This evening, around 6 pm, is the Winter Soltice: the shortest day, longest night of the year. The earth in its circuit around the sun is now more and more presenting the northern hemisphere to the sun. The days will lengthen, the sun will become more effective, winter will pass and spring will come. We know all this well ahead of time. It's a cycle sure to repeat over and over, barring unforeseen astronomical disaster.
Last night at a party to celebrate this astronomical behavior, we read aloud solstice customs around the world and over time. Bread was distributed and wishes were made: This, go! That, come! Pete Seeger was honored (?) in song. 'As I walk on that endless highway...' to spring,I can look forward another such moment in reverse in June, the tip into darkness, and so round and round endlessly.
I pray: 'Let the consummation of your creation quickly come, soon arrive....' which implies a belief in an end to the cycle, and something else after. Yesterday morning, I woke up, doubt-stricken. How plausible is any end to this constant turn-over of history, and (just as sharp) how ridiculous holding this belief must make me look. I must seem a crank, an apocalypticist, a fool. I was thoroughly pierced by skeptical arrows, launched by myself (others are too polite or indifferent to do this service.)
I never really thought to give up the belief, a sign perhaps that I'm not impartial. But then, how could I be? This assertion of a 'consummation' is linch-pin of that network of beliefs by which I'm guided and consoled. To dump them, and go 'agnostic' would be, it seems to me, like driving auto-pilot while peering through a fogged windshield. My blindness makes me uneasy. Or I could just turn on the defogger and adopt an alternate set of convictions.
What would, should, make me change my beliefs is evidence or argument demonstrating their inescapable absurdity or pernicious consequence. That is, I should give up my beliefs if they force me to deny what is clearly evident or demonstrable (or clearly deducible from what is) or to condone what is clearly cruel or callous. But the axiom of the autonomy of this universe (or bevy of same) seems to me no more compelling a starting point than the one asserting your existence, God-in-love, nor does the premise of the indifference at the heart of the universe seem a better one than than that of the friendship, hospitality and exploration characterizing your engagement with your creation.
Which leads me to the 'world to come,' a concept that flies in the face of the endless cycle posited by last night's celebration. Life continuing in another mode, call it heaven (or hell), after death doesn't flout of our day to day experience; the dead are not present in the same was the family across the street is. 'World to come' suggests not a mode but a place. 'Consummation of creation' suggests some kind of completion or sufficiency in this everyday world. 'Let [it] quickly come and soon arrive' suggests a moment of appearance. But this is the only place we have; the concept of progress is ambiguous (re technology, there's far to go; re person practice of virtue or vice we're no further forward nor backward than before (thought both are more institutionalized.); and a life-cancelling wave of gamma rays from nearby supernova explosion or the planet-rocking impact of an errant asteroid are the only significant arrivals we can expect from off-world. And while the four horsemen still ride, and may ever, any apocalypse will be wholly natural, perhaps of our own doing.
What then do I mean when I say the words 'arrive', 'consummation,' 'world to come' and what warrant do I have for saying them? This is what I asked myself yesterday.
Simply this: there will be a time when your relationship with the Beloved, God-in-love, will mature to the point of take-off into something constituted of elements similar to those we read in our history books and newspapers but fresh, exciting, and as yet inconceivable. And this I base on the conviction that you are ever challenging to encounter you and that our encounters are meaningful and are going somewhere. Your presence is what I find compelling.
Still, I am grateful for the cosmic circumstances which will bring spring and which allow me to enjoy the expectation of same. That is, I enjoyed thinking along with others about where we are, what's coming and what it means. Plus the chowder and the chat were great.
Last night at a party to celebrate this astronomical behavior, we read aloud solstice customs around the world and over time. Bread was distributed and wishes were made: This, go! That, come! Pete Seeger was honored (?) in song. 'As I walk on that endless highway...' to spring,I can look forward another such moment in reverse in June, the tip into darkness, and so round and round endlessly.
I pray: 'Let the consummation of your creation quickly come, soon arrive....' which implies a belief in an end to the cycle, and something else after. Yesterday morning, I woke up, doubt-stricken. How plausible is any end to this constant turn-over of history, and (just as sharp) how ridiculous holding this belief must make me look. I must seem a crank, an apocalypticist, a fool. I was thoroughly pierced by skeptical arrows, launched by myself (others are too polite or indifferent to do this service.)
I never really thought to give up the belief, a sign perhaps that I'm not impartial. But then, how could I be? This assertion of a 'consummation' is linch-pin of that network of beliefs by which I'm guided and consoled. To dump them, and go 'agnostic' would be, it seems to me, like driving auto-pilot while peering through a fogged windshield. My blindness makes me uneasy. Or I could just turn on the defogger and adopt an alternate set of convictions.
What would, should, make me change my beliefs is evidence or argument demonstrating their inescapable absurdity or pernicious consequence. That is, I should give up my beliefs if they force me to deny what is clearly evident or demonstrable (or clearly deducible from what is) or to condone what is clearly cruel or callous. But the axiom of the autonomy of this universe (or bevy of same) seems to me no more compelling a starting point than the one asserting your existence, God-in-love, nor does the premise of the indifference at the heart of the universe seem a better one than than that of the friendship, hospitality and exploration characterizing your engagement with your creation.
Which leads me to the 'world to come,' a concept that flies in the face of the endless cycle posited by last night's celebration. Life continuing in another mode, call it heaven (or hell), after death doesn't flout of our day to day experience; the dead are not present in the same was the family across the street is. 'World to come' suggests not a mode but a place. 'Consummation of creation' suggests some kind of completion or sufficiency in this everyday world. 'Let [it] quickly come and soon arrive' suggests a moment of appearance. But this is the only place we have; the concept of progress is ambiguous (re technology, there's far to go; re person practice of virtue or vice we're no further forward nor backward than before (thought both are more institutionalized.); and a life-cancelling wave of gamma rays from nearby supernova explosion or the planet-rocking impact of an errant asteroid are the only significant arrivals we can expect from off-world. And while the four horsemen still ride, and may ever, any apocalypse will be wholly natural, perhaps of our own doing.
What then do I mean when I say the words 'arrive', 'consummation,' 'world to come' and what warrant do I have for saying them? This is what I asked myself yesterday.
Simply this: there will be a time when your relationship with the Beloved, God-in-love, will mature to the point of take-off into something constituted of elements similar to those we read in our history books and newspapers but fresh, exciting, and as yet inconceivable. And this I base on the conviction that you are ever challenging to encounter you and that our encounters are meaningful and are going somewhere. Your presence is what I find compelling.
Still, I am grateful for the cosmic circumstances which will bring spring and which allow me to enjoy the expectation of same. That is, I enjoyed thinking along with others about where we are, what's coming and what it means. Plus the chowder and the chat were great.
No comments:
Post a Comment