The Death of Marcus Aurelius

The Death of Marcus Aurelius

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Boethius, The Consolation 3.26


"You who does rule the Universe with everlasting law,
founder of earth and heaven alike,
who has bidden time stand forth from out of Eternity,
for ever firm Yourself, yet giving movement unto all.
No causes were without You
that could then impel You to create this mass of changing matter,
but within Yourself exists the very idea of perfect good,
which grudges nothing, for of what can it have envy?
You make all things follow that high pattern.
In perfect beauty You move in Your mind a world of beauty,
making all in a like image,
and bidding the perfect whole to complete its perfect functions.
All the first principles of Nature You do bind together by perfect orders as of numbers,
so that they may be balanced each with its opposite:
cold with heat, and dry with moist together;
thus fire may not fly upward too swiftly because too purely,
nor may the weight of the solid earth drag it down and overwhelm it.
You make the soul as a third between mind and material bodies:
to these the soul gives life and movement,
for You spread it abroad among the members of the Universe, now working in accord.
Thus is the soul divided as it takes its course,
making two circles, as though a binding thread around the world.
Thereafter it returns unto itself and passes around the lower earthly mind;
and in like manner it gives motion to the heavens to turn their course.
You it is who does carry forward with like inspiration these souls and lower lives.
You fill these weak vessels with lofty souls,
and send them abroad throughout the heavens and earth,
and by Your kindly law do turn them again to Yourself and bring them to seek,
as fire does, to rise to You again.” . . .  

—from Book 3, Poem 9

Of course I know that the trendy philosophical fashion of the age is to deny God, anything greater than ourselves, or anything that might give us a meaning and purpose beyond our own preferences.

I no longer choose to fight with people over such a point, because I know what a task it was to fight with myself over such a point. Being in conflict with myself never made it any better, though sincere and humble reflection made all of the difference.

I can hardly blame people for their doubts. How often have you heard people tell you that what they want from you is, of course, God’s will, or that you must give all that you have to an invisible man in the sky? Somehow, all that you have ends up in their pockets. How convenient for them! They claim to know what you don’t know.

Yet I suggest the problem is not from believing in something greater than us, but rather from not believing in what is the greatest. Your boss, and your banker, and your lawyer, and your priest are in a sense, more than you, since they have more power than you; the conventional image of the stern fellow with a big white beard, sitting on a glowing throne, is hardly any different. Those people may be something, but they are not everything. Look to what is itself everything.

No, the great difficulty with conceiving of the Divine, in whatever form we may understand it, is not that we are thinking too big, but that we aren’t thinking big enough. Think bigger, to the point where you have reached the biggest, that beyond which you can conceive of nothing more.

I don’t just think of a mighty warrior, or an influential bureaucrat, or a powerful politician. I think of that which has no limits and borders, which allows no weakness or imperfection, the very measure and standard of all existence. I think of the infinite, and I think of what is boundless, with no beginning or end. It isn’t a part of creation, one piece of the whole, but rather the source of creation. It isn’t even a being, but being itself. All other passing things are effects, shadows, or aspects of its immovable permanence.

Does this seem like a pie on the sky? I have sometimes thought so, until I actually put on my thinking cap. If I see what is changing, it is only possible through what is unchangeable. If I see what comes to be, it is only possible through what already is. If I see what is incomplete, it is only possible through what is complete.

If I tell myself I can’t see it with my eyes, I am fooling myself. I see it in, and through, and with everything I see around me. The cause is apparent in the effect. I feel the light directly, which requires the source of the light. I have come to be, and I will end, and that means there is somewhere I have come from, and somewhere I am going to. I know all creatures are somehow lacking, in constant search for what fulfills them, the end for which they were made.

An awareness of the Divine is not a matter of blind faith; I have come to consider it a necessity of reason.

There are days I don’t want this to be true at all, but there are also days I want to not get out of bed either. I found that what bothered me about God was not God Himself, but what small-minded people chose to make of God, serving not the Image of all things, but only their own image. I was quite busy hacking away at the members, and I ignored the root. I saw the malice in the messengers, and I neglected the message.

Everything in Nature has its function, an all function demands purpose, and all purpose reveals Mind—not just any mind, but Perfect Mind.

If I am seeking something constant, stable, and absolutely reliable, should I not look to what is in itself constant, stable, and absolutely reliable? I don’t mean this or that school, or ritual, or cult. I mean that which is permanent through all impermanence.

Does the name bother me? Let me then change the name, at least for the moment, if it brings with it too much uncomfortable baggage. Let me never, however, close myself to the Divine reality of which I am only a part.

I am piece of a world. The world is itself something in a state of flux. What stands behind it and makes it what it is? 

Written in 9/2015

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