Thursday, June 3, 2010
1:37 PM
Lauda ducem et pastorem Praise thy Saviour and thy King
In hymnis et canticis. Praise with hymns thy Shepherd true.
Quantum potes, tantum aude; All thou canst, do thou endeavour,
Quia major omni laude, Yet thy praise can equal never
Nec laudare sufficis. Such as merits thy great King.
Laudis thema specialis, See today before us laid
Panis vivus et vitalis The living and life-giving Bread!
Hodie proponitur. Theme for praise and joy profound!
Quem in sacrae mensa coenae, The same which at the sacred board
Turbae fratrum duodenae Was, by our incarnate Lord,
Datum non ambigitur. Giv'n to His Apostles round.
Sit laus plena, sit sonora, Let the praise be loud and high;
Sit jucunda, sit decora Sweet and tranquil be the joy
Mentis jubilatio. Felt today in every breast.
Dies enim solemnis agitur, On this festival divine
In qua mensae prima recolitur Which records the origin
Hujus institutio. Of the glorious Eucharist.
In hac mena novi Regis, On this table of the King,
Novum Pascha novae legis, Our new Paschal offering
Phase vetus terminat. Brings to end the olden rite.
Vetustatem novitas, Here, for empty shadows fled,
Umbram fugat veritas, Is reality instead;
Noctem lux eliminat. Here, instead of darkness, light.
Quod in coena Christus gessit, His own act, at supper seated,
Faciendum hoc expressit: Christ ordain'd to be repeated,
In sui memoriam. In His memory divine:
Docti sacris institutis, Wherefore now, with adoration,
Panem, vinum in salutis We, the Host of our salvation
Consecramus hostiam. Consecrate from bread and wine.
Dogma datur Christianis, Hear what Holy Church maintaineth,
Quod in carnem tranist panis, That the bread its substance changeth
Et vinum in sanguinem. Into Flesh, the wine to Blood.
Quod non capis, quod non vides, Doth it pass thy comprehending?
Animosa firmat fides, Faith, the law of sight transcending
Praeter rerum ordinem. Leaps to things not understood.
Sub diversis speciebus, Here beneath these signs are hidden
Signis tantum, et non rebus, Priceless things, to sense forbidden;
Latent res eximae. Signs, not things, are all we see.
Caro cibus, sanguis potus: Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine,
Manet tamen Christus totus, Yet is Christ in either sign
Sub utraque specie. All entire, confessed to be.
A sumente non concisus, They, who of Him here partake,
Non confractus, non divisus: Sever not, nor rend, nor break:
Integer accipitur. But, entire, their Lord receive.
Sumit unus, sumunt mille: Whether one or thousands eat,
Quantum isti, tantum ille: All receive the self-same meat,
Nec sumptus consumitur. Nor the less for others leave.
Sumunt boni, sumunt mali: Both the wicked and the good
Sorte tamen inaequali, Eat of this celestial Food:
Vitae vel interitus. But with ends how opposite!
Mors est malis, vita bonis: Here 'tis life: and there 'tis death:
Vide paris sumptionis The same, yet issuing to each
Quam sit dispar exitus. In a difference infinite.
Fracto demum sacramento, Nor a single doubt retain,
Ne vailles, sed memento, When they break the Host in twain,
Tantum esse sub fragmento, But that in each part remains
Quantum toto tegitur. What was in the whole before.
Nulla rei fit scissura: Since the simple sign alone
Signi tantum fit fractura: Suffers change in state or form,
qua nec status, nec statura The signified remaining one
Signati minuitur. And the same for evermore.
Ecce panis angelorum, Lo! upon the altar lies,
Factus cibus viatorum: Hidden deep from human eyes,
Vere panis filiorum, Bread of Angels from the skies,
Non mittendus canibus. Made the food of mortal man;
In figuris praesignatur, Children's meat to dogs denied.
Cum Isaac immolatur: In old types presignified:
Agnus Paschae deputatur: In the manna heaven-supplied,
Datur mann patribus. In Isaac, and the Paschal lamb.
Bone Pastor, panis vere, Jesu! Shepherd of the sheep!
Jesu, nostri miserere: Thou Thy flock in safety keep.
Tu nos peasce, nos tuere: Living Bread! Thy life supply:
Tu nos bona fac videre Strengthen us, or else we die:
In terra viventium. Fill us with celestial grace!
Tu qui cuncta scis et vales: Thou, who feedest us below!
Qui nos pascis his mortales: Source of all we have or know!
Tuos ibi commensales, Grant that with Thy Saints above,
Cohaeredes et sodales fac Sitting at the feast of love,
sanctorum civium. Amen. We may see Thee face to face. Amen.
Alleluia. Alleluia.
This past, sweet Thursday, the whole of
It is generally considered that the modern nation, in order to defeat hatred, must also outlaw the expression of love. The Church must receive no favour from the State, even though the constituents of the State are one and the same with her, these constituents ought not to unveil the dearest loves seated within their hearts. In a day where every man is 'entitled to his opinion', provided that he does not think himself right, (and Heaven forbid he act on what he thinks right), it has been a blessing to live in a land where that disease has not spread.
Politics is a science meant to keep the commonwealth functioning. Science is an art that is employed for invention and natural curiosity. History is the study of man's past either for pleasure or to benefit the other studies. Art is for entertainment. Mathematics is that pure science which governs the mechanical arts and first forms how man receives information through his senses. Language is the means of communication. It is only Philosophy and Theology that can dare to tell men how to act, because contemplation of the Good is their proper sphere alone!
And if the purpose of the State is more than simply making it easier to survive, though Hobbes and Locke dismissed it as simply that, but the right and natural organ of the social and rational animal, as Aristotle and Plato insisted, then is it not the State's duty to promote the Good? To make happiness possible for man? While it cannot encroach on man's individual conscience (for to deprive man of his volition is to make him an animal), it should cultivate the environment that natural law demands for its citizens to act uprightly.
Rather, has not the State turned all the passionate Rites of beauty, truth, and holiness into something dirty and to be kept out of the public eye for fear the impressionable would fall in love with it? Whether the individual agrees or not, he bows his head to the dictum 'Separation of Church and State' with more unquestioning obedience than I prayed the Creed as a child. Man has lost his freedom to the monolithic structure of modern law, which is only the dictum of other men. The mechanic has left off operating the mill to worship the wheel, not paying any heed to the water that turns it. Few and blessed are the peoples that stoop at the edge to quench their thirst.
