MATHETΩN

Everywhere I read a Christian writing about God, these days, she seeks miracles. She dwells upon whether God may have intervened in her life in some forgotten way or whether God can be made to intervene in her life in future. Have Christians never read, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign”?

Yesterday I even read a pastor declare that, if only he were faced with an event from no explicable cause, he would find it easy to believe God the cause of it. Could he be less logical?

God planned the universe. It revolves at his will by his laws. Were he always to be crossing himself with miracles, surely this would cast doubt on his plan’s prudence.

(And what is so special about a Christian, anyway?)

Marvel not that the animals other than man have furnished them, ready prepared by nature, what pertains to their bodily needs — not merely food and drink, but also a bed to lie on — and that they have no need of shoes or bedding or clothing, while we are in need of all these things. Why, consider what it would be for us to have to take thought not merely for ourselves, but also for them! But, as it is, we first forbear to give thanks for these beasts because we do not have to bestow on them the same care we require ourselves, and then we proceed to complain against God on our own account! Yet, by Zeus and the gods, one single gift of nature would suffice to make a man who is reverent and grateful perceive the providence of God. Do not talk to me now of great matters: Take the mere facts that milk is produced from grass, and cheese from milk, and that wool grows from skin — who is it that has created or devised these things? ‘No one,’ somebody says. O the depth of man’s stupidity and shamelessness!

Why, if we had sense, ought we to be doing anything else, publicly and privately, than hymning and praising the Deity and rehearsing his benefits? Ought we not, as we dig and plow and eat, to sing the praise of God? ‘Great is God, who has furnished us these instruments to till the earth. Great is God, who has given us hands, and power to swallow, and a belly, and power to grow unconsciously, and to breathe while asleep.’ Thus we ought to sing on every occasion, and above all to sing the greatest and divinest hymn: that God has given us the faculty to comprehend these things and to follow the path of reason. If I were a nightingale, I would sing as a nightingale; if a swan, as a swan. I must be singing hymns of praise to God. This is my task; I do it; I will not desert this post, and I invite you to join me in the same song.

Some people are doing some very good things!

Things like, for example, turning, in only a few months, just a fraction-of-an-acre of abandoned volcanic-ash-poisoned land into a lush orchard capable of providing good income to a family of five:

Permaculture

Or designing how food-stamp-dependent people can eat a generous, nutritious diet, full of delicious foods like homemade peach ice cream, and very high in vegetables and whole grains, for as little as three dollars a day:

Cook for Good

I’m so happy to know such people exist!

It was the most beautiful grackle who died. His form was plump and cunning even after trauma; his sheen was all over so black it was green-purple; and every, each feather of his was edged with gold, as though God, to pass the fall afternoons, had taken up cloisonne.

“When my family and I attended Wednesday night prayer meetings in small churches in Fairpoint, Ohio, or Hamilton, Montana, or Blackduck, Minnesota, or any of the small towns and communities in which we lived for a time here and there in this far-flung expanse of earth called America, we would generally begin by singing the verses of a few shaped-note hymns in harmony.

“Then someone at the front of the room would ask if anyone had any prayer requests or anything to share. While we waited for someone to speak, the person at the front of the room would take out a small piece of paper and a pencil to jot down a few notes.

“Edith might update us on a skin condition and request prayer for her doctor’s appointment on Thursday afternoon. Virgil would ask for good weather for the hay harvest. And Bubbles was still having seizures.

“Uncle Rudy and his family would be arriving soon for a visit, and we asked for traveling mercies. All of us were heartsick that Clovis was dying, a man in his thirties, his soft-spoken wife still so young. Andy Androsko Sr. was out of the hospital and doing much better.

“And there were requests for wayward sons off in the city (that they would return safely home) and reports of encouraging conversations with unchurched Uncles and Aunts in neighboring towns. The impending arrival of new babies, high school algebra exams or the ongoing search for gainful employment now that the coal company was leaving town were all discussed and noted in front of a group of believers. It was news, it was keeping in touch, it was gathering together, it was part of a high call to love your neighbor and to pray without ceasing.

“But there was something else.

“Occasionally someone seated in a gently curving wooden pew would raise their hand and say simply, I have an unspoken request. If someone had an unspoken request, they could receive prayer without need of finding words to speak. Perhaps they had no words. Perhaps it was a situation too personal or painful to talk about just yet. We would pray that God would be with them and their unspoken request whatever it might be.

