A Lover and a Fighter (a Christmas postscript)

The following is from pages 124-125 & 130 of C.S. Lewis' book Reflections on the Psalms:

[The Psalms' focus on the Messiah as a conquering hero] emphasizes an aspect of the Nativity to which our later sentiment about Christmas (excellent in itself) does less than justice. For those who first read these [messianic] Psalms as poems about the birth of Christ, that birth meant something very militant: the hero, the "judge" or champion or giant-killer, who was to fight and beat death, hell and the devils, had at last arrived, and the evidence suggests that Our Lord also thought of Himself in those terms.

[...]

The hero has come.

Read in this sense, the [messianic] Psalm restores Christmas to its proper complexity. The birth of Christ is the arrival of the great warrior and the great king. Also of the Lover, the Bridegroom, whose beauty surpasses that of man. But not only the Bridegroom as the lover, the desired; the Bridegroom also as he who makes fruitful, the father of children still to be begotten and born. Certainly the image of a Child in a manger by no means suggests to us a king, giant-killer, bridegroom, and father. But it would not suggest the eternal Word either---if we didn't know. All alike are aspects of the same central paradox.

"...the blue sapphire of the year..." (by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care

For times and seasons---but this one glad day

Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights

That flash in the girdle of the year so fair---

When thou wast born a man, because alway

Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights

Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation's play.

(George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul)

"...the philosophy of Light" (ramblings and parables from orthodox rebels)

Recently I flipped through an essay by Roger Scruton called "How I Became a Conservative," where he charts his course to philosophical conservatism from the Student Riots of 1968's Paris to his professorship in the 1980s. He mentioned how during the Student Riots, a friend of his (one of the rioters) justified the mayhem with a book by Michel Foucault called The Order of Things. Scruton had few kind words for the book, but one thing he did say stuck with me: "The book is not a work of philosophy but an exercise in rhetoric. Its goal is subversion, not truth...." 

That last remark in particular wedged itself into my mind. As a member of the postmodern "millennial" generation, I have found myself flummoxed by the strange audacities committed in our name. Rampant relativism, the near deification of doubt and skepticism, and a narcissistic insistence on a conformity to our own "authenticity," i.e., if something doesn't speak to or "resonate" with us then we have no ears for it and that's that. A lot of books have been written in defense of these atrocities, many of them religious in content, all of them mystical in tone.

It is that mystical quality that often astounded me. When I would read the "history" of Foucault or the "theology" of Rob Bell, I found a singular consistency: what they said was gibberish, but it was artful gibberish, and very often infused with a romantic flair or delivery. Some of Foucault's best chapters are his last ones, where he drops all pretense to scholarship and simply slips into the artist that he is, weaving an intoxicating and provocatively put pack of lies. Bell is even better, being an artist from start to finish. His books are more a product of creativity than serious study. Anyone with a critical eye can see through all the ornamentation to the real substance of the work, which is either terrifying (Foucault) or damnable (Bell). In either case, it is utter nonsense in fancy garb.

Yet they gain traction, and it is because of the fancy garb. There is something to be said for the power of beauty: it has a moral force. As such, its abuse is incredibly dangerous. It can turn a man's heart faster than any syllogism. I speak as an artist myself: in the grand scheme of any debate, rhetoric often trumps logic. That is the meaning behind Scruton's statement. It's not what you say but how you say it, and if you speak it well then you can bombard people with any number of things, hiding your true meaning and purposes behind a flurry of colorful lights, like a fireworks display obscuring an incoming storm.

The exact purpose of all this rhetoric is indeed "subversion," and the goal of subversion is the destruction of every "truth" that has apparently imprisoned us. Such a task can sound very noble, especially if you dress it up with terms like "tyranny" and "liberty," "oppression" and "authenticity". It can even speak of "truth" in a sense, i.e., all of the "truths" we've been given are just the oppressive constructs of dead, white, European men. We must tear down those constructs so that we can get to the real essence of things (if there even is such an essence). One could very well argue (and I'm sure that some have) that subversion is all about "truth": the destruction of its counterfeits and the discovery of its true form or nature.