Boze Cialo by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.
If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. (John 15:19-20)
Three years ago Father Adriano Franchini was murdered after Mass for no specific motive by a young male other than the priest's faith. Four years ago, a youth murdered Father Andrea Santoro, and the assassin's government let him off easily with a mere 18 year imprisonment for extinguishing the life of another human being.Muslim anti-Catholics have grown more ambitious; now a bishop has been murdered. When a Spanish cardinal was murdered while praying in church (at the time of the Reconquista) it has been said that he cried out his thanks to God for allowing him to die a martyr. Yes, these clergymen have been honoured to die for Christ, but 'blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,' and so we cannot be expected to be gleeful about these iniquitous crimes.
St. Paul said that it was not a sin to be concerned with the things of this world, but that attachment to them makes it more difficult to be resigned to the will of God. Ergo, he wished that 'all men were like [him]': Celibate and so aflame with God that no darkness could ever affect him. There are times when the Church Militant stands her ground, and her members fight for their survival, but when it is clearly God's providence, that she lays down like the lamb for the slaughter.
It remains to be seen whether Bishop Luigi Padovese will be our example in the future or our rallying cry.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
There are occasions when one has enough of substance and simply yearns for style. Those dramatic stormy days that spawn tales filled with clichés and trite sentiments and garishly colour costumes are some of the best after all! Ergo, what follows is the first chapter of a ridiculously silly tale of mine, full of frivolity and girded with the appropriate period propaganda of a Gothic tale, with myself and my three, dear suitemates from college as the leading ladies of this love pentangle.
It is not for everyone, just for women who one day for no reason whatever put on their most dramatic cosmetics and and finest gowns and sat down to read. It is for any home baker that ate most of the icing before it found its way to the cake. For anyone who has skipped to their favourite scene on a DVD, encored at the opera, or read the last six lines of Tennyson's Ulysses over and over and over and over....for you, please enjoy.
Episode I
The Sun dyed the clouds with all the mulitudinous colours of tis blood in the glorious iridescence of its decline. The tall craggy mountains in the distance, coloured ebon by the facing light, cut the gloomy east after the pattern of gothic spires against sanguine hued silk, and the west lay unfurled in all its glory over the boundless sea, spotted with angular isles of rock.
Settled sweetly in the vale, the city-state sat high on the rolling, tree-covered mounds, which coloured the misty, evening air with their emerald hue, painting the green the grey, the white, and the rosy stones of the lordly and common domeciles alike, from the scoured thatched cottage to the rouded towers of the ornate, stone castle.
Horatius reined in his lusty, bay mount and alighted with gusto in the courtyard of the castle. He doffed his cavalier trilby, and carelessly ceded it to a breathless manservant. His foaming charger was led away, and the rider swept his velvet cloak of deep peridot over his left shoulder. Thus, he revealed that only a waistcoat of pale jade covered the white shirt hanging lithely from his arms.
'Wilt thou not don thy coat, sir?' his man asked pettishly.
'I shall not! The foul thing is a cumbrance to my movement when I would but exert myself with the greatest ease and strength, Nay, when I doth that foully wrought manacle, behold! it shall no longer be the fashion to wear coats in any realm within a hundred leagues of this settlement.'
Giving a baritone chuckle, Horatius mounted the steps with all the reported grace of the lauded swordsman's career. His tall boots did not stiffen the fine dancer's, being made from the leather of an elk he felled. Matched with his smile, never quite broad yet never absent, and the green clad figure resembled the person of Robin of Locksley, well lately rewarded by a liberated Richard I.
Horatius paused before the jewel encursted mirror of the foyer, which he entered as his own. Running a proudly callused hand through his sandy, dishevelled curls, he regarded his brown, straight nose without embarrassment. He was tanned all over with sun, for it was fire and feeling he ever sought with a mad passion, caring not for being burned. He did regard with scorn the men who merely huddled by a tamed, caged fire with an effeminate screen held to preserve their waxed flesh.
Upon the arrival of this character some time ago--one whose health was enlivened with feasting, while his form was tempered with fasting--the men of the city of Fiona Saoirseosphie were thrown into uproar. The lauded tenors found that the molten gold of his voice made theirs to clang as tin.
The sighing poets saw that the grimaces provoked by aesthetic pleasure arose in a more comely fashion on a masculine cheek coloured from vigorous exercise. The best swordsman soon found that grace and fashion did not mean the loss of skill, and other sportsmen soon discovered no advantage in their prowess when matched with a much finer cask containing the same rich wine.
Adding to this the foreign novelt, Horatius having hailed from distant islands in the romantic north, the Scythian-bred, Roman-named Horatius had deprived many a man of his beloved's heart, leaving a rival whose best hope was for an wizened woman after she had failed to catch Horatius's discriminating eye.
For he worshipped Life above all, and how many a threadbare anchorite or ermine clad monsignor had tried to show him its higher form. From his days as a foundling to his youth, Horatius's teachers had observed his profound moderation in Shrovetide, for how easily did this active young boy seem to shun meat and sweets, who enjoyed them with so much gusto at the tide of a feast. The learned Jesuits hoped to kindle an Ignatian fire in the young oak, alas! his inner spirit was too impatient.
His creed was pleasure, and the pain he inflicted upon himself was so done to increase his delight when ease and leisure came. How pleasant was meat after abstinence, rest after exercise! Recklessly he drove himself in the practice of ascetics to appreciate comfort the more when it came, but to labour long with study only to savour wisdom garnered throughout the years? Nay! With a robust laugh, he shook his head at the proposition.
If his masters were right, then he would return to quietude after his fire was utterly spent. If the learned men were in error, then at least he would not have squandered the stuff of life. Well aware was Horatius of his qualities without the stupidity of vanity. Aye, his awareness that his form and talents were but lent to him heightened his need to display them flauntingly and milk those qualities of their lost drop before they were again taken away.
So the Jesuits he abandoned. He first won fame in the courts of great noblemen with his wit and decorative learning, coupled with his personal grace and charm. When these bored hm, he threw himself into the service of arms. The taste of battle's rigours intoxicated him. Though his commanders observed he made a better singular warrior than a dutiful soldier, and were taken aback at his frenzy, his popularity with powerful gentry and generosity to comrades and inferiors caused him to exalted with many honours.
But Horatius again wearied of conforming to an organon of which he was not the head, and he had obliged a great deal more than his superiors could understand. When the opportunity came, Horatius struck out again with alacrity. In distant lands that could claim none of his pariotic ardour, if Horatius ever possessed any, he fought as a vigilante, glorying in his conquests with a passion verging on madness.
Yet, he was too wise to suppose his flesh was invulnerable. Though regarding his scars as mere scratches, a blow to the leg that nearly took the use of that limb gave him cause to initiate another transformation. Even in the icy chill of a soldier's discipline and the fiery heat of a warrior's act, his soul had began revolving in routine. Much like a hand in chilled or heated water will no longer feel sensation of cold or warmth in time, Horatio thirsted for an alteration and desperately clawed his mind for one that would not bore him. In deserts of rock and sand and in glens of moss and stream, he performed his idolatrous fasts, and he sought in his soul a means for more pleasure, for all in life was waxing bland.
The answer came upon him of a sudden. Woman.
Rising from a despair that had been as earnest as his choleric nature was capable of, Horatius laughed with mirth. Was he not an Adam dulled by all other pleasures in the wilderness of paradise? His irreverent metaphor concluded the necessity of Eve. He had been trained and honed by men, had engaged with them on fields of mind, art, and battle. Now he turned his thoughts towards engaging another soul. What thrill or mystery might be there?
Not that one woman would be his Eve, oh no! Not to the drollness of vowed monogamy did he aspire, but to the grandeur of loving, beyond body and into the soul. Perhaps marital union would arrive a day--what thrill might there be in fatherhood after all? But the contract would oblige him no more than the Old Law's patriarchs had been restricted.
'Ah, yes the best shall ever be my models! Father Malachy, thou old Ignatian, art thou not proud that I aspire after Abraham and David? The Father of Faith and the man after God's own Heart?' Glad the poor priest to be dead, or he would have broken his heart at such a speech from his favoured pupil.
Gay laughter followed this ungoldy humour, and Horatius discovering his appetite again made hastily to break his fast at the nearest tavern.
It is not for everyone, just for women who one day for no reason whatever put on their most dramatic cosmetics and and finest gowns and sat down to read. It is for any home baker that ate most of the icing before it found its way to the cake. For anyone who has skipped to their favourite scene on a DVD, encored at the opera, or read the last six lines of Tennyson's Ulysses over and over and over and over....for you, please enjoy.
Episode IThe Sun dyed the clouds with all the mulitudinous colours of tis blood in the glorious iridescence of its decline. The tall craggy mountains in the distance, coloured ebon by the facing light, cut the gloomy east after the pattern of gothic spires against sanguine hued silk, and the west lay unfurled in all its glory over the boundless sea, spotted with angular isles of rock.
Settled sweetly in the vale, the city-state sat high on the rolling, tree-covered mounds, which coloured the misty, evening air with their emerald hue, painting the green the grey, the white, and the rosy stones of the lordly and common domeciles alike, from the scoured thatched cottage to the rouded towers of the ornate, stone castle.
Horatius reined in his lusty, bay mount and alighted with gusto in the courtyard of the castle. He doffed his cavalier trilby, and carelessly ceded it to a breathless manservant. His foaming charger was led away, and the rider swept his velvet cloak of deep peridot over his left shoulder. Thus, he revealed that only a waistcoat of pale jade covered the white shirt hanging lithely from his arms.
'Wilt thou not don thy coat, sir?' his man asked pettishly.
'I shall not! The foul thing is a cumbrance to my movement when I would but exert myself with the greatest ease and strength, Nay, when I doth that foully wrought manacle, behold! it shall no longer be the fashion to wear coats in any realm within a hundred leagues of this settlement.'
Giving a baritone chuckle, Horatius mounted the steps with all the reported grace of the lauded swordsman's career. His tall boots did not stiffen the fine dancer's, being made from the leather of an elk he felled. Matched with his smile, never quite broad yet never absent, and the green clad figure resembled the person of Robin of Locksley, well lately rewarded by a liberated Richard I.
Horatius paused before the jewel encursted mirror of the foyer, which he entered as his own. Running a proudly callused hand through his sandy, dishevelled curls, he regarded his brown, straight nose without embarrassment. He was tanned all over with sun, for it was fire and feeling he ever sought with a mad passion, caring not for being burned. He did regard with scorn the men who merely huddled by a tamed, caged fire with an effeminate screen held to preserve their waxed flesh.
Upon the arrival of this character some time ago--one whose health was enlivened with feasting, while his form was tempered with fasting--the men of the city of Fiona Saoirseosphie were thrown into uproar. The lauded tenors found that the molten gold of his voice made theirs to clang as tin.
The sighing poets saw that the grimaces provoked by aesthetic pleasure arose in a more comely fashion on a masculine cheek coloured from vigorous exercise. The best swordsman soon found that grace and fashion did not mean the loss of skill, and other sportsmen soon discovered no advantage in their prowess when matched with a much finer cask containing the same rich wine.
Adding to this the foreign novelt, Horatius having hailed from distant islands in the romantic north, the Scythian-bred, Roman-named Horatius had deprived many a man of his beloved's heart, leaving a rival whose best hope was for an wizened woman after she had failed to catch Horatius's discriminating eye.
For he worshipped Life above all, and how many a threadbare anchorite or ermine clad monsignor had tried to show him its higher form. From his days as a foundling to his youth, Horatius's teachers had observed his profound moderation in Shrovetide, for how easily did this active young boy seem to shun meat and sweets, who enjoyed them with so much gusto at the tide of a feast. The learned Jesuits hoped to kindle an Ignatian fire in the young oak, alas! his inner spirit was too impatient.
His creed was pleasure, and the pain he inflicted upon himself was so done to increase his delight when ease and leisure came. How pleasant was meat after abstinence, rest after exercise! Recklessly he drove himself in the practice of ascetics to appreciate comfort the more when it came, but to labour long with study only to savour wisdom garnered throughout the years? Nay! With a robust laugh, he shook his head at the proposition.
If his masters were right, then he would return to quietude after his fire was utterly spent. If the learned men were in error, then at least he would not have squandered the stuff of life. Well aware was Horatius of his qualities without the stupidity of vanity. Aye, his awareness that his form and talents were but lent to him heightened his need to display them flauntingly and milk those qualities of their lost drop before they were again taken away.
So the Jesuits he abandoned. He first won fame in the courts of great noblemen with his wit and decorative learning, coupled with his personal grace and charm. When these bored hm, he threw himself into the service of arms. The taste of battle's rigours intoxicated him. Though his commanders observed he made a better singular warrior than a dutiful soldier, and were taken aback at his frenzy, his popularity with powerful gentry and generosity to comrades and inferiors caused him to exalted with many honours.
But Horatius again wearied of conforming to an organon of which he was not the head, and he had obliged a great deal more than his superiors could understand. When the opportunity came, Horatius struck out again with alacrity. In distant lands that could claim none of his pariotic ardour, if Horatius ever possessed any, he fought as a vigilante, glorying in his conquests with a passion verging on madness.
Yet, he was too wise to suppose his flesh was invulnerable. Though regarding his scars as mere scratches, a blow to the leg that nearly took the use of that limb gave him cause to initiate another transformation. Even in the icy chill of a soldier's discipline and the fiery heat of a warrior's act, his soul had began revolving in routine. Much like a hand in chilled or heated water will no longer feel sensation of cold or warmth in time, Horatio thirsted for an alteration and desperately clawed his mind for one that would not bore him. In deserts of rock and sand and in glens of moss and stream, he performed his idolatrous fasts, and he sought in his soul a means for more pleasure, for all in life was waxing bland.
The answer came upon him of a sudden. Woman.
Rising from a despair that had been as earnest as his choleric nature was capable of, Horatius laughed with mirth. Was he not an Adam dulled by all other pleasures in the wilderness of paradise? His irreverent metaphor concluded the necessity of Eve. He had been trained and honed by men, had engaged with them on fields of mind, art, and battle. Now he turned his thoughts towards engaging another soul. What thrill or mystery might be there?
Not that one woman would be his Eve, oh no! Not to the drollness of vowed monogamy did he aspire, but to the grandeur of loving, beyond body and into the soul. Perhaps marital union would arrive a day--what thrill might there be in fatherhood after all? But the contract would oblige him no more than the Old Law's patriarchs had been restricted.
'Ah, yes the best shall ever be my models! Father Malachy, thou old Ignatian, art thou not proud that I aspire after Abraham and David? The Father of Faith and the man after God's own Heart?' Glad the poor priest to be dead, or he would have broken his heart at such a speech from his favoured pupil.
Gay laughter followed this ungoldy humour, and Horatius discovering his appetite again made hastily to break his fast at the nearest tavern.
Aristotle proclaimed that friendship with God was impossible, because friendship filled a need, and God by definition would have no needs. He was also the man that had asserted there were 'final ends' for everything that existed, and destinies which those things could achieve. Everything that 'is' is able to realize the purpose for which it was intended, because that is how it was made. It would seem to suggest a defect on God's part to have designed a creature that had no hope of achieving its most intense desires. Worse than a defect of judgement, it would be sadism to create a being that could thirst, but could not bring itself to water or even stand the substance when imbibed.
While the terror of eternity has subsided, it having been shown it is not an infinite line of time stretching our being ever more thinly, the soul still wonders how she will take it all in. When beautiful things give us pain, true things blind our sight, and good 
things reduce us to tears, we are all too aware of how small our capacity is for the great and noble. Like the shining Dawnstar, we love the Sun, but as He draws near to kiss us, we expire and dissolve in His light. Ourselves are too weak for Himself.
As the Angelic Doctor observes:
But man's perfect Happiness...consists in the vision of the Divine Essence. Now the vision of God's Essence surpasses the nature not only of man, but also of every creature...For the natural knowledge of every creature is in keeping with the mode of its substance: thus it is said of the intelligence that 'it knows things that are above it, and things that are below it, according to the mode of its substance.' But every knowledge that is according to the mode of created substance, falls short of the vision of the Divine Essence, which infinitely surpasses all created substance. Consequently neither man, nor any creature, can attain final Happiness by his natural powers. (Summa Theologiae: Prima Secundae Partis, Question V, Article v)
Perhaps then, God will only unveil some of Himself in eternity. There is a certain beatitude man is entitled to by his nature, which is the vision of God in the context of creation, i.e., seeing Him as through a mirror. It is an analogous beholding, just as all of man's knowledge is here on earth: facts drawn up by sense impressions, signs, and measurements. So we would not have a Beatific Vision in the true sense, but in a diluted sense of the idea. (Hontheim, Joseph: The Catholic Encyclopaedia; Volume VII, "Heaven")
Such a proposition is reasonable and our just deserts--assuming we have not so damaged our natures by sin that we do not merit the fellowship of man, much less that of God. However when someone is in love, and after the rigours of good judgement and virtue have had their say about the object of his love, the lover no longer concerns himself with what his beloved deserves, but things that she would like. The more stunned and overwhelmed she is, the better. To invest as much of himself in his giving as possible is his intent, not to meter out according to justice with no thought for mercy.
God, after the judgements which Holiness requires (I ought not to have the same vision as Mother Teresa), is the most generous of all lovers. After Cophetua has won the beggar maid's affection in the guise of a poor man, he will not keep her in her lowly state, but will elevate her to the status of queen. Would this contradict all the rules of his state? Yes, but he is the king, and it is also a law of his that he can make exceptions to the rules. If God can create man, He can create in man the capacity for Himself, though still proper to the mode of man's existence:
For God loveth mercy and truth: the Lord will give grace and truth. (Psalm 83:12)
Just as the human body may be brought to perfect health by medicine, so it is through His assistance that we shall obtain the enjoyment of Himself. It is true that we will not infinitely comprehend Him with our finite intellects, but we may yet possess Him in an act which eternity shall not exhaust. The is the lumen gloriae, the light that allows our intellect to look on God directly, not reflected, and receive Him to the extent our being allows.
Man's more supernatural end has been explained thus:
'Comprehension is twofold: in one sense it is taken strictly and properly...and this in no way is God comprehended either by intellect, or in any other way forasmuch as He is infinite, and cannot be included in any way by the finite being...in the degree of His own Infinity.
But in another sense 'comprehension' is taken more largely as opposed to 'non-attainment'; for he who attains to anyone is said to comprehend him when he attains to him. And in this sense God is comprehended by the blessed, according to the words, 'I held him, and I will not let him go.' (Canticles 3:4)...in this way 'comprehension' is one of the three prerogatives of the soul, responding to hope, as vision responds to faith, and fruition responds to charity. (Summa Theologiae: Prima Pars, Question XII, Article vii)
As Christians, we are told not to emulate the saints or the angels, but God Himself. We have been promised that we shall see His face. How? It is simply a mystery. And so one comes round, after the toild of frenzied, intimidated reason back to these simple words:
When He shall appear, we shall be like to Him; because we shall see Him as He is. (I John 3:2)
The Problem of Infinity: Let Us Be Made for It! by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.
