An Old Reflection and Prayer

It frightens me to think, after all the importance I have placed on thinking, that the possible yield of thought vis-a-vis knowledge is in fact very little. Just now I have been reading from Heidegger’s “Introduction to Metaphysics” (a small selection, I must admit) and, rather than experiencing the sensations of wonder and deadly weight that used to accompany my readings in philosophy, I felt like the would-be victim of an elaborate but shoddy dupe -- yet one who perceived the act of fraud and willed to reject it. For it seemed to me that the classifications of being and not-being, ground as groundless or truly grounded or un-ground did indeed carry the flash and ring of that old thrill until I saw their boundary-lines as crooked & ill-conceived as a child’s surreptitious drawings on her bedroom wall. Oh yes, philosophers become inflamed with the capabilities of their own minds when they discover within themselves a special ability to conjure the surrounding world into blueprint form, into sets of oppositional and classificatory statements that perform world-ing, that is, the imagined creation or revelation of the universe’s properties that constitutes the proper field of philosophical inquiry. And yet, from their inflammation what comes but delirium? It seems to me now that the approach of the natural scientist, of the manual laborer, of the schoolchild, yes, even of the unlearned but wise elder could combine to form a saner approach to philosophy than that of wild drawings/draftings and grand blathering (and there my writing gets shoddy -- but I am just learning, just starting on my way). For what is generalization, spiritualization, systematization, and long proclaiming in contrast with the reverent (though sometimes dogged) quietness of the observer, the worker, the learner, the gentle-speaker? It seems to me that philosophy is slow work that requires one’s continual attention to the particularities of one’s life in equal measure to speculation, the balance of one’s critical practice in terms of demanding the most exacting level of specificity from all (including one’s own) thought in tandem with the subjection of all one’s critical stringency to former and better thinkers than oneself, and (especially!) one’s willingness to reject over-general & ungenerous ideas no matter where they come from. And do not all of these requirements remind one of the quiet patience that young students must practice in order to learn simple arithmetic? Philosophy is no higher an activity than that (although, in some sense, I want to say that such a kind of learning is the highest activity). Jesus says, “let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,” and Kierkegaard speaks of the spiritual person (in this case it would be the thinking person) as a “learner,” which is a very plain word for one in-the-process-of-coming-to-possess something -- an inheritance, so to speak, or a “ground” (yes, as in Heidegger), a promised land in which to remain. “O Lord, You have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.” And it is this that the learner comes to his learning to possess, comes to her continual work of rising-and-going-forth to receive -- the Bread of Life, the living bread, that is, God Himself in Christ. And so learning at once combines the lowest and the highest, the contained and the uncontained, the conceivable and inconceivable -- and so makes the learner (whose posture is always the humble bow -- as to read or work -- and silence) the collision point for a kind of gaining that is at once earning and gift. What one takes to learning is what one gathers in work (which by itself forms a worthless pile) and the illumination by which one sees that-which-one-has-gathered in its fullness and motion is always a given thing. But somehow there has to be a separation from seeing the world in its everyday instrumentality and bringing things from that world into the working/learning table, that is, a division rests at the very incipience of a learner’s learning that cannot be surmounted -- if there is no break then there is no reflection -- one must pluck the leaf from the high tree before one can observe it closely. And then, through a process in which no other property can be named but that of givenness (that is, the process is itself purely a gift) the thing-that-one-learns returns to its place in the living world and works as more itself than before -- and this is how the matter stands to one who has understood something at firsthand. & Gradually one retains something more of that faculty of holistic vision which accompanies learning-how-to-look, as in the first learning-proceedings, as before -- so that more and more the separation recedes, the view of division turns over quicker, until one’s vision comes to operate with a knack for tandem vision, where known and knowing are nearly one. And then, at the learner’s death, the “through a mirror dimly” of the learner’s living learning-work gives way to complete and simultaneous clarity, where, as in Eliot, “the fire and the rose are one” -- the knowing is “face to face,” for “when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.” So this is the philosophy that I want to know, that of the quiet learner, a philosophy that is both more and less than the love of wisdom -- instead, a learning-work that is the love of love overflowing the creative avenues. Being-and-not-being, then? the ground? metaphysical speculation? -- yes and no -- yes as our ownmost pittance, as that which we, having seen, bring to the Light asking to see -- and no as our ownmost pittance that we bring to the cross for “Christ who is our Light” to burn away. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  “For me to live is Christ” (that is, the Light) “and to die is gain” (that is, the gain of true sight that is the highest reward of the learner and has nothing to do with sharpness or exactitude and exactly everything to do with truth -- into the character of which I intend to enquire in this year’s learning-work, in this year’s learning-to-see.) &, “Lord, You have been our dwelling-place throughout all generations” & “the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places, yea, I have a good inheritance” -- which means to me that the “ground” of Being in which we all of us dwell is nothing other than God Himself, who has given us nothing less than Himself as our inheritance, as that giver who invariably says “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.” And how can we have faith without that gift of grace that comes to us after the separation (and here is the non-being, the nothing, the void, the non-being-coiled-at-the-heart of our erstwhile world-that-passes-away-like-a-puff-of-smoke) -- and if I were to pray, which I dare not because I am still an inveterate sinner who’s not taken time to learn how, I would ask God that I might begin walking along this path-to-sight, begin the learning-work that will take me a life (and why my fingers burn as if I’m committing a great sin by typing all this I don’t know -- perhaps it’s because I see all this but am unwilling to yield to all this: I want greatness and renown and no limitations, and because I want to rub my foot in the eyes of all those people who have hurt or superseded me -- yes, I am rotten rottenness, and even as I confess my spoilage I relish it, and revel in it, even delighting in the masterful ways in which I turn all the layers of my discontent, of my smug irony in quietness, into fullish dancing designs, and even now as I congratulate myself for speaking all of this as others do not have the stomach to do I feel the gnawing in my heart of holding onto something spoiled that sickens me but that I yet love (how apt was Tolkien’s ring!) Lord, I am afraid to pray for You to wring it out of me, but wring me anyway. (& What is knowledge then? it is the certain work of love, love living, love unseparated, love allowing itself to be regarded.)

2 Corinthians 2:14

1599 Geneva Bible (GNV)

14 Now thanks be unto God, which always maketh us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the[a]savor of his knowledge by us in every place.