(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
No ideas but in things.Most of us go through life searching for the ideal. The ideal job or the ideal mate or the ideal pair of pants. Even if we're hard headed realists, at least in our language we set up the "ideal" as what's best, don't we? As in "Sure, a cat with a good attitude that doesn't smell would be ideal, but good luck finding one."
-William Carlos Williams
Now I know what you're thinking (unless you're a cat lover, which means you're probably too busy thinking unkind thoughts about me to be thinking what I think you would be thinking). You're thinking, "We're just talking like good Neoplatonists."
Well, you're right. Which is why we need to be reading more William Carlos Williams.
That should be enough confusion to untangle (or tangle with) for one blog.
If you remember anything your old philosophy professor taught you it might be that Plato said that ultimate reality lies in the ideal. There is an ideal in which all the particular instances of a thing participate. We know this tree is a tree because it participates in the ideal of treeness. Or we say something is beautiful because is participates more fully in the ideal of beauty. "Oh, that would be ideal!" is the highest praise in Plato's world.
But not so for William Carlos Williams. His obsession was things. So after Philosophy 101 we wandered into English class and memorized his poem about a red wheelbarrow that didn't seem to be a poem at all. It just described a thing. And said that so much depends upon this unremarkable thing.
Now, if Plato and Williams occupy the ends of some kind of spectrum (I don't know that anybody else ever placed them on one) it would seem that religion would fall toward the Platonic end. God could be the name for the ultimate ideal. And William Carlos Williams was a New Jersey doctor with no interest in the supernatural. The thing in front of him held all the wonder he needed.
But I think Christianity actually falls towards the Williams end. The Christian faith isn't about ideals. It's about particulars. Incarnation is the opposite of God as an ideal. Ideals stay vague and stay put because they are perfect. Incarnate things move and surprise and challenge and offend. As Rilke says in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, "Who is this Christ, who interferes in everything?"
If the Christian faith rings true to us don't you think it's because in some way, we all come to God like the blind man from Sunday's gospel reading. We don't think our way to God. We don't imagine a perfect and life-giving concept. We have an encounter. And we try to make some sense out of it.
Somebody spat on the ground and rubbed mud on the eyes of this man. And when he was healed he began to suspect something wonderful was happening. Something even beyond his own healing. God was present in his life in the person standing right in front of him. He wasn't searching for an ideal to believe in. He was wondering about the person who had just touched his eyes.
The beauty of the Christian faith is that as God gives us God's self in face to face encounter we are given one another as well. We let go of the impossible search for the ideal and take up the wonderful exploration of the life and the people before us. As Kathleen Norris says, Christ is present among us "not as a static idea or principle, but a Word made flesh, a listening, active Christ who in the gospels tells us that he prays for us, and who promises to be with us always."
That's not ideal. It's something - or someone - much, much better.
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Christ: Giving up the Search for the Ideal
Christ came to the blind man. He said, “Neither he nor his parents have sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.” (John 9:3) Jesus spat on the ground and made mud and rubbed it in the man's eyes and sent him to wash in the pool called Siloam (which means Sent). After the man washed in the pool he could see.
Scott talked about how according to Neoplatonists, (modern people who like Plato/Socrates), a tree is a tree because is participates in treeness. (this could get really esoteric really fast, and I'm not going there) so let it suffice to say that by the same “Neoplatonist” token, Jesus is Christ because he participates in the ideal of Godness.
Pulling up out of that quagmire before we get buried, William Carlos Williams was more focused on the red wheelbarrow, not the ideal of red wheelbarrowness, just one particular wheelbarrow. That's like focusing on one particular man called Jesus.
Okay, pulling up yet again, we've got Plato/Socrates talking about the pure ideal treeness, or wheelbarrowness, or Christness, and William Carlos Williams talking about a particular tree, wheelbarrow, or Jesus of Nazareth.
At first this seems like a dichotomy. Either we have the ideal treeness, or wheelbarrowness, or Godness, or we have some tree, a wheelbarrow, and Jesus, the man. But Christ defies the dichotomy. He is both. He was a man. He spat, made mud and touched the blind man. He is a Spirit, living in us. When he instituted the Eucharist he said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” At that moment, he was both a man about to die, most likely sad and afraid, and God, a Living Spirit which transcends death and lives in us.
Plato was right. Jesus was the Christ because he participated in the pure ideal of Godness. William Carlos Williams was right. Jesus was this guy, our brother who was fully human, and died an agonizing death.
And Scott is right. “Incarnate things move and surprise and challenge and offend.”
Jesus, the man, went to the blind man. He rubbed spit mud in his eyes. He sent him to bathe in the pool called “Sent.” Christ the Living Spirit comes to us and bathes us in His ideal Godness. When He said “Do this in remembrance of Me,” maybe he meant for us to remember both.
Thank you God, for saving us from a philosophical quagmire. Amen.
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