Monday, May 31, 2010
This life can be so wonderful. To think of nothing weightier than accomplishing the day's task, to observe a baby's wonder at the spinning of a little paper windwheel, to savour the rich taste of kielbasa in one's sandwich, and to look forward to a warmly lit room with one's heart warmly lit by beer and fellowship. Surely these are the best things!
Yet, I can remember an afternoon, with my first cousin twice removed sitting in my lap as we read a story together. We were warm in the chair, as I read her a fairytale from an ornate, leatherbound volume. The rain pattered a pleasant tattoo on the roof, and the soft touch of our chenile blanket was like Heaven. The story was interrupted abruptly, as three year olds tend to end all their activites, and so I went to the kitchen to enjoy a cup of cinammon tea. To be warm and dry while the rain fell without gave me the kind of comfort bestowed by a Psalm or an Irish drinking song. Yet...
I drew closer to the window, my reflection disappearing as I leaned forward to glimpse the pewter darkness beyond the pane.
'What choo lookin' at, Rachel?' Elaine inquired in her sweet, piping voice. I turned my eyes across the broad field neighbouring our sweet yellow home towards the naked, great pines lining its eastern border, a sable vanguard against the umbrous clouds. I looked to the north. The maples' leaves turned over in the wind, revealing their silver underlining in ripples of shimmering brilliance.
I opened the door. The smell of wet rock and earth flooded my nostrils, and the mixture of the summer's heat, imbued with the wet cool of the storm enveloped me. Elaine raised her blonde eyebrows and gave me a quizzical look with her brown green eyes.
'Let's go out in the rain,' I said and made a flying leap into the downpour, leaving a sceptical child at the door. Gone was the warm comfort of the tea, and I was soon wet through. Onto the spongy lawn I trod, dancing about with no music but the rhythm of my blood, longing to be one with the heartbeat of all things. Gone was the desire for individual security and protection, only the wild desire for All remained, to bring every potency into act and to make a moment into forever. I turned with a laugh to see that Elaine had joined me, turning about with her arms outspread and also laughing.
Later, slipping on fresh, dry clothes, which brought comfort to my damp, chill skin as potent as a narcotic thrill, I admitted to myself that I wanted both. My individuality and unity with something greater. The security of community and the harrowing journey of solitude. I wanted home, and I wanted the epic.
Fiction is of course no help for resolving the dilemma. Dorothy of Kansas and Oz returned home after admitting there was no other place like it. Odysseus returned to Ithaca a thoroughly humbled man, and exalted his Penelope above any of the goddesses whose beds he had shared. Yet, Thumbelina never returned home. She became the queen of the flower elves, and Frodo Baggins departed to Valinor, his beloved Shire having failed to heal his wounds. The morals of poetry are cloven in two. One party cries out for the simplicity of the heart, and the other chants the praises of higher, greater things. One says this life is good, and so be content. The second says this life will end; do something that will echo into eternity.
The reasonable, balanced man would likely say that neither of these two extremes are perfectly right, nor completely wrong. The first lacks truth, and is inclined towards the bigotry of personal and familial interest. Tea Party affiliates of the United States do not wish to dominate foreign politics, nor would they assist foreign countries out of any kind of charity.
The second division lacks humility, and is too inclined to push the interests of what it thinks is right. It is the grand empire that would aristocratically see the oneness of all men and dictate unto them broad-mindedly, but it would also insist on their adherence to this greater whole. The coldness of this form would be willing to sacrifice the small for the great, individual lives for generations not even in existence.
G. K. Chesterton, a hobbit in ways and a wizard in mind, said that he hoped to see somewhere in the Eternal Jersualem an object with the familiar, homely semblance of a lampost. No doubt this was the quotation that prompted C. S. Lewis to include so random, yet wonderful, an object in his mythical realm of Narnia. When the hero of Tolkien's autobiographical allegory, an artist named Niggle, stepped out of the Purgatorial Workhouse on his way to Heaven, he saw a polished, brilliantly coloured train waiting him for at the station.
These men with such epic, grand tastes shared the desire to somehow reconcile the two opposing views just related. To have the peasant in his colourful, cheery garb sit at board with the solemn, erudite sage trimmed in ermine--to have Molly Malone breaking bread congenially with Aristotle. The writers mentioned wanted a common ground which embarrassed neither party, and did not attempt to mix the brilliant black and white of their aspirations into a dirty, mottled grey.
Can man's condition allow for this? Is it possible to throw one's self into the wild, climbing the mountain towards enlightenment, going farther and farther beyond all known boundaries, and at last, when one drops to his knees in exhaustion, to look up and see the warm light of a fire beckoning him through curtained windows of an ornate, gaily painted pub? To travel to distant realms, striving to rise above one's own culture in search of common humanity, and then suddenly to be clapped on the shoulder by someone with a smiling face who inexplicably knows your name?
One must sojourn through this life, with all its imperfections and disappointments, only to endure the agony of death however it comes. We shall fall into that state utterly naked and alone in spirit, if not in flesh as well, and watch the world fall away from us, existence fall away from us. At His own moment of darkness, the most resigned, detached Teacher this world has ever known cried out, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou abandoned Me?'
Is it possible, or is it the most nefarious joke ever played on man, that after this dreadful moment, the soul that chose Goodness in her life, will realize that she has just now begun to live in the truest sense of the word? After the weariness of life, will she have strength for eternity? Will she even want what awaits her, namely the contemplation of Mystery beyond our understanding, the Beatific Vision?
According to Tennyson (and many others concur), the aged Odysseus, as he surveyed the state he had built after returning home from war, was satisfied with what he would leave behind. But he was not satisfied with what would be his end. He suddenly discovered that he had not drunk 'life to the lees,' that there was use yet in his wits and limbs, and beyond him there was a world which he could sometimes glimpse, but never fully contemplate. He longed to find this world.
His military companions long dead, Odysseus gathers his friends: his beloved Penelope, the old farm hands, the faithful servants, all that is left of the elderly in his househole, and makes for the ships. This time he shall not return to Ithaca:
...for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will,
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
(Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses)
The third property of water is that it satisfies and quenches the thirst; for it seems to me, that thirst implies the desire of something we stand much in need of, and which, if it cannot possibly be obtained, kills us. (Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection)This life cannot make one perfectly happy. Even if one could possess all the goods tallied up to provide joy, bliss would still be imperfect. St. Teresa of Avila once observed:
We thirst for adventure and long for security. We fear death and pale at the eternal. Our hearts are set on the temporal, which we wish to endure forever. Man wants to know what is at the bottom of all existence, but can an effect hope or even desire to know its Cause?
