	_nonchaloir_; and in an odd mixture of feelings, a fling of
	self-respect, a preference for selfish liberty, and a great
	dash of that fear with which honest people regard serious
	interests, kept himself back from the straightforward course
	of life among certain selected activities.  And now, all of a
	sudden, he is unhorsed, like St. Paul, from his infidel
	affectation.  His heart, which has been ticking accurate
	seconds for the last year, gives a bound and begins to beat
	high and irregularly in his breast.  It seems as if he had
	never heard or felt or seen until that moment; and by the
	report of his memory, he must have lived his past life between
	sleep or waking, or with the preoccupied attention of a brown
	study.  He is practically incommoded by the generosity of his
	feelings, smiles much when he is alone, and develops a habit
	of looking rather blankly upon the moon and stars.

					"Virginibus Puerisque"
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel