Being Who You Are: Beyond Naming and Framing
‘When you realise that eternity is right here now, that it is in your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following: That which you are was never born and will never die’.
(Joseph Campbell)
I had an interesting session in cardiac rehab today, some deep words shared by group members about being given a ‘second chance’ at life. Or third or fourth or more, since a few of us have had a few near misses with death before. The words were few, but pertinent, and resonated with the members of the group, all ages and experiences, all of them facing their own mortality, many for the first time. So I came home and gave the words some thought. And added some extra philosophical reflection.
I got a bit irked by the idea of having ‘goals’ and ‘targets’ in order to achieve some end state of happiness as healthy living. What kind of happiness, health and living?
Here’s how I expressed myself. Life is a fundamental task, not so much a problem to be solved with a well-defined and complete list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’t’s’, but an encounter with the gift that is life. We can abuse that gift, or give thanks for it. Appreciate it.
Wittgenstein described ‘seeing the world as a miracle’. ‘The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is’, wrote Wittgenstein, (Tractatus 6.44).
We can express wonder at the order of things and try to understand why the world is intelligible to intelligent beings. It’s part of the quest for meaning. But it doesn’t exhaust that quest. Rather than try to work out ‘what’ the world is, we can express sheer wonder ‘that’ the world is. The sheer existence of the world and of life and of our own selves is a cause for wonder. And thanks. And joy.
As to the origin which caused all of this to exist, I’d question whether there has to be an answer to the question. What would change in the way we are and the way we live if we could ever come to know completely the answer to that question? Is there a ‘principle of sufficient reason’? Leibniz is one of those who thought so: 'No fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise, although these reasons usually cannot be known to us'. (Leibniz, Monadology, sec. 32).
The likes of Hume and Kant looked at questions like this, and came to the conclusions they did. Kant claimed that Hume woke him from his ‘dogmatic slumbers’, and that set Kant on his way to find a middle way between and beyond empiricism and rationalism, navigating a path beyond the twin-reefs of radical scepticism on the one hand and metaphysical speculation on the other.
In his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779), Hume emphasises the orderliness of the world, and goes so far as to express the view that the world evinces an 'internal, inherent principle of order' which 'first arranged, and still maintains, order in this universe' and 'bears... some remote inconceivable analogy to the other operations of Nature and among the rest to the economy of human mind and thought'. (Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. Kemp Smith (2nd ed., London: 1947), Part VI, p. 174; Part XII, p. 218). Well that’s the kind of metaphysical speculation for which no good reason can be given, and is open to all the objections that Hume himself launched against such thinking.
And Kant pours cold water on the argument from order:
'The utmost ... that the argument can prove is an architect of the world who is always very much hampered by the adaptability of the material in which he works, not creator of the world to whose idea everything is subject.' (Critique of Pure Reason, B655).
Compare this to Hume:
'Look round this universe: the whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children!’ (Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Part XI, p. 211).
In the words of Richard Dawkins:
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” (Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life).
‘Man must at last wake out of his millenary dream and discover his total solitude, his fundamental isolation. He must realize that, like a gypsy, he lives on the boundary of an alien world; a world that is deaf to his music, and as indifferent to his hopes as it is to his sufferings and his crimes.’ (Monod (1972), p. 160.)
Is that all there is? These are not views I care for and, judging by reactions whenever I quote them, neither do most people. That doesn’t make me right and those views wrong, at least not in the sense of scientific or philosophical reason. But I think the question of life’s worth transcends such reason. That may be all that there is to our scientific or philosophic reason. But that’s not all that there is to life. And in the very least, intuitively, at the core of our being, we know it. Philosopher A.N. Whitehead came across such views many years ago and declared: "If men cannot live by bread alone, still less can they do so on disinfectants" (Science and the Modern World 87). Lewis Mumford wrote well in this respect: ‘If human life has no purpose and meaning, then the philosophy that proclaims this fact is even emptier than the situation it describes. If, on the other hand, there is more to man's fate and history than meets the eye, if the process as a whole has significance, then even the humblest life and the most insignificant organic function will participate in that ultimate meaning. (Mumford 1952: 61/62).
