People point to [the prison] and say, 'That is where the artistic life leads a man.' Well, it might lead to worse places. The more mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation depending on a careful calculation of ways and means, always know where they are going, and go there. They start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle, and in whatever sphere they are placed they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more. A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.
But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different. People whose desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are going... The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?...
Christ had no patience with the dull lifeless mechanical systems that treat people as if they were things, and so treat everybody alike: for him there were no laws: there were exceptions merely, as if anybody, or anything, for that matter, was like aught else in the world!... His chief war was against the Philistines. That is the war every child of light has to wage... He is the Philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical forces of society, and who does not recognize dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a movement...
Philistinism was the note of the age and community in which he lived. In their heavy inaccessibility to ideas, their dull respectability, their tedious orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and their ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance... Christ mocked at the 'whited sepulchre' of respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever. He treated worldly success as a thing absolutely to be despised. He saw nothing in it at all. He looked on wealth as an encumbrance to a man... He showed that the spirit alone was of value... he preached the enormous importance of living completely for the moment.
I see in Christ not merely the essentials of the supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the romantic temperament also... He saw that people should not be too serious over material, common interests: that to be unpractical was to be a great thing: that one should not bother too much over affairs. The birds didn't, why should man?... His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be... His justice is all poetical justice, exactly what justice should be...
Between my art and the world there is a wide gulf, but between art and myself there is none.
~ from: 'De Profundis' by Oscar Wilde
Friday, January 13, 2012
Friday, December 9, 2011
Love For Oneself and Love For Others
Imagine being jealous of your own love; rather than being jealous of someone else's love for someone else, being jealous of your own love, for anyone but yourself. What if love for others were, in certain instances, and in a certain sense, infidelity to oneself?
While we often look for love from others, and not from ourselves, what we seek is the same loving validation which we cannot (or will not) give to, and receive from, ourselves. In seeking that validation indirectly, and outside of ourselves, are we perhaps committing an indiscretion? When we love and seek love from others, are we being unfaithful to ourselves?
Who would say so? We all feel encouraged to give our love to others, rather than be overly concerned with ourselves. We feel that love of self must be subdued, or else defended, justified and explained. At the same time, we believe that having love for oneself is somehow a prerequisite for loving others, and that self-love is redeemed, but only on account of that larger purpose.
So, is it that, before we have loved ourselves, our love for others is a kind of betrayal; a desperate, insecure and untethered love, which, not tied to ourselves, is loosely blown about by the wind, and loosely wrapping itself around people and things?
On airplanes, they tell people, in the event of an accident, to secure their own oxygen mask, before trying to help anybody else on with theirs. If you do not secure your own air first, you will not have the air you need to secure anybody else's. In a subtle sense, your air is also their air and your lungs feed into their lungs. Your love for others grows faint and disperses when it is not fed by a strong (i.e. loving) connection to yourself. You yourself grow petty with jealousy for your own love; for the love you tried and failed to give, and ought to have given yourself.
It is our responsibility to love ourselves, and begin with ourselves, before anything. Then we can allow our love to wander, -- or, more precisely, we can wander out together with our love, beyond ourselves, -- without experiencing a loss or diminshment to ourselves; rather, an expansion of self; for if, having sufficient love for ourselves, we harbor no resentment towards the love that is given away, then we wholeheartedly take part in the giving, and are a part of what is given.
Conversely, we can be open and responsive to the expressions of love coming to ourselves from others, and take part also in that love, inasmuch as we allow it; and thereby add our self-love to it, as one river giving into another.
Of course, we cannot forget, ignore, or deny the concurrent responsibility which society bears towards the individual. While we have a duty to love ourselves (and not to bake the poison of resentment into the bread of our love for others), so, also, does society have a duty to provide for us.
In fact, our duty to ourselves is the same duty we perform to others as members of society, just as their duty to themselves is the same duty they perform for us. In loving ourselves, and being responsive to the expressions of love from others, we help to create an atmosphere, an entire culture, of love.
How often do people reject our love, and how often do we feel rejected, simply because the ones we love do not yet love themselves, and, so, cannot or will not receive and respond to any expressions of love from others? They resent such overtures as an impertinence, as if to say, "Wait! I'm not ready," because they are entering the world, as it were, naked or half-naked; completely or partially stripped of self-love. It is the absurdity of refusing clothes because they have none, and, yet, if you are, at the same time, stripping yourself of love in order to clothe them, what sort of indecency, and what manner of absurdity, is that?
What disturbs me, though, is when we are fully clothed in love for ourselves and our expressions of love for others are still being rejected, out of some unreasonable pride or sense of propriety. In such instances, there is no shame in being naked, and the shame people feel must really be a distorted manifestation of an already distorted pride; pride which is itself a distorted manifestation, or symptom, of their lack of self-love; that is, their nakedness.
The shame of nakedness in this world, then, is a part of nakedness, just as it is impossible to be nude in the cold and not to feel chills. Moreover, the chilling winds of shame are felt, and felt more bitterly, by those who are too proud to clothe themselves with love, which they believe does not belong to them.
But, again, pride, like shame, is only a natural and necessary part, or adjunct, of lovelessness (inasmuch as a symptom of illness may be termed "natural", given that illness is itself unnatural, or indicative of some behavior or condition which runs at cross purposes to the designs of nature). Granted, it is a pride mingled with humility, but what a strange humility. And what is that, anyway? What does it mean to be simultaneously too humble and too proud to receive and/or respond to love? And how is it that there is a sense of propriety connected with not receiving and responding to love?
It is because our civilization still carries a Stoic thorn in it's pride; it still affirms the notion that each individual is 100% responsible, -- 100% to blame, or to credit, -- for his condition.
According to that way of thinking, accepting love from others is an admission of weakness and insufficiency, while expressions of love from others are not only charity, but moral displacements, the acceptance of which constitutes a form of theft.
