The Iron Thūmos
and the Empty Vessel.

Calypso offers Odysseus a life without aging or death. He chooses the dangerous journey home. That choice opens a question at the heart of this essay: what becomes possible for the soul because a human life has limits?

I follow Homer’s language of feeling and endurance into a conversation with Jung’s Answer to Job. The argument turns on three conditions of mortal life—permanent loss, radical uncertainty, and utter powerlessness—and on what the soul may acquire through bearing them.

From Odysseus and Achilles, the essay moves to the Incarnation, Gethsemane, and Golgotha. It asks what the divine can learn through entering the conditions of a mortal life.

You can begin with the published essay, or use the short reading companion on Seba to orient yourself to its central questions.