. . . “Grant then, O Father,
that this mind of ours may rise
to Your throne of majesty;
grant us to reach that fount of
good.
Grant that we may so find light
that we may set on You unblinded eyes;
cast You there from the heavy
clouds of this material world.
Shine forth upon us in Your own
true glory.
You are the bright and peaceful
rest of all,
Your children who worship You.
To see You clearly is the limit
of our aim.
You are our beginning,
our progress,
our guide,
our way,
our end.”
—from
Book 3, Poem 9
It is
not only the fact that the Divine exists that came to matter to me, but that
the existence of the Divine is itself the measure of all other existence. It is
further not only that everything moves as it does because of Divine Mind, but
that the fullest union with Divine Mind is itself the purpose of my own mind.
I must
stop thinking of God as something “out there”, somehow distant and removed, but
as something “right here”, more real than anything I have ever thought to be
real. If it is, it only is through
the fullness of all that Is.
By this
point in first reading the text of the Consolation,
I originally had much the same cynical and skeptical response many other modern
readers may also have. I would roll my eyes at the pseudo-holiness of all the
poseurs and the manipulators, strutting about while insisting that God was on
their side. Was Boethius going to try to play that game with me?
It took
me quite a bit of honesty and humility to recognize that it was ironically only
my own pride that was getting in the way. Because others abused what reason
told me must be true, would I then reject the truth behind what they abused?
How foolish to say that God is on anyone’s side at all; only a man who makes
himself a God could ever think such a thing. Men pick sides, out of greed and
malice, while God remains what He always was, and always will be.
Once
again, I needed to think bigger. I needed to look beyond imperfect human
standards, and rest my mind and heart in more perfect standards. I began to
wonder if maybe, just maybe, I had been looking at it all wrong. I understood
that happiness could only be found in that which was lacking in nothing. Well,
what was it that, in and of itself, lacked in nothing?
I made a
connection for myself, that God not only made me, in whatever way we may wish
to describe it, but that I had also been made for God, that my beginning was also
my ending, that my very life had been made to return to where I began. I was a
bit like a salmon, coming home to spawn. I have a mind, ordered to know the
truth. I have a will, ordered to love the good. What is the deepest truth, and
what is the greatest love? Recognizing this changed my life to the core, and it
wasn’t always that comfortable. It meant rebuilding everything about myself.
Lady
Philosophy has asked Boethius to seek God’s aid. Wait, I thought, why would
God, in any form, try to help me? He is everything, and I am a meaningless
afterthought! No, once again my own stubbornness and arrogance was getting in
the way. If He made me, did He not make me to do well, to use my own freedom to
fulfill my very purpose? Even as God is, by definition, that which is the
greatest, it is precisely because He is the greatest that nothing is ever too
small for Him.
It
sounds quite silly, but my anger and frustration with such questions would keep
me awake at night. Surely, God didn’t care. Look at how much He let me suffer,
after all, and let other people suffer even more. Yet now we are cutting to the
bone, however painful it may be. Was I made to rich, or pleasured, or famous?
No, I am a being with a nature ordered to living well, to understanding and to charity,
not to luxuries and entitlements.
So I
hated God, or denied that He existed, because he didn’t give me stuff; stuff
isn’t what I need. Virtue is what I need, and is that which can never be taken
away from me. All that had ever happened to me always gave me an opportunity
for that, if only I would accept it.
I try
not to tell others how to think, but I did learn how I needed to think, not by
any blind conformity, but by the demands of my own common sense. At every turn,
I made excuses, and deep down inside I knew they were just excuses. I ripped
myself apart because I didn’t want to admit that happiness was not what certain
important people, as frail and weak as I was, told me what it had to be.
Here’s
the simplest version I came up with, after many years of inner turmoil: Do you
want what is perfect? Then make your way, slowly but surely, to what is
actually perfect. There are no substitutions.
Time to
swim back upstream.
Written in 9/2015
Sean, this is a tough subject. And, I think, a freeing one. My wife once asked me why she should ask God where her keys are...I replied, the whole omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient thing makes your keys as relevant as the fate of stars. If he made us in his image, and sees us as the beautifully terribly flawed creatures that we are. Well, car keys are the least of it.
ReplyDelete