Several have asked, so this is part of an answer of why I am now working on the
spiritual significance of pain in medieval punishment . . . it is an inadequate
answer, written as most posts are, largely for myself. I think I will be
cryptic myself here, for then it will be much easier to get to the point,
though no one will understand. Sometimes, one needs others to say, "yes, I
see, I know that thought too!" without having to explain in a long drawn out
numbing way.

He was having a difficult time with God, though he was at the time a hard line
fundamentalist. He came to talk to me, he thought I knew about the world. I
had worked on the intersection of criminal law, culture, and theology for many
years. After a while, he told me I made him feel like a man . . .even to this
day he says I gave him his manhood.

We read scripture. We read Nietzsche. We read Hediegger. We made fervid love.
And I shared the most private and unworked out thoughts I had about law and why
it seems at time, He does not love His children. I shared all my work.
He used. He beat me to a pulp. He left. Then the first piece was published. I
winced to see many of my words there, a portion of a thesis worked on for years
there, without citation to me, in print.

I pledged my own quiet kind of revenge which would not disturb his professional
life, but would say something out to the world. I began to write again. First
article out: on the same subject of the ordeals and punishment he had
published, but more biting, more clever, more attentive to piety, than his
plagerizing article had been. Then article II. On my old work on medieval
sanctuary and the rule of reconciliation in medieval punishment . . . you see,
he had come to me for sanctuary . . .we spoke of it often, and then those talks
became academic fodder for his disertation.

Finally, I work now on my thesis which will be article III, and the last of my
small revenge. It was all about understanding pain, and the necessity of evil,
in ourselves, in others. The why of why we Fell. Again he did it. A small
published article in University of Michigan Press on "the problem of pain in
punishment." It was glib. It skirted Dante's work never engaging. It was
trendy. It was false to the fundamental questions we had asked in hushed tones
in my office and in my bed.

So, I answer his piece, directly engaging with it, in this last article which,
I imagine will be transformed into a book, and will bring together all the work
I have done on the beauty of medieval criminal law and punishment for these
last twenty years. But no, the choice of subject is not arbitrary. The meaning
and necessity of suffering, particularly for the outlaw or outcast personally
plagues me. I need to understand its meaning, it potential for transfiguring,
or I will not be able to live on.

This work, that form a triology, in name of the Trinity, is my answer to John
for all he did, I hope transfigured by me, into something worthy of others
reading and which will yield meaning to these last 7 years of sheer madness.