"White is only the beginning."

Calling "subversion" the search for truth through destruction reminds me of The Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf recounts his ill-fated meeting with Saruman. Gandalf discovers that Saruman has rejected his title of "the White" and has instead become "Saruman of Many Colors". Gandalf retorts that he "liked white better." Saruman sneers at this: "White! It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten, and the white light can be broken." Gandalf's reply is another statement that has stuck with me: "In which case it is no longer white, and he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."

Tolkien was referencing a medieval theory of light. Medieval Christianity viewed light as the perfect physical image for God, being not only pure and clarifying but also an absolute unity of multiples. Such logic is fundamentally trinitarian, as is all of Christianity. Every inch of Christian thought and act and artistry revolves around this central notion of separates being one while remaining separates (neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance). The Trinity is the highest expression of this (three in one). There is also the Incarnation (God and Man) as well as Atonement (God and man). The Church fits the bill (one body, many members), as does the Bible (66 books of different genres written at different times and places in different contexts, yet all unified around a singular theme). The Liturgy is built upon many separate elements coming together to form a singular worship, while the sense and structure of stained-glass windows and the cathedrals they adorn give vivid concrete testimony to the amassing together of many into one (without losing the many).

Out of many, One.

For the Christian, existence (from the foundations of ontos to the spectacles of quarks and quasars) has always been a fragmented whole, a great and glorious tapestry of many threads of many colors(!) woven into a singular image. Reality, truth: these things have always been a work of art, not a didactic platitude. Truth cannot be summarized in a statement; that is why it was summarized in a person (John 14:6). The swirling complexities of reality are captured by the irresistible gravity of an incomprehensible center that is God. But that capture does nothing to diminish the complexities, anymore than gravity diminishes the stars. On the contrary, it is their capture that gives us the beauty of the night sky, with its constant constellations and expansive milky way. From the foundations of trinitarian doctrine, you arrive at a philosophy of light, which says that it is neither unity nor diversity, neither solidification nor fragmentation, but rather the whole spectrum working in unison, in perfect, sublime harmony and holism.

Not that I see it, but that I see all else.

It is this "both/and" trinitarian logic that has been missed by the radicals of yesterday and today. They fear solidification at every turn, so they tear it down. To them, the light is nothing to them but blinding, so they break it that they might better see. But then it is not light at all, just disparate colors scattered about without direction or clarity. And in such a catastrophe, one of two things typically happens. Either they revel (or despair) in the prismatic chaos they have created, or they try to contain the madness by reducing everything to one of the disparate colors. Thus, everything becomes a reductionism: it all boils down to economics, or genetics, or sex, or race, or class, or truth-to-power, or pacifism, or Republicanism, or patriotism, or doubt, or whatever else comes and goes in fashion. Whatever way they go, they have broken the whole, and have left the path of wisdom.

I end this random ramble with a parable, told by G.K. Chesterton in the first chapter of his book Heretics. It is not his best book, but it is relevant here. Each chapter has Chesterton dealing a deathblow to a different kind of reductionism, for subversion (rhetorical or otherwise) has been in vogue for a long time now, which is why today we are practically drowning in it:

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good---" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmedieval practicality.

But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted an electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, and some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery, and some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes.

So, gradually and inevitably, today, tomorrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we may have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.

-Jon Vowell, et. al. (c) 2013

 

In the Name of Peace and Quietness (an Advent post by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following is from Dorothy Sayer's essay "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged," from the book Letters to a Diminished Church:

[The Incarnation] is not just a pious commonplace; it is not commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man---limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death---[God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

[...]