In The Labour of Sisyphus, existentialist Albert Camus asks us to imagine if we could come to know everything there is to know about the material world, and answer the question what would change in our lives as a result. Camus’ purpose here is not to denigrate scientific knowledge but to address a deeper question, the primary question of life’s worth. That’s a moral question, and a question that presupposes life's value. It isn’t a question of scientific reason or philosophical proof. So I return to Leibniz here, the idea that there a ‘principle of sufficient reason’, and that nothing worthy can be said that is lacking in sufficient reason: 'No fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise, although these reasons usually cannot be known to us'. (Leibniz, Monadology, sec. 32).
The likes of Hume and Kant were challenging the rationalists who, in various forms, argued that there must be good reasons explaining the ‘what’ of life’s existence. But this has all the hallmarks of a non-question, the kind of intellectual puzzle that the liveliest minds can come to waste their intellects on, each side endlessly reacting against the fallacious and misguided arguments of the other. There is no good reason to accept the principle of sufficient reason, and there is no need for us to accept it. No reason can be given and no reason needs to be sought in order to explain distinctions and differences in the ‘what’ of the world, and the same with respect to explaining why this order of things exists rather than some other order. It’s all beside the point. There are more important, deeper, kinds of knowledge that we need in order to understand life’s ultimate worth and thereby live well. If asked to choose, I’d go with the idea of an intelligible, ordered universe accessible to intelligent minds. I can give reasons for it. I doubt that they could be considered to meet the stringent test of sufficient reason. But they don’t need to. Because that choice is made, ultimately, on grounds other than philosophic reason. Aristotle could write of the sharing of the human and the divine nous in contemplation, the supreme activation of human intelligence as a participation in God's self-understanding. He, like Plato, affirms the power and objectivity of reason, something giving us experiential access to the divine, transcendent source of truth. Aristotle opens the Metaphysics with the claim that 'by nature all men desire to know'. In Aristotle’s Lagoon, development biologist Armand Leroi argues that this is a claim for the dignity and the worth of natural science. In truth, there is something much more profound than that to Aristotle’s claim, because he proceeds from that statement to affirm that the most desirable object of knowledge is 'the highest good in the whole of nature, identifying that good with God, and that understanding 'in the highest sense' is concerned with God, that God is the supreme object of understanding or thought and that 'intelligence (nous) understands itself through participation (metalepsis) in the object of understanding; for it becomes an object of understanding by being touched and understood, so that intelligence and the object of understanding are the same.' Aristotle affirms that 'the first principle upon which depend the sensible universe and nature' is God. Aristotle may well, have been the first scientist, as Armand Leroi argues, the first to examine the world and gather facts about it in a systematic sense, defining, classifying, and categorising. But his argument that all men by nature desire to know points to an understanding that participates in the divine, an unfolding of intelligence that proceeds by nature.
But can he give sufficient reason to justify such claims? Or is it just metaphysical speculation lacking grounds in nature and reason? Aristotle is the most meticulous of thinkers, full of clauses and qualifications and factual statements. But when it comes to establishing the relation between the contemplation of the divine order of things and the requirements of practical life to ensure all-round flourishing within the polis, Aristotle’s usual assuredness gives way to uncharacteristic prevarication. To give just the one instance, Aristotle's concern to justify self-sacrifice for one's friend is noble, but his argument for its reasonableness is strangely deficient. There are many similar examples of an atypical uncertainty on Aristotle's part in the Ethics, and it is interesting to examine why. (And these points apply to Plato too). The approach is overly rational, insofar as any attempt to access the transcendent source through philosophic (or scientific) reason exclusively will necessarily fall short. Such things are beyond the tools and methods of rational investigation. The notion of ‘sufficient reason’ is a chimera. What we could have is sufficient assurance that the world is good, life is a miracle, and that a life of ultimate worth is within our range. In the absence of a revelation that reveals more than philosophic (and scientific) reason is capable of revealing, then those who restrict their gaze to the level of philosophic (and scientific) reason will find themselves asking questions that cannot be answered, and so we will swing between scepticism and rationalism, leaving the thirst meaning unquenched. The truth is that we cannot give ‘sufficient reason’ that the source of life is such that it yields a world of this or that type, fitting a meaning or a purpose that makes sense of our existence, to which we should conform our lives. To put the same point more bluntly, the idea that the world should possess an order and meaning that is discernible to human intelligence and instrumental in the human good is the mere wishful thinking of grown up children (in the words of Max Weber), a millenary dream (the words of Monod).
