Giving thanks for the wonder that never ends
I want to examine a couple of texts, one a poem, the other song, one in Hebrew and one in Latin. They are two of my favourite texts, and I am concerned to give a translation that adequately conveys their meaning. Their basic meaning in joy through assembly and communion with others, with something greater. A few words of explanation by way of introduction will serve to show why it matters.
The world seems divided and fractured, constituted by myriad emptinesses and nihilisms, inflicting pain and suffering upon people through isolation and separation, shattering individuals and their communities into pieces. The world is in recovery, attempting to put the pieces of broken selves, lives and communities back together. In one way or another, we are all trying to put and hold relationships together – to others in the community, to the world and the community of life – and we do this out of a deep love and commitment to something outside of us, something greater than we are alone in ourselves. We escape the ego as prison through communion with something greater than we are – with God, Nature, Society. We expand our being and become greater than our egos when we see ourselves in others, join with others. Love and loyalty is expanded as it is shared, returning to us as something greater and richer, nourishing us as a result, and making us something greater than our egos. However, when that reaching out to others is not returned – and it isn’t always – it causes us to question and even to withdraw that love and loyalty, so that communion ceases. That withdrawal diminishes us. We come to contract rather than expand our being and, as a result, we become smaller, anxious, insecure versions of our true selves. We become lesser than we truly are.
In time, if we exercise soul care, we come to ask questions as to what we really want out of life, in terms of its value and meaning. We wonder why it is that what we send out to the world isn’t always returned, and face the choice of carrying on giving love and loyalty, or withdrawing it, and withdrawing ourselves from communion with something greater. The truth will come to us in quiet moments, and we find it in what Tolkien called ‘the inner consistency of reality.’ If we trust to that, and see the relation of each and all, Ourselves and Others, in terms of that consistency, then we can grow and evolve from the pain and suffering, overcoming the isolation, and finding that something greater within and without. St Augustine stated that loving your neighbour as yourself is predicated upon being able to love oneself in the first place. If you don’t love yourself, you will not be able to love others. In the Anglo-Saxon, the word ‘neighbour’ refers to one who builds nearby. Reaching out to the world in an expansive sense of being is a form of building, building oneself, one’s relationships to the world, learning that the greater love is real, that it can be accessed and shared, that the ego becomes stronger and richer through asking for, and giving, help and support. In the process, you come to build a fellowship in the world. What is fellowship? It is friendship. For Aristotle, friendship was the highest value in life. No society can survive and thrive without friendship. Being is expanded through a society of friends. Without friendship, without ties of love and loyalty, society fractures into myriad egoistic emptinesses, and that is something that diminishes each and all. After breaking our selves into pieces, we are coming to learn the value of fellowship, the fellowship of all creatures, too, within the earthly commonwealth of life. In the process, we start to feel the strength and joy that have lain dormant within us, that family and friends see in us, and help draw out of us through relation with them. Loving oneself is a necessary condition of loving others as our neighbours. That love comes out through expansive communion with others. Through commitment to others, to friends and family, to the non-human beings and bodies of the greater world that enfolds and nourishes us, we expand our being and give thanks for this wonderful Life! That is to enter a fellowship of all creatures great and small, celebrating and honouring the life force that is embodied in us and in all. When we share with others what does not serve our interests in some narrow and immediate sense we take the risk that we are giving something of ourselves that will not be returned. That’s scary and seemingly irrational, in terms of the instrumental form of rationality that dominates the system world we live in. If all do the rational think and withdraw love and loyalty and commitment, then there will be contraction rather expansion, and instead of mutual self-affirmation, there will be the mutual self-cancellation of self-interested, self-maximising minimal selves leading to mutual self-annihilation. The zero-sum politics that dominates the world of politics, geopolitics and business is leading us in that direction. We need an ethic that draws us into positive sum cooperation, making a clear space for us to enter with others and which we may fill with love, loyalty and fellowship, a space that allows us to humbly and respectfully find our true purpose in life in relation to others, and thereby embrace our own true nature. And express awe and wonder at the beauty of it all. And give thanks!
