When one asked him how a man may be convinced that every one of his acts is seen by God: Do you not think, he said, that all things are united together?
“I do,” he said.
Again, do you think that things on earth feel the influence of things in heaven?
“I do,” he said.
Whence comes it that in such perfect order as at God's command, when He bids the plants to flower, they flower, when He bids them grow, they grow, when He bids them to bear fruit, they bear, when to ripen, they ripen; when again He bids them drop their fruit, they drop it, and when to let fall their leaves, they let them fall, and when He bids them gather themselves up and be still and take their rest, they are still and take their rest?
Whence is it that as the moon waxes and wanes and as the sun draws near and departs afar we behold so great a change and transformation of things on the earth? If the plants then and our own bodies are so closely bound up with the Universe, and so share its affections, is it not much more so with our minds?
And if our minds are so bound up with God and in such close touch with Him as being part and portion of His very being, does not God perceive their every movement as closely akin to Him?
This is sadly another one of those chapters that gets overlooked when our concern for ourselves begins to exclude our Divine source, where we get so caught up in the parts that we forget about the whole.
Once I begin to minimize God’s existence, or doubt both His complete transcendence and immanence, I must remind myself that the problem is not in the workings of the Universe, but in my own muddled thinking. These are the kinds of problems that arise when the effect wishes to spite the cause.
On a personal level, asking “Does God know anything about me?” is a variation on worrying “Is there really anything important about me in the grand scheme of things?” A calm reasoning, not at the mercy of fickle and flighty impressions, can only answer with a confident “yes” to both questions, for nothing ever exists outside of an absolute Unity.
When faced with an uncertainty about the guidance of a universal Providence, where everything has a dignity according to its own particular role, I recover some clarity and comfort by repeating a sort of formula to myself, one I have worked through in my reflections over the years. I never express it in quite the same way twice, but it helps me keep my head and heart in harmony, and I find that it has something in common with what Epictetus argues in this text.
Where there is causality, there is order.
Where there is order, there is purpose.
Where there is purpose, there is design.
Where there is design, there is intelligence.
Where intelligence rules, nothing is in vain.
And it can always be added that this applies not merely to the plan of my own life, but to the plan behind all things, and while my intelligence has its limits, the Intelligence that governs the whole Universe will, by definition, have no limits.
Now why should I keep worrying that God, in whatever way we conceive of Him, neither understands nor cares? Any knowledge and love that have ever been, and could ever be, are in themselves the very expressions of God. There is no distance or separation between the measured and the measure.
This principle applies equally on a grand scale, like the motions of the stars and the planets, and on a humble scale, like the growth of a single flower, because all things, great or small, are intimately connected. The totality fits together. How odd it is when I can discern the order and purpose in the natural world around me, and yet I fail to see that order and purpose within myself!
My own human consciousness, by which I can discover meaning and value, is no less than a product of Divine Consciousness, by which all creatures receive their meaning and value. The division of mind from Mind comes only from the anxieties of my imagination.
I should not think that God must be ignorant and uncaring, simply because I may have foolishly chosen to become ignorant and uncaring.
Written in 12/2000
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