What we require is a civilization rooted in the Christian conception of the free distribution of love; which views love not as a private possession, privately won, but as a public possession, which comes ultimately from God, and which is intended to provide for all the people.
No individual, and no family, would be shamed for giving or receiving love.
Consequently, nobody would be shamed into stockpiling or hoarding excess love originally intended to be shared; intended for others. Nor would they be encouraged to gorge and luxuriate on this soured love until they were incapable of distinguishing between the wholesome love which is theirs (that is, the love they need) and the putrefying love which they've merely become addicted to (that is, the love they still want, having been accustomed to want it by society).
Likewise, nobody would be forced to starve, unable to accept the love coming from others which is rightfully theirs, and wrongly convinced that all love, in order to be legitimate, must be manufactured directly from within.
Though it is true that love for oneself ought to begin from within, it is just as true that the love which comes from within cannot be separated from the love which comes from God. And, as true as both these things are, there is a third which is no less true than them: that neither the love which comes from within nor the love which comes from God can be separated from the love which comes from outside ourselves; as it also comes from within others, and from God. It is all the same love.
Only when love is withheld, or stored up, -- rather than consumed when it is freshest; consumed when it is needed, and by whom it is needed, -- does it become difficult to say to whom it belongs. If it has been either denied to or denied by it's rightful heir, then whose is it? Whose does it become?
A love shut out of doors, or shut in, is a breath of the Holy Spirit which has been cut-off from it's source and can no longer blow where it pleases; that which is locked out passes on, while that which is locked in collapses and dies on the floor. We must learn to open the doors and windows of our hearts to love. We must learn to break bread with love, allowing her to enter and to leave, to pass through, according to her own circuits; neither refusing her company, nor detaining her with vain conversation and excuse.
Love is a beggar, but she is also the richest person in the city.
She is a stranger, yet is known by name in every corner; she is a household name, with no home of her own. Or, rather, her place is mysteriously everywhere and nowhere. One day, she is perfectly at home with you, but the next she is restless for somewhere, and someone, else. Tonight, her bed is your bed, tomorrow it is another's.
Consider that you are twice-blessed; blessed to share your bed with her, and equally blessed to share her with someone else. She belongs to no one, yet her will is to come to everyone, when each has need of her.
She is the treasure of the city.
Sure, all of this must sound utopian. And the classic objection to the idealist or utopian thinker is that his ideal, his plan, being incongruous with the present order of things, is therefore impracticable.
But what is the truth?
In truth, the vision is the blueprint; the theory is the chief tool to be used in the formation of it's own realization in matter.
Must we begin with a faulty schematic, simply because the present structure is faulty? That is to remake the old temple, faults and all. It is renovating a thing which is faulty by design, and only made to be broken.
So, what is the proper conception?
Love, in its spiritual form, is fluid; when it enters a vessel, it spreads easily and evenly throughout the whole, only welling up in places of dryness or depression.
Love which enters an organism, according to it's purity, passes easily between the organs. If the love is impure, if it aggregates too much, becomes turgid and sticky, and bonds too tightly in places, while in other areas of the organism its presence is scarce or thin, then it cannot maintain the overall health of the structure.
Apply this to the case of civilization.
How is love permitted to work through the culture, and how is it diluted and made thick with impurities?
Relationships between individuals which do not increase their connectivity to the whole of humanity, but only to one another, must be recognized as calloused and cancerous tumors in the life of a society.
Monogamy is, in essence, a prescription for cancer; a treatment which seeks to heal the internal divisions of society (caused by lack of love) by completely fusing some of its parts, while allowing other parts to atrophy.
Rather than raise the vibration of love to where it is quicksilver-like, electric, and capable of touching every part of society precisely when it is needed, our paradigm demands that we slow love down, and attempt to sequester it in various places.
It feeds those parts for a time, then gradually isolates them from their environment, until the entire system collapses. And they in it.
Like their relationships, along with the value systems which form the substructures of those relationships, individuals themselves are manifestations of various energies and impulses circulating within the culture.
Prominent individuals are particularly extreme examples; gathering within themselves, and channeling through their own lives, those patterns of energy which are most ripe for manifestation in their cultures.
Individuals like Saint Francis are historically-sized expressions of self-love; an impulse arising within the culture which seeks the well-being of all its parts. To the extent that it is selfish, it is benevolent.
On the other hand, individuals like Hitler are expressions of self-hatred; an impulse arising within the culture which seeks the destruction of the culture itself. To the extent that it is destructive, it is self-destructive.
Homicide and suicide are two sides ((or "cides")) of the same coin; the former destroys society from the outside-in, the latter from the inside-out. Whenever a society shows neglect or contempt towards any of its parts, it shows the same for itself, and engenders in those parts a corresponding neglect or contempt for itself.
The conditions which give rise to a murderer are put into place long before the murderer himself is even born, to say nothing of when the murder is conceived. One could say, without being entirely unjust, that the great-great-great-grandfather of the victim is as guilty of the crime as any man alive.
Indeed, regardless of whether a man has been creating murderers or saints, the longer he has been dead, the more responsibility he shares; since the consequences, implications, and repercussions of his actions increase in direct proportion to the moment of his death.
Our good and evil actions posses the greatest significance for, and bear the greatest impact upon, people who have not yet been born. The fact is that we barely touch the people we impact directly, but we are like gods to creatures born light-years from now.
We must be idealists. Our thoughts eternal. Our ambitions absolute. For the worlds we imagine are the worlds we create, and the visions of today are the politics of tomorrow.
While we often look for love from others, and not from ourselves, what we seek is the same loving validation which we cannot (or will not) give to, and receive from, ourselves. In seeking that validation indirectly, and outside of ourselves, are we perhaps committing an indiscretion? When we love and seek love from others, are we being unfaithful to ourselves?
Who would say so? We all feel encouraged to give our love to others, rather than be overly concerned with ourselves. We feel that love of self must be subdued, or else defended, justified and explained. At the same time, we believe that having love for oneself is somehow a prerequisite for loving others, and that self-love is redeemed, but only on account of that larger purpose.
