The title helps. I didn’t see it until after I was well into reading. In regard to beauty, I think this is a lovely way to put it. Although I’m not sure about “law”. But certainly, the likelihood of noticing and enjoying beauty increases, when we’re looking in this kind of way.
When I first read it, it felt like a description of karma. At least the happy half of it. A friend of ours is going through a horrific period of suffering via empathy and love right now. My first dive into this was focused on resisting the quote in light of heart-breaking suffering.
But yes, there are many types of encounters that can be far more hopeful and healing.
I just rediscovered this little beaut while browsing an old thread:
John Betz writes in Hamann Before Kierkegaard,
“For both of them, anxiety betrays the legerdemain, the comical self-deception, of every speculative attempt to sleight the difference between God and human beings; and, as such, it is at bottom an existential category, as it would be for Heidegger.”
(nothing is being implied in relation to any of the recent comments)
If anyone wants to bring back the topic of mimetic desire, John Betz has a lovely paper on mimetic desire and it’s relationship to metaphysics. His reading of the paper takes up the first half hour.
Yeah I’m not sure “law” is even a great choice where patterns in physics are concerned since they are descriptive and not prescriptive. I read it again from the point of view of someone going through hard times and seeking a gift of healing. Much harder to find the sense in it that way.
But for noticing and appreciating beauty I like it.
Yeah - that’s a beautiful excerpt. And anything that celebrates beauty, love, and depth of engagement with close friends sounds very much like GM to me!
1 With at least one exception.2 2 The first petition in The Lord’s Prayer 3 is not asking for oneself, but it might be the prayer of someone who loves God more than life or self. 3 “Hallowed be your name” Matthew 6:9
Mark, I never answered your initial question: whether Kierkegaard touches on the themes in this quote.
Greatness and reverence before it has come up a number of times in my reading. But in conjunction with great people or, more importantly to SK, the person of God. Kierkegaard’s reverence is something quite different from what I believe is being described here. It is a patient, silent, obedient, submissive reverence that is entirely aware that God may choose not to commune with the silent one, and that the silent one should not attempt to bring attention to her or himself, but should continue in obedient silence. Kierkegaard proposes no balance in the relationship. The greatness is all on one side, and the obedient dependence is on the other.
That makes me a little sad. I can’t think that what I think of as God would want that sort of relationship. I have to wonder if the submission is more to the settled meanings of official theology. Unless one keeps in mind how amazing it is that there is anything at all it’s hard to see how God can be the source of awe and wonder He is and should be. But of course I do not accept that reality was once set aside so that man could receive his marching orders. I can’t see that as good news. I have to think it is better to live with unknowing but if you tell me it makes you happy I am happy for you. We all need faith.
I think I understand where that response comes from, Mark - and I resonate and share in it; at least if I understand it correctly. What I hear you saying is that no good relationship has all submission and obedience all on one side and all effective willful guidance on the other. Even if there isn’t perfect symmetry or balanced mutual submission, there must still always be a will and an agency on both sides of any relationship if it is to be in any meaningful sense a ‘relationship’. I hear GM resonating with that as well though I am not prepared with any specific passages to quote in support of that.
So all that said, perhaps another way to see the SK quote Kendal shared might be that if we are to be spiritually well-grounded people, their must be some attendant humility baked into that which would prevent us from presuming our equality with the transcendant. There is just something Christian about presuming that there is that which is greater than ourselves, and the moment we assume we are its equal (or worse - we are the greater thing), then we have done little more than lapse into the arrogance that seems to be our default starting point in the absence of any spiritual maturity. Or at least I can imagine GM suggesting something like that.
I actually agree about that. It isn’t equal but I think we are called to execute our role with as much excellence as we can muster and should feel proud if we succeed. I don’t think what is greater desires a reluctant assistant and might even prefer a joyful one.