Over a millenium after the Philosopher's flesh was swept into dust, centuries after the Son rose in the East and set the West aflame, a big, lumbering man was sitting on a hard bench in a stony cell. Whether he wrote by a shard of sun or the aureole of a candle, his own illuminated mind brought forth these words:
Respondeo: as stated before, our end (i.e., the purpose of humanity) is twofold.
Did he pause after that? Or did he scribble on furiously?
The atheist and fabulous mystery novelist, Colin Dexter, wrote through the lips of his irascible hero, Inspector Morse, these poignant words: 'I wish to God there was a God. A just God, dealing out judgement and mercy.' In the end, we all admit in our moments of sincerity that we want an explanation for existence. At the last, after all of man's inhumanity to man, we want someone who can show us the tapestry that will finally allow us to forgive evildoers completely, embracing existence with renewed joy. In a world of such horrors, we want there to be something so Beautiful behind it all that It would annihilate ugliness. We want it, we want it. Oh God! can we have it?First, there is the thing itself which we desire to attain...Secondly there is the attainment or possession, the use or enjoyment of the thing desired. In the first sense, then, man's last end is the uncreated good, namely. God, Who alone by His infinite goodness can perfectly satisfy man's will. But in the second way, man's last end is something created, existing (in him, and this is nothing else than the attainment or enjoyment of the last end. Now the last end is called happiness. (Summa Theologiae, Prima Secundae Partis: Question III, Article i)
Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence. To make this clear, two points must be observed. First, that man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire and seek: secondly, that the perfection of any power is determined by the nature of its object. Now the object of the intellect is...the essence of a thing...Wherefore the intellect attains perfection, in so far as it knows the essence of a thing... Consequently, when man knows an effect, and knows that it has a cause, there remains in the man the desire to know about the cause...and this desire is one of wonder, and causes inquiry...
So God will give us Himself, but in what way? So that we can truly contemplate His infinity? His eternity?
Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence. To make this clear, two points must be observed. First, that man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire and seek: secondly, that the perfection of any power is determined by the nature of its object. Now the object of the intellect is...the essence of a thing...Wherefore the intellect attains perfection, in so far as it knows the essence of a thing... Consequently, when man knows an effect, and knows that it has a cause, there remains in the man the desire to know about the cause...and this desire is one of wonder, and causes inquiry...
If therefore the human intellect, knowing the essence of some created effect, knows no more of God than "that He is"; the perfection of that intellect does not yet reach simply the First Cause, but there remains in it the natural desire to seek the cause. Wherefore it is not yet perfectly happy. Consequently, for perfect happiness the intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First Cause. (Summa Theologiae: Prima Secundae Partis, Question III, Article viii)
The Problem of Infinity: Do We Wish to Be Made for It? by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.
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Tuesday, May 25, 2010
We are finite beings.
This statement may be acknowledged by any given man to whom it is uttered, but is it truly imbibed by the hearer? Is its meaning held within his bosom, and does he nod his head in vigourous assent? Does his face cloud over, though frozen with Stoic fatalism, or does he fall to his knees crying out in agony? For some odd reason, such behaviour as described above is not considered strange in a dying man, yet it would be seen as bizarre in a man pondering the fact of death from afar.
Some, if they are of faith, may take this moment to console the pensive self-mourners with the assurance of life after death, since that ought to be consoling. Yet, these well-meaning souls have not absorbed the statement properly. It was not, 'we are mortal beings,' but 'we are finite beings.' As Tolkien said concerning the necessity of man's death in his literary works, it was a gift from Eru, the creator, not a bane or curse that man should die. The idea was that humanity was not made for immortality, because man himself is a certain quantity. No matter how much butter one has, it can always be scraped too thinly over too much bread. Man, being finite, does not have the capacity for the infinite.
The remains of this essay will likely be of no interest to those who believe man's very existence is finite and terminates at death. Indeed, if that is the case, there is no more to discuss. For those who on the other hand believe in infinity, the problem still requires resolution.
I still remember that aching moment twenty-one years ago now. A five year old girl was sitting in the back of the car, staring at her second younger sister in the baby carriage, while the first younger one sat up front. As her mother turned into the driveway of their home, the child glanced out the righthand window towards the tall hills beyond the railroad tracks, themselves invisible due to the intervening meadows and woods. If she did not perspire, she had that same preliminary sensation of nervous cold that precedes the sweat resulting from stress.
'Mommy, I'm scared of Heaven.'
'What? Rachel, it only makes sense to be scared of Hell.'
'Heaven is scary, too, because it doesn't end.'
'If it ended, you wouldn't exist.'
And so began an brief interchange that did not leave the child satisfied. It's a shame that she asked these questions so soon. Rather than resting with childlike trust on the goodness of the same God that had created cedar trees, the colour purple, the smell of vanilla, and the cooing of a mourning dove, all of which she loved so much, her morose mind sought things beyond its strength.
'One cannot conceive a thought without language.' Being inarticulate (especially when one does not even know the word 'inarticulate') can cause a great deal of suffering. Teaching English in foreign countries, I have seen children tear up with frustration over my not understanding their native language, especially when it is spoken quickly and emotionally. Trying to convey philosophical problems for one's parents to resolve before even knowing that philosophy exists also causes a great deal inner tribulation.
It was at the age of nineteen, when my famished mind was devouring St. Augustine's Confessions, that I found I had not been alone in my fears.
'Thank God! Someone else has been frightened of infinity,' I said after a seminar on the work.
'Oh yeah,' a fellow student said, 'I remember trying to tell someone once that I was scared of Heaven, and they thought I was crazy!'
So the Bishop of Hippo had shared the quandary. Two years later, the Angelic Doctor resolved the problem altogether with his definition of eternity:
To give an illustration to the visual learner: recall please that a line is that which has only length and no width. Is such a thing impossible in the physical world? Yes, but so are circles, triangles, and squares, and you can imagine those just fine. Now imagine a plane. In the diagram below, the line is lavender, and the plane green. The line is imperfect obviously, for if it were a true line, you could not see it at all.
Now, place a few lines within the plane.