I’m neither a Hebrew scholar, nor a Latin scholar, but I’ll have a go at translation anyway...
"A Walk to Caesarea" / Hanah Senesh
Hebrew
אֵלִי, אֵלִי,
שֶׁלֹּא יִגָּמֵר לְעוֹלָ
הַחוֹל וְהַיָּ
רִישְׁרוּשׁ שֶׁל הַמַּיִ
בְּרַק הַשָּׁמַיִ
תְּפִילַת הָאָדָ
Eli, Eli, she loh yigamer leolam
Hachol vehayam,
Rishroosh shel hamayim
Berack hashamayim
T'filat ha'adam
Putting different versions that are given together gives us this:
My God, My God
May these things never end;
The sand and the sea
The rustle/plash/rush of the water
The brilliance/shine of the sky/the lightning of heaven/the heavens
The prayer of Man.
It’s how to translate the lines on the water and the sky that is the problem. ‘Plash’ would do it, but it’s not a well-known word, and I’d rather have it simple. I’ve come up with two versions, one that has the action and drama of life and nature, and one that has the calm and beauty. A poem for all seasons.
Active version
My Lord, My God
May these things never end:
The sand and the sea
The rush of the water
The lightning of the heavens
The prayer of Man.
Passive version
My God, My God
I pray that these things never end:
The sand and the sea
The murmur of the water
The shine of the sky
The prayer of Man
And here is a singable version:
My Lord, My God
I pray that that these things never end:
The sand and the sea
and the waves breaking and sighing
and high over the water
the wind blowing free.
The lightning and rain and the darkness descending
and ever and ever the nature of man.
There is beauty in simplicity. Speaking of which, I come now to the second text, Quanta Qualia.
Here is the song, sung by Hayley Westenra, Quanta Qualia:
(Hayley only at beginning, choir begins at Quanta (line 3).)
Anima mea (x2)
Mane! Mane! (x2)
Quanta, oh Quanta,
Qualia, oh Qualia,
Quanta Qualia,
Conventus gaudia (x2)
Erunt.
Mane...
(choir only)
Anima mea (x2)
Mane! Mane! (x2)
Quanta, oh Quanta,
Qualia, oh Qualia,
Quanta Qualia,
Conventus gaudia (x2)
Erunt.
Mane...
(Hayley only)
Anima mea (x2)
Mane! Mane! Mane!
Oh Erunt.
The writer of the music Patrick Hawes translates his brother Andrew’s lyrics thus:
Oh my soul
Wait
How great and how wonderful
The moment of meeting
Will be
I’d query ‘how great and how wonderful’ (although it does seem to be the favoured translation, and I’d certainly want something stronger than ‘the moment of meeting.’
Anima mea
This is straightforward enough. (My soul, my soul).
Mane! Mane!
This is also simple (Wait! Wait!, although I do like ‘Abide!’
Quanta, oh Quanta, (how great)
Qualia, oh Qualia,
Quanta Qualia,
This is complicated, whole books have been written on quantity and quality, the relation between the two and the transformation of quantity into quality.
O quanta = O how great
http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/a-12th-century-hymn.9412/
Quanta and qualia – Quanta is used here to mean quantum mechanical entities, numbers, and measurement in general. Qualia, means the ‘raw feels’ of sensation (i.e. the experience of the redness of red, as distinct from any information processing or biochemistry associated with producing that effect).
That’s the transformation I see going on here. And I want words that express that meaning, concisely and simply. In fine, ‘Quanta Qualia’ means ‘how great and how wonderful’ in the sense of ‘oh how great a feeling.’ And it’s a feeling of ecstatic joy that is being conveyed, a joy that comes through meeting and union.
Conventus gaudia
The joy of and through assembly, the joy of meeting.
Erunt.
Will be, shall be.
Mane...
Wait! Abide!
So I have these options:
Anima mea (My soul, Soul of mine)
Mane! (Wait!)
