Boethius, the Consolation 3.27

. . . “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