When asked if he believed in God, physicist Albert Einstein declared: ‘I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.’ (to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein (1929).
That’s the God of the physical world, the God of physical processes and causality. That could be Dawkins’ ‘blind, pitiless’ nature. Other scientists point to a purposeful, animate universe. You can take your pick. Do we choose on the basis of scientific evidence? Or is our preference motivated by other, moral, concerns? My point is that the question cannot just be left to scientific reason, for such reason is necessarily bounded, whereas this ultimate question of life’s worth transcends reason’s tools. In terms of scientific reason, physical creation is indeed indifferent to the fate and doings of humankind.
Who cares for you? A ‘blind, pitiless’ nature could care less for the survival of any of its species, let alone their manifold desires and concerns.
Francis Crick delivers a blunt message to us from the world of science:
“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: 'You're nothing but a pack of neurons.'”
But Crick has failed to take the decisive moral point delivered by Carroll’s Alice. In this passage, Alice was addressing the recalcitrance of a pack of cards, not human beings as moral beings, but inanimate objects incapable of moral understanding and sympathy. Alice was putting the human case against ‘blind, pitiless’ indifference. The full quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is: ‘Who cares for you?’ said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). 'You're nothing but a pack of cards!' (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). The things of the physical world are ‘nothing but’ inanimate objects without moral sense, empathy, sympathy, free will, intelligence. Crick had spectacularly failed to grasp Alice’s point. Human beings, as moral beings, can care and do care for each other and for the things of the world in a way that inanimate things and physical processes cannot and indeed do not. Human beings are capable of moral choice and action, and it is in such choice and action that the question of life’s ultimate worth is answered. And it is through such choice and action as moral beings that individuals grow to their full stature as human beings. Any civilisation in which human beings come to imitate a conception of ‘blind, pitiless’ nature is one which will collapse in on itself as quickly and as easily does a pack of cards, for it will be a civilisation of indifference, where no one cares, neither for themselves nor for others, or for the world that enfolds and sustains them, where no one is concerned to make the right choices and undertake the right actions because nothing we do is considered to make a difference.
Against this, I affirm that human beings are a lot more than a pack of cards, and, as moral beings, are a lot more than can be revealed by scientific explanation. We care. Human beings care. The day they cease to care, either for themselves, for each other, for their environment, is the day they start to die. They can survive in physical terms in the outer landscape for a while, but they will assuredly wither and die in the inner landscape.
I’ll phrase the same point I made above slightly differently to give a fuller explication of the view I am presenting: philosophic or scientific reason is incapable of giving sufficient reason to explain the divine or transcendent source of the order of things in this good world, or our possession of an intelligence which equips us with the ability to understand this good world as an intelligible order, a world that is intrinsically good, purposeful, valuable and meaningful, telling us that life is a miracle and a gift, something to express wonder over the fact of its sheer existence, that we are part of a world that is good, a world that we could love and care for because, in some sense, that world loves and cares for us, a world whose source is personal in a way that is capable of imitation in our lives, offering a guidance and an instruction that we can follow from within life’s creative unfolding and enjoyment. It is upon that standard of practical reason rather than some intricate argument for a principle of sufficient reason that we can ground the way we live our lives.
Jonathan Sacks identifies the something more beyond philosophic and scientific reason I am drawing attention to:
‘There is a difference between a contradiction and a cry.
