Christian mystic Jean Pierre de Caussade described himself in his relationship with God as a “piece of stone destined to be carved†into whatever the great sculptor would, in His wisdom, wish Jean Pierre to become.
“…his work is the finest imaginable. It is perfect. I welcome each blow of his chisel as the best thing that could happen to me, although, if I am to tell the complete truth, I feel that every one of these blows is ruining me, destroying me, and disfiguring me.â€
This, then, is a tough spot for one to put oneself in. Reading it for the first time I was struck by the courage of Jean Pierre to offer himself up to God in such a way…struck by the humility. Welcoming each blow, even though he has no clear idea as to how he is being “sculptedâ€, feeling the pain of every whack, yet accepting it all gratefully.
Upon reflection, however, I wondered at the form of such a relationship. This describes a one-sided affair. Is this the way our relationship with God is? Others seem to regard the relationship as more of a partnership of sorts. We are partners in God’s creation…some of the stone is us, some is God, some of the sculptor is God, some is us.
A while back I posted the thread “Acornology” to try and describe re-birth. The shell of the acorn is analogous to our personality while the kernel within is analogous to the seed of man capable of re-birth.
Normally our personalities are very strong and this living side is securely covered by this shell or personality. Ideas like you bring are hard to accept because we consider them from our personality which must become subservient if the kernel of life we possess can be allowed to feel and experience the light and grow. Normally they are rejected.
In some people like Jean Pierre de Caussade the kernel of life is very developed to begin with so it is easier for them to become open to abandon so many awkward habits and and ideas acquired in life that block the light but we, in darkness, find desirable. They are open to a calling that is suppressed in us
I’ve found it useful but difficult to ponder the following from Meister Eckhart. It puts this idea of our “doing” so emphasized in secular religion into a very difficult perspective that IMO can only be appreciated in the context of re-birth since IMO it is beyond us. But this is God’s will done through us and I find nothing offensive in it.
From a site that no longer exists but I copied to my Documents a while ago
I agree with Nick in that we are servants. In fact, the Bible praises the servants. But the last shall be first. The one that serves the Lord shall be lord of men.
Besides, Jerry, Jean Pierre might strike you as humble, if you consider him by himself as an anomally, but loses his luster and importance as a representation of a type, a type for example, also found in Luther, the author of “Theologia Germanica”, Ignatious, to mention just three.
These were men who found comfort in the control of their God over the cruel human condition. They took comfort in that, whatever the world was like-- unjust, cruel, capricious etc–that these “evils” had meaning, had a reason for being and what is more, were only apparently evil, because in the end, this God controlled the entire universe and being a good just god, meant that the workings of the universe had a positive design to them. Evils were for instruction, for example, or the mighty blows of this good God’s adversary, striking against this good God’s soldiers.
In any case, a narration was created in which this good controlled all, united all and secured meaning in all.
Pierre did not have a choice in receiving the blows of life, in some way or another, as many ills strike us all as humans, but he could choose how he understood their cause; a choice still haunting us to-day.
It may seem like courage and humility and even feel as such, but we are critters first and foremost.
Nick and Omar, thank you for your thoughtful responses.
Would you say, then, that “servant” status presupposes a teleological universe? Or put another way, wouldn’t one have to believe in a teleological universe to believe in servant status of humans?
I would say that we are both partners and servants. We serve God by tuning into God’s frequency, when we are in tune with the frequency of God then all our actions are that of God and thus we serve God. We are also partners in that we are co-creators of our world, spiritually speaking if we understood who we really are, gods and godesses, we would understand that we hold the power of creation within us.
Jerry wrote:“Would you say, then, that “servant” status presupposes a teleological universe? Or put another way, wouldn’t one have to believe in a teleological universe to believe in servant status of humans?”
O- We should say that “God”, in the way that Pierre uses the concept, presupposes that type-universe; not at all the word “servant”. Even if we used the word “partner”, as one could prefer, we still remain in that teleological universe, presupposing a design, a designer and a purpose. To be otherwise, you would have to allow “Chaos” and Chaos is not what we have in mind when we talk of “God”.
You’re gonna get me in trouble with this one. Yes, I believe the universe is a hierarchical structure serving divine purpose.
This conflicts directly with much of modern thought which denies such hierarchy putting everything on the same level. Naturally then, it is easy to become attracted to all these ideas as suggested above that we are gods and goddesses.
We are servants simply because as we are, we are as Simone Weil suggests. Consider the excerpts I posted above from Meister Eckhart:
The human condition does not allow it. It is our potential, something to be practiced as suggested in view of this goal.
This is what we do so it is what we are
In Christianity this is re-birth. It begins with the acceptance of our nothingness in contrast to our more normal tendency to consider ourselves from the imagined perception of self importance.
