First off: a new essay to be found under the heading "Books by Frederick Keogh", subheading, "Essays." Titled "The Well." Listen up, Cal!
Am reading a deceptively simple biography of William Blake by Michael Bedard called "The Gates of Paradise." I go to Blake not only for his poetry - as the father of the Romantic poets who linked imagination to the Divine - but for that link to the Divine itself, one that he had in spades. He would, for instance, see angels in trees, or Christ and the Apostles walking in a field. At the age of 4 (or there abouts) he came running down the stairs of his London home to tell his parents that he had seen the face of God looking in his window. And we all know that snippet of poetry that sums up his visions:
To see the World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
And of course Blake is one of those about whom biographies are written: that is, a person much more hard-working, inspired and just all-around better than me. I have to admit that I do spend a little time with each of these biographies of the Greats wondering - and lamenting - about why I am such a sod-footed clod. On the other hand, thank God for the gifted, and for the gifts they have given us.
They also suffer. Blake often sounds like a schizophrenic and so was often treated as a nut case in his day, but he clearly was not crazy. He learned quickly that others did not have his visions and he fully understood their lack of it - identifying their (our) flatness with deadly accuracy. His was an addition, not an alternative. He was simply given more than the rest of us.
He also struggled for a definition more precise than his poetry for his overall world view, and at last he found it in Jacob Boehme, a German shoemaker who was blessed - and cursed - with visions as clear as Blake's, but also with a clear understanding that was lent to him through his celestial conversations. It is to one of these understandings in particular that I am drawn. It is not new, but put so concisely that even we clod-footed can understand. It is this: First, that God is present in everything - and thus we have only to look withing ourselves to find God "shining in and through all things." But "we do not live steadily in the light of this vision. In all things there is light and darkness, joy and sorrow..." If we do not know the former, we certainly know the latter, but the big question to be answered is, why is there the latter? If God is perfect light and love, and God is within everything and everyone, why is there this darkness? Simply, as Bedard states it through Boehme, "Were not this so, nothing would exist. There would only be a vast stillness."
And there it is in a nutshell: to exist is to have darkness mixed in with light, just as to have light there must be shadow - there MUST be. And it is in this darkness, this shadow, that the opposite of light MUST exist. To human understanding, this means that there MUST be evil, death, disease and so on simply because without these, existence could not be. And why existence? I can only answer here for myself: because creation is the nature of God. I cannot go beyond that. But we can see that in the contrasts necessary for existence there comes the possibility of choice, of fluctuations between good and evil, and of every kind of sorrow and of every kind of joy but the one transcendent. Let me allow Bedard to finish it:
"The kingdom of darkness is the part of us that seeks to enclose us, that surrounds us like a shell, constrains us like a cocoon. Boehme calls it Selfhood. Its light is reason; its rule is law. It denies vision and delights in power.
Constantly opposed to it is the kingdom of light - the part of us that strives to open, to expand its wings, to break through the shell that constrains it and fly free. As the world opens in us, we see the same world opening in all that lives and are one with them. This condition of harmony and freedom, where each creature strives to bring the life that opens in it to bloom, is what Blake celebrated in his Songs of Innocence."
This still does not explain exactly what I have felt about life, but it comes close: that is, that the way we think and experience is a necessary part of existence itself. That is, we would not be here without our stunted understanding - it is how we must be just as the flowers must bloom in season, and die in season as well. It is our condition. It is up to us, if we like, to peel back the shell and see more and more of the light that is really everything - but by so doing, we of course lose ourselves in the light. This is what the mystics have all been saying.
But still I feel that something is missing. Maybe that can only be found in the Light itself, but I'll keep trying, even if I can never keep up with the likes of Blake. FK
Am reading a deceptively simple biography of William Blake by Michael Bedard called "The Gates of Paradise." I go to Blake not only for his poetry - as the father of the Romantic poets who linked imagination to the Divine - but for that link to the Divine itself, one that he had in spades. He would, for instance, see angels in trees, or Christ and the Apostles walking in a field. At the age of 4 (or there abouts) he came running down the stairs of his London home to tell his parents that he had seen the face of God looking in his window. And we all know that snippet of poetry that sums up his visions:
To see the World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
And of course Blake is one of those about whom biographies are written: that is, a person much more hard-working, inspired and just all-around better than me. I have to admit that I do spend a little time with each of these biographies of the Greats wondering - and lamenting - about why I am such a sod-footed clod. On the other hand, thank God for the gifted, and for the gifts they have given us.
They also suffer. Blake often sounds like a schizophrenic and so was often treated as a nut case in his day, but he clearly was not crazy. He learned quickly that others did not have his visions and he fully understood their lack of it - identifying their (our) flatness with deadly accuracy. His was an addition, not an alternative. He was simply given more than the rest of us.
He also struggled for a definition more precise than his poetry for his overall world view, and at last he found it in Jacob Boehme, a German shoemaker who was blessed - and cursed - with visions as clear as Blake's, but also with a clear understanding that was lent to him through his celestial conversations. It is to one of these understandings in particular that I am drawn. It is not new, but put so concisely that even we clod-footed can understand. It is this: First, that God is present in everything - and thus we have only to look withing ourselves to find God "shining in and through all things." But "we do not live steadily in the light of this vision. In all things there is light and darkness, joy and sorrow..." If we do not know the former, we certainly know the latter, but the big question to be answered is, why is there the latter? If God is perfect light and love, and God is within everything and everyone, why is there this darkness? Simply, as Bedard states it through Boehme, "Were not this so, nothing would exist. There would only be a vast stillness."
And there it is in a nutshell: to exist is to have darkness mixed in with light, just as to have light there must be shadow - there MUST be. And it is in this darkness, this shadow, that the opposite of light MUST exist. To human understanding, this means that there MUST be evil, death, disease and so on simply because without these, existence could not be. And why existence? I can only answer here for myself: because creation is the nature of God. I cannot go beyond that. But we can see that in the contrasts necessary for existence there comes the possibility of choice, of fluctuations between good and evil, and of every kind of sorrow and of every kind of joy but the one transcendent. Let me allow Bedard to finish it:
"The kingdom of darkness is the part of us that seeks to enclose us, that surrounds us like a shell, constrains us like a cocoon. Boehme calls it Selfhood. Its light is reason; its rule is law. It denies vision and delights in power.
Constantly opposed to it is the kingdom of light - the part of us that strives to open, to expand its wings, to break through the shell that constrains it and fly free. As the world opens in us, we see the same world opening in all that lives and are one with them. This condition of harmony and freedom, where each creature strives to bring the life that opens in it to bloom, is what Blake celebrated in his Songs of Innocence."
This still does not explain exactly what I have felt about life, but it comes close: that is, that the way we think and experience is a necessary part of existence itself. That is, we would not be here without our stunted understanding - it is how we must be just as the flowers must bloom in season, and die in season as well. It is our condition. It is up to us, if we like, to peel back the shell and see more and more of the light that is really everything - but by so doing, we of course lose ourselves in the light. This is what the mystics have all been saying.
But still I feel that something is missing. Maybe that can only be found in the Light itself, but I'll keep trying, even if I can never keep up with the likes of Blake. FK
RSS Feed