Possibly we might prefer not to take this tale too seriously---there are disquieting points about it. Here we had a man of divine character walking and talking among us---and what did we find to do with him? The common people, indeed, "heard him gladly," but our leading authorities in Church and State considered that he talked too much and uttered too many disconcerting truths. So we bribed one of his friends to hand him over quietly to the police, and we tried him on a rather vague charge of creating a disturbance, and had him publicly flogged and hanged on the common gallows, "thanking God we were rid of a knave." All this was not very creditable to us, even if he was (as many people thought and think) only a harmless, crazy preacher. But if the Church is right about him, it was more discreditable still, for the man we hanged was God Almighty.

[...]

If this is dull, then what, in Heaven's name, is worthy to be exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore. [O]n the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him "meek and mild," and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggests a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand.

True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites. He referred to King Herod as "that fox"; he went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a "gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the temple; he drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people's pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if he was God, [then] there can be nothing dull about God either. But he had "a daily beauty in his life that made us ugly," and officialdom felt that the established order of things would be more secure without him. So they did away with God in the name of peace and quietness.

 

Death and Rebirth (some Advent thoughts by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following is an excerpt from "The Grand Miracle," a chapter in C.S. Lewis' book Miracles.

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He created. But he goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift; he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.

Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both colored now that they have come up into the light; down below, where it lay colorless in the dark, he lost his color too.

In this descent to reascent everyone will recognize a familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of vegetable life. It must belittle itself into something hard, small and deathlike. It must fall into the ground; thence the new life reascends. It is the pattern of all animal generation too. There is a descent from the full and perfect organisms into the spermatozoon and ovum, and in the dark womb a life at first inferior in kind to that of the species which is being reproduced; then the slow ascent to the perfect embryo, to the living, conscious baby, and finally to the adult. So it is also in our moral and emotional life. The first innocent and spontaneous desires have to submit to the deathlike process of control or total denial; but from that there is a reascent to fully formed character in which the strength of the original material all operates but in a new way. Death and Rebirth--go down to go up--it is a key principle. Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies.

The doctrine of the Incarnation, if accepted, puts this principle even more emphatically at the center. The pattern is there in Nature because it was first there in God. All the instances of it which I have mentioned turn out to be but transpositions of the Divine theme into a minor key. I am not now referring simply to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The total pattern, of which they are only the turning point, is the real Death and Rebirth; for certainly no seed ever fell from so fair a tree into so dark and cold a soil as would furnish more than a faint analogy to this huge descent and reascension in which God dredged the salt and oozy bottom of Creation.

Gravity and Kittens (some Advent thoughts by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

Continuing our Advent posts this season, here we have an excerpt from G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. In the first chapter of the second section (called "The God in the Cave"), Chesterton talks about the unique qualities of Christmas and how no other religion or philosophy in the world could have produced it. Here is a small sampling. I encourage you to sometime read the whole chapter.

Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether he likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other: the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, [even] when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection. For him there will always be some savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God.

But the two ideas are not naturally or necessarily combined. They would not be necessarily combined for an ancient Greek or a Chinaman, even for Aristotle or Confucius. It is no more inevitable to connect God with an infant than to connect gravitation with a kitten. It has been created in our minds by Christmas because we are Christians; because we are psychological Christians even when we are not theological ones.

In other words, this combination of ideas has emphatically, in the much disputed phrase, altered human nature. There really is a difference between the man who knows it and the man who does not. It may not be a difference of moral worth, for the Muslim or the Jew might be worthier according to his lights; but it is a plain fact about the crossing of two particular lights, the conjunction of two stars in our particular horoscope. Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique. Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet.

 

 

The Lonely Maker (some Advent poetry by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

Now that Thanksgiving has passed, the Christmas season can officially begin. (That's right: I'm a purist. Don't hate.) In light of this and in honor of the season, I'll be sprinkling my blog with an occasional "Advent post," starting with this excerpt from George MacDonald's Diary of an Old Soul.