So, is it that, before we have loved ourselves, our love for others is a kind of betrayal; a desperate, insecure and untethered love, which, not tied to ourselves, is loosely blown about by the wind, and loosely wrapping itself around people and things?
On airplanes, they tell people, in the event of an accident, to secure their own oxygen mask, before trying to help anybody else on with theirs. If you do not secure your own air first, you will not have the air you need to secure anybody else's. In a subtle sense, your air is also their air and your lungs feed into their lungs. Your love for others grows faint and disperses when it is not fed by a strong (i.e. loving) connection to yourself. You yourself grow petty with jealousy for your own love; for the love you tried and failed to give, and ought to have given yourself.
It is our responsibility to love ourselves, and begin with ourselves, before anything. Then we can allow our love to wander, -- or, more precisely, we can wander out together with our love, beyond ourselves, -- without experiencing a loss or diminshment to ourselves; rather, an expansion of self; for if, having sufficient love for ourselves, we harbor no resentment towards the love that is given away, then we wholeheartedly take part in the giving, and are a part of what is given.
Conversely, we can be open and responsive to the expressions of love coming to ourselves from others, and take part also in that love, inasmuch as we allow it; and thereby add our self-love to it, as one river giving into another.
Of course, we cannot forget, ignore, or deny the concurrent responsibility which society bears towards the individual. While we have a duty to love ourselves (and not to bake the poison of resentment into the bread of our love for others), so, also, does society have a duty to provide for us.
In fact, our duty to ourselves is the same duty we perform to others as members of society, just as their duty to themselves is the same duty they perform for us. In loving ourselves, and being responsive to the expressions of love from others, we help to create an atmosphere, an entire culture, of love.
How often do people reject our love, and how often do we feel rejected, simply because the ones we love do not yet love themselves, and, so, cannot or will not receive and respond to any expressions of love from others? They resent such overtures as an impertinence, as if to say, "Wait! I'm not ready," because they are entering the world, as it were, naked or half-naked; completely or partially stripped of self-love. It is the absurdity of refusing clothes because they have none, and, yet, if you are, at the same time, stripping yourself of love in order to clothe them, what sort of indecency, and what manner of absurdity, is that?
What disturbs me, though, is when we are fully clothed in love for ourselves and our expressions of love for others are still being rejected, out of some unreasonable pride or sense of propriety. In such instances, there is no shame in being naked, and the shame people feel must really be a distorted manifestation of an already distorted pride; pride which is itself a distorted manifestation, or symptom, of their lack of self-love; that is, their nakedness.
The shame of nakedness in this world, then, is a part of nakedness, just as it is impossible to be nude in the cold and not to feel chills. Moreover, the chilling winds of shame are felt, and felt more bitterly, by those who are too proud to clothe themselves with love, which they believe does not belong to them.
But, again, pride, like shame, is only a natural and necessary part, or adjunct, of lovelessness (inasmuch as a symptom of illness may be termed "natural", given that illness is itself unnatural, or indicative of some behavior or condition which runs at cross purposes to the designs of nature). Granted, it is a pride mingled with humility, but what a strange humility. And what is that, anyway? What does it mean to be simultaneously too humble and too proud to receive and/or respond to love? And how is it that there is a sense of propriety connected with not receiving and responding to love?
It is because our civilization still carries a Stoic thorn in it's pride; it still affirms the notion that each individual is 100% responsible, -- 100% to blame, or to credit, -- for his condition.
According to that way of thinking, accepting love from others is an admission of weakness and insufficiency, while expressions of love from others are not only charity, but moral displacements, the acceptance of which constitutes a form of theft.
What we require is a civilization rooted in the Christian conception of the free distribution of love; which views love not as a private possession, privately won, but as a public possession, which comes ultimately from God, and which is intended to provide for all the people.
No individual, and no family, would be shamed for giving or receiving love.
Consequently, nobody would be shamed into stockpiling or hoarding excess love originally intended to be shared; intended for others. Nor would they be encouraged to gorge and luxuriate on this soured love until they were incapable of distinguishing between the wholesome love which is theirs (that is, the love they need) and the putrefying love which they've merely become addicted to (that is, the love they still want, having been accustomed to want it by society).
Likewise, nobody would be forced to starve, unable to accept the love coming from others which is rightfully theirs, and wrongly convinced that all love, in order to be legitimate, must be manufactured directly from within.
Though it is true that love for oneself ought to begin from within, it is just as true that the love which comes from within cannot be separated from the love which comes from God. And, as true as both these things are, there is a third which is no less true than them: that neither the love which comes from within nor the love which comes from God can be separated from the love which comes from outside ourselves; as it also comes from within others, and from God. It is all the same love.
Only when love is withheld, or stored up, -- rather than consumed when it is freshest; consumed when it is needed, and by whom it is needed, -- does it become difficult to say to whom it belongs. If it has been either denied to or denied by it's rightful heir, then whose is it? Whose does it become?
A love shut out of doors, or shut in, is a breath of the Holy Spirit which has been cut-off from it's source and can no longer blow where it pleases; that which is locked out passes on, while that which is locked in collapses and dies on the floor. We must learn to open the doors and windows of our hearts to love. We must learn to break bread with love, allowing her to enter and to leave, to pass through, according to her own circuits; neither refusing her company, nor detaining her with vain conversation and excuse.
Love is a beggar, but she is also the richest person in the city.
She is a stranger, yet is known by name in every corner; she is a household name, with no home of her own. Or, rather, her place is mysteriously everywhere and nowhere. One day, she is perfectly at home with you, but the next she is restless for somewhere, and someone, else. Tonight, her bed is your bed, tomorrow it is another's.
Consider that you are twice-blessed; blessed to share your bed with her, and equally blessed to share her with someone else. She belongs to no one, yet her will is to come to everyone, when each has need of her.