Quanta Qualia (how great and how wonderful) (what a feeling)
Conventus gaudia (assembly joy) (the joy of meeting)
Erunt. (Will be)
Mane! (Wait!)
The chord progression at 3:09 is out of this world, that is, an ecstatic experience. Hence ‘what a feeling’, ‘how great a feeling.’ Patrick Hawes says here: ‘What I wanted to create here is really a feeling of ecstasy as the singer sings about this moment of meeting and how great and how wonderful it will be.’
He refers to the ‘soprano climax,’ before all the singers join in to sing in this perfect moment of meeting. That describes assembly as joy, leading me to add ‘joy’ to Hawes’ ‘moment of meeting’ to produce ‘the joy of meeting.’
The words express a heartfelt longing for the joys of togetherness, ecstasy through union, a happiness that is shared in a future moment of meeting. The ecstasy of this moment is emphasised by the soprano solo and climax, with the repetition of key words 'mane', 'gaudia' and 'conventus' deepening the intensity of this cosmic longing for ecstatic union and bliss.
I did a quick online translation, which made something spiritual and divine sound very earthy indeed, which gave me a few clues as to the real meaning, if little by way of accurate translation:
"The morning of my life! Stay! What, oh what kind of man oh quality, quantity to quality, will delight Assembly. ... My soul, early in the morning! Stay! What, oh what kind of man oh quality, quantity to quality, will delight Assembly. ... My soul, early in the morning! Stay! Stay! And oh."
Oh indeed.. It sounds like the ecstasy of Theresa of Avila. Interesting, certainly, but not quite what I was looking for. (At least, I don't think so. Spiritual Ecstasy.) I thought it wise to give the matter a little more thought, and put greater effort into getting an accurate translation.
More insightful linguistically was the translation of ‘O Quanta Qualia’ I got from this, A Neglected Masterpiece by Peter Abelard
Here, Canon Jim Foley comments that whilst J. O’Conner’s translation of ‘O Quanta Qualia’ ‘might be considered archaic today’, ‘he has managed the impossible by offering a fine translation of the first line, a line which is almost untranslatable – O quanta qualia, ‘Ah me! How calm and deep’ is perfect.’ And perfect will do me fine. Nothing less than perfect will do ‘Quanta Qualia’ justice. How apt that the words by which this perfect song is titled are the ones that are ‘almost untranslatable.’
So there it is:
O Quanta Qualia translates as ‘Ah me! How calm and deep.’
Archaic, not the one the writer uses, but perfect all the same, expressing something profoundly fulfilling about the experience of ecstatic joy through union.
I like ‘abide’ too instead of ‘wait’, although I may be pushing things a little here. ‘Wait’ is fine. But ‘abide’ indicates a reality to observe and adhere, something greater to accept and conform to, to accede to. That’s the sense of a union with something greater than the ego, the union to come. The archaic meaning of ‘abide’ as ‘live’ or ‘dwell’ makes sense of this union, as in coming to abide in a world that expresses an assembly of joy.
In the end, words are merely a blunt instrument, that’s why we have music. The music cuts through directly. So there is no substitute for the song itself. Go direct to the inner consistency of reality! The ecstasy that takes us higher.
My very good friend, and not inconsiderable Latin scholar, Hélène Domon, has given me this:
"Mane! The verb maneo means to stay, to remain. It's the same word in "immanence." Anima mea, mane joins transcendence and immanence. That's the feeling of bewilderment, and it takes the form of an ecstatic awaiting."
That's it! An ecstatic longing, a longing for union that is ecstatic in its completion. Hence the joy of the meeting to come. That expresses the meaning I want to convey perfectly.
It took me a while. I'm an incorrigibly verbose, loquacious, garrulous, voluble and wordy person … who never knows when to stop the words from flowing. It's better to sing. When it comes to the emotional roller-coaster that is life, there are some things that can only be sung. And that's why we sing. I’ll give two English translations: one simple, one ‘archaic’, both somewhat short of the perfection expressed in the Latin and the music, but the nearest the English can take us to it.
Anima mea My soul
Mane! Wait!