“Unspoken requests nudged my imagination in those early years and left a deep impression on me. As a child, when I had no words, I often sat at home at the piano to try to find the impressions of what I could not speak. My heart would yearn toward something I could not name and my hands would follow along little by little. Those improvised imperfections drifted up out of the room and into the darkness.

“I still don’t know what I’m saying exactly when I sit down at the piano here at home, but I do often wonder about God listening when there is no other audience. I can remember slipping into an empty auditorium on a Friday evening after dark when many of the students at boarding school had gone home for the weekend. It was only me, a piano and 400 empty seats, but there was the hush of something holy in the room.

“I suppose the piano has continued to be a means of helping my soul to grow still from time to time. This unpremeditated, unspoken music may be as close as I’ll ever get to what the Benedictines call contemplative prayer, a form of prayer that requires being quiet and mostly listening.

“I still hope to feel a little something when I sit down at the piano. I hope to breathe a little something. I hope to hear silence as well as music. I hope to sit in the stillness of a room, maybe even in the presence of the Lord, and just be my unimpressive self. No words. The occasional grin.

“This is the third in a series of simple instrumental recordings I’ve made at home. Previously, painters painting, writers writing and especially new mothers nursing (all I think are forms of unspoken prayer) have expressed some gratitude for the simple, spontaneous backdrop that this music somehow provides. Thank you for your encouragement. These tiny songs without words, these unspoken requests are for all of us who at times find that we must pray without speaking.

“Nursing mothers, loosen your blouses.”

“ ‘Homo creatus est.’ [‘Man is created’—from the meditations of Loyola.] Creation, the making out of nothing, bringing from nothing, into being: Once there was nothing; then lo this huge world is there. How great a work of power!

“The loaf is made of flour; the house of bricks; the plow, the cannon, the locomotive, the warship of iron—all things are made of matter. But the world—the grain, the wheat ear, the seed, the ground, the sun, the rain; the clay, the earth; the iron, the fuel—was made of nothing. The loaf &c. were made over time and with labor; the world in no time and with a word. Man cannot create a single speck; God creates all that is besides Himself.

“But men of genius are said to create a painting, a poem, a tale, a tune, a policy. Not indeed the colors and the canvas, not the words or the notes, but the design, the character, the air, the plan. How then? From themselves, from their own minds. And they themselves, their minds and all, are created of God: If the tree is created, much more the flower and the fruit.

“To know what creation is look at the size of the world. The speed of light—it would fly six or seven times round the earth as the clock ticks once. Yet it takes thousands of years to reach us from the Milky Way, which is made up of stars swarming together (though each as far from other as we are from them), running into one another and looking a soft mist, and each of them a million times as big as earth perhaps (the sun is about that). And there is not the least reason to think that is anything like the size of the whole world [universe]. Yet all arose at a word! So that the greatest of all works in the world, nay the world itself, was easier made than the least little thing that man or any other creature makes in the world.

“Why did God create? Not for sport, not for nothing. Every sensible man has a purpose in all he does, every workman has a use for every object he makes. Much more has God a purpose, an end, a meaning in His work. He meant the world to give Him praise, reverence, and service—to give Him glory. It is like a garden, a field He sows. What should it bear Him? Praise, reverence, and service—it should yield Him glory. It is a leasehold He lets out. What should its rent be? Praise, reverence, and service—its rent is glory. It is a bird he teaches to sing; a pipe, a harp He plays on. What should it sing to Him? Praise, reverence, and service—it should sing Him glory. It is a glass He looks in. What should it show Him? With praise, reverence, and service it should show Him His own glory. It is a book He has written of the riches of His knowledge, teaching endless truths, full of lessons of wisdom, a poem of beauty. What is it about? His praise, the reverence due Him, the way to serve Him—it tells Him of His glory. It is a censer fuming. What is the sweet incense? His praise, His reverence, His service—it rises to His glory. It is an altar, and a [sacrifice] on it lying in His sight. Why is it offered? To His praise, honor, and service—it is a sacrifice to His glory.

