Unquantifiable qualities

I was reflecting on good ol' St. Paul's words to the Galatians regarding the "fruit of the Spirit," a verse that I'm sure many of you have had lodged in memory since a tender age.

I suppose the problem of having such passages so ready-to-hand is the mental hinderance that superficial familiarity can be to actual understanding. By contrast, I suppose the benefit of having such passages so ready-to-hand is the sudden, fortuitous return of the truths that endure on a deeper plane, requiring no impetus beyond the words themselves as they bob to the surface.

As Horatio said of the grave digger, "Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness," and it is the ease of such recollections that allow for flippancy. But the easy recollections can also be, as for Sydney Carton, a "chain of associations that [bring] the words home, like a rusty old ship's anchor from the deep."

So, in short, as I sat on my couch today staring into space, Paul's words struck me differently. Here they are:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law" (ESV).

Now regardless of your religious persuasions (or lack thereof), I think you may find these qualities Paul attributed to life in the Spirit to be valuable ones. Nevertheless, I'm not sure if we were asked (without being put on guard) to name the qualities we most value in ourselves and others that the list would look the same. Conspicuously absent are our conventional American values. 

Imagine if the verse read, "But the fruit of the Spirit is independence, charisma, ambition, intelligence, talent, power, wealth, and self-confidence."

It is not just the absence of these qualities that struck me, but the stark difference between them and the ones specified. I have been reflecting on these things, in part, I believe, because of the recent death (May 8th, 2013) of my favorite contemporary philosopher, Dallas Willard. The greatest vindication of his vast corpus of philosophical theology is the quality of the life he lived--or to put it in terms closer to his own articulations: who he was proved to be the best evidence of the truth of what he believed.

Dallas Willard was fond of describing Jesus as "relaxed," and his own life was marked by a similar disposition. If we look at the first few qualities ascribed to the Spiritual fruit, we find fairly relevant characteristics.

Love: 

Was it Aquinas who first defined love as "willing the good" to a person or object? Is there anything so great and so humiliating as love? Love is essentially other-oriented. Is there not, to the contrary, an undercurrent of Self that pulls the alternative set of qualities toward their fulfillment? 

Joy:

Joy ain't happiness (or at least not as we understand it in modern terms), but a pervasive sense of well-being; one that persists in spite of circumstances or personal outcomes. In today's context, would an ambitious, motivated leader be comfortable (and fully content) not taking the complete initiative in his own pursuits?

Peace:

Shalom. Rest. A good person can be peaceful? Do we instead think of the ever-studious, the diligent, the organized, the (dare I say) workaholic as a better model of personal success? Perhaps there is some truth in our impressions, and perhaps there is some deceit. How can we be such spendthrifts with our time in an ultimate reality begging us to lie down in green pastures and wander by the still waters?

Patience:

Oh God, I am a failure here. No comment.

Kindness:

You mean I should treat other people well? Even if it doesn't help me achieve my personal goals?

So far the fruit of the Spirit looks like a nice old man from a fairy tale. Where are the kick-ass qualities of "real" men that we all know lead to real happiness? Let's look further down.

Gentleness:

Whoopsie. I should have skipped that one. Our traditional heroes sit uncomfortably in the shadows. Perhaps George Washington would not approve (certainly not Thomas Jefferson). My apologies.

Okay let's stop before "self-control." That might make us all a little depressed.

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My point is that one who dwells with the Spirit or "in" the Spirit, whatever that means (and presuming it is something good) is a person whose primary character traits generally apply, by modern standards (and ancient standards, for that matter), to weaklings and nobodies, people who don't get what they want because they don't assert themselves or they don't have the "right" kind of education. 

If I'm not too far mistaken, these traits also apply, however, to the people we know deep down to be much happier, better persons than we are, to the ones we want to be around and to be like, the ones we want to be with forever. 

And with God's help perhaps we will get there.

Dwelling on the Triolet (not to be confused with the toilet).

French words are like the flamingoes of linguistic taxonomy: ostentatious, gangling, and generally more appealing to the eye than the ear.  Of course, this comes from someone who, like dear Alice, would struggle to wield such words with the minimal finesse required of a croquet mallet.

Nevertheless, the word triolet doesn't bother me at all. As the name of an obscure but lovely poetic form, it has captured my heart as so many French things manage to do, in spite of the smell and the attitude.