She is the treasure of the city.
Sure, all of this must sound utopian. And the classic objection to the idealist or utopian thinker is that his ideal, his plan, being incongruous with the present order of things, is therefore impracticable.
But what is the truth?
In truth, the vision is the blueprint; the theory is the chief tool to be used in the formation of it's own realization in matter.
Must we begin with a faulty schematic, simply because the present structure is faulty? That is to remake the old temple, faults and all. It is renovating a thing which is faulty by design, and only made to be broken.
So, what is the proper conception?
Love, in its spiritual form, is fluid; when it enters a vessel, it spreads easily and evenly throughout the whole, only welling up in places of dryness or depression.
Love which enters an organism, according to it's purity, passes easily between the organs. If the love is impure, if it aggregates too much, becomes turgid and sticky, and bonds too tightly in places, while in other areas of the organism its presence is scarce or thin, then it cannot maintain the overall health of the structure.
Apply this to the case of civilization.
How is love permitted to work through the culture, and how is it diluted and made thick with impurities?
Relationships between individuals which do not increase their connectivity to the whole of humanity, but only to one another, must be recognized as calloused and cancerous tumors in the life of a society.
Monogamy is, in essence, a prescription for cancer; a treatment which seeks to heal the internal divisions of society (caused by lack of love) by completely fusing some of its parts, while allowing other parts to atrophy.
Rather than raise the vibration of love to where it is quicksilver-like, electric, and capable of touching every part of society precisely when it is needed, our paradigm demands that we slow love down, and attempt to sequester it in various places.
It feeds those parts for a time, then gradually isolates them from their environment, until the entire system collapses. And they in it.
Like their relationships, along with the value systems which form the substructures of those relationships, individuals themselves are manifestations of various energies and impulses circulating within the culture.
Prominent individuals are particularly extreme examples; gathering within themselves, and channeling through their own lives, those patterns of energy which are most ripe for manifestation in their cultures.
Individuals like Saint Francis are historically-sized expressions of self-love; an impulse arising within the culture which seeks the well-being of all its parts. To the extent that it is selfish, it is benevolent.
On the other hand, individuals like Hitler are expressions of self-hatred; an impulse arising within the culture which seeks the destruction of the culture itself. To the extent that it is destructive, it is self-destructive.
Homicide and suicide are two sides ((or "cides")) of the same coin; the former destroys society from the outside-in, the latter from the inside-out. Whenever a society shows neglect or contempt towards any of its parts, it shows the same for itself, and engenders in those parts a corresponding neglect or contempt for itself.
The conditions which give rise to a murderer are put into place long before the murderer himself is even born, to say nothing of when the murder is conceived. One could say, without being entirely unjust, that the great-great-great-grandfather of the victim is as guilty of the crime as any man alive.
Indeed, regardless of whether a man has been creating murderers or saints, the longer he has been dead, the more responsibility he shares; since the consequences, implications, and repercussions of his actions increase in direct proportion to the moment of his death.
Our good and evil actions posses the greatest significance for, and bear the greatest impact upon, people who have not yet been born. The fact is that we barely touch the people we impact directly, but we are like gods to creatures born light-years from now.
We must be idealists. Our thoughts eternal. Our ambitions absolute. For the worlds we imagine are the worlds we create, and the visions of today are the politics of tomorrow.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Impressions of 'De Profundis'
I could not have known that the most touching and poignant depiction of Christ -- his life, character, and teachings, -- would come to me, not from an established mystic, saint, or interpreter of the Gospel, but from an artist in the midst of his first genuine encounter with the Christian legend. Oscar Wilde's 'De Profundis', truly written (as its title proclaims) "from the depths", is a book for the ages, if ever there was one. It is my most wonderful recent discovery, and all the more so as it came to me unexpectedly.
Some weeks ago, I had made a, more or less firm, resolution to read only books written by or about saints (in the wider, but not the widest, sense of the word). In the pages of St. Isaac the Syrian, Dionysius the Areopagate, St. Gregory Nazianzus, and Jean-Pierre de Caussade, I looked and expected to find that rarefied oil which would feed, renew, and revitalize the flame of devotion within me. Yet only when I relaxed myself, and took up the book of a secular man of letters, did I find what I so desperately sought.
Here I discover the most profound and breathtaking meditations on humility, suffering, forgiveness, redemption, and the love which holds nothing back for itself. Again and again, as I read, I am struck 'to the quick', and must stand back, breathe deep, and steady myself for reemergence into this work; into these depths. At times, I must set the book down, and step away, in the awareness that I am not fully present with it; that it is so much greater than myself, and requires so much more of me than I am able to give to it. I am too distracted to do it justice. I must come back to it when I am in a more mellow and reflective mood. I must not squander it on my careless or anxious hours, but preserve it for those times when I am equal, or nearly equal, to it.
So precious is this discovery. Having found it, not as a diamond in the rough, but ready-made, ready-cut, the task left to me now is only to recognize it for the treasure that it is. I must not treat it as a simple pearl or gem of lesser worth. I am to prepare a fitting setting into which this diamond may be placed, and I myself am that setting; I am the ring which must bear it. So I retire for a bit, to shape and polish myself for the honor, and to reflect on what I have found.
Some weeks ago, I had made a, more or less firm, resolution to read only books written by or about saints (in the wider, but not the widest, sense of the word). In the pages of St. Isaac the Syrian, Dionysius the Areopagate, St. Gregory Nazianzus, and Jean-Pierre de Caussade, I looked and expected to find that rarefied oil which would feed, renew, and revitalize the flame of devotion within me. Yet only when I relaxed myself, and took up the book of a secular man of letters, did I find what I so desperately sought.