Quanta Qualia How great and how wonderful
Conventus gaudia The joy of meeting
Erunt Will be
Mane! Wait!
Or, the archaic version
Anima mea Soul of mine
Mane! Abide!
Quanta Qualia Ah me! How calm, how deep
Conventus gaudia The joy of meeting
Erunt Shall be
Mane! Abide!
I’m writing too much, as usual. I’m finding that words tend to generate more hot air and heated debate than clarity, rendering simple things incredibly complicated and inviting misunderstanding. I have researched my book Being and Place thoroughly, and have decided to use minimal assumptions so as to avoid a theism vs atheism debate, or any kind of ideological debate that simply fractures into endless arguments over subjective value judgments that are irresolvable in their own terms. That’s why, for all the obsession over politics and political debates, clashes and campaigns, nothing gets resolved. People mobilise against other platforms, but none can advance a positive platform which can command common assent in its merits. I try to present an argument that anyone who believes in the true, the good and the beautiful can accept.
That said, in the end, I have to be clear about this search for meaning in the universe. Carl Gustav Jung spoke well when he wrote of 'modern man in search of a soul'. That cosmic longing will never go away. We are made for it, it is built into us. And that, for good or ill, must mean that at some point, I have to make the transition from facts, reasons, logic and evidence – first order statements, or logic and empirical statements for logical positivists - and express a view on that which cannot be expressed, attempt to define that which cannot be defined. The deep human sense of longing has its origins in God, and finds its fulfilment in God. If we look, we will find. It's there in St Anselm's prayer to God: ‘grant me what you have made me long for.’
Now that is a view that cannot be defined and conceived logically or intellectually. And that longing and its satisfaction involves waiting and requires patience. It needs another order of human knowing and experience in order to express the meaning adequately. Pertinent here is Wittgenstein and the wonder he expresses at the mystery of life. To those who affirm the human capacity to know the world, and who believe that such knowledge is the road to freedom, such words sound premature, an invitation into mysticism, obscurantism and irrationalism. They could be used that way. But not necessarily. There is no abandoning of reason. To express wonder is not to adopt a fideist position that devalues reason.
It's too bad that the modern world has become diverted from true realities by becoming in thrall to its technological capacities - which are indeed great. That seems to be a temptation of the modern age, expressing an inversion of means and ends. Jacques Ellul's The Technological Bluff is a great book. Ellul makes it clear that technology is not and can never be an ethics:
‘The first point that we can be sure of is that no philosophy of technique is possible. Nor is any technical culture, in spite of the great pretensions of some modern humanists. There can be no philosophy of technique because technique has nothing whatever to do with wisdom. On the contrary, it is solely an expression of pride. It makes excessiveness finally possible (as we have seen), an excessiveness that on the one hand rolls on without our wanting it or participating in it (there is a difference in this regard from Dionysiac excess, which was human, and also from all that Nietzsche wrote on the subject). On the other hand, technique attains a dimension so exorbitant that we cannot even record its products, let alone direct them. We need machines to record what other machines are doing. Only computers can record sounds and photographs from the planets. Only the complex machines of microphysicists can record the phenomena that calculations tell us exist. As Nils Bohr could say: "Matter, the real, is what my machines permit me to record." Hence our own machines have truly replaced us. We cannot make a philosophy of them, for a philosophy implies limits and definitions and defined areas that technique will not allow.’ (Ellul, The Technological Bluff, ch 11 Progress and the Absurd).
My point is not made against technology but against an expansion of means bought at the price of a diminution of meaning. I had the misfortune to read - and then have to write a long critique of - Stewart Brand's book Whole Earth Discipline (2009). He opens the book with this statement: "We are as gods and HAVE to get good at it." There then follows chapter after chapter on the deification of our technologies, with explicit statements which render ethics secondary and ephemeral. A plain delusion. Gandhi spoke with disdain of those who dream of systems so perfect that no one would need to be good. Character, being good and doing good, knowing right from wrong, matters; it is the difference between going along with institutional and systemic imperatives to do evil, however unwittingly, and living as moral beings exercising choices that make a difference.
