“Man, in his weakness and shortsightedness believes he must make choices in this life. He trembles at the risks he takes. We do know fear. But no. Our choice is of no importance. There comes a time when our eyes are opened and we come to realize that mercy is infinite. We need only await it with confidence and receive it with gratitude. Mercy imposes no conditions. And lo! Everything we have chosen has been granted to us. And everything we rejected has also been granted. Yes, we even get back what we rejected. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.”
Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Babette’s Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny (Translated from Danish)
In finitude: severance, analysis, choice. In infinitude: the acceptance of deliverance, the full fecundity of being.
You know, for as long as my kid sister was here, she was going on about the ‘eternal self’ and the ‘temporal self,’ making me laugh with recap’s of her eternal and temporal selves’ witty parlays on topics as diverse as whether she was fit for a run, fit for her life, fit for the Kingdom of God. When I prodded her for more of this (wonderful) theology she told me a winsome myth (worthy of Rilke in its unapologetic idiosyncrasy) of a life before life in the full presence of God and a choice made (whose?) to enter the temporal stream, losing all but the seed of a memory that would have to be grown up in full so that by death temporality should be so shot through with eternity (recovered) that “death hath no dominion.” (I, like a perfect Philistine, suggested she might like Heidegger. She was gracious enough to let me say “Scratch that! I’m sorry!” and to take me in-arm to the lake.)
Had you suggested she read Plato’s Symposium, you might both have walked arm-in-arm with a glint of fallen infinitude and a glimmer of dear Diotima.
Here in downtown LA getting ready to talk about Thoreau and being reborn each day and gratitude for life and living; and back at the ranch Tues ‘the kids’ will see the movie version of Blixen, who has retold Kierkegaard in wonderful fables that philosophers pass over — except for the alert ones, who see them and let them give new breath when the academy suffocates.
Andrew, I thought of that (of dear Diotima), but what was so (so!) great about Ada’s mythology was that it didn’t fall along Platonic lines at all. Her eternal self was a passionate one: personal, embodied, thoroughly invested with care. So too, her temporal self’s sin was not worldliness so much as short-sightedness, unwillingness. (Something Nietzschean here, perhaps.) Her temporal self was bound by fear while her eternal self always found resources for yes-saying, for coursing once more into the fray. Her Eden was no world but this world, but this world affirmed. In moments of misgiving she would say, “My eternal self has to remind my temporal self . . . ” or, “I just have to remember . . . ” and what she had to remember was something like already having willed this, or having been willed by God. Writing you, I realize I have so many things I want to think through here. More anon, friend?
Dear Ed,
I confess, I struggle to think “downtown LA” and “Thoreau” in one sentence–a prejudice I hope you’ll educate me out of. And Babette’s Feast as a follow-up lesson to ‘Skip to the rose garden’: What lucky students you have!
Ever,
C.
Dear C.,
LA and Thoreau never shall meet, you’re right; meeting colleagues there (where there’s no ‘there’) is like meeting them in cyber space. It works fine until one descends the staircase and sees the street. Or the year-around roses reminding you that there are no seasons, and the dry hills, wanting anything but the suburbs that mercilessly invade them.
Ed
Oh, Ed. I would call these ‘desert words’ except the desert un-invaded is so stunning in its wealth. I’m sorry for the poverty of the sights, but trust that the time with colleagues and promise of Dinesen (today!) was some compensation, some refreshment.