Here I discover the most profound and breathtaking meditations on humility, suffering, forgiveness, redemption, and the love which holds nothing back for itself. Again and again, as I read, I am struck 'to the quick', and must stand back, breathe deep, and steady myself for reemergence into this work; into these depths. At times, I must set the book down, and step away, in the awareness that I am not fully present with it; that it is so much greater than myself, and requires so much more of me than I am able to give to it. I am too distracted to do it justice. I must come back to it when I am in a more mellow and reflective mood. I must not squander it on my careless or anxious hours, but preserve it for those times when I am equal, or nearly equal, to it.
So precious is this discovery. Having found it, not as a diamond in the rough, but ready-made, ready-cut, the task left to me now is only to recognize it for the treasure that it is. I must not treat it as a simple pearl or gem of lesser worth. I am to prepare a fitting setting into which this diamond may be placed, and I myself am that setting; I am the ring which must bear it. So I retire for a bit, to shape and polish myself for the honor, and to reflect on what I have found.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Quaker Teachings and Personal Beliefs
Essential Teaching of Quakerism:
Quaker doctrine is minimal, while dogma is nil. We believe there is a "divine inner light" in every person (accessible through silent meditation and the contemplation of higher ideas), which illumines those who give priority to it; informing their thinking and their speech, as well as motivating their actions in the world, in such a way as to inculcate, within the collective mind, a greater awareness of the sanctity of virtues; compassion, tolerance, peace, charity, equality, patience, trust, hope, love, and so on.
This is the central tenet of the faith, and really the only doctrine, while other teachings are secondary and less than essential.
Secondary Teachings of Quakerism:
Pacifism, especially in the form of conscientious objection and nonviolent resistance, is encouraged, though every individual must decide for themselves if and when force becomes necessary or permissible.
Simplicity, or plainness, of lifestyle is likewise encouraged; materialism/consumerism is discouraged.
Truth and honesty are highly esteemed, and partly for this reason the taking of oaths is also discouraged, as it implies two standards of truthfulness; we believe that to swear or promise would be to suggest that one is less accountable to truth at other times (i.e. when one does not swear or promise), which we do not believe; moreover, that, because God is within, one is always in the presence of God (not merely when one places a hand on the Bible, for instance), so that a person who will lie without swearing is not likely to be prevented from lying by swearing.
Quakers may share various religious affiliations, though they have traditionally been Christians. In any case, the promptings of the inner light are accorded precedence over scriptures, and revelation is ongoing in the heart of every individual.
A Statement of Personal Beliefs:
I have found much to admire among the Buddhists, Hindus, Sufis, South American Shamans, and others, but Christ, along with the saints, mystics, ministers, and martyrs of Christianity, tend to be my primary religious influences.
Christ is, for me, the supreme manifestation and representation of God, though I recognize that God is ultimately formless and beyond conception.
This is in conformity with the Hindu practice of having a "chosen ideal"; an archetype or deity who carries the God projection, and therefor acts as a point of focus for religious activity. At the same time, I respect the rights of others to their own "divine projections", without considering that Christ is necessarily any more or less suitable for "the role" in an objective sense; only that he is more suitable for myself. Hence, if I call him "The Greatest" it is similar to when a child gives his father a "World's Greatest Dad" t-shirt, and should not be taken as a cause for strife; Christ is my spiritual father, Christians are my spiritual brothers and sisters, while deities of other faiths are spiritual aunts and uncles, and followers of other faiths are spiritual cousins.
Asking God for mercy and forgiveness is like asking the sun for light and heat; these belong to the incorruptible nature of divinity itself; and, though clouds of ignorance may cast shadows of guilt over the souls of men, the sun does not go black, nor does the Lord condemn. Nevertheless, there is some sense in asking God for mercy as a formality, and for convenience; as Paul says "I speak as a man", and as Christ asks to be baptized by John, because it is seemly, though he had no need to be baptized.
Moreover, the question of whether or not Jesus existed as an "actual" historical reality (in the same sense in which Gandhi existed, or in which you or I exist) or if he is "merely" mythical, is an irrelevant distinction. Christ is real without question, or we would not be speaking of him, nor having our hearts and minds inspired by the contemplation of him. The very idea of Christ has inspired more people to live virtuous lives than the actual physical presence of any other known being. If he does not belong to the material realm of fact, as our culture has defined it, yet he belongs undoubtedly to the archetypal realm of truth.
I believe that the ability to percieve how an idea or an archetype may be equally, or even more real, than a historical figure is a form of spiritual seeing, and only a person who can read "the spirit" as well as "the letter" of the law is prepared to receive this teaching.
"Who has ears to hear, let them hear."
Quaker doctrine is minimal, while dogma is nil. We believe there is a "divine inner light" in every person (accessible through silent meditation and the contemplation of higher ideas), which illumines those who give priority to it; informing their thinking and their speech, as well as motivating their actions in the world, in such a way as to inculcate, within the collective mind, a greater awareness of the sanctity of virtues; compassion, tolerance, peace, charity, equality, patience, trust, hope, love, and so on.
This is the central tenet of the faith, and really the only doctrine, while other teachings are secondary and less than essential.
Secondary Teachings of Quakerism:
Pacifism, especially in the form of conscientious objection and nonviolent resistance, is encouraged, though every individual must decide for themselves if and when force becomes necessary or permissible.
Simplicity, or plainness, of lifestyle is likewise encouraged; materialism/consumerism is discouraged.
Truth and honesty are highly esteemed, and partly for this reason the taking of oaths is also discouraged, as it implies two standards of truthfulness; we believe that to swear or promise would be to suggest that one is less accountable to truth at other times (i.e. when one does not swear or promise), which we do not believe; moreover, that, because God is within, one is always in the presence of God (not merely when one places a hand on the Bible, for instance), so that a person who will lie without swearing is not likely to be prevented from lying by swearing.
Quakers may share various religious affiliations, though they have traditionally been Christians. In any case, the promptings of the inner light are accorded precedence over scriptures, and revelation is ongoing in the heart of every individual.
