This Silent Agency, part I

The Apocalypse Tapestries, Angers

Photograph by the author

September 7

Life makes a great deal of noise, and we make a great deal of noise with it.

Being, however, gathers life into it silently. It flows into us in varying degrees according to our receptivity, and we become aware of it in varying degrees according to our attention. 

Eventually, perhaps, we begin to see that it is a whole thing, not divided into the many fragments we perceive. To see this from time to time is not a right but a privilege. The wholeness of Being in its entirety belongs only to God; that wholeness is His own nature, and will never be comprehensible to us.

In the meantime, we serve as the custodians of whatever part is given to us through our own Being. We become representatives of God within our sensation, apprehension, and contemplation; and in this way we come to be like God, on an infinitesimally tiny scale. The moments when this takes place are the moments when we are harmonically attuned to the divine in such a way that its vibrations flow all the way from the top of creation down through us and towards the bottom. There are reminders, here, of Hadewijch’s vision of the countenance of God (vision 13):

…the new heaven was opened. There revealed itself (the) Countenance of God… The Countenance had six wings; they were all closed outwardly, but within they were ceaselessly in flying motion… all the locks of the wings came open outwardly... 

The two highest flew in the height in which God enjoys the highest power of love. The two middlemost flew in the amplitude of Love's perfect modes of action. The two lowest flew in the fathomless depth in which he swallows up all beings. All the wings were straight. 

—Hadewijch, From The Classics of Western Spirituality, Vision 13, Page 297

  Love engenders all Being. These are the two highest wings, which also represent heaven. Mankind and material creation are the middlemost wings, which fly in the amplitude of love’s perfect modes of action.  

Amplitude is the maximum extent of a vibration or oscillation measured from the position of equilibrium; so we see how she directly refers to material existence as being in a harmonic  relationship with God’s action. 

To fly is to overcome gravity; and perfect modes of action represent a wholeness of Being. In their entirety, Hadewijch’s perfect modes of action can also be understood as all of material creation, which is composed both in its entirety and in its infinite particulars of The Perfection. 

What we can understand from this is that The Perfection is not resident in the material manifestation but in the action of love.

There are further important relationships here that can’t be explained but must be absorbed through experience. In the meantime, perhaps we recognize that the rapturous visions of a medieval ecstatic won’t help us to understand where we are now and what we are doing. Even if one is familiar with religious ecstasy, it's not a stool to sit on or podium from which to preach. One has to live in an ordinary way, after all is said and done; and almost all of our experiences are lived in this middle ground where the harmonic relationship of Being is our primary responsibility.

So I come back to this point that Being gathers life into itself silently. 

In conjunction with the support of a higher energy that perpetually flows into us — whether we're in relationship with it or not — Being gathers Life. 

Every time we do come into relationship with this, the concentration of the force of The Perfection and of Love itself within us becomes greater. We are in a greater alignment with this force; and the particles of our own Being vibrate in consonance (NOT mere resonance) with those greater forces that engender us.

 Another way of putting this is that the essence of our Being, which is quietly collecting the material of our life the way that bees collect honey, forms a core of silence around the entirety of our inner life, which is there to support us if our attention contacts it. We may be outwardly agitated; but if our inner silence gains strength through our willing participation in Being— our willingness to suffer, that is, to be there as we are — then it is always present as an agency of its own.

This silent agency contains all of the questions our life brings us.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.