I do remember how one time I thought,

"God must be lonely--oh, so lonely lone!

I will be very good to him--ah, nought

Can reach the heart of his great loneliness!

My whole heart I will bring him, with a moan

That I may not come nearer; I will lie prone

Before the awful loveliness of loneliness' excess."

A God must have a God for company.

And lo, thou hast the Son-God to thy friend.

Thou honor'st his obedience, he thy law.

Into thy secret life-will he doth see;

Thou fold'st him round in live love perfectly--

One two, without beginning, without end;

In love, life, strength, and truth, perfect without flaw.

Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care

For times and seasons--but this one glad day

Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights

That flash in the girdle of the year so fair--

When thou wast born a man, because alway

Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights

Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation's play.

We all are lonely, Maker--each a soul

Shut in by itself, a sundered atom of thee.

No two yet loved themselves into a whole;

Even when we weep together we are two.

Of two to make one, which yet two shall be,

Is thy creation's problem, deep, and true,

To which thou only hold'st the happy, hurting clue.

No less than thou, O Father, do we need

A God to friend each lonely one of us.

As touch not in the sack two grains of seed,

Touch no two hearts in great worlds populous.

Outside the making God we cannot meet.

Him he has made our brother; homeward, thus,

To find our kin we first must turn our wandering feet.

It must be possible that the soul made

Should absolutely meet the soul that makes;

Then, in that bearing soul, meet every other

There also born, each sister and each brother.

Lord, till I meet thee thus, life is delayed;

I am not I until that morning breaks,

Not I until my consciousness eternal wakes.

[...]

Go, my beloved children, live your life.

Wounded, faint, bleeding, never yield the strife.

Stunned, fallen-awake, arise, and fight again.

Before you victory stands with shining train

Of hopes not credible until they are.

Beyond morass and mountain swells the star

Of perfect love--the home of longing heart and brain.

 

 

A Parthian Shot on Glory (from one more Original Orthodox Rebel)

One final post on the premise I laid down here, the following is some thoughts by St. Maximus the Confessor. I find it interesting that Maximus (and Augustine and Symeon) lays foundations not only for the idea of Lewis' notion of "glory" but also for the idea of what Lewis would call "the Great Dance," i.e., the infinite bliss of eternal communion with the triune God.

(The following excerpts can be found in "Ad Thalassium 2" and "Ad Thalassium 22" in The Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ.)

God, as He alone knew how, completed the primary principles of creatures and the universal essences of beings once for all [at the Creation]. Yet He is still at work, not only preserving these creatures in their very existence but [also] effecting the formation, progress, and sustenance of the individual parts that are potential within them. Even now in His providence, He is bringing about the assimilation of particulars to universals...[to] make them harmonious and self-moving in relation to one another and to the whole universe. In this way, there shall be no intentional divergence between universals and particulars. Rather, one and the same principle [i.e., communion with God] shall be observable throughout the universe...[and] displaying the grace of God effective to deify the universe. It is on the basis of this grace that the divine Logos, when He became a man, said, "My Father is working even now, and I am working" (John 5:17). The Father approves this work, the Son properly carries it out, and the Holy Spirit essentially completes both the Father's approval of it all and the Son's execution of it, in order that the God in Trinity might be "through all things and in all things" (Eph. 4:6), contemplated as the whole reality proportionately in each individual creature as it is deemed worthy by grace....

[...]

Since, therefore, the ages predetermined in God's purpose for the realization of His becoming human [i.e., the Incarnation] have reached their end for us...the other "ages"---those which are to come about for the realization of the mystical and ineffable deification of humanity---must follow henceforth. In these new ages, God "will show the immeasurable riches of His goodness to us" (Eph. 2:7), having completely realized this deification in those who are worthy. For if He has brought to completion His mystical work of becoming human, having become like us in every way save sin...then God will also completely fulfill the goal of His mystical work of deifying humanity in every respect, of course, short of an identity of essence with God; and He will assimilate humanity to Himself and elevate us to a position above all heavens. It is to this exalted position that the natural magnitude of God's grace summons lowly humanity, out of a goodness that is infinite.