You can solve a contradiction by sitting quietly in a room, thinking, using conceptual ingenuity, reframing. Philosophy, said Wittgenstein, leaves the world unchanged. But faith does not leave the world unchanged. You cannot solve a cry by thinking. Moses, weeping for his people, is not consoled by Leibniz's admittedly brilliant proof that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.’ (Sacks, The Great Partnership, ch 12).
Talk of human beings as co-creators in an endlessly creative and participatory universe is becoming more and more prevalent, even in science circles. The idea of a participatory universe is stated specifically by physicist John Wheeler, co-creation in the creative universe by theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, there are countless examples. In this participatory universe, everything is the observer and everything is the observed. What matters here is not the objectivity of the universe but its intelligibility. As John Polkinghorne observes, such a notion would be very familiar to St. Thomas Aquinas.
Why is it that almost all physicists want to insist on the reality, appropriately understood, of electrons? I believe it is because the assumption that there are electrons, with all the subtle quantum properties that go with them, makes intelligible great swathes of physical experience that otherwise would be opaque to us. It explains the conduction properties of metals, the chemical properties of atoms, our ability to build electron microscopes, and much else besides. It is intelligibility (rather than objectivity) that is the clue to reality - a conviction, incidentally, that is consonant with a metaphysical tradition stemming from the thought of Thomas Aquinas.’ (John Polkinghorne, Quantum Theory, 2002, ch 6). I have referred to Plato and Aristotle and the participation of human intelligence in divine intelligence. St Thomas also refers to such participation, identifying the uniqueness of the human being in being both a subject of God and a co-operator with God. Jonathan Sacks in the book I cite above refers to ‘The Great Partnership.’ The poet Dante compares this to the horizon ‘which lies in the middle, between two hemispheres’ (Monarchia, III, xvi).
Here is what Aquinas writes: ‘there is in man a certain inclination to know the truth about God and to live in society. In this respect there come under the Natural law all actions connected with such inclinations’ (Summa Theol., la 2a, 94, 2).
Aquinas takes Aristotle’s ‘desire to know’ further than the limitations of philosophic and scientific reason, and so takes us beyond Aristotle’s prevarications and uncertainties in giving good reasons to justify actions he knows to be good and worthy. Aquinas makes the profound statement that ‘Grace does not abolish Nature’. Nature is good, and grace is the perfection of nature, not its negation as a corrupt influence. Aquinas gives us all that Aristotelian naturalism gives us. And then he gives us more even than that. The natural order gives way to a higher order. For nature does not abolish grace or do away with the need for grace. That’s the missing factor in the vision of philosophic or scientific reason. Reason walks hand in hand with faith, but reason is the handmaid of faith. In the end, if we want to take the final step in answering ultimate questions concerning life’s worth, leading us to our ultimate ‘end of eternal blessedness’, then we require faith. As St Thomas wrote: ‘love takes up where knowledge leaves off’. (St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIa IIae, q.27, a.4, ad.1.)
(Two posts from me on this quote:
Dante expresses the soul’s long and perilous pilgrim journey towards God in these words: ‘“What reason can see here, I can impart; beyond that point, it’s Beatrice alone you must await, for faith is here thy need.’ (Purgatorio, xviii, 46-48).
That makes the distinction between two forms of truth, truth of reason and truth of faith; knowing the difference between the two, and respecting the legitimacy of each in accordance with their object, is key to understanding natural law in the Thomist tradition. In the same manner that Virgil hands Dante the pilgrim over to Beatrice on the summit of the mountain of Purgatory, so too does the truth of reason with respect to naturalism constitute for human beings a necessary step on the journey towards perfection. For such perfection, however, there is a step beyond. St Thomas, therefore, does not make the mistake of grounding his system of ethics on an Aristotelian naturalism. On the contrary, his natural law reveals the limitations of such ethical naturalism (a point which shows the deficiencies of the contemporary recovery of Aristotelian naturalism as a quasi-scientific ethics, something which actually ignores the extent to which Aristotle himself made it clear that his ethics requires a cosmological metaphysics pertaining to the divine order. I intend to write more extensively on this point shortly. And I shall also be concerned to distinguish the practical reasonableness of the natural law from modern rationalism and its assertion of the self-sufficiency of reason. To those who baulk at Thomist transcendence or supernaturalism, I can so only this at this point – the modern assertion of the self-sufficiency of human reason threatens to enclose the world in a totalising reason that is its own standard and justification, discarding the transcendent norms, truths and values that constitute our birthright and offer the surest defence of our rights and inherent worth and dignity.)