A Statement of Personal Beliefs:
I have found much to admire among the Buddhists, Hindus, Sufis, South American Shamans, and others, but Christ, along with the saints, mystics, ministers, and martyrs of Christianity, tend to be my primary religious influences.
Christ is, for me, the supreme manifestation and representation of God, though I recognize that God is ultimately formless and beyond conception.
This is in conformity with the Hindu practice of having a "chosen ideal"; an archetype or deity who carries the God projection, and therefor acts as a point of focus for religious activity. At the same time, I respect the rights of others to their own "divine projections", without considering that Christ is necessarily any more or less suitable for "the role" in an objective sense; only that he is more suitable for myself. Hence, if I call him "The Greatest" it is similar to when a child gives his father a "World's Greatest Dad" t-shirt, and should not be taken as a cause for strife; Christ is my spiritual father, Christians are my spiritual brothers and sisters, while deities of other faiths are spiritual aunts and uncles, and followers of other faiths are spiritual cousins.
Asking God for mercy and forgiveness is like asking the sun for light and heat; these belong to the incorruptible nature of divinity itself; and, though clouds of ignorance may cast shadows of guilt over the souls of men, the sun does not go black, nor does the Lord condemn. Nevertheless, there is some sense in asking God for mercy as a formality, and for convenience; as Paul says "I speak as a man", and as Christ asks to be baptized by John, because it is seemly, though he had no need to be baptized.
Moreover, the question of whether or not Jesus existed as an "actual" historical reality (in the same sense in which Gandhi existed, or in which you or I exist) or if he is "merely" mythical, is an irrelevant distinction. Christ is real without question, or we would not be speaking of him, nor having our hearts and minds inspired by the contemplation of him. The very idea of Christ has inspired more people to live virtuous lives than the actual physical presence of any other known being. If he does not belong to the material realm of fact, as our culture has defined it, yet he belongs undoubtedly to the archetypal realm of truth.
I believe that the ability to percieve how an idea or an archetype may be equally, or even more real, than a historical figure is a form of spiritual seeing, and only a person who can read "the spirit" as well as "the letter" of the law is prepared to receive this teaching.
"Who has ears to hear, let them hear."
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Some Quotes From Oscar Wilde's 'De Profundis'
"The supreme vice is shallowness."
"I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not laws... And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life. People must adopt some attitude towards me, and so pass judgment, both on themselves and me."
"If I can produce only one beautiful work of art I shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots... The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me."
"The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being... a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and meaner minds. I became a spendthrift of my own genius... I grew careless of the lives of others.. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself... I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility."
"Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility. It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery at which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh development. It has come right out of myself... It could not have come before, nor later. Had anyone told me of it, I would have rejected it. Had it been brought to me, I would have refused it... Of all things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except by surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it."
"Every thing to be true must become a religion... I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me. The plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one's finger-tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and finishes, the harsh orders... the silence, the solitude, the shame -- each and all of these things I have to transform into a spiritual experience... I was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity's sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good."
"To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development... It is no less than a denial of the soul. For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and converts them into swiftness and strength, into the play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy."
"Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation... It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain. Where there is suffering there is holy ground. Some day people will realize what that means... [People] sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation... I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art... Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask... There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain. More than this, there is about sorrow an intense, an extraordinary reality... For the secret of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind everything... Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection."
"I must accept the fact that one is punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. I have no doubt that it is quite right one should be."
"Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. when the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself' that is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay... I claim on my side that if I realise what I have suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side."
"The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a casualty, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. It is the phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it."
"When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of [a] little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me the wells of pity: made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world."
"I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not laws... And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life. People must adopt some attitude towards me, and so pass judgment, both on themselves and me."
"If I can produce only one beautiful work of art I shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots... The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me."
"The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being... a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and meaner minds. I became a spendthrift of my own genius... I grew careless of the lives of others.. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself... I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility."
"Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility. It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery at which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh development. It has come right out of myself... It could not have come before, nor later. Had anyone told me of it, I would have rejected it. Had it been brought to me, I would have refused it... Of all things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except by surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it."
"Every thing to be true must become a religion... I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me. The plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one's finger-tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and finishes, the harsh orders... the silence, the solitude, the shame -- each and all of these things I have to transform into a spiritual experience... I was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity's sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good."
"To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development... It is no less than a denial of the soul. For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and converts them into swiftness and strength, into the play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy."
"Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation... It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain. Where there is suffering there is holy ground. Some day people will realize what that means... [People] sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation... I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art... Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask... There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain. More than this, there is about sorrow an intense, an extraordinary reality... For the secret of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind everything... Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection."
"I must accept the fact that one is punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. I have no doubt that it is quite right one should be."
"Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. when the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself' that is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay... I claim on my side that if I realise what I have suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side."
"The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a casualty, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. It is the phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it."
"When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of [a] little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me the wells of pity: made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world."
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Smitten
so now i am smitten
love-swollen
clinically insane
dropped into a second world created by you
stunned and sunburnt
sacred
disoriented
meditating on your presence in my life
tasting your name
your grace
all that happens to me
no sun and no moon
only the sudden radiance of you to discover
and this
love-swollen
clinically insane
dropped into a second world created by you
stunned and sunburnt
sacred
disoriented
meditating on your presence in my life
tasting your name
your grace
all that happens to me
no sun and no moon
only the sudden radiance of you to discover
and this
Monday, November 7, 2011
God and Mammon
What is man's will apart from God, and what is this that we call "free will"? Simply put: It is the condition of being divided against oneself; into a lower and higher nature; the lower being an egocentric contraction into self, and the higher being a transpersonal expansion into God. Moreover, it is the ability, arising from this condition of dividedness, to follow (or to allow one's whole self to be led by) either of these two parts. In all situations, whatever thought we entertain or action we perform, we are electing to align our whole self with one of these two sides; the good or the evil. In every moment, there is a choice, and in every choice there is both victory and surrender; one side advances, the other retreats.
