Floating Reminiscences - There is a Change in the Wind - LOTR 62
Change in the Wind, Eagles in the Sky, And a Quest on Foot.
"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds". GK Chesterton
This is a rambling essay, but the Quest (proper) is over - we have attained it together! In the course of this Walkabout, something is taking shape.
So...what is there left to do, having been to the rim of Mount Orodruin and beyond?
We have lingered over the views, and can now linger over the lingerings. We can "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the meaning we find in a work of art such as LOTR. We can ponder the meaning of the meaning. Just as we can learn, to doubt our doubts. We can discursively meditate, with and on the sense of wonder, and what it might portend. We can enter the realm of Fairie, with the Inklings. In doing so, perhaps we can carry that sense of wonder, back to the Holy Scriptures themselves, for do not they, also, mark and speak of the Mystery? The "We" can become, farther along, an "I". The Word of God is all in the Book, and all beyond the Book.
Life will never go off and leave us, because the Lord is Life, and He is always with us, and where He is, there is life abundantly.
4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. 6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: Psalm 8:4-6)
Each of the epiphanies (a star) along the road, can illuminate the other epiphanies. The constellations of stars can take shape. We may even see nebula. It is possible, to begin to suspect, and that with sudden joy, that what we call "Reality" is only the first, pale beginning of the Beginning, the start of the New Creation. This fundamental Joy, and corresponding absence of primal Terror, is the "gratitude" from which the New Creation grows, and which protects us from Sin. It makes us dead to Sin.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools... Romans1:20-22
It's good to be alive - it's good to see the Sun, but also, the Moon and Stars...
The theme for Now, we are returning to - A Change in the Wind...
'Do you remember the Wild Man's words, lord?' said another. 'I live upon the open Wold in days of peace; Wídfara is my name, and to me also the air brings messages. Already the wind is turning. There comes a breath out of the South; there is a sea-tang in it, faint though it be. The morning will bring new things. Above the reek it will be dawn when you pass the wall.
Other signs and clues Tolkien gives are in the flights of the Eagles, a sighting high above, at Amon Hen:
Aragorn hesitated. He desired to go to the high seat himself, hoping to see there something that would guide him in his perplexities; but time was pressing. Suddenly he leaped forward, and ran to the summit, across the great flag-stones, and up the steps. Then sitting in the high seat he looked out. But the sun seemed darkened, and the world dim and remote. He turned from the North back again to North, and saw nothing save the distant hills, unless it were that far away he could see again a great bird like an eagle high in the air, descending slowly in wide circles down towards the earth.
The appearance in the tale of the Wose, the wild men of the woods, is also a sign. It is precisely in the good and honorable treatment meted out to them, that Aragorn reaffirms his intrinsic worth, and wins the help he needs to accomplish the ride to the rescue of Gondor. It is no mere epicycle, or throw away moment: it encapsulates Tolkien's entire method.
We could stab at it and say, The little things confound the great. That is to say, when "All" fails and collapses, the little things endure, and in their endurance, call forth (again) the forgotten Great Things which restore the All.
“Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” Matthew 18:18-20
This is St. Bonaventura's Rule: That is Divine, which cannot be coerced by the Greatest, nor is it lacking, from even the Smallest. King David was fond of saying it this way:
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
2 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. Psalm 121:1-2
The Lord is not merely Lord of Heaven, but of Earth. He looks up, to the high places of the hills. These symbolize both Earth and Heaven, united: the place where earth rises to receive, and heaven drops down to give. So the sufferings of Earth are not beneath the Lord, nor are her truths, beauties, and goodnesses, alien to the Lord. The eagles, the wind, and the quest are signs of Union between Earth and Heaven. This Union is Omnipotent, because in it, the Lord Himself is present and fights on behalf of the "shields of the earth".
Ghan-Buri-Ghan Link - not alienated from Earth or Heaven
The wisdom of the earth, the love of the sun, and the power of their union. (H/T John Michael Greer)
Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners? Song of Songs 6:10
The wisdom of the earth moon, the love of the heavenly sun, and the power of the New Moon, which is the Sign of the Grail and the Heart of the World. The Heart of the World yearns for the deliverance, the jubilee, and the year of the Lord. The Lord IS the heart of the world. And the heart of the heart, they both yearn for each other. There is no denying that final and complete Victory over Death, for The Bride and the Bridegroom long for each other.
Hence, there is Change in the Wind, Eagles in the Sky, & a Quest on Foot. The Man is Coming Around.
Dear Reader, one thing you can be certain of, is that there are many changes in the winds, both above and below, these days. The Times They Are A'Changing.
And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do; the heads of them were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their commandment. I Chronicles 12:32
“When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red, And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? Matthew 16:2-3
I have a lot of natural anxiety over Change. It seems to help a great deal, when you "go farther in, to get on through". But things need to Change, Amen? (I am tempted to ask myself for an Amen, here...) We want God to do something, but without Change. And we fear the Change. Since the Lord is always working, there is always Change. So we end up fearing the Lord.
Thomas Carlyle once said, change the Denominator, not the Numerator. This kind of thing can help us here. If we change our perspective, we help unblock the channels of Grace. A new world can therefore, more easily emerge. Repentance literally means, Re-Thinking. It is thinking back to the roots, including our problems.