And I agree. Humility enough not to imagine we can think our way past our insufficiency. No matter how well we learn to manipulate the world to our ends, our capacity for recognizing what matters most in life will always come up short so long as we try to own that through some system of rules or so on. We are partners in these lives with the source of true wisdom while all we can hope to add on our side is some occasionally useful cleverness. It isn’t an equal partnership but both are needed.
We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception. Alan Watts: The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety. First published in 1951.
I find it strange that this enters the conversation, after all, O’Donohue speaks of “when our approach is respectful, sensitive and worthy, gifts of healing, challenge and creativity open to us…” The very fact that Jesus encourages the use of the word, “Abba” or Father, which even in a patriarchy is intimate, suggests a relationship. Of course, awe does have its trembling aspect, which a child can experience when seeing the protective side of their father rising up to challenge what endangers his family. I often get the feeling that we overstate some things at times, and overlook the “secret law of balance” that John was talking about here.
I see it a little differently. I think when Merv says that part you quoted it is like McGilchrist warning of LH take over. Regardless of terminology I do think regard for the sacred can be swamped by our attempts to do too much ourselves … even on its behalf.
The poem you mention does sound the right notes to put us at ease but I think we have to be wary of crossing that line. In recognizing the truth in the poem it is easy to identify with the RH perspective but anytime we want to help it along there is a risk of actually subverting it since all that we actually control is the LH. Just my 2 cents worth.
Hmm, my understanding of when the left hemisphere dominates, is that individuals may become overly focused on specific details and lose sight of the broader context, so that they may struggle to see the interconnectedness of ideas, events, and experiences. In comparison, I read John O’Donohue as very “right hemispheric” in his creative thinking, suggesting a holistic approach to life and spirituality, and it is possibly because the quote is an excerpt from a larger piece that a different perception occurs, and my bias overlooked that possibility.
The context of the text quoted I took to be a reflection on the value of approaching life and relationships with mindfulness, reverence, and a willingness to embrace the beauty and depth that exists in the world around us. It encourages a shift away from superficial interactions and a move toward deeper, more meaningful connections and experiences.
He says something vaguely similar in ON MEETING A STRANGER:
With respect
And reverence
That the unknown
Between us
Might flower
Into discovery
And lead us Beyond
The familiar field
Blind with the weed
Of weariness
And the old walls
Of habit.
O’Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (pp. 95-96). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Perhaps we U.S. Americans are not taken as much by surprise at our own culture’s need for this? Not that we have any complete monopoloy on arrogance, but we as a culture do seem to excel in the celebration of some of the baser human proclivities. Having read the Tao Lao Tsu Te Ching recently, it struck me how much of it was of the same flavor of self-denialism as one finds all through the pages of the new testament. It makes me wonder if there is a greater cultural absorbtion of a spiritual humility more historically ‘baked-in’ to the psyche of the Eurasian continent (especially the eastern parts) that has been more of a “sprinkled-on” afterthought in the west.
BTW - in a separate note, the author Tom Holland had lost a few points for me in a recent chapter where he casually gave voice to a common, and ideologicaly-motivated historical distortion when he referred to Galileo as having been tortured by the Catholic church. So much for him ‘whitewashing Christianity’ right? But then a paragraph later, he begins with …
That nothing in this narrative was true did not prevent it from becoming a wildly popular myth. Nor was its appeal confined solely to agnostics. There was much in it for Protestants to relish as well. The portrayal of medieval Christendom as a hellhole of backwardness and bigotry reached all the way back to Luther. Huxley’s sense of himself as a member of an elect had - as contemporaries were quick to note - a familiarly radical quality. ‘He has a moral earnestness, the volitional energy, the absolute confidence in his own convictions, the desire and determination to impress them upon all mankind, which are the essential marks of the Puritan character.’ 28 - (T.S. Banes cited)
Points fully restored as far as I’m concerned! It’s Holland’s writing style to ‘get into the heads’ of the people he’s writing about, and to think their own thoughts after them, so-to-speak, to presumably help the reader understand their mindset (in this case, Huxley’s mindset.) So one has to be careful to not mistake the immediate narrative for being Holland’s own.
