Loving A Hidden God
PURIFYING OUR FOCUS
Our spirits become swollen with the fun of living on earth and we find it almost impossible to even think about matters relating to God. We are consumed by our daily experiences of this earth and we find it extremely difficult to lift our sights again to the affairs of God. ...
I cannot help thinking that the turmoil caused by violent storms in wilderness, twisting us this way and that, is easier to bear than the strife we are called upon to fear and endure because of our day by day involvement in the affairs of this world.
Letter 95, 2 & 4
The final stage of purification on the way to wisdom demands a change of focus from earth to heaven whereby we, finally free from the distractions of everyday life, are able to center our lives on our eternal destiny. If we can accomplish this, then there is a chance that we will come to understand ourselves and (perhaps) even begin to have an experience of God.
It is not an easy thing to do. Augustine writes that we humans are often like little bugs crawling across a beautiful tile floor ... (I think of an ant crawling across the Sistine Chapel). We become so absorbed by the little piece of rock before us that we cannot see even the beauty of the whole floor. And, as far as being able to raise our eyes to see the beauty above ... that is just impossible! The task is beyond the capacity of our two-dimensional imagination. (On Order, 1.1.2)
The warning conveyed by Augustine's analogy is that if we spend all our time focusing on every passing pebble in front of our nose, every fleeting event that momentarily catches our attention, we will never come to see the beauty of the universe. We will judge creation as a whole by the beauty or ugliness of the little piece of life we are living through now, a practice which Augustine considers as absurd as judging the beauty of human beings by the attractiveness of their hair. (On True Religion, 40.76)
Focusing on these little bits of reality that fly past, we spread ourselves too thin. We rush about on the circumference of life. We "throw ourselves away" on every passing fancy (Commentary on the Gospel of John, 25.15.4) Cluttering our lives with more and more we become less and less. Our lives lose their center and we lose sight of the God who is at that center. (On Music, 6.13.40)
Changing the focus of our lives does not mean that we ignore daily affairs. We must live out our life in time on earth, crawling from day to day seeking what we need to get on with our lives. But if we attend to these passing needs in the right way, we still should have time to think of eternity. Living out our days in time we still should be able to sense the presence of God in our lives, a firm underpinning for all we do. His presence will be like the throbbing sound of a bull fiddle giving substance to the fleeting melody of everyday life.
In a way this awareness of the divine in everyday affairs is not unlike true love. In the first ecstasy of romantic love, lovers tend to go through life in a daze. All they do day in and day out is colored by the continuing overpowering realization that:
"I AM LOVED! I HAVE FOUND A TRUE LOVE!"
As the affection grows older it becomes quieter but it is still there as the foundation of their lives. Looking at two people holding hands after 50 years of marriage, you can see that with all the ups and downs in their lives, the solid foundation of their life has been the peaceful awareness that they have been and indeed still are two in one ... friends forever who have shared hearts and thereby conquered their loneliness in the love of the other. Such love, like the awareness of God, can only become present if we first begin to pay attention to the one we seek.
Augustine recognized that such focused attention is made difficult by the "bells and whistles", the "sights and sounds", of earthly diversions. In one of his sermons he cried out:
What vulgarity is caused by our sometimes shameless curiosity! Sacred Scripture calls it the concupiscence of the eyes and it is exemplified today in our eager craving for frivolous shows and spectacles. Consider the madness of the coliseum where the fans often begin fighting in the stands! At least the people on the field compete for some prize. What prize is there for the crowds who fight in the stands over their favorites? They lose there senses cheering for the players. Then they go to shows and feverishly applaud their favorite performer.
Sermon 313a, # 3.
Though he himself was never addicted to the games and races of the coliseum (as was his friend Alypius), Augustine saw the maddening effect such competitions and shows had on his congregation. Times do not change. The following harangue addressed to his fifth century congregation already shuffling their feet as they waited for the service to be over so they could rush to the coliseum, could just as well be applied to crowds at some of our modern extravaganzas:
On all sides the seething crowds, the hubbub of people converging on the stadium, pointing out the posters to each other as if it was all something tremendous, working themselves up to a pitch of excitement, touting the trivial attractions, urging one another to go, to see. To go where? To see what? To a place where witless fools can go and return even more mindless.
Sermon 142, 7.
There was a time when even Augustine was infected with such passion for the trivial. Writing about his experiences as a young student, he admits that he often sacrificed his studies in order to win at games and that he developed an inordinate curiosity about adult shows. (Confessions, 1.10) Later on, when he was formally exposed to the great literature of his day, he became even more captivated. Remembering those days, he wrote:
I was forced to memorize the wanderings of Aeneas (whoever he was) while forgetting my own wanderings; and to weep for the death of Dido who killed herself for love, while putting up with my own pitiful state without tears: the fact that I was becoming dead to You, O God.
