Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site gloria.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!houxm!houxz!vax135!floyd!cmcl2!seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel 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 Lines: 37 [You are not here] 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