Tags
belief throughout life, Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), knowledge and mystery, Marshall McLuhan, reading edition, the Holy Trinity, variorum edition, we and God
Who were “the Father and the Son”
We pondered when a child –
And what had they to do with us
And when portentous told
With inference appalling
By Distance fortified
We thought, at least they are no worse
Than they have been described.
Who are “the Father and the Son”
Did we demand Today
“The Father and the Son” himself
Would doubtless specify –
But had they the felicity
When we desired to know,
We better Friends had been, perhaps,
Than time ensue to be –
We start – to learn that we believe
But once – entirely –
Belief, it does not fit so well
When altered frequently –
We blush – that Heaven if we achieve –
Event ineffable –
We shall have shunned until ashamed
To own the Miracle –
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Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886), American poet.
Poem quoted from the 1999 (2005 in ppbk.) The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, by Ralph Franklin. This book originated in Franklin’s 1998 3-volume work, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition*. The Reading Edition offers the reader a single reading of each poem, rendered with Dickinson’s own spelling, capitalization, and punctuation intact.
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Personally, I imagine that “belief”, ideally, grows with us as we grow through our lives. But this means that it does not stay the same for even a moment, just as we, each of us in his/her totality, mind-body-spirit-soul, do not stay the same. As the skin we had at 10 years of age would not contain us at 20 years (it would not “fit” us), so our beliefs, and our faiths, are, inevitably, continuously renewed. But the new is built upon—even if consciously against—what was before; it doesn’t manifest from thin air, unrelated to what was previously.
(Does anything of ‘us’—of you, of me—remain constant and unchanging through our life? If so, what might this be? Or are we prey to illusion if we sense that there is something of us that is timeless?)
So how shall we approach the traditions we learned when young? Do we toss them into the landfill, like broken old toys? Well, that’s one way that’s open to us, outright rejection. But don’t let’s imagine that this is any freer a choice than any other. As our beliefs revolve around (anywhere on spectrum of Accept…Reject) the tenets we learned early in life, we are given time and space for their evolution.
For example, if you grew up ‘knowing’ about the Holy Trinity, how do you visualize, how do you understand it now? My point is, I think, that there is no “right” way and no “wrong” way. The Trinity is, at bottom, a metaphor for the organization, shall we say, of being as we can know it. Does your attitude towards it / understanding of it help you to make some sense of your life? Does it help you to get along more honestly, hopefully better, in your relationships with others, human and non-human? Does it allow for the awareness of a meaning of your being, of your existence, to evolve with you so that the original construction/metaphor retains some relevance through the span of your life?
Here’s an illustration from my imagination: Marshall McLuhan (Canadian philosopher, 1911-1980) coined, among others, the phrase, The medium is the message. (See mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2014/11/17/the-medium-is-still-the-message-five-key-ideas-from-understanding-media-1964/ (with https:// in front), or Wikipedia, for information about McLuhan.)
I, thinking in trinities as I often do, will add a member to McLuhan’s duo; namely, I’ll add mind. Hence, The mind is the medium is the message comes into being. And indeed, one of the ways I’ve come to imagine the Holy Trinity is precisely thus: Mind-Message-Medium.
Metaphor upon metaphor.
Almost from the moment we’re born we’re awash in concept and metaphor. Our weight, our sex, our name, our photograph—these are all concepts; all metaphors, symbols pointing beyond themselves; and having physical, social and cultural extensions and implications: infinite webs of significance, consequence. Rare are conceptual vacuums for us in this life.
But to return to the Holy Trinity, in its most basic form. So much theorizing over the centuries. After spending some time reading opinions and summaries, could we be forgiven for likening these distinctions and arguments to those in earlier times about numbering angels on pinheads? Yet this is not to criticize . . . thinking like this is just what we humans do, what we must do, what makes as human; it is the way we express something within us that seeks to be known and communicated. There’s something in our psyche that craves this conceptual, if possible even ‘rational’ understanding, craves to grasp in idea, in concept what is, perhaps or probably, in its essence ineffable. So we debate metaphors, searching for what best agrees with our little experience on this little green, blue, white planet . . . and we strive onward.
My personal Trinitarian ‘heresy’ removes as much metaphor as is possible for me to do at this point in time. Hence: I, you, the crayfish and the alga, the meteor and the galaxy, the earthworm and the robin, the light and the dark, the dew and the grass, life and death, matter and energy, the now and the then, the here and the there, the rational and the irrational, the true and the false, the something and the nothing; all that may be called “created reality”, all that we can know, now and ever, with our senses and our reason—each of us and all of us are/constitute/embody/reify “the Son”, “the Second Person of God”, whether begotten, made, conceived, breathed, thought, manifested, materialized, imagined of/by “the First Person of God”. Every one and all of us—are “the Christ”, the anointed. Indeed I also believe (Credo!) that this was precisely Jesus’ message to us, this was what he was showing us through his life. He was teaching us this before the later language and story and metaphor/terminology were applied to him. So, further, what is God’s “Third Person”, “the Spirit”, but the recognition among us, and between us and “the Father”, of each others’ essence, and this essential mutual . . . Being-ness? Created-ness? Relatedness? Unity? Mystery? Sacredness? Whole-ly-ness? A One-ness which is yet differentiated, infinitely, inscrutably, within itself; including us, but not limited to us? For me, here and now, such is the triune God.
If you are interested in a properly philosophical/theological look at some issues of the Trinity and “the transcendentals” (truth, goodness, beauty, etc.), here’s a 10-page article that seems to attempt an overview of such scholarship historically. (I did not get far into it, just haven’t got the terminology…but it appears to be well-written.)
An https:// in front:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2265.2008.00436.x
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Be careful what you teach your children. Don’t foist upon them as unassailable fact the theology you (may) hold, whether it be secular or sacred. Teach them how to live by your example of integrity, critical thinking, and, as much as possible, grace and kindness toward those with whom you engage; with attention, respect and compassion towards ‘creation’. Find things out for yourself and take full responsibility for your own thoughts and actions. Do not seek scapegoats. Do not cling to a ‘victim’ status for yourself or for your family or for your group. Do your life! Say what you mean, mean what you say. Take satisfaction, even pride, from work you have done well. Your kids will address theology on their own, in their own good time and their own way, exploring and creatively bringing together and building on many ideas. There’s a lot of neurosis hiding behind religion (even theology?) out there. Cut through, cut through. There is some Truth to be sought and found, and maybe it will even “set us free”; still, our shared experience, and yes, the shared Mystery, must be allowed to sustain us.
The grace of the season be with you.
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* The New Oxford American Dictionary, via my desktop dictionary (Apple Version 2.1.3), informs:
variorum as adjective: (of an edition of an author’s works) having notes by various editors or commentators; including variant readings from manuscripts or earlier editions.
variorum as noun: a variorum edition.
ORIGIN early 18th century: genitive plural of varius ‘diverse,’ from Latin editio cum notis variorum ‘edition with notes by various (commentators)’.