I find myself fascinated, these days, by tales and legends of a small group working against apparently insuperable odds, ridiculously overmatched... yet succeeding (overall, mostly) with the help of divine providence.
This may explain my recent engagement with the Journey to the West/ Monkey story; as well as more familiar examples from Lord of the Rings, That Hideous Strength, or the excellent Mistborn fantasy trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.
There were real life examples such as the 'Lake Poets' and the Inklings - or Tolkien's youthful TCBS club of schoolfriends.
It is a familiar trope; and is usually associated with action and adventure. But I feel that the deep fascination of this scenario is at the level of thinking, not doing - and it about a spiritual rather than material quest.
At any rate; the current situation is a quest for something uncertain, in an unknown place, and without any clear idea of how to achieve it.
Consider the blog, Albion Awakening - we three authors were on on a spiritual quest for the awakening of Albion - Albion being the deep spiritual aspect of Britain (or perhaps the British Isles including Ireland).
There is no way that three people writing on an obscure blog could causally make a positive difference to a nations of some sixty million who are addicted to the mass media and overwhelmingly hostile to anything which might interfere with their pleasures, or which might threaten their comfort, convenience and self-esteem.
But the blog is merely the surface; communicating aspect of a motivation that exists in our minds, in our thoughts; and which can work by a direct process of knowing - a mind-to-mind mutual knowledge, rather than being reliant upon the process of sending-out signals and having them received and understood in line with our hoped for meanings...
Furthermore, the 'odds' against us are balanced by divine assistance insofar as we are indeed (really and truly) pursuing a quest that is in-line-with God's hopes and plans...
(And if we are not doing what would please God, then such assistance will be withheld; so the harm is limited.)
Divine assistance generally works by means of 'providence', or synchronicity - that is a 'behind the scenes' arrangement of events to produce the most hopeful juxtapositions of persons and incidents. But God can only do so-much when it comes to human affairs, since our 'free will' can and does often oppose God's will... nonetheless, providence is known for recurrently leading to as-many-as-possible opportunities for us to 'make the right decision', and to nudge thereby things in the right direction.
So providence can ensure that something is noticed, but not that it is reacted-to; nor that it is reacted-to in a positive and constructive fashion. Providence can use communications to point-at a truth - but cannot ensure that a person grasps that truth intuitively (ie directly).
Anyway; I personally feel vastly encouraged by the idea of a hopeless quest against the odds, of a type that could only succeed by 'luck'/ wildly improbable 'coincidneces'!
The idea is that we should simply get-on-with trying to do what we ought to do, as best we can determine and and best we can pursue that quest; and accept that that is all that we can do - but that is enough; despite that we almost certainly will never know the full outcome of our endeavor even if we did (improbably, overall) succeed.
I also feel encouraged by the conviction that such a quest cannot fail, because it has intrinsic value in the doing; and that any genuine achievement in the realm of real-thinking (thinking by and of our divine selves) is permanent and eternally available: makes a difference forever.
Can a tiny Quest group make a significant difference? Yes, of course it could! It could - if that is what God wills, if divine providence assists, and if that is what the people of Albion choose...
This understanding and perspective - the Quest Fellowship as a tiny band of cheerful but inept adventurers who hardly know what they are looking-for, and only hope to recognise it if they happen to stumble upon it...
Ridiculously out-matched; being pitted-against a vast and powerful system of purposive evil led by immortal demons and sustained by a legion of variously depraved, drugged and dozy minion masses...
Such a perspective makes life both exciting and
unpredictable; and also possesses a refreshing clarity, simplicity, and
honesty!
Reprinted with some editing from Albion Awakening - a couple of years ago; more relevant now than ever.
6 comments:
Your touch reaches all over the world. I am reading every day here in Southwestern, PA.
Maybe Creation is like one big symphonic orchestra. The whole physical universe (with all its laws of nature) is is a kind of constant, perfectly-performed harmony, and living Beings are the melodies.
But the symphony hasn't been written beforehand. It's being composed on the spot by the players. It's more like a giant jamming session, where every person can do their own thing, but if their music will synchronize when play their instrument in Love. The Holy Family's music is synchronized by Love, and they want us to join them.
When we humans play Loving music, sometimes the Holy Family will jam with us. We'll become the lead, and the universe in some way will riff off us.
In other words, Synchronicity is that rare moment when the Symphony becomes a Concerto. For a moment, we get our solo. The contents of our consciousness are performed in the physical universe, letting us know that our consciousness is not cut-off from the rest of existence. We're meant to see that we're not alone. This is a way that Heaven can directly comfort us without disrupting the physical universe's necessary perfection. They don't want to "interrupt the game." This might be happening all over the place without our realizing.
But because the Nature Harmony Lines are so perfect and reliable, we mistake the Laws of Nature as the boundaries of a closed system, rather than a perfectly-coherent live orchestral performance. We miss what's all around us.
All this might explain why we feel that certain music goes with certain images. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata might suggest a sweet-and-melancholic moonlit night precisely because it resembles the Heavenly Music that physically creates such scenes.
@Stacey - Thanks for letting me know.
@Epi - Yes, thats about it; with the added advantage that there is nothing very analogous to the difficult process of learning a musical instrument. I think that each individual's contibution to the symphony of creation will comes from his or her real and divine self (their ultimate nature of being), which is Not like a kind of expertise, and is more genuinely unique than the genius of a great soloist. We will each, individually, bring to creation something that nobody else could ever bring.
I liked your analysis of synchronicity as a kind of generic 'reminder' - I think this is more accurate than the more frequent assumption that the specific content of the synchronicity has an encoded meaning intended to affect choices or actions.
Agreed! Thanks for taking that metaphor seriously!
Maybe the musical instruments are intended to play the sounds of Creative Love. To play the music of Creative Love in whatever potentially-infinite way is to perform with the technical expertise you speak of. Musical Expertise=Development of Creative Love. I take your point on the uniqueness, though.
I agree very much with synchronicity being a generic reminder. I think attempting to divine the will of the Heavens through trivial daily events will lead very shortly to madness. We are meant to attend to the main song of life, and it is our civilization's intense interest in that main song - ie. the physical universe, among other things - which (for better or worst) is responsible for its unprecedented success.
Ironically, by ignoring superstitions, signs, and wonders in favor of studying the details of everyday life, we've acquired Godlike powers far beyond the old world with its priests and magicians. There's probably a spiritual lesson in that.
The ideas, thoughts and insights that you, Wildblood, Fitzgerald and Berger have expounded and that perhaps could be summarily encompassed by the idea of Romantic Christianity have been essential to me. So has some of the writers that you have introduced , such as Colin Wilson, Arkle and Barfield.
So, whatever happens the coming months regarding political or societal development you should know that your circle have been a source of inspiration and hope for at least some of us.
@AB - Thanks!
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