Nine great masters,
carpenters and masons,
with Manole, ten,
who surpasses them...
So reads the second stanza of the age-old Romanian ballad Master Manole, a master-piece of local folklore... According to legend, the Black King commissioned him and his fellow craftsmen with the task of erecting the most beautiful monastery on earth. When they were done building the edifice, while they were still up on the roof, finishing the last touches, the King approached them once again, asking them if they were capable of constructing yet another church, even more magnificent than the first one. When they joyfully answered in the affirmative, he commanded that the stairs be removed, trapping them all on the roof. Desperately, they fashioned wings of wood, seeking to fly down and land on the ground, but only fell to their dreadful death instead...
Just like the Black King himself, we also tend -perhaps either unknowingly or unwillingly- to limit God and His creativity, conveniently forgetting that it is He Who brought everything from non-being into being, by crafting all that exists with unlimited imagination. It is as if -all of a sudden- we simply lose faith in His infinite potential as Maker and Architect, believing -as it were- that He has somehow exhausted all of His mental resources, and is now unable to show us anything new, contrary to the words of the divinely-inspired Apostle Paul, who wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians that "what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, these are the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him ".
To be more specific: we think that romantic and/or parental love are the highest summit and ultimate epitome of all human experience, than which nothing better can be imagined. This is simply not true.
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