Saving grace …

… Fierce Velleity: Poetry as Antidote to Acedia | Front Porch Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The alternative to seeing the world as given, Wilbur goes on to suggest, is to agree with Satan, the father of lies, that it is a “prison.” Wilbur names Satan the “arch-negator,” thereby expressing his agreement with Augustine that evil is a privation or negation of the good. And while a fib told to make a social gathering more interesting seems a far cry from Satan’s lie that led to the banishment from Eden, both stem from a dissatisfaction, a sense that the world is tiresome. Yet Wilbur claims that what we perceive as “nothing” is in fact “something missed.”