Shadowgraphs is a column written from a progressive Christian perspective, based on a concept for an essay from Kierkegaard's work Either/Or.

Dear Cordelia,

I must apologize for the strange mood I am in as I write you this email, I am currently lost in fanatic devotion to Jesus with overwhelming thanks for the privilege of my being, in meditative agony for His rose colored blood that holds me so secure, in lowly want to meet him I would have all but forgotten this world and begun preparing for the anxiety of my last breath…

But, how unexpectedly the world at present has changed, how undeserving I feel for the light you have brought to it, for the inverted smile of my faith has been now coupled with visible mortal exuber­ance, the feelings of adoration and non-masochistic [!] passion. For finally we have spent a night together, a very uplifting night, do you recall the details as clearly as I do? We watched jazz musicians play and were held captive in the dominion each performer had over his instrument – the creative and moody outburst - and for once, rather than watching you on stage beside them, you sat beside me.

Jazz music! The strain of knowledge I have tried so vainly to acquire, but then, I have to wonder if it is really knowledge at all. For like the musician I claim knowledge of my own respective field - the knowledge of Christ - when really both domains are feelings, incapable of expression as is. In this way, Cordelia, we are the same though our voices are different – we are totally irrational and therefore have been blessed by the savant of irrationality, the rule breaker and way shower Jesus.

God! How fragrant your hair as I ran my fortu­nate hands through it and held you close – it was the substance of dreams, it made science a bastard and logic a pig, it grieved me into frantic joy, and then we kissed and our pact was sealed: we would meet again and the time leading up to our reunion would be pious and joyful even as the occasional thought of you caused my knees to quake and my heart to patter in fatigue.

And so my friend this letter is simply to let you know that I am happy and thinking about you, or rather, happy because I am thinking about you. Would it be unfair to suppose that you feel the same? For the words I write to strangers have the least meaning behind them, and this email I write for your eyes alone has significantly more, but it is the literature of the heart that speaks the only unfiltered truth. And it is this literature, which I have read through your loving eyes, that has me convinced that we will grow to love one another and that our love will last.

Yours,
Aabba

This concept from A Seducer's Diary, the novel featured in Kierkegaard's Either/Or. The diary's writer is said to be a man who "lived much too intellectually to be a seducer in the ordinary sense."