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An excerpt from Jan Potocki’s “The Manuscript Found in Saragossa” (originally published in 1805):

I thought the hermit smilled at my naivety. Then he said to me, ‘I can see, my son, that you still have faith, but I fear that you may lose it … If they offered you a vast fortune to change religion, would you accept it?’

‘Certainly not!’ I replied. ‘It seems to me that to renounce ones religion is as dishonorable as to desert one’s colors.’

At this the hermit smiled again and said, ‘I am sorry to see that your virtues are based on an exaggerated sense of honor … Virtues also can have more secure foundations…’

… As I rode along I began to think about the precepts I had just heard, but could not imagine any sounder basis for virtue than a sense of honor, which seemed to me itself to contain all the virtues.’

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An excerpt from The Gospel according to Matthew (approx. 85-90 A.D.) :

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question to test Him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

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An excerpt from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (approx. 53-54 A.D.) :

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

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An excerpt from “Mama Knows” by Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds (2015):

No shit your life is hard
It’s an easy Sunday when you know who you are
Ain’t no shortcut gonna bring you peace
But your mama knows just what you need

She would say oh, oh don’t hit me with your stuff
Say you got money, you got something
Oh, oh just hit me with your love
You ain’t got love, you ain’t got nothing

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An exceprt from JSP’s journal (2024):

“For my small part, I am running out of ways to disbelieve it. ‘My honor’ is not my salvation. ‘My virtues’ are not my salvation. It may even be that ‘my faith’ is not my salvation, nor anything of ‘mine’ at all. If so, what a relief…“

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