"The ancients have said that the giants advanced themselves
against God, to pull him off of his throne. Let us omit these fables. In very truth you querulous
and murmuring men are these giants. For if it be so that God not
only tolerates but send all these things, then you who
thus strive and struggle, what do you do but, as much as in you
lies, take the scepter and sway of government from him?
"O blind
mortality! The sun, the moon, stars, elements, and all creatures else
in the world, do willingly obey that supreme law. Only man, the
most excellent of all God's works, lifts up his heel, and spurns
against his maker. If you hoist your sails to the winds, you must
follow where your will is forced, not where your will leads you.
And in this great ocean sea of our life will you refuse to follow
that breathing spirit which governs the whole world?
"Yet you strive in vain. For if you do not follow freely you shall be drawn
after forcibly. We may laugh at him who having tied his boat to a
rock, afterwards hauls the rope as though the rock should come to
him, when he himself goes nearer to it. But our foolishness is far
greater, who being fast bound to the rock of God's eternal
providence, by our hailing and pulling would have the it obey
us, and not we it.
"Let us forsake this fondness, and if we are wise let
us follow that power which from above draws us, and let us think it
good reason that man should be pleased with that which pleases
God."
--Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.14 (tr Stradling)
The Renaissance Stoic Justus Lipsius isn't pulling any punches here. As uncomfortable as it may make me feel, he is calling me out for my stubborn pride. I can, in almost every case, trace my problems back to the fact that I am insisting that the things rightly outside of my power should be subject to my own will.
I would get angry at my mother when, after one of my usual adolescent rants and raves about the injustices of the world, she would lovingly say, "so it's all about you?" I was angry because I knew she was right. Pride goes before the fall.
I shouldn't have to feel resentful because I am not God. To find joy and appreciation in what I am isn't making anything less of me. It is making something more of me by understanding how I play a part, small but necessary, in the order of all of Nature. By humbling myself I can truly exalt myself.
I have always enjoyed the wonderful imagery of Tolkien's Creation Myth from the Silmarillion. Iluvatar directs the Ainur to assist him in Creation by singing together in a beautiful harmony, each part playing a role in the magnificence of the whole. It is only Melkor in his vanity who seeks to spoil the great theme with his own composition. But it wasn't all about him.
If I am playing in a symphony orchestra, or singing in a choir, I can freely share in the beauty of the music made by all of us together. Or I might try to stubbornly and arrogantly play or sing only my on tune. In the first case, I am joyfully lifted up into the harmony. In the second, my lone voice of dissent will be drowned out by all the rest, and I will feel resentful and miserable. So it is with Providence.
Written on 11/23/1999
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