A living text ...

... What makes The Good Book good? - Philosophy and Life. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... it can be read in a spiritual way - by which I mean it is a text that grapples with a phenomenon that it itself does not ultimately understand. That is surely Plato's genius. He conveys this sense that we'll never have love sussed by creating a text that can be read in innumerable ways, its patterns shifting like a kaleidoscope. It deploys myth as well as reason, darkness as well as light. Are the speeches independent and/or more subtly linked? Is the goal of love the beatific vision described by Diotima, or is that route sheer folly, as shown by the character of Alcibiades? Is love part of the comedy of life, or one long human tragedy - though a tragedy that can ennoble our experience and make us the envy of the gods? Or is it neither, or both?