There are three lines within this plane, and if you magnify it, you will see that there is plenty of green space in between the purple marks. Now since a true line has no width, it is impossible to place two side by side, and so it would be impossible to cover this plane with lines. Just so, if you tried to draw a circle by making equal lines from a certain point, you would probably never succeed in finishing it. The finer your pen, and hence the closer the pen would be to a true line, the less likely success would become. This is the problem of assuming what is two dimensional can be converted into the first dimension. The same absurdity arises when one tries to cram the eternal into the fourth dimension.
If Heaven were like a lush and verdant forest that had to be explored by one's moving through it, the expedition would likely end in madness. Our limited eyes would be forced to exploring one narrow line, one after the other, straining to catch everything of worth. We would never see the whole and certainly never come to an end. Yet, in Paradise, there is no time, only eternity. If one accepts that time is the measurement of motion according to the before and after there can be no before and after in the Hereafter. Rather than view a park by examining one blade of grass after another, line by line, Heaven is everywhere immediately open to us as. One need but remain still and glance about, taking in its splendour.
Such a conclusion would not have been possible without Divine Revelation, and even then, it took centuries for the truth to be put in such clear words by the Church's 'Dumb Ox.' Yet, the problem remains that even if we are not asked to move along the plane of Heaven in wearing lines, can a one dimensional creatue glance from side to side? Can four dimensional creatures like use begin to understand an existence beyond time?
The problem of taxing out nature beyond its strength has been resolved, but a new problem has arisen. How can we rise above our very natures into a higher existence? If one grants the soul's immortality, how can this question be resolved?
It was certainly beyond the strength of the world's greatest minds standing alone, specifically, Plato and Buddha.
While Socrates consoled his disciples with his magnificent certainty of life after death in the Phaedo, Socrates himself (or as written by his disciple) apparently feared the immortality of the spirit. He may have projected that after death, beauties and glories of enlightenment awaited the soul, a return to the star where the spirit had her birth.
Yet, as one takes in the whole of the dialogues, one discovers with some disappointment that there is no 'happily ever after.' The soul again descends into this world, drinks of the River Lethe, and is reborn on Earth, having forgotten all previous lives. While an impious soul descends into lower, animal forms of life, the pious is again exalted after death, but then the circle spins yet again.
Buddha essentially had the same idea. Whereas Socrates yearned to look on the Form of Love after death, Buddha desired not to love at all, but to achieve a space without air or breath. This would be the realm where no fire could burn, because there was no breeze to feed or fan it. However, Nirvana, like Plato's star, is not a final destination. After ascending the petals of the lotus flower, the spirit again tumbles down. Again it plummets into the muddy earth of the flesh. Round and round the wheel turns.
At first there is something very appealing about the theory of reincarnation. It soothes both our fear of death and of eternity. Being around ten years of age, I had come up with the theory that every once in a while in Heaven, one went to sleep for a time, and awoke having forgotten all that went before, thus refreshing existence anew. I see now that there is truly no difference between my little theory and that of the those just related.
Children cannot help being honest though. If their appetites do blind them occasionally, they remain brutally honest with themselves in solitude, for they have not yet mastered rationalizing. Even at ten I knew my theory was cheating. Just so with Plato and Siddhartha. They were two men reasonable enough to know that the soul was immaterial. They were broad enough in mind to propose that the immaterial can live without matter, and they were noble enough to believe that the best things awaited man beyond the grave. But there is a limit to man's greatness, even his greatness of mind.
The mightiest of spirits may scale the highest mountains, bracing their flesh against the cold, taking in stride the lack of air for the sake of breathing the purer, though rarer stuff, climbing higher and higher up the great peaks. They find themselves at ever more dizzying heights, taking in more thrilling views, and trekking up lonelier paths. Finally, as their nostrils bleed, the scarcity of air tires their lungs, and solitude becomes as stifling as a mob, they giddily scream that they have at last reached the top, shutting their eyes to the infinity of the mountain jutting into eternity. Down they giddily cartwheel back into the valley, taking shelter in the mundane, glad to have their mortal souls safe from the great, eternal Forms again.
Like Tolkien's hobbit hero, they say:
The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the road has gone
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.
Yet, as Bilbo was nodding by the fire in Rivendell, did he perhaps glimpse amongst the tongues of flames, the great peak of the Lonely Mountain, urging him to start out again?
The Problem of Infinity: We Seem Not to Be Made for It by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.
This statement may be acknowledged by any given man to whom it is uttered, but is it truly imbibed by the hearer? Is its meaning held within his bosom, and does he nod his head in vigourous assent? Does his face cloud over, though frozen with Stoic fatalism, or does he fall to his knees crying out in agony? For some odd reason, such behaviour as described above is not considered strange in a dying man, yet it would be seen as bizarre in a man pondering the fact of death from afar.
Some, if they are of faith, may take this moment to console the pensive self-mourners with the assurance of life after death, since that ought to be consoling. Yet, these well-meaning souls have not absorbed the statement properly. It was not, 'we are mortal beings,' but 'we are finite beings.' As Tolkien said concerning the necessity of man's death in his literary works, it was a gift from Eru, the creator, not a bane or curse that man should die. The idea was that humanity was not made for immortality, because man himself is a certain quantity. No matter how much butter one has, it can always be scraped too thinly over too much bread. Man, being finite, does not have the capacity for the infinite.
The remains of this essay will likely be of no interest to those who believe man's very existence is finite and terminates at death. Indeed, if that is the case, there is no more to discuss. For those who on the other hand believe in infinity, the problem still requires resolution.
I still remember that aching moment twenty-one years ago now. A five year old girl was sitting in the back of the car, staring at her second younger sister in the baby carriage, while the first younger one sat up front. As her mother turned into the driveway of their home, the child glanced out the righthand window towards the tall hills beyond the railroad tracks, themselves invisible due to the intervening meadows and woods. If she did not perspire, she had that same preliminary sensation of nervous cold that precedes the sweat resulting from stress.
'Mommy, I'm scared of Heaven.'
'What? Rachel, it only makes sense to be scared of Hell.'
'Heaven is scary, too, because it doesn't end.'
'If it ended, you wouldn't exist.'
And so began an brief interchange that did not leave the child satisfied. It's a shame that she asked these questions so soon. Rather than resting with childlike trust on the goodness of the same God that had created cedar trees, the colour purple, the smell of vanilla, and the cooing of a mourning dove, all of which she loved so much, her morose mind sought things beyond its strength.
