five points for systematics:

1. i am not sure that i have hope, and i am not sure that i am still xian
2. i find something sustaining in the liturgical contexts of trad. xianity, i find even if they are rhetorical fictions, rhetorical fictions that still maintain a use function (cf rorty)
3. so it moves back to the hardy/oxen connundrum, the mystic desire for the presence of the divine, the erotic longing, the lingering heartbreak, and also images of absentee fatherdom
   
4. so it becomes a hope in the midst of an anihilating self--and so where do we go from there?
5. what does god have to do with the above, i fundamentally don't know, but not knowing is legitmate? (beckett)