Relevant Kierkegaard

I hear you sighing.
"Matt says that his blog is about everything, but I think it's really about Kierkegaard, and sports."
Maybe.
But this post is not about Kierkegaard or his philosophy per se. It's about a Kierkegaard quote that is particularly relevant to a discussion which I've forced upon the parishioners of Steamtown Church via the teaching blog at steamtownchurch.com. So I'm linking them.
The quote:
"What has particularly helped mediation to grow and prosper in the ethical sphere is the deterring way in which the monastic movement of the Middle Ages has been used. People were made to believe that the existing person's absolute respect for the absolute "telos" (purpose, goal, end) would lead to entering the monastery. The movement itself was an enormous abstraction, monastic life a continued abstraction, so that life would be spent in praying and singing hymns--instead of playing cards at the club. If it is permissible as a matter of course to caricature the one, then it surely must also be permissible to depict the other as it has caricatured itself. In order, then, to stop the monastic movement, from which worldly wisdom has known how to derive great advantage, which even now it sometimes uses to preach indulgence from all engagement with the religious, (indeed in a Protestant country where Protestantism has prevailed for three hundred years, where anyone who wanted to enter a monastery would get into even greater difficulties than was the worried father who wrote: Where shall I send my son to school; in the nineteenth century, in which secularism is triumphant, we now and the stillhear a pasot who, in a discourse urging his listeners to participate in life 's innocent joys, warns against entering the monastery; one hears this and sees, behold the pastor is so gripped by his subject that he perspires and wipes away the perspiration)--consequently in order to stop the monastic movement people hit upon this foolish talk about mediation. Just as it is foolish talk to bring up God's name in ordinary chatter, so also is it foolish talk to place the absolute "telos" on the same level as the rank of captain of the popinjay shooting club and the like. But even if the Middle Ages erred in eccentricity, it by no means follows that mediation is commendable...the monastic movement is a passionate movement (related to what the Greeks also had, passion), as is appropriate with respect to the absolute "telos" and to that extent is far preferable in its nobility to the wretched brokerage wisdom of mediation."

It's important to note that although Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation, (modern day Protestantism/the evangelical of my other blog)he does criticize the monastic movement for wanting to make the absolute telos external as opposed to internal. The whole of that particular argument is the assertion that one compromises the absoluteness of the absolute telos my making it external. That's not the goal of this particular blog post, although it's related and interesting. But now suffice it to point out the reason that Kierkegaard prefers monasticism to mediation. However, I might come back to discuss what exactly we should prefer as existing individuals if not mediation, or monasticism. In short, Kierkegaard would argue for a private yet passionate filled ethos or spirituality that could not be detected by anyone accept the one possessing it. I'm not very comfortable with that idea. But I do like the point he's made in the quote about the preferable nature of monasticism over mediation, i.e. the victory of passion over the tyranny and paganism of balance.