“The creation does praise God, does reflect the honor of Him, is of service to Him—and yet the praises fall short. The honor is like none—less than a buttercup to a king. The service is of no service to Him. He does not need it. He has infinite glory without it and what is infinite can be made no bigger. Nevertheless He takes it; He wishes it, asks it, commands it, enforces it, gets it. The sun and the stars shining glorify God. They stand where He placed them, they move where He bids them. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ [Psa ixx.1]. They glorify God, but they do not know it. The birds sing to Him, the thunder speaks of His terror, the lion is like His strength, the sea is like His greatness, the honey is like His sweetness; they are something like Him, they make Him known, the tell of Him, they give Him glory, but they do not know that they do—they do not know Him, they never can, they are brute things that only think of food or think of nothing. This then is poor praise, faint reverence, slight service, dull glory. Nevertheless what they can do they always do.

“But we will speak of man. Man was created, like the rest then to praise, reverence, and serve God—to give Him glory. He does so, even by being, and being beyond all visible creatures: ‘What a piece of work is man! Domine, dominus, quam admirabile … Quid est homo … minuisti eum paulo minus ab angelis.’ [This is again from the meditations of Loyola; the Latin is from Psalm 8: ‘O Lord our Lord, how excellent is your name ... What is man ... a little lower than the angels.’] But man can know God—can mean to give Him glory. This then is why man was made, to give God glory—and to mean to give it. To praise God freely, willingly to reverence Him, gladly to serve Him. Man was made to give, and mean to give, God glory.

“I was made for this. Each one of us was made for this.

“Does man then do it? Never mind others—do I do it? If I sin I do not: How can I dishonor God and honor Him? wilfully dishonor Him and yet mean to honor Him? choose to disobey Him and mean to serve Him? No, as sinners, we have not answered God’s purposes, we have not reached the end of our being. Are we God’s orchard or God’s vineyard? We have yielded rotten fruit, sour grapes, or nothing. Are we His cornfield sown? We have not come to ear, or are mildewed in the ear. Are we His farm? It is a losing one to Him. Are we His tenants? We have refused Him rent. Are we His singing bird? We will not learn to sing. Are we His pipe or harp? We are out of tune, we grate upon the ear. Are we His glass to look in? We are deep in dust, or our silver has gone, or we are broken, or worst we misshape His face and make God’s image hideous. Are we His book? We are blotted, we are scribbled over with foulness and blasphemy. Are we His censer? We breathe stench and not sweetness. Are we His sacrifice? we are like the sacrifice of Balac, of Korah, and of Cain. If we sin, we are all this.

“But what we have not done yet we can now do; what we have done badly hitherto we can do well henceforward. We can repent of our sins and begin to give God glory. The moment we do this we reach the end of our being, we do and are what we were made for, we make it worth God’s while to have created us.

“This is a comforting thought: We need not wait in fear until death; any day, any minute that we bless God for our being or for anything—for food, for sunlight—we do and are what we were meant for, made for: things that give and mean to give God glory. This is a thing to live for.

“Then make haste so to live.

“For if you are in sin you are God’s enemy, you cannot love or praise Him. You may say that you are far from hating God; but if you live in sin, you are among God’s enemies, you are under Satan’s standard and enlisted there: you may not like it—no wonder; you may wish to be elsewhere—but there you are, an enemy to God. It is indeed better to praise Him than to blaspheme, but your praise is not a hearty praise—it cannot be. You cannot mean your praise if, while praise is on your lips, there is no reverence in the heart; there can be no reverence in the mind if there is no obedience, no submission, no service; and there can be no obeying God while you disobey Him and no service while you sin.

“Turn then, brethren, now, and give glory to God. You say grace at meals and thank and praise God for bread—thank and praise Him now for everything.

“When a man is in God’s grace and free from mortal sin then everything that he does, so long as there is no sin in it, gives God glory. It is not only prayer that gives God glory, but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping scouring—everything gives God some glory if, being in His grace, you do your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives Him glory too. To lift up hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a pitchfork in his hand, a woman with a pail give Him glory too. He is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean they should.

“So then, my brethren—live.”

God bless you and

Porter

There once was a Note, pure and easy,
playing so free, like a breath rippling by.
The note is eternal—I hear it—it sees me—
forever we blend and forever we die.

I listened, and I heard music in a word—
the words when you play your guitar.
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering;
and a child flew past me riding in a star.

As people assembled, civilization
was trying to find a new way to die.
But killing is really merely scene-changing,
and all men are bored with other men’s lies.

Gas on the hillside, oil in the teacup—
watch all the chords of life lose their joy.
Distortion becomes somehow pure in its wildness—
the Note that began all can also destroy!

We all know success when we all find our own dreams,
and our love is enough to knock down any walls;
and the future’s been seen as men try to realize
the simple secret of the note in us all.