Einstein said this: 'Formerly, one had perfect aims but imperfect means. Today we have perfect means and tremendous possibilities but confused goals' (Einstein quoted in Roger Garaudy The Alternative Future 1975:39). This loss of the moral compass is a direct consequence of the split between fact and value as a result of 'the disenchantment of the world', the way mechanistic science and purposeless materialism has come to see the world as objectively valueless. I am working to put fact and value back together in a purposeful world.
Here is what Wittgenstein writes:
“Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.”
I take that as an expression of wonder, awe and reverence – and an invitation to give thanks for the miracle of life. And we give thanks for the gift of life by accepting that gift and living it in a way that respects and values its nature. That leads me to take a critical position with respect to the disconnection that leads us to lose our lives, indeed our souls, diverting us from true purpose, and thereby losing meaning. That meaninglessness pervades the world we have created, a world in which means have been enlarged to displace true ends. I focus on the work of reconnection that enables us to appreciate and live the life we have been given. Disconnected from the sources of being, we cannot give thanks. We just close in on ourselves, seek to own, control, use the gift we have been given, and see the world of others as mere exploitable resources to be used to private ends. We come to a mean and narrow existence in which we owe nothing to no-one, trust no-one. We just retreat into the ego as a prison and harden the heart. When each comes to use others as mere means to private ends, all become subservient to external force. When we see ourselves as dependent and contingent beings, we come to trust others, place our faith in something greater than ourselves.
G.K. Chesterton suffered from long periods of depression, and wrote of how he came out of them for good.
"I had wandered to a position not very far from the phrase of my Puritan grandfather, when he said that he would thank God for his creation [even] if he were a lost soul. I hung on to religion by one thin thread of thanks ... At the back of our brains ... there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder; so that a man might suddenly understand that he was alive, and be happy."
That 'one thin thread' is the tightrope we walk; it is narrow, but real and resilient, it can take our weight if we trust enough to put our best foot forward. It's our best hope. Wittgenstein describes the religious man or woman as a "tightrope walker": "It almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it." (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1948), 73).
Giving thanks is all about the work of reconnection, celebrating the gift of life, expressing wonder at it all. And that means overcoming the disconnection that leads to so many lost souls, acknowledging that we are dependent and contingent beings, that we need to trust others and have faith in something greater than we are alone. And it means going beyond the mania to own, control, and use the 'things' and people of this world to ... well ... give thanks and to be thankful for life, nature's plenitude, connection and connectedness. Stay connected! There is joy in that connection, and there is a hope that one day peace shall come to everyone through joyous union.
I shall close with these beautiful words from Jonathan Sacks, which show us How we can face the future without fear, together:
“Don't forget that biologically, we're social animals. We've spent most of our evolutionary history in small groups. We need those face-to-face interactions where we learn the choreography of altruism and where we create those spiritual goods like friendship and trust and loyalty and love that redeem our solitude. When we have too much of the "I" and too little of the "we," we can find ourselves vulnerable, fearful and alone. It was no accident that Sherry Turkle of MIT called the book she wrote on the impact of social media "Alone Together."
I think the simplest way of safeguarding the future "you" is to strengthen the future "us" in three dimensions: the us of relationship, the us of identity and the us of responsibility.
So here is my simple suggestion. It might just change your life, and it might just help to begin to change the world. Do a search and replace operation on the text of your mind, and wherever you encounter the word "self," substitute the word "other." So instead of self-help, other-help; instead of self-esteem, other-esteem.
And if you do that, you will begin to feel the power of what for me is one of the most moving sentences in all of religious literature. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
We can face any future without fear so long as we know we will not face it alone.
So for the sake of the future "you," together let us strengthen the future "us."
Thank you.”
And give thanks as we engage in the work of reconnection.
My God, My God
I pray that these things never end:
The sand and the sea
The murmur of the water
The shine of the sky
The prayer of Man
My soul
Wait!
How great and how wonderful
The joy of meeting
Will be
Wait!