Keeping with Meister Eckhart and from another excerpt:
The idea isn’t to serve God but to consciously participate in God’s will which, in the fallen state, is impossible for us. This potential for Man’s freedom and usefulness is why God makes something out of nothing when we can become open to it.
This is interesting to me. I started another thread on the meaningless-ness of life. Not that I believe that life is meaningless, but it’s worth it, I think, to at least consider the idea that the meaning of life might be that there is no meaning. In the face of this idea, chaos itself becomes fascinating…maybe even attractive. A certain randomness to the world automatically brings forth endless possibilities. One might even argue that creativity herself is dependent upon it.
Why is one idea, the idea of a goal-oriented universe, necessarily more attractive than one without goals….without a clear purpose, yet steeped in (maybe even contingent upon) creativity?
But liquidangel’s ideas, which you have noted here, present, I believe, the possibility of a universe of random creativity, one dependent in large part on us to complete the canvas, or paint over it and begin anew, with the only point being creativity itself, for its own sake.
I think I would like to ask you the same question I posed to Omar above.
I would suggest that one must choose a one-behind-many POV, or that of a processual ascosmotic universe. The typical western view is the former, where Eastern thought is primarily the latter. There is much confusion because of language and cultural reductionism, but both viewpoints are quite distinct in their ‘seeing’ of any metaphysical question. de Caussade obviously is within the one-behind-many POV, while LA’s response (without putting words in her mouth) suggests a more Eastern viewpoint.
It doesn’t seem clear to me that the lack of a single omnipitent creator represents chaos, but rather novelty and sponteniety. The deeper and greater the sensitivity of our awareness, the deeper we see into our experience as it happens each moment, and perhaps it is here that we glimpse that which is God.
Partners or servants? It is beyond our knowing. But one may construct whatever one chooses. That which is God lies hidden in plain sight.
It does not have to be an either/or proposition and much easier to visualize from a cosmological perspective or a “layered” universe.
The highest cosmos is God and pure consciousness. Each descent cosmologically manifesting as a level of creation is a combination of consciousness and the interaction of mechanical laws functioning as forces and coming together as three into one appearing to us as “things” or lawful fractions of a higher whole. The higher the cosmos, the greater its consciousness and the less it is dependent on the interaction of mechanical laws to serve its purpose.
Universal purpose is to function as a machine continually transforming matter in conjunction with the two complimentary flows of energy known as evolution in the direction of the source and involution or away from the source and into the lower realms of creation.
So even though at higher cosmological levels the universe functions more consciously, at the lower levels within the higher levels, the universe functions mechanically and the transformation of substances occurs at random without conscious guidance and appearing to us as chaos. In Buddhism these laws of universal continuance are called the dharma.
As a pre-Christian I accept the Lord’s Prayer which has within it the phrase: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Here is where the creativity you mention comes in. Unfortunately, in modern times our egotism has allowed us to believe we are capable of serving as the vehicle for this to occur. Our scattered being denies it which is why Christianity strives with the help of the Holy Spirit for inner unity or re-birth…
I believe as does Meister Eckhart in our potential for creativity in accordance with God’s will but as a seed it is only a potential to eventually allow higher consciousness to enter into man and be guided down into the mechanical realms of our being and that of the earth to aid in evolutionary development.
But there is a great difference between man as a seed analogous to an acorn and evolved Man analogous to an Oak and able to create in accordance with universal purpose. It is just not flattering to our egos to admit it.
— Why is one idea, the idea of a goal-oriented universe, necessarily more attractive than one without goals….without a clear purpose, yet steeped in (maybe even contingent upon) creativity?
O- Well Jerry, I guess thyere are many answers to that. In life we do have certain goals and aspirations. At a deeper level, we seek pleasure and try to avoid pain-- nature, as it were, has set goals to our species; has set necessities.
For these reasons it is more comfortable to imagine the universe as having a purpose, because that is what we know, and expect.
As some have argued, we are naturaly predisposed to belief. Be more general and you can see that “goals” are purposes that exist if there is order in the universe.
As for “creativity”, I’ll prefer if you could elaborate on what you mean with this.
Well I’m not saying there’s no order in the universe. Things seem to follow very predictable and rigid physical laws, after all. But order doesn’t necessarily equate to a goal for mankind. It follows, to my way of thinking, that absent a specific goal, the universe can go in all kinds of different, unpredictable directions. It will go there in predictable, ordered ways (mankind is limited by physical laws) but it can go in who-knows-what direction since, in this scenario, there would be no prescribed goal. And this, it seems to me, opens up more of a random nature to things. I see this randomness as an ingredient for creativity. If the painting is supposed to be blue, if that is the goal of the painting, then it’ll be blue. That’s creative in its own way, but if there is no particular color the painting has to be, if somebody is randomly, with no regard for any assumed goal, selecting whatever colors he wants, then the end result is up for grabs, limited not by goals set down for how the painting has to look, but limited instead only by the painter’s imagination.