Foreshadowing the Divine

Greetings,

      During Lent we look to many different sources to challenge our thinking about God and our relationship to God and to our fellow creatures within our relationship to God.  The Truth of God in Christ is revealed in so many forms, most often not in “religious” books, but in the pure expressions of Truth in all of the arts.  A number of my clergy friends are preaching this Lent about how various individuals, such as Adam, Moses and Samuel, foreshadow Jesus Christ.  It raises the question of how we, humans all, can both fulfill and foreshadow the reality of God.

      Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is revered as the Germans' greatest poet.  To generations of admirers, he's also been the ideal of the “good German” - cosmopolitan, free-thinking and with faith in the human spirit.

      Of course, Faust is his greatest achievement, but I want to share this poem from 1783.  Goethe struggles to maintain balance in the whole of life.  It is intentionally difficult to comprehend, celebrating a world that is difficult and harsh, yet rewarding.  The poetry makes a truth that is evident and mysterious, hidden and revealed in its form as much as its words.  It is circular, the end returning to the beginning, but on a higher plane, in the form of an ascending spiral, giving voice to a measured optimism.  The English translation, which is certainly the best I have read, is by John Whaley.

The Divine

                  Noble, let man be,

                  Helpful and good!

                  For that alone

                  Distinguishes him

                  From all beings

                  That we know of.

     

                  Hail to the unknown

                  Higher beings

                  Sensed in the mind!

                  Let man be as they are!

                  His example teach us

                  Belief in them.

     

                  For nature

                  Is unfeeling:

                  The sun’s light shines

                  On the wicked and the good,

                  And transgressor and the best

                  Alike see the gleaming

                  Of the moon and the stars.

                  Wind and waters,

                  Thunder and hailstones

                  Roar on their course

                  And hurrying on

                  Seize as they go

                  One after the other.

                  So too fortune

                  Gropes among the crowd,

                  Grasping now the child’s

                  Curly-haired innocence

                  Now too the balding

                  Head of the guilty.

                  By eternal, iron,

                  Mighty laws

                  Must each and all of us

                  Complete the circles

                  Of our existence.

                  Only man alone

                  Can do the impossible:

                  He can distinguish,

                  Chooses and judges;

                  He can endow

                  The moment with permanence.

                  He alone may

                  Reward the good man,

                  Punish the wicked,

                  Restore and rescue,

                  Usefully bind

                  All that errs and wanders.

           

                  And we venerate

                  The immortal ones,

                  As if they were humans,

                  And did on the grand scale

                  What the best in his small way

                  Does or would wish to.

                  Let the noble man

                  Be helpful and good!

                  Untiring let him do

                  The right and the useful,

                  And pre-figure for us

                  Those sensed higher beings.

Yours & His,

DED