The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air: Three Godly Discourses

by Søren Kierkegaard

Yes, when you are surrounded by commotion or when you are immersed in diversions, this seems to be almost an exaggeration; there seems to be altogether too great a distance between loving and hating to permit someone to place them so close to one another, in a single breath, in a single thought, in two words that—without subordinate clauses, without parenthetical phrases to produce greater agreement, without even the slightest punctuation mark—follow immediately upon one another. But indeed, as a body falls with infinite speed when placed in a vacuum, so also does the silence out there with the lily and the bird, the solemn silence before God, cause these two opposites to touch and repel one another at exactly the same instant: indeed, they come into existence in the same instant—either to love or to hate.

This seems to me a hideous and wrong-headed simplification. The third way is ambivalence or unknowing. One does not hate god if they feel that entity to be a human fiction.

For the lily and the bird are unconditionally obedient to God; in their obedience they are so simple or so lofty that they believe that everything that happens is unconditionally God’s will, and that they have absolutely nothing to do in the world other than either to carry out God’s will in unconditional obedience or to submit to God’s will in unconditional obedience.

Another definitional challenge. You can choose to embrace or merely accept god's will, but accept it you shall.

For despite its surroundings the lily is itself because it is unconditionally obedient to God; and because it is unconditionally obedient to God, it is unconditionally free of cares, which only those who are unconditionally obedient—especially under such circumstances—can be.

Want to live carefree? Give unconditional obedience!

The gospel, which is the wisdom of upbringing, does not get involved in an intellectual or verbal quarrel with a person in order to prove to him that it is so; the gospel knows very well that this is not the way things are done, that a human being does not first understand that what it says is so and then decide to obey unconditionally, but the reverse, that only by unconditionally obeying does a human being come to understand that what the gospel says is so.

Another handy tautology of faith.

the lily and the bird are themselves what they teach; they themselves express the subject in which they give instruction as teachers. This is different from the straightforward and primal originality, that in the strictest sense the lily and the bird possess firsthand that which they teach—it is acquired originality. And of course this acquired originality in the lily and the bird is in turn simplicity, for whether instruction is simple does not depend so much on the use of simple, everyday expressions or high-flown, learned language—no, simplicity is that the teacher himself is what he teaches.

Finally, an elegant thought beautifully portrayed.

For when you keep silent in the solemn silence of nature, then tomorrow does not exist, and when you obey as a creature obeys, then there exists no tomorrow, that unfortunate day that is the invention of garrulousness and disobedience.

But isn't a large part of joy derived from improvement? How does the simplicity of the lily and bird account for that?

You shall learn joy from the lily and the bird. Even less may you become self-important—in view of the fact that the lily and the bird, after all, are simple—so that you (perhaps in order to feel that you are a human being) become clever, and speaking with reference to some particular tomorrow, say: “The lily and the bird, of course they can—they who do not even have a tomorrow by which to be plagued, but a human being, who of course not only has worries about tomorrow, about what he is to eat, but also about yesterday, about what he has eaten—and not paid for!” No, no witticism that impudently disturbs the instruction. But learn, at least begin to learn, from the lily and the bird. For of course no one can seriously believe that what the lily and bird rejoice over, and similar things—are nothing to rejoice over! Thus, that you came into existence, that you exist, that “today” you receive the necessities of existence, that you came into existence, that you became a human being, that you can see—consider this: that you can see, that you can hear, that you have a sense of smell, that you have a sense of taste, that you can feel; that the sun shines for you and for your sake, that when it becomes weary, the moon begins to shine and the stars are lit; that it becomes winter, that all of nature disguises itself, pretends to be a stranger—and does so in order to delight you; that spring comes, that birds come in large flocks—and do so in order to bring you joy; that green plants...

The response to my prior question. Do I actually believe this? No, I do not. This text is not providing me joy.