A Triolet is defined as, "a poem of eight lines, typically of eight syllables each, rhyming abaaabab and so structured that the first line recurs as the fourth and seventh and the second as the eighth" (The New Oxford American Dictionary).

The most exceptionally hilarious instance of this form is by Frances Cornford (1886-1960):

To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

So much, indeed. I have always been glad that poetry can express the ridiculous, the humorous, and not simply the serious. Often the diverging impulses must blend. As Chesterton has noted, “He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.”

Before I discovered the "tragedy in [my] heart," I turned to verse merely as a way to communicate, for example, the murder of clowns, or the demise of Santa Claus, or the death of overly zealous lumberjacks--and naturally the verse itself was poor (to say nothing of the content). Now, of course, I am glad to understand (that is, stand under) a better, though perhaps not complete, distinction between verse and poetry. As Aristotle has observed, "The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with meter no less than without it." 

Poetry, by contrast, is not just a medium, but a kind of verbal Tao, submitted to by its practitioners, and able to instruct and to receive all the ridiculous, noble, profound, and playful aspects of human experience without regarding them as exclusive nor vilifying any sincere attempt to follow its tenets.

Human beings, unfortunately, are not so kind, and perhaps they cannot be. Just as the qualities of Love itself will be superior to the qualities of its disciples; the disciples of poetry cannot fully express the nature of poetry itself. It is a comfort for lousy poets like myself.

Poetry, then, if I can stay on my literary cloud for a moment longer, is a kind of spiritual discipline which trains one, not it the perfection of its forms, but in the perfection of one's heart. I wish more of us practiced it, perhaps even daily, even if we are terrible at it (and we generally are), that we might begin to shed the impulse merely to produce poems of merit and take on the poetic mind, through which our reality is justly discovered.

With that, I freely admit that my own insecurity leaves me, at present, to share only the more flippant of efforts in this Tao. Thus your reward (or penalty) for enduring my disorganized effusion is my own attempt at satisfying the conditions of the Triolet. Hopefully you know your Shakespeare.

Sadly, Not to Be

Dear Hamlet was a happy man—
A shame that he should die!
Ophelia never gave a damn,
Yet Hamlet was a happy man:
He smiled as villains, or anyone, can
And praised the pestilent sky!
Dear Hamlet was a happy man—
A shame that he should die.

 

I highly encourage you to try your own hand at this lovely little flamingo, and send them to me or post them below.

"Science" can't answer the important questions (Implication #2)

As a continuation of my initial argument and its initial implication, I posit a further corollary.

As eminent philosopher and generally successful human being, Dallas Willard, once said, There really is no such thing as Science; there are only sciences. And those various disciplines which constitute the generic field of "science" as a whole often do not agree with each other. People, therefore, who appeal to "science" in the abstract as some sort of nebulous entity capable of solving any riddle or explaining any phenomenon are either ignorant or disingenuous.

Now, don't get me wrong, this is not an anti-science diatribe. The sciences are superb and beautiful disciplines suited to wonderful purposes that, I believe, will extend forward into eternity as valuable avenues for engaging our universe. However, as interesting and elegant as the branches of scientific study are, they simply are not suited to answering questions concerning love, human significance, ethics, religion, or any other essential element of our daily conduct and personal relationships.

In fact, to ask the sciences to address such matters is not only misguided, but also unfair. Such misplaced expectations set up them up to fail and/or force them to give poor answers in order to preserve the undue sense of authority that has been blindly foisted upon them.

But enough about that; you can further explore the ideology of Scientism here or here or here.
On to the argument:

Premises:

1. The various sciences appropriately describe, measure, calculate, and theorize concerning the natural world and those laws, forces, and principles that govern it.

2. If one is to maintain the existence of rationality (and thus free will), then there is more to "the world" than the broad realms of physics and chemistry (i.e. the natural world).

3. Rational human beings, however, face paramount considerations of life and ethical conduct on a daily basis (e.g. how to treat one's children; what to buy; who to love; how to achieve happiness, etc.).

4. Such considerations demand reasoned responses that engage the human will.

Conclusion:

Therefore, the sciences cannot appropriately describe, measure, calculate and theorize concerning these paramount considerations.
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There are, no doubt, a few enthymemes lingering beneath the surface, but the thrust of this argument should be clear. If you want real answers to the really important aspects of your life, you must find somewhere else to turn besides science. Let scientists be scientists; let them do their job without burdening them with your own moral and intellectual responsibilities.