Why is there evil if God is good and the world is good? Here is Jonathan Sacks’ argument:
‘The sages noted that while Noah was making the ark, he registered no protest against the fact that God was about to destroy most of life through the Flood. That is what made Abraham, not Noah, the hero of faith. Noah accepted. Abraham protested. The religion of Abraham is a religion of protest against evil, in the name of God.
Why then is there suffering in the world? The answer given by Maimonides still seems to be the best. There are, he said, three kinds of evil. First is the evil that follows from the fact that we are physical beings in a physical world. There are tsunamis because the land mass of the earth rests on tectonic plates which sometimes shift, creating earthquakes and giant waves. Had the surface of the earth not rested on tectonic plates, the conditions would not have existed for the emergence of life…
The second kind of evil is that which humans commit against other humans. The third - by far the largest, says Maimonides - is the evil we commit against ourselves: the smoker who complains to God that he has developed cancer; the workaholic who rails against the high blood pressure that caused the heart attack.
These last two evils exist because of human free will. This explanation is often criticised. Could God not have created human beings who - freely and with no divine coercion - only ever did good, not harm? And if the answer is 'No', then could God not have created humans without freedom, if freedom comes at so high a price?
The answer to the first is 'No'. Freedom means the freedom to do evil. Hence Adam and Eve, hence Cain, hence God's regret that he had created humanity in the first place. But freedom is not a minor, negotiable element of the human condition. Abrahamic faith is the religion of freedom as responsible self-restraint. God could have created billions of computers programmed to do nothing but sing his praises. Would such a God be worthy of worship? Is such a God conceivable except as a philosophical joke?
So evil exists because we exist as free beings in a physical world with all the accidents of matter and the pain of mortality. What difference, then, does it make whether our attitude to evil is one of acceptance or of protest?
It makes all the difference. Abraham's protest, and Moses' and Jeremiah's, were not mere cries wasted in the wind. They were cries born in the cognitive dissonance between the world that is and the world that ought to be. The only way of resolving this dissonance is a deed. That is the difference between faith-as-acceptance and faith-as-protest. The only way to deal with slavery is to lead the people to freedom. The only way to confront the evils of the polis is to build a more just social order, with special emphasis on loving the stranger.’
(Sacks, The Great Partnership, ch 12).
So now, having discussed life and its ultimate worth in terms of philosophic reason and its limitations, demonstrating the need for both reason and faith, I may close this discussion with the words that resonate amongst the ‘ordinary’ folk innocent of such intellectualising and demands for proof.
In my cardiac rehab class, we had the opportunity as a group to tell our experiences, share our concerns and worries, express our fears, seek and offer reassurance and comfort. A practical philosophy of living, with no idle abstractions and demands for proofs.
The question of goals and targets cropped up, aiming to make changes in lifestyles so as to engage in right living. I could see the point. If you are behaving badly and doing the wrong things, then you need to change behaviour if you want to live healthily and lengthily. That seems obvious. But I chose to phrase it differently. The basic challenge in life, common to all human beings, is how to live well as human beings. This is often phrased in terms of a contrast between remaining the persons we are, often bad and in need of reform, and becoming better persons than we are. To compare and contrast, criticise and evaluate, set tasks and goals in terms of exercise and diet, is indeed a challenge, complete with a list of instructions and directions and goals. It seems too instrumental to be true to me. I see the whole question in terms of learning how to be. We are who we are, we already exist and have no need to become other than we are. It is a question of being, and the resources to be are already within our reach. Through our actions and choices, we are shaping our own selves, our characters, our being as persons. We do this with others, of course. We need each other in order to be ourselves, and so make commitments to others and other-regarding activities. Our being exists in a sea of mutual relationships. And this requires the notion of free will on the part of moral beings adumbrated earlier. We are more than physical beings, to be issued with an instruction manual containing details of set exercises, diet, targets and goals. Our freedom in action and choice, then, concerns how we are to be persons. Being a person in this sense of moral freedom and responsibility is quite distinct from becoming a person as a healthy physical being.