"No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
This is the scriptural verse which most perfectly illustrates the principle. It appears twice, once in Matthew and again in Luke, where it is identical. It is the only saying of Christ's, that I know of, which is not worded differently by the different evangelists. Without being able to say exactly why or how this is so, I nevertheless believe that this lack of variation is not entirely coincidental. The importance of the verse, which is itself a categorical declaration, seems to be underscored by the insistence of one evangelist not to paraphrase the other. Indeed, those who heard this saying from the mouth of Christ may have heard and remembered it identically because Christ himself may have been careful to stress it, and not to vary his wording of it during his various discourses.
We must not shrink from stark distinctions between "God and mammon", good and evil, the spirit and the flesh, the divine life and the life of the world. While we might like to seamlessly weave together these two wills, to find a balance, or a compromise between them, so as not to push ourselves into some extreme, rigid asceticism, we must remember that it is only as a concession to our present weakness that we allow such an indulgent attitude. We must not compromise the ideal, or corrupt the truth, in order to make it fit our compromised and corrupted lives; it is better to be hypocrites and to accuse ourselves, than to distort the wisdom of God; but, of course, it is best not to shrink at all from that high calling.
While moderation deserves praise, we should remember that the moderation of saints is something very different from the moderation of worldly men. For a saint, moderation means eating only a dozen (or less) mouthfuls of healthy food, once or twice a day, rather than fasting for days on end, or eating only bread and water. If he partakes of alcohol, it is to drink one sip of wine during the Eucharist, or perhaps a glass or two at a wedding celebration, such as the wedding in Galilee. For him, this would be moderation as opposed to the strict refusal to drink any alcohol, ever. But to a man caught in the snares of the world, the saint's moderation appears altogether extreme. The worldly man believes he is being moderate when he intoxicates himself only a little, or on the weekend, and when he eats large, unhealthy meals, provided they are not "overly" toxic, or "very" expensive. The terms are relative, as we can see.
What is essential to the Christian approach towards moderation is that we are always making efforts to bring our will closer to God's. We may be excused from doing what is best, provided only that we endeavor to do what is better. In this sense, there is some moral relativity. Christ was more lenient with respect to the confessions of thieves and murderers, than he was to the pride of the Pharisees, who, though outwardly good, had become complacent. We must not compare ourselves to our neighbors, for there are always some who are better and some who are worse; but we must endeavor to be better than ourselves; to be more righteous tomorrow than we are today. This is all that Christ asks of us. For some, it means following in his very footsteps; renouncing the world, spending forty days fasting and praying in the desert, and/or laying down one's life -- even for the lives of one's enemies. For others, it just means drinking a little less, giving a little less time to superficial chatter, or not cutting somebody off in traffic.
We must understand that, in all cases, there is a division between the higher and lower will. What is higher to one man may be lower to another, but, nevertheless, each man has his own higher and lower will, and his own choices to make between them.
Now, some people teach that free will is a gift from God. My own understanding is that the gifts of God are such as to draw us into alignment with His will; that is, with our own highest will. To my mind, God is purely good; He is not the creator of evil, and He would not plant this division in our hearts. If Christ brings "a sword of division", it only so that we may finish the business, by cleaving away the lower will altogether. It is as Shakespeare's Hamlet has said it, when Gertrude cried out that he had "cleft her will in twain": "Then throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the other half." Gertrude accuses Hamlet of creating this division, when all he has really done is alert her to it; he has demanded self-honesty from her, while she has insisted upon remaining in denial. So it is with Christ. He does not make us enemies of ourselves, but he shows us wherein we are already divided against ourselves.
While we insist on healing this division through some form of compromise, Christ makes it clear to us that this is a false hope, and a denial of the true nature of the rift. We are like wounded soldiers, with gangrene eating away at one of our arms, who refuse to recognize the seriousness of our condition. We beg and plead with the surgeon; we want to keep both our arms. But a true physician will tell us strait that if we do not amputate the infected limb then the infection will inevitably spread to our whole body. Christ, who is, for all Christians, the greatest physician in the world, tends not to our bodies, but to our souls; which is to say, he tends not to where the symptoms manifest, but to where the disease has its root. His advice to us is the same, but on a much higher level: to bear up, to grit our teeth, and to amputate that sickly part of ourselves which we have already lost, though we continue to cling to it at our own expense; to amputate the lower will. Healing will come, and wholeness with it, only when we have been purified of the lower will; when we have consented to be small and clean, rather than large and contaminated; to serve in heaven, rather than reign in our own personal hell.
I ask again, what then is free will? If it is merely the freedom to make poor choices, as well as wise ones, -- to make choices influenced by ignorance, foolishness, weakness, and depravity, as well as choices influenced by knowledge, understanding, strength, and righteousness; -- well, then, it is more of a disability than an ability. Ought we to be so proud of this "free will"? It is like that same soldier being proud that he has two arms, and not one, despite the fact that his second arm is the enemy of his whole life! Is this what we call freedom?
Many people mistakenly believe there is something shameful in following another; in being a servant and having a master. The shame, however, is in that pride which honors its own foolishness rather than the wisdom of another. Though we may be intoxicated with a distorted vision of equality, the fact is that we are all inferior to the likes of Jesus Christ. We cannot fail to see this, provided only that we take an honest, humble, and objective look at the matter. We are equal, in that we are loved by God no less than Christ was, and that we, like him, may each become saviors of worlds. But we are not the saviors of this world. At best, we are the saved. At worst, we are the lost sheep, who insist on going their own way, proudly ignorant of the dangers, only to be swallowed up by wolves.
Just as the blind cannot lead the blind, no man can shepherd himself. Those who are wise will light their own way only until they have found another whose light burns brighter than their own. They will know it when they have found it, and will not be blinded by their own light. As an expression of true leadership, they will allow themselves to be led by the absolute greatest of leaders. But a man who insists on leading himself is a man who is content to be led by one in need of a leader.
