L. William Countryman's Blog, page 3

Finitude (cont.)

10. The universe is always in God's hand, as in Dame Julian's vision of the hazelnut. It is so small in comparison to the infinite hand that there can be no danger of its falling; and so she found herself reassured that "All shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of thing shall be well." Still, to us, the universe is so vastly huge that a fall within it will often seem to be a fall into sheer nothingness—so death, most obviously, but even lesser falls, a fall from employment, from favor, from the hope of some particular success, from good health, from cheerfulness or hopefulness. The extraordinary thing in Dame Julian's vision is that, for a moment, she is allowed to see the universe from God's perspective.

Finitude (cont.)

9. Perhaps the only possible experience of infinity for a finite being is what Gregory of Nyssa called an epektasis, a "drawing out toward." It is not an arriving at the infinite nor an unbounded state, but a progressive experience of the repeated transcendence of boundaries, including the re-experiencing of familiar things as new. This is not a religious experience in a narrowly defined sense though it certainly includes much religious experience. It also lies at the heart of erotic and sexual transcendence, which does not abolish the boundary between lovers, but grants to the lovers moments of unity, transcending rather than erasing their difference. And this is a transcendence that can continue to build on itself or deepen over time.

Finitude (cont.)

8. The inescapable reality of finitude is open to many interpretations, perhaps reducible to two. The first is that the finite equals all, the second that the finite is an expression of an unknown, an X, a something other than finite. The former interpretation has about it a kind of scientific aura, since it excludes any "non-natural" explanatory element. In the form of scientism, it even becomes a kind of tautology: only the measurable is real and therefore what I cannot measure does not exist. The incommensurate is dismissed as a category mistake. The second interpretation is that of faith and of the arts, which find that much of human experience evokes the incommensurate and therefore infinite.
But, of course, neither explanation is testable in scientific terms. Archimedes has no place to stand. One is always inside the question, always part of the problem one is trying to resolve. But perhaps these two interpretation of finitude, these hypotheses, can be tested in other terms—say, of joy, responsibility, generosity. This is essentially what Traherne proposed to us—that the reality of the infinite, shining though the finite, is made known to us as joy and delight and that our own joy and delight find fruition in the love of the Creator and of other human beings.

Finitude (cont.)

7. The creation is finite. Even if no external boundaries can be located for the universe, its reality remains finite because its internal structure is one of boundaries and limits. Only in finitude can anything "original, spare, strange" (in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins) exist. The possibility of such is a necessary condition for art because it makes newness possible. (This is not to advocate a modernist emphasis on originality as opposed to tradition; even within a tradition, every work of art represents a slightly different take on what has been received from the past, a slightly different vision.) Finitude is also the condition for all human dignity, since it gives each of us a different place to stand, a different moment in which to live. Finitude is a gift from God that can also become a creative act of our own. And it is also a condition for the peculiar richness of our world, affording us a finite image of the richness of God's inner life, though we can scarcely conceive that life as finite in itself.

Finitude (cont.)

6. We tend to experience (or become aware of) our finitude as an affront: the failing body, the lapsing memory, the distance we cannot traverse, the result we cannot achieve, the years we cannot live, the power we cannot wield. "Limits" always sound to us like a problem. We need, as corrective, an experience of the finite as gift. It is the kind of experience that Thomas Traherne described, drawing on memories of his early childhood, in a famous passage of his Centuries:
The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold. . . . The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. . . . Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared: which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. (3.3).
Here all the distinct and finite beauties and wonders of the world bring to the human soul a kind of infinite delight. The moment somehow includes the all and is therefore infinite. And yet, this is not really an escape into eternity, for it is momentary and it is made up of many finite pieces: grain fields, dust, stones, trees. It does not deny the reality of limitation, of temporality, of finitude; it is finitude itself becoming, however briefly, transparent to infinity.

Finitude (cont.)

5. Consciousness represents a glimpse, a suggestion of the infinite, a gesture toward it. It allows us to observe our finitude and therefore creates a kind of illusion of having escaped it. Indeed, insofar as it represents a moment of transcendence, looking back over the way it has come and specifying and describing the boundary it has just crossed, it has a kind of analogical relationship with the infinite. It shares the delight of the infinite and thereby expresses a kind of worship. Thinking, learning, understanding, imagining are all forms of this worship, for all are directed toward this thing that we are not—the infinite.

Reading Jay Johnson

I've just finished reading Jay Emerson Johnson's thought-provoking Divine Communion: A Eucharistic Theology of Sexual Intimacy. Like Jay (a longtime friend and colleague) I have long been emphasizing the centrality of God's love in Christian faith; and he kindly cites a couple of my writings. But he has gone much further in framing a comprehensive way of speaking about human sexual intimacy in the larger context of God's passionate love for humanity and the specific context of the sacraments. This strikes me as a very important contribution to the effort to construct a Christian understanding of sexuality that comprises less a set of rules than a spiritual integration of human life. It's a bold step and deserves careful reading.
It also ties in with the series of reflections on finitude that I've begun in this blog. For one thing, finitude is a necessary condition of sexuality. For another, sexuality is one of the transforming consequences of finitude.

Finitude (cont.)

4. Other animals are as bounded and finite as human beings. At times, some of them very likely approach the human consciousness of finitude. They certainly know something of delight and attachment and loss. The human experience of finitude, however, is shaped by our awareness of the alternative, boundlessness, and our longing to experience it or, at least, to get a handle on it—a handle of religion, perhaps, or theology, or science.

Finitude (cont.)

3. The goal of "wholeness" for a finite being is elusive and perhaps unattainable, partly because the finite being experiences everything as fragmented by space and time and partly because finitude means being inescapably related to other finite beings. The goal, perhaps, should not be wholeness, but rather the discovery of a center and the learning to rest in it, so that the disparate elements of our lives can come into relationship with one another.
The center cannot be chosen arbitrarily. If it is, the soul will find no rest in it, for the fragments will not meet. It cannot even be known in advance. Although we may profit from the advice or example of those who appear to have found such a resting point, we will not find it for ourselves except in the process of seeking it. For that matter, given our finitude and the consequent separation of each from the other, we are more or less certain to have misunderstood much of what our models have tried to tell us. They provide starting places, not final answers. "Seek and ye shall find." There will be no finding without the search.

Finitude (cont.)

2. Finitude is a quality of human existence so pervasive that we seldom consider it as such. It is breathing air. It is eating and drinking. It is falling short of our aims. It is our surprise at finding that the life we lead and the place we live it in, things we thought we knew, are both more and less than we supposed. Finitude imposes limits; it also offers opportunity. It is the condition that makes artistic creation possible: it gives us line, dimension, tempo and meter, assonance and dissonance, color, light, darkness. . . . Finitude is death; it is also birth. It is the substrate of desire and enjoyment as also of loss and anguish. And it is an ongoing affront to our desire to conceive and think and aspire without limits.