In the well-known hymn attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, "O Sacred Head Now Wounded," is the following verse:
What language shall I borrow to thank thee dearest friend,
for this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever! And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never, outlive my love for thee.
This is perhaps my favorite verse in all of Christian hymnody because of its opening line, "What language shall I borrow. . ." Indeed, what language can we use to describe something too deep for words?
As mentioned in my previous post, we humans are physically limited in our abilities to perceive the world around us by our five senses and three-dimensional perspective and for most and for the most part they work very well in finding our way around it.
Beyond them, however, we humans are gifted with imagination and intuition, which help us formulate our experiences as knowledge which is retained by the faculty of memory.
Beyond that we humans have evolved a means of recording and sharing our memories through speech and language.
Beyond that we have invented a way to preserve and systemize our language through writing.
This evolving human journey is amazing in itself as I am reminding myself while I am siting here typing away on my laptop preparing this post electronically and will be digitally preserved in a binary code that exceeds my current understanding of how such things work. Things we can do today, fly around the world in the matter of hours, travel into space, communicate with billions of people around the world simultaneously through picture and sound at the speed of light would have been considered nothing more than science fiction and fantasy a little more than a hundred years ago, but such fantasy, as we know today, can become reality as a result of the four "I's": Intuition, Imagination, Intellect, and Invention.
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ALL KNOWLEDGE IS ROOTED IN MYTH
Amazing as all of that is, we still encounter things too deep to understand in simple terminology. We have yet to find a scientific answer to the intuitive inquiry as to why anything exists and that exhausting one-word question, "Why?" that every child learns to ask as soon as he or she begins to question frequently leads impatient parents to answer with the ambiguous answer, "because." To answer the "Why" of some things, requires the use of imagination and story-telling to provide a context for understanding the question and that provide the semblance of an answer to it.
There is one catch-all word that we humans have come up with to answer that question, a word that has no intrinsic definition of its own, a word that proceeds from the depth of human intuition about why anything exists, a word that requires the telling of stories to make any sense of it, and a word that kindles the mythic imagination, and that word is "GOD."
God is an imaginative, mythic word that can be divided into any number of gods and goddesses. It can be given a shape and it can transcend any shape. Gods are generally considered immortal, all-powerful, and beyond comprehension, yet accessible through prayer. Gods can be ambivalent, capricious, caring, involved in human affairs, and so on. The word God is a paradox in some religious understandings; in that, it is a noun describing verb. This is particularly the case in Abrahamic monotheism, where God is love and God is light and where it is forbidden to make a concrete image of God, where God is whatever God is at any given moment.
Myth is a very misunderstood word and method. It shouldn't be, but it largely is because we have been taught that myths are lies. Let me emphatically say that myths are not lies and the reason I say that is because myths never pretend to be facts and should never be taken as such. Myths are about something deeper than facts and they appeal to something deeper in us than cold facts, something that attempts to answer that perennial question, why? Myths are about exposing truths that lie beneath the surface of our factual experiences. Myths are stories that give voice to an intuitive body of knowledge that is older than recorded history, an imaginative knowledge upon which every facet of intellectual knowledge is rooted in. Myths attempt to answer the ultimate questions as to why anything exists. In doing so they expose us to truths about ourselves and the universe we live in that resonate within our living souls.
Science itself gives a nod to the mythic by the fact that it theorizes phenomena that are true enough to be utilized in factual ways but are, as yet, unprovable in themselves. After all, the root word in theory is "Theo" the Greek word for god. As such, scientific theories are mythic formulae that are true enough to be factually utilized. In fact, some theories are so true that they are no longer considered by some to be theories. Darwin's theory of evolution is such a theory because it so effectively explains the how, the what, the where, and the when of life on our planet emerged. The one thing it doesn't explain is the why. That it cannot answer that question doesn't make it false. Instead the theory of evolution has drawn us closer to the truth about ourselves and our universe than any other theory to date, making Darwin a saint in my book.
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Christianity struggles with the mythic imagination, which is unfortunate because Jesus regularly employed myth in telling parables and all the Gospel writers use it to explain who Jesus is in one way or another because there is no contextual way to explain some things without its use. An example of this is found in the mythic of all the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of Luke, where we find the well-known story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. This mythic story combines the factual condition of greedy wealth of man and extreme poverty of Lazarus with the metaphorical imagery of heaven and hell to expose a truth that is not apparent by cold fact itself. Why greed is wrong is not something that is based upon it intrinsically being so but rather it is deemed so by the rippling experience and effect that can be traced back to it, an experience that was initially expressed in myth.
The term the Kingdom of God is a mythic term or as Jesus says in the parabolic Gospel of John, "My kingdom is not of this world," during a discussion with Pilate on the issue of truth. The Kingdom of God, mythically speaking, lies both above and beneath the surface of the world of our making. It cannot be grasped by human hand or seen with the physical eye. It can only be perceived and grasped by something deeper within us that is intuitively perceived and emotionally felt; perceptions and emotions that can be and are shared.
When Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God he did not directly clarify what that meant as he did to Pilate in the Gospel of John; in part, because I believe Jesus wanted his audience to seek its presence in the present, in their daily experiences, and to that end he told them parables to engage their imagination and connect intuitively with them to see the truth of what he was saying. One can deduce that sense of its presence in the present by the fact that when he talks about the Kingdom of God he uses the present tense, "The Kingdom of God is like...." as opposed to an anticipatory future coming, "The Kingdom of God will be like... ." In other words, we can see its presence within the world of our making, if we look for it. "Seek the Kingdom of God and God's righteousness and all this will be added to you". - it will become apparent in our lifetimes in what you do and how you act.
The mythic employs and resides within the parameters of our social and cultural experiences and upbringing that have been shaped myths extending back to the dawn of human experience. In Jesus' mythic imagination and as a result of his intuitive vision, God is his Father. This is not surprising as Jesus was the product of a patriarchal society and upbringing. That intuitive vision shaped his understanding of his world and prompted him to question himself and the world around him. It also opened his eyes to what the Kingdom of God meant and that God was not a self-righteous, capricious god, but a loving Father whose kindness and mercy knows no end.
Understanding and appreciating Jesus' use of myth serves as an inspiration to those who are seeking truths beyond fact, to truths too profound for words alone, truths that can only be understood within the context of imaginative and intuitive story-telling.
Until next time, stay faithful,
Norm
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