"No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
This is the scriptural verse which most perfectly illustrates the principle. It appears twice, once in Matthew and again in Luke, where it is identical. It is the only saying of Christ's, that I know of, which is not worded differently by the different evangelists. Without being able to say exactly why or how this is so, I nevertheless believe that this lack of variation is not entirely coincidental. The importance of the verse, which is itself a categorical declaration, seems to be underscored by the insistence of one evangelist not to paraphrase the other. Indeed, those who heard this saying from the mouth of Christ may have heard and remembered it identically because Christ himself may have been careful to stress it, and not to vary his wording of it during his various discourses.
We must not shrink from stark distinctions between "God and mammon", good and evil, the spirit and the flesh, the divine life and the life of the world. While we might like to seamlessly weave together these two wills, to find a balance, or a compromise between them, so as not to push ourselves into some extreme, rigid asceticism, we must remember that it is only as a concession to our present weakness that we allow such an indulgent attitude. We must not compromise the ideal, or corrupt the truth, in order to make it fit our compromised and corrupted lives; it is better to be hypocrites and to accuse ourselves, than to distort the wisdom of God; but, of course, it is best not to shrink at all from that high calling.
While moderation deserves praise, we should remember that the moderation of saints is something very different from the moderation of worldly men. For a saint, moderation means eating only a dozen (or less) mouthfuls of healthy food, once or twice a day, rather than fasting for days on end, or eating only bread and water. If he partakes of alcohol, it is to drink one sip of wine during the Eucharist, or perhaps a glass or two at a wedding celebration, such as the wedding in Galilee. For him, this would be moderation as opposed to the strict refusal to drink any alcohol, ever. But to a man caught in the snares of the world, the saint's moderation appears altogether extreme. The worldly man believes he is being moderate when he intoxicates himself only a little, or on the weekend, and when he eats large, unhealthy meals, provided they are not "overly" toxic, or "very" expensive. The terms are relative, as we can see.
What is essential to the Christian approach towards moderation is that we are always making efforts to bring our will closer to God's. We may be excused from doing what is best, provided only that we endeavor to do what is better. In this sense, there is some moral relativity. Christ was more lenient with respect to the confessions of thieves and murderers, than he was to the pride of the Pharisees, who, though outwardly good, had become complacent. We must not compare ourselves to our neighbors, for there are always some who are better and some who are worse; but we must endeavor to be better than ourselves; to be more righteous tomorrow than we are today. This is all that Christ asks of us. For some, it means following in his very footsteps; renouncing the world, spending forty days fasting and praying in the desert, and/or laying down one's life -- even for the lives of one's enemies. For others, it just means drinking a little less, giving a little less time to superficial chatter, or not cutting somebody off in traffic.
We must understand that, in all cases, there is a division between the higher and lower will. What is higher to one man may be lower to another, but, nevertheless, each man has his own higher and lower will, and his own choices to make between them.
Now, some people teach that free will is a gift from God. My own understanding is that the gifts of God are such as to draw us into alignment with His will; that is, with our own highest will. To my mind, God is purely good; He is not the creator of evil, and He would not plant this division in our hearts. If Christ brings "a sword of division", it only so that we may finish the business, by cleaving away the lower will altogether. It is as Shakespeare's Hamlet has said it, when Gertrude cried out that he had "cleft her will in twain": "Then throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the other half." Gertrude accuses Hamlet of creating this division, when all he has really done is alert her to it; he has demanded self-honesty from her, while she has insisted upon remaining in denial. So it is with Christ. He does not make us enemies of ourselves, but he shows us wherein we are already divided against ourselves.
While we insist on healing this division through some form of compromise, Christ makes it clear to us that this is a false hope, and a denial of the true nature of the rift. We are like wounded soldiers, with gangrene eating away at one of our arms, who refuse to recognize the seriousness of our condition. We beg and plead with the surgeon; we want to keep both our arms. But a true physician will tell us strait that if we do not amputate the infected limb then the infection will inevitably spread to our whole body. Christ, who is, for all Christians, the greatest physician in the world, tends not to our bodies, but to our souls; which is to say, he tends not to where the symptoms manifest, but to where the disease has its root. His advice to us is the same, but on a much higher level: to bear up, to grit our teeth, and to amputate that sickly part of ourselves which we have already lost, though we continue to cling to it at our own expense; to amputate the lower will. Healing will come, and wholeness with it, only when we have been purified of the lower will; when we have consented to be small and clean, rather than large and contaminated; to serve in heaven, rather than reign in our own personal hell.
I ask again, what then is free will? If it is merely the freedom to make poor choices, as well as wise ones, -- to make choices influenced by ignorance, foolishness, weakness, and depravity, as well as choices influenced by knowledge, understanding, strength, and righteousness; -- well, then, it is more of a disability than an ability. Ought we to be so proud of this "free will"? It is like that same soldier being proud that he has two arms, and not one, despite the fact that his second arm is the enemy of his whole life! Is this what we call freedom?
Many people mistakenly believe there is something shameful in following another; in being a servant and having a master. The shame, however, is in that pride which honors its own foolishness rather than the wisdom of another. Though we may be intoxicated with a distorted vision of equality, the fact is that we are all inferior to the likes of Jesus Christ. We cannot fail to see this, provided only that we take an honest, humble, and objective look at the matter. We are equal, in that we are loved by God no less than Christ was, and that we, like him, may each become saviors of worlds. But we are not the saviors of this world. At best, we are the saved. At worst, we are the lost sheep, who insist on going their own way, proudly ignorant of the dangers, only to be swallowed up by wolves.
Just as the blind cannot lead the blind, no man can shepherd himself. Those who are wise will light their own way only until they have found another whose light burns brighter than their own. They will know it when they have found it, and will not be blinded by their own light. As an expression of true leadership, they will allow themselves to be led by the absolute greatest of leaders. But a man who insists on leading himself is a man who is content to be led by one in need of a leader.
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