And I take this to be the only way of answering the ultimate question of life’s worth – the challenge is not to become better than we are, nor to remain, whether through laziness or arrogance, who we are, but to be what we are as human beings, appreciating and giving thanks for all the gifts with which we have been endowed. Rather than arming ourselves with instruction manuals and following orders in order to become a better person, the human challenge is one of addressing the key questions of what it takes to be persons. Is this what Nietzsche was getting at when he urged ‘become what you are?’ I’d need to check his argument. In terms of my argument, I’d rephrase that as ‘be what you are!’ And the challenge lies in discerning how to be what we are. An even deeper way of phrasing the challenge here is to see who we are as an endeavour that constitutes a life well lived and worthy of living. We can evade the responsibility, and choose to do things and absorb ourselves in activities that are unworthy of our gifts. And, in that way, we will fail to be with the depth of our being.
In conclusion, I’ll bring the discussion back to the notion of participation. In being as opposed to becoming, we are ‘participating’ in a good rather than ‘achieving’ a good. And such participation is ongoing as we perform the actions and make the choices that shape our character. These are not goals and targets set outside of ourselves, they are internal to us, integral parts of our being. It is about forming our characters rather than conforming to external standards to become better persons. We are already good, we have no need to become better. The challenge lies in coming to appreciate that inherent goodness by shaping and expressing who we are.
How does this simple point relate to the long disquisition on philosophic reason that premised it? Simply. The search for ‘sufficient reason’ and ultimate proof concerning life and its source and end is chimerical if conducted within the limitations of reason alone. We live well and live in appreciative wonder of the gift of life when we see the world as good, and live in imitation of the goodness of the source of that world. Our lives have meaning and purpose when we see the goodness in the world, when see that our actions and choices matter and make a difference, to ourselves, to others and to the world we live in, when we see a personal, caring, loving good at the heart of the world, and thus come to choose and act in partnership with that good. Living is being through participation in the good of the world.
“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Psalm 46: 10
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.
Let’s transcend the world of naming and framing and access experientially the world that lies beyond it, the world that exceeds the reach of reason, that ‘anarchic excess’ beyond reason to which Mick Smith in an Ethics of Place refers, a world that is core and is essential to our true health and happiness, the world that is the ground of our being.
In the words of Tennyson:
Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in,
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:
Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no
Nor yet that thou art mortal—nay my son,
Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee,
Am not thyself in converse with thyself,
For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’,
She sees the Best that glimmers thro’ the Worst,
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer thro’ the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,
She finds the fountain where they wail’d ‘Mirage’!
From ‘The Ancient Sage’
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
‘The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God’ (Paul Tillich).
But the crucial lesson to be drawn is that we are beyond naming and framing.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
- John O'Donohue
Behind the concepts and images by which we attempt to see the world, somewhere between the lines, beneath the words and beyond the thoughts and imaginings, the still silent centre of the real world awaits.
‘I experience God as the power of life, the power of love and the ground of being. I don’t say that’s what God is; I say that’s my experience of God.’
(John Shelby Song).
Others have rendered the same truth poetically. Recall the beautiful lines of Thomas Traherne:
You never enjoy the world aright,
till the Sea itself floweth in your veins,
till you are clothed with the heavens,
and crowned with the stars:
and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world,
and more than so,
because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.
Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditation, 1.29
A fish cannot drown in water,
A bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of creation,
Gold does not vanish:
The fire brightens.
Each creature God made
Must live in its own true nature;
How could I resist my nature,
That lives for oneness with God
- Mechthild of Magdeburg
‘The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.’
(Joseph Campell).