A Continuing Defense of Glory (from another Original Orthodox Rebel)

Continuing the premise laid down in this post, here is an excerpt from "Hymn 1" of St. Symeon's Hymns of Divine Eros. It not only speaks of the reception into glory awaiting the faithful, but also the rejection by glory that awaits the unbelieving.

[T]hus are those who have stood by God Who glorified them:

they persevere, astounded by the excess of glory

and by the endless addition of divinity's splendor.

For the end will be eternal progress,

the condition of additional, endless fulfillment,

and shall make an attainment of the Unattainable, and God,

of Whom no one can get enough, shall become the source of satisfaction for all.

But the full measure of Him and the glory of His light

will be an abyss of progress and an endless beginning;

and just as those who have Christ transformed within them

stand by Him Who shines unapproachably,

so also the end in them becomes a beginning of glory.

And---in order to make the idea more clear to you---

in the end they shall have a beginning and in the beginning an end.

Understand me: one who is overflowing needs no addition,

and runners do not overtake the end of the infinite.

For if this sky that we see passes away,

as well as the earth and all things in the earth, then seek what I say:

it will be the attainment of the place where you find fulfillment.

[...]

This All is filled with the divine divinity

And so those who have a share in Him, those who dwell in Him,

how may they embrace all of Him, and so be satisfied?

How, tell me, would they grasp the end of the endless?

It is impossible and by all means impracticable.

For thus neither for the saints still in the body,

nor for those departed to God

can such a thought at all penetrate them.

For they also are covered by the light of divine glory;

they are enlightened, and they shine,

and they revel in all these things.

And they truly know as though by every certainty

that their perfection shall be endless,

and the progress of their glory shall be everlasting.

I wonder where those who fall away from God stand,

those who stand afar off from Him Who is everywhere?

[...]

These also shall certainly be within the All,

but they shall be outside the divine light

and certainly outside of God;

for just like those who do not see when the sun shines,

even if they are illuminated all around,

they finish their lives outside the light.

They are separated from the sun
by perception and contemplation.

So also is the light of the Triune Divivity in the All,

and in the middle of the light the sinners are enclosed in darkness,

not seeing, not having any divine perception at all,

but burning in their conscience,

and being condemned, they shall have unspeakable calamity,

and an unutterable suffering unto eternity.

 

In Defense of Glory (with an excerpt from an Original Orthodox Rebel)

Not too many posts ago, I published an excerpt from C.S. Lewis' essay "The Weight of Glory". One of the things I like about Lewis is the perfect way that he puts things. His wording not only sounds nice but also makes his ideas make sense. Another thing I like about him I discovered recently: he's not original, at least not entirely. Much of his thinking was just a rewording (or "redelivering") of what Christians have believed and taught as orthodox for centuries. As proof, I present this excerpt from St. Augustine's Confessions (viz., XIII.10). This small section is a good representation of one of the key elements on Augustinian thought, i.e., that we can never rest until we rest in God. Such thinking sounds suspiciously like Lewis; or perhaps I should say, Lewis sounds suspiciously like Augustine. You be the judge.

Why is it said of him [i.e., the Holy Spirit] alone that he is "your gift"? [Because] in that gift we find our stability, there we enjoy you yourself. Our stabilization is our peace. So love tumbles us toward it, your Spirit's favoring will drawing our lowliness up from the portals of death. In that favoring will is our peace.