Confessions, 1.13
There is nothing inherently evil in playing games, in enjoying shows, in cheering on "our" team. Because we are human we have the gift of wonder and through this gift we are able to appreciate the beauty of true art, to feel the thrill of competition, to experience the satisfaction of witnessing a difficult task done well. Such wonder at passing events becomes dangerous only when it prevents us from remembering where we are going. We become like the poor fellow on the superhighway, so intense in his gaping at the accident in the other lanes that he forgets where he is going and indeed even forgets that he himself is still rushing down a dangerous road. For him on the superhighway and for us on the road of life, such immoderate curiosity inevitably results in personal disaster.
Augustine believed that this what happened to the Prodigal Son. The beginning of the boy's downfall was his overpowering curiosity about what the world "out there" was like. (Luke 15:14-15), what answers were being given by astrologers, soothsayers, and secular masters to the mysteries of life:
Such wrong-headed curiosity led to a poverty of truth. The son, torn away from his father (God) by the insistent hunger of his mind, began to feed on the husks of earthly teachings, husks which crackle and pop but do not satisfy, husks which are fit food for pigs but not for human beings.
Sermon 112a, 3.
As long as the boy was consumed by curiosity about the husks of passing things, he was unable to appreciate the eternal.
To be honest, it seems quite easy to do this. Such earthly "husks" seem less boring than discourses on heaven. Few fall asleep in a stadium while watching a football game; listening to a discussion of theology in a lecture hall is conducive to napping. Speaking from my own experience of teaching philosophy for 40 years, I must confess that on some days I was more bored than my students. Even now, there are days when thinking and writing about spirituality loses out to fluffy T.V. presentations of the foibles and fables of the passing scene. On such days the description of the "dark night of the soul" seems less distressing than the dark screen of the broken cable T.V.
Sometimes our curiosity leads us to spend hours peering into the lives of others, especially those odd people who surface on afternoon talk-shows. Consumed by interest in their strange problems, we have no time to devote to our own destiny, our own weakness and strength. As Augustine remarked:
We humans are indeed hopeless creatures. The less we concentrate on our own faults, the more interested we become in the faults of others. We love to criticize others and spend little or no time correcting ourselves. We cannot stand looking at our own disreputable lives but we are quite eager to pass judgment on everyone else.
Sermon 19, 2-3.
It is probably because of our "cracks" that we have an almost irresistible temptation to gossip about the foibles of others as we float past them on this river of time. Our own life seems so dull by comparison and there seem to be so many truly outlandish things happening to others. We forget the words spoken by the prophet:
Our own faults are revealed as soon as we open our mouth to pass judgment on others.
Sirach, 27:4
As we merrily comment on the foundering lives of others, we cannot see that our own life is in danger of sinking into the depths from all of the accumulated bilge-water of greed, anger, lust, and downright meanness that is ours alone. (Commentary on the Gospel of John, 12.14.2; Sermon 56, 19; Sermon 77B, 7)
Instead, we waste our days talking more and more about less and less, demonstrating the emptiness within and the accuracy of Augustine's observation that the people who do the most talking are often those who have the least to say. Our gossip reverberates loudly in space only because it is amplified by the echoing chambers of our empty head. Better by far to follow Augustine's advice:
If we would keep our "fiddle-faddle" to ourselves and begin to learn from the wise rather than converse with fools.
City of God, 5.26.
But it is so hard to do this! It is so much easier to live on the surface of life rather than dive into the depths of contemplation to try to hear the quiet voice of God. (Letter 140, 2)
It is clear that the danger of such misdirected focus is not that it makes us do bad things. It just diverts our attention from doing the good that we must do in order to successfully make our pilgrim way to heaven. It is a temptation that will be always afflict us because this world is indeed an interesting place. And so it should be because it is, like us, a reflection of the wonder that is God.
If only we can change our focus from our daily joys and tribulations to what is promised us in our eternal future, then perhaps we will come to experience the ecstasy of true freedom, an ecstasy reflected in Augustine's joyous words:
"I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, Most High. (Psalm 9, 2-3.)" I will rejoice and exult, not now in this age, not in the pleasure of bodily caresses, not in the flavors of the palate and the tongue, not in sweet scents, not in pleasant sounds that fade away, not in the beauty of iridescent colored objects, not in the vanities of human praise, not in the joys of a loving spouse and fine children (who sadly must someday die), not in the abundance of temporal riches but "in you I will rejoice and exult".
Commentary on Psalm 9, 3
This is the song of those who are at last purified, those who have ceased
trying to control their future, those who finally have come to accept whatever the
providence of God has in store for them. Free of time and the world they are now prepared
to look into eternity, to seek that Wisdom which comes with finding and loving the hidden
God.