There once was a note— Listen! There once was a note— Listen! There once was a note …

—The Who

“Wherein anything is sweet or nourishing, it is [grace of] God. Sin is God-absence. Perverse sin is God-absence willfully attached to God.

“Let us observe a flower. Sweet and beautiful it is God—who thought of it and crafted it. Dry and dead it is God-absence—God leeched out of it. Petals poisoned to slay my lover it is God-absence (God leeched from my lover’s mortal form) wilfully attached to God (sweet and beautiful).

“Let us contemplate gravity. Pulling me straight and steady to the earth as I stand it is God—who engineered it and sustains it. Plunging me down the stairs it is God-absence—God’s intentions accidentally forgotten. Hurtling my enemy toward implacable pavement from seven stories up it is God-absence (God’s intentions ignored) willfully attached to God (pulling him straight and steady).

“Let us listen to a song. Harmonizing and prancing it is God—who computed it and is gladdened by it. Gone off-key it is God-absence—God’s frequencies mismeasured. Jinglingly advising me to perceive women as harlots it is God-absence (God’s love scoffed) willfully attached to God (hear it harmonizing and prancing). …”

“Indeed, it is my theory that God-absence is not natural to a universe and that the Eden-story is evidence of that. In the beginning, I propose, there was no God-absence and no deranging mixtures of God-absence and God. Instead, there was God only, with all his reason, peace, beauty, bounty, love—and there was the possibility of a wish to oppose him. For where there is more than one will, there is the possibility that one will wishes to oppose another. And when God perceived that one will (and here I speak of the Serpent) wished to oppose him, he granted it God-absence—for there is no other way a will can be free. For all that is is God, and God cannot oppose God—only what is not is not God. And so God granted the Serpent God-absence and with that perversion of God—but he kept it out of Eden.

“He kept it out of Eden, but he, foreknowing that a free will may wish to oppose him, provided our Parents’ wills a way. Then the Serpent spake and offered God (‘God is wise’) mixed with God-absence (‘you may be wise as he’, God’s primacy denied)—and our Parents’ wills wished it.

“And then did God curse them and the whole world, and he rent himself, partly, from his universe, with ah! what pangs—and God-absence entered it. Deterioration, famine, forgetting—and Death—entered it. God cursed our Parents and their curses were a picture of earth’s new fractured piebald state—the fruitful ground was now coupled with the endlessness of tilling, the joyful birth was now paired with the agony of bearing.”

“But God did not curse us forever, nor can a universe bear to be, even partly, long reft from him. Earth and skies will someday be reborn—a new Eden.

“Now these are the measures of the world’s current fracture: absence of God, in famine, death, decay; and the mixing of absence-of-God and God to willfully oppose him, in lies, boasts, war.

“And here is a golden needle to thread the gap and and mend the universe: ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.’ It proves it is the golden needle because it fits the measures of the gap. First, ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’ implies that we not do to others as we would not have them do to us: this spans the latter gap by stopping our willful opposition of God—we stop harming God and each other. Second (and the needle shows itself even longer, even brighter): ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’ spans the former gap by filling the absence of God—‘Do feed the hungry, do clothe the poor, do fix the broken, do build the beautiful’—we do for each other as God did for our Parents in Eden.

“In fine, there is no reasonable way to pretend that, could every person in the world, every moment in time, do to others as he would have them do to him, the world’s fracture would not be mended. And so the golden needle proves it fits our world’s gaps precisely—and so proves our Savior who spoke it to us—it is one way he is proved.

“This is all I have to say about the Eden-story tonight.”

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
it gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod—
and all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil,
and wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent:
There lives the dearest freshness, deep-down things.
And, though the last lights off the black west went—
oh, morning at the brown brink eastward springs!
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
world broods with warm breast and with—ah!—bright wings.

—Gerard Hopkins

Listen to the trumpet in Hayden’s second concerto in C: what it says is true. In a mild way; it is not pretentious about it.

Why, Materialist, are you always silent, in your contemptuous discourses, on the subject of music? I challenge you to explain by what mechanism music informs our emotions. As a child I had not felt many feelings―but music could educate me of them, and make me dance or cry.

Through music, the fifth dimension, do angels look in and we look out. By music, the philosopher’s stone, is breath made spirit and spirit made air.

All that is sprang from a word of God―but that word was sung―ah, do you doubt it?