A physical object tends by its weight to find its natural level. It does not tend, necessarily, downward but toward whatever its natural level is. Fire tends up as a stone tends down. Their weight keeps them in motion until they find their own level. Oil poured under water comes to the surface. Water poured out over oil sinks below it. Their weight keeps them in motion until they find their level. Out of their proper place, they are unstable. In their proper place, they are stabilized. The weight moving me is love. By your gift we are kindled and borne upward, we are set afire and we go, we "ascends the heart's ascents" and "sing the climbing song." It is your fire, your fire for good, that burns in us as we go up toward "our peace, which is Jerusalem," since "I take joy from those who told me, We are going to the Lord's house." There your favor will give us our proper place and we shall wish for nothing but "to stay there eternally."

 

Part of Our Inconsolable Secret (thoughts by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

I like to break up the monotony every once in a while, especially when I'm doing one of my infamous "series". So here, for your reading pleasure, is an excerpt from C.S. Lewis' essay "The Weight of Glory" (from the book by the same name). I do this merely to tease you, as you should go buy the book immediately if you are one of those shame-faced few who have yet to purchase it.

If I had rejected the authoritative and scriptural image of glory and stuck obstinately to the vague desire which was, at the outset, my only pointer to heaven, I could have seen no connection at all between that desire and the Christian promise [of heaven]. But now, having followed up what seemed puzzling and repellent in the sacred books, I find, to my great surprise, looking back, that the connection is perfectly clear. Glory, as Christianity teaches me to hope for it, turns out to satisfy my original desire and indeed reveal an element in that desire which I had not noticed. By ceasing for a moment to consider my own wants I have begun to learn better what I really wanted.

When I attempted, a few minutes ago [earlier in the essay], to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or the landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described by Keats as "the journey homeward to habitual self." You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can: "Nobody marks us."

A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.

Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being "noticed" by God. But this is almost the language of the New Testament. St. Paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (I Cor. 8:3). It is a strange promise. Does not God know all things at all times? But it is dreadfully reechoed in another passage of the New Testament. There we are warned that it may happen to anyone of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words, "I never knew you. Depart from me."

In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside---repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities. Apparently, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.

 

Live Law (as explained by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following is from George MacDonald's essay "The Fantastic Imagination," and it is meant as a postscript to yesterday's post:

A man's inventions may be stupid or clever, but if he does not hold by the laws of them, or if he makes one law jar with another, he contradicts himself as an inventor; he is no artist. He does not rightly consort his instruments, or he tunes them in different keys. The mind of man is the product of live Law: it thinks by law, it dwells in the midst of law, it gathers from law its growth; with law, therefore, can it alone work to any result. Inharmonious, unconsorting ideas will come to a man, but if he tries to use one of [them], his work will grow dull, and he will drop it from mere lack if interest. Law is the soil in which alone beauty will grow. Beauty is the only stuff in which Truth can be clothed; and you may, if you will, call Imagination the tailor that cuts her garments to fit her....

The Courage to Do (as explained by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following is from p. 218 of Oswald Chamber's The Moral Foundations of Life:

An artist is one who not only sees, but is prepared to pay the price of acquiring the technical knowledge to express what he or she sees. 'Artistic people' are those who have not enough art in them to make them work at the technique of art whereby they can express themselves; they indulge in moods and tones and impressions. Consequently, there are more artistic people than there are artists. The same is true of poetry. There are many people with poetic notions, but very few poets. It is not enough for people to feel the divine flame burning in them; unless they go into the concentrated, slogging business of learning the technique of expression, their geniuses will be of no use to anyone.

Apply these illustrations spiritually: if we have not enough of the life of God in us to overcome the difficulty of expressing it in our bodies, then we are living impoverished spiritual lives. Think of the illuminations the Spirit of God has given you. He expected you to bring your physical body, that He made, into obedience to the vision, and you never attempted to but let it drift, and when the crisis came and God looked for you to be His mouthpiece, you crumbled all to pieces. You had not formed the habit of apprehending; your physical machine was not under control. It is a terrible thing to sit down to anything.

Beware of being sidetracked by the idea that you can develop a spiritual life apart from physical accompaniments. It is a desperately dangerous thing to allow the spiritual vision to go ahead of the physical obedience.