'One cannot conceive a thought without language.' Being inarticulate (especially when one does not even know the word 'inarticulate') can cause a great deal of suffering. Teaching English in foreign countries, I have seen children tear up with frustration over my not understanding their native language, especially when it is spoken quickly and emotionally. Trying to convey philosophical problems for one's parents to resolve before even knowing that philosophy exists also causes a great deal inner tribulation.
It was at the age of nineteen, when my famished mind was devouring St. Augustine's Confessions, that I found I had not been alone in my fears.
'Thank God! Someone else has been frightened of infinity,' I said after a seminar on the work.
'Oh yeah,' a fellow student said, 'I remember trying to tell someone once that I was scared of Heaven, and they thought I was crazy!'
So the Bishop of Hippo had shared the quandary. Two years later, the Angelic Doctor resolved the problem altogether with his definition of eternity:
Thus eternity is known from two sources: first, because what is eternal is interminable--that is, has no beginning nor end (that is, no term either way); secondly, because eternity has no succession, being simultaneously whole. (Summa Theologica: Prima Pars, Question X, Article i, emphasis mine)
How wonderful it is to breathe! To take air into one's lungs up to the count of four, hold that breath a moment, and breathe out as if one's manacles were falling from one's wrists, the scales from one's eyes. I was able to exhale such a breath when I saw that Heaven was not a horrifically tedious, infinite line, which would drag out my ragged soul, thinner and thinner, throughout eternity. It is not a perpetual succession of seconds, but one great second, even less than a second, it is one great 'now.'To give an illustration to the visual learner: recall please that a line is that which has only length and no width. Is such a thing impossible in the physical world? Yes, but so are circles, triangles, and squares, and you can imagine those just fine. Now imagine a plane. In the diagram below, the line is lavender, and the plane green. The line is imperfect obviously, for if it were a true line, you could not see it at all.
Now, place a few lines within the plane.
There are three lines within this plane, and if you magnify it, you will see that there is plenty of green space in between the purple marks. Now since a true line has no width, it is impossible to place two side by side, and so it would be impossible to cover this plane with lines. Just so, if you tried to draw a circle by making equal lines from a certain point, you would probably never succeed in finishing it. The finer your pen, and hence the closer the pen would be to a true line, the less likely success would become. This is the problem of assuming what is two dimensional can be converted into the first dimension. The same absurdity arises when one tries to cram the eternal into the fourth dimension.If Heaven were like a lush and verdant forest that had to be explored by one's moving through it, the expedition would likely end in madness. Our limited eyes would be forced to exploring one narrow line, one after the other, straining to catch everything of worth. We would never see the whole and certainly never come to an end. Yet, in Paradise, there is no time, only eternity. If one accepts that time is the measurement of motion according to the before and after there can be no before and after in the Hereafter. Rather than view a park by examining one blade of grass after another, line by line, Heaven is everywhere immediately open to us as. One need but remain still and glance about, taking in its splendour.
Such a conclusion would not have been possible without Divine Revelation, and even then, it took centuries for the truth to be put in such clear words by the Church's 'Dumb Ox.' Yet, the problem remains that even if we are not asked to move along the plane of Heaven in wearing lines, can a one dimensional creatue glance from side to side? Can four dimensional creatures like use begin to understand an existence beyond time?
The problem of taxing out nature beyond its strength has been resolved, but a new problem has arisen. How can we rise above our very natures into a higher existence? If one grants the soul's immortality, how can this question be resolved?
It was certainly beyond the strength of the world's greatest minds standing alone, specifically, Plato and Buddha.
While Socrates consoled his disciples with his magnificent certainty of life after death in the Phaedo, Socrates himself (or as written by his disciple) apparently feared the immortality of the spirit. He may have projected that after death, beauties and glories of enlightenment awaited the soul, a return to the star where the spirit had her birth.
Yet, as one takes in the whole of the dialogues, one discovers with some disappointment that there is no 'happily ever after.' The soul again descends into this world, drinks of the River Lethe, and is reborn on Earth, having forgotten all previous lives. While an impious soul descends into lower, animal forms of life, the pious is again exalted after death, but then the circle spins yet again.
Buddha essentially had the same idea. Whereas Socrates yearned to look on the Form of Love after death, Buddha desired not to love at all, but to achieve a space without air or breath. This would be the realm where no fire could burn, because there was no breeze to feed or fan it. However, Nirvana, like Plato's star, is not a final destination. After ascending the petals of the lotus flower, the spirit again tumbles down. Again it plummets into the muddy earth of the flesh. Round and round the wheel turns.
At first there is something very appealing about the theory of reincarnation. It soothes both our fear of death and of eternity. Being around ten years of age, I had come up with the theory that every once in a while in Heaven, one went to sleep for a time, and awoke having forgotten all that went before, thus refreshing existence anew. I see now that there is truly no difference between my little theory and that of the those just related.
Children cannot help being honest though. If their appetites do blind them occasionally, they remain brutally honest with themselves in solitude, for they have not yet mastered rationalizing. Even at ten I knew my theory was cheating. Just so with Plato and Siddhartha. They were two men reasonable enough to know that the soul was immaterial. They were broad enough in mind to propose that the immaterial can live without matter, and they were noble enough to believe that the best things awaited man beyond the grave. But there is a limit to man's greatness, even his greatness of mind.
The mightiest of spirits may scale the highest mountains, bracing their flesh against the cold, taking in stride the lack of air for the sake of breathing the purer, though rarer stuff, climbing higher and higher up the great peaks. They find themselves at ever more dizzying heights, taking in more thrilling views, and trekking up lonelier paths. Finally, as their nostrils bleed, the scarcity of air tires their lungs, and solitude becomes as stifling as a mob, they giddily scream that they have at last reached the top, shutting their eyes to the infinity of the mountain jutting into eternity. Down they giddily cartwheel back into the valley, taking shelter in the mundane, glad to have their mortal souls safe from the great, eternal Forms again.
Like Tolkien's hobbit hero, they say:
The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the road has gone
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.
Yet, as Bilbo was nodding by the fire in Rivendell, did he perhaps glimpse amongst the tongues of flames, the great peak of the Lonely Mountain, urging him to start out again?
The Problem of Infinity: We Seem Not to Be Made for It by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.
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About Me
- Jacobitess
- Warsaw, Poland
- Domine, spero quia mundum vicisti. Lord, I trust that Thou hast overcome the world. Panie, ufam, żeś pokonał świat.