Beauty tugs at one's intuitions. One's acknowledged intuitions shape one's faith. Faith drives hope. Hope guides love. Love demands selfless compassion that works toward Justice.
But, because Beauty is “the elegance of meaningful complexity” (Robinson, p. 113), and because my intuitions desire a shortcut to Truth, and because my faith and hope reason from emotion and ego, and because Love has become both exclusive and reclusive, I create a superficial, meaningless complexity and call it essence; though in actuality it is merely substance.
This lack of Love as described contributes to the wealth gap, perpetuates poverty, incites violence, encourages disinvestment, destroys communities and according to some, (including Jesus), is Humanity's greatest sin. Yet we have created philosophies and built entire economies and social structures from this foundation of divisive self-interest.
Shame on us. Shame on me.
If we spread every individual on Earth equidistant apart, each one of us would be parked in the center of a 16 acre square and the next closest person would be 830 feet (nearly three football fields) away. Normal face-to-face conversation, personal human contact, would be impossible. But if every one of us stood side by side and held hands we could encircle this planet 334 times; 7,959,431,958 individuals, as one, hugging the planet. In both scenarios, we are neighbours. In one we are self-centered, divided. In the other we are faithful, active. In which circumstance are we more likely to find Beauty? Which neighbour are we more likely to Love?
Notes and Quotes:
All quotes below (except for the last one) came from “What Are We Doing Here? Essays” written by Marilynne Robinson, published in 2018. All thoughts above came from consideration of this material. Because this week's thought feels incomplete and because no one reads me, I am including my process / inspiration. I may extend this thought into next week, at which time I may delete the notes below from this week's thought.
“our intuitions having to do with the way things are and become are real enough to participate in the elegance of meaningful complexity, which may be one definition of beauty, a necessary if not a sufficient one.” (113)
Bureaucracy is not meaningful and only superficially complex – meaning there is no or very little depth of reason.
“We distract ourselves from powerful, ancient intuitions of the grandeur and richness of being, and of human being, with a reductionist theoretical contraption endlessly refitted in minor ways to survive the collapse of old scientific notions that have sustained it and to present itself once more as the coming thing, with the whole history and prestige of science behind it. Those intuitions, which figure in the highest thought and art civilization has produced, are faith.” (221)
“Hope implies a felt lack, an absence, a yearning.” (225)
“Paul says love will not pass away. John says God is love. At best, hope is an intuition that this could be true, with the kind of essential truth affirmed in eternity, in the Being of God, who is in infinite ways more anomalous even than we are, more improbable even than we are, judged in the terms of a reductionism that is infinitely less useful in his case than in ours. Say that in our difference from everything else we and God are like each other—creative, knowing, efficacious, deeply capable of loyalty. Say that in his healing and feeding and teaching, Jesus let us see that the good that matters to mortal us matters also to eternal God. Then we have every reason to hope.” (236)
“John makes it clear when the claim to love is spurious. He says, “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”” (245)
“The Samaritan of the parable shows very practical consideration for the needs of the stranger he finds by the road. That is, he very impractically sets no limit to his own generosity. After providing for the stranger’s immediate care, he says he will return to pay any costs that exceed the amount he has left with the innkeeper. Would he know the innkeeper could be trusted? Certainly the parable suggests that prudence, that is to say, considerations of self-interest, should not be brought to bear when demands are made on one’s kindness and generosity. How we have struggled with this! Far more than with the sins we are so much readier to renounce, denounce, dramatize, scorn, conceal, and confess. And this sin, the withholding of kindness and generosity—love is the crucial word in this context—structures entire social systems and philosophies. In his letter, James says, “If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?” The pious inflection he mimics would have been familiar at any point in history. The Law of Moses makes specific, ongoing provision for the alleviation of poverty, rarely noted. The Hebrew prophets are passionate on the subject, also treating it as the standard by which faith can be tested, and the offense by which the favor of God can be lost. Ezekiel 16:49 says, “Behold, this is the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” This is a good illustration of the fact that there are certain sins as well as certain texts we choose not to dwell on.” (246-247)
“Thomas Aquinas quotes Ambrose: “It is the hungry man’s bread that you detain; the naked man’s cloak that you store away; the poor man’s ransom and freedom that is in the money which you bury in the ground.” And, “He who spends too much is a robber.” And, “It is no less a crime to refuse to help the needy when you are able and prosperous than it is to take away someone else’s property.” Economic polarization was perhaps more visible in his world than in ours, for those of us who live in wealthier countries away from the war zones, though it is certainly here, too. There is now a great deal of prestige associated with being far wealthier than anyone ought to be.” (247)
Matthew 22:37-40
“37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”