So true is it, what I then said, that the Fraction of Life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your Numerator as by lessening your Denominator. Nay unless my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will give Infinity. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under thy feet. Well did the wisest of our time write: "It is only with Renunciation (Entsagen) that Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin." (Works 1: 152-53)
These meditations are meant to change my Denominator. Maybe they can help someone else change theirs.
Are things so hopeless? Am I bereft of all Hope? The Squire thinks not! In fact, The Squire suspects he has barely even scratched the nature of real Hope:
The truth is that the tradition of Christianity (which is still the only coherent ethic of Europe) rests on two or three paradoxes or mysteries which can easily be impugned in argument and as easily justified in life. One of them, for instance, is the paradox of hope or faith — that the more hopeless is the situation the more hopeful must be the man. Stevenson understood this, and consequently Mr. Moore cannot understand Stevenson. Another is the paradox of charity or chivalry that the weaker a thing is the more it should be respected, that the more indefensible a thing is the more it should appeal to us for a certain kind of defence. Thackeray understood this, and therefore Mr. Moore does not understand Thackeray. Now, one of these very practical and working mysteries in the Christian tradition, and one which the Roman Catholic Church, as I say, has done her best work in singling out, is the conception of the sinfulness of pride. Pride is a weakness in the character; it dries up laughter, it dries up wonder, it dries up chivalry and energy. The Christian tradition understands this; therefore Mr. Moore does not understand the Christian tradition. Link
Also -
“It is currently said that hope goes with youth, and lends to youth its wings of a butterfly; but I fancy that hope is the last gift given to man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged; God has kept that good wine until not. It is from the backs of the elderly gentlemen that the wings of the butterfly should burst.” ― G.K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study
We can sense there is definitely change in the winds, and it heralds a Sea Change (as it were) of all the Worlds. It is despair which teaches the necessity of authentic Hope.
With so much happening, so fast, these days, it's easy to miss the forest, for all the trees. But the weather is shifting. Check out this piece, for instance, from a disillusioned scientist.
Scientific institutions (and university STEM departments) are, to me, a sort of day camp for smart people...Writing and reviewing countless grant proposals for many millions of dollars taught me that each (successful) proposal is a well-crafted fiction. I’m not saying that scientists are charlatans, but that the budgets, timelines, and promises are incommensurate with actual results...In short, I came to realize I was one of the bad guys. I like the saying that everyone is the hero of their own story. Part of me would certainly like to believe so, but no—I’m still a villain, if unwittingly so. The projects I worked on demanded copious energy, resources, and travel far out of line with care for the natural world. The result in no way helped the more-than-human world. I can say the same about virtually all science...I would recommend that we relax rigorous rigidity and put more stock in operationally productive stories: stories that move something good. Who cares if science can’t validate the stories? Science has its limits, dude. Let’s not get paralyzed by pedantry. The good stuff awaits, if we can let go of the shiny trinket in the “monkey trap” (I cringe to use the speciesist term). [Note: I owe much of this awareness to recently reading Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary.] Source, also.
Is this is white flag of surrender? The end of F*****g Science (as a religion)? It sure sounds like it.
Great Empires have a "great deal of ruin in them". The end of the Third Age (and maybe even old Gondor), is not the end of God, Life, or the World, or us in it. It may be the "end of us", but change needs to happen.
As to your other question, I’ll answer briefly. The West has gone full totalitarian under one of the operative definitions of fascism, which is the merger of state and corporate power. This allows them to create a vast network of corporate and private-interest NGOs, shell companies, and news/media purveyors to act as propaganda organs, amplifying unprecedented levels of propaganda across the globe. Since Russia and China are decidedly not Fascist, their governments don’t quite have the same power and financial backing to effect such measures. Source
To the decaying Empire, we can oppose the Union of the old primal forces (Ghan-Beri-Ghan) with the creators of the new world (Aragorn and the last men of the West).
The Earth and Sun, the Old and the New, give birth to New Moon...
This brings together the Old and the New, without loss of either.
There is nothing new under the sun, it has all happened this way before:
I can recall meeting older scholars, long ago, who said that when they were young they had a hard time getting their hands on a copy of Shiji or Han shu. If they were lucky enough to get one, they thought nothing of copying the entire text out by hand, so they could recite it day and night. In recent years merchants engrave and print all manner of books belonging to the hundred schools, and produce ten thousand pages a day. With books so readily available, you would think that students' writing and scholarship would be many times better than what they were in earlier generations. Yet, to the contrary, young men and examination candidates leave their books tied shut and never look at them, preferring to amuse themselves with baseless chatter. Why is this? Source
Empires end. Even worse, the Stars Change. This is under the command of Manwe (translation: the Lord). Whatever is coming, it will not be the future that our enemies have planned for us. And it will work for the good of them who love the Lord.
So when you see the West and China becoming more like the bad qualities of one another, and the heavens shaken and "stars" falling (the fall of empires), and a dread red dawn, when you must despair, don't despair. It is only then that Hope is useful. And only then, that God appears.
Despite years of trying to build a better Shire, and the blood, sweat, toil and tears of the Hobbits, our effete-and-defeat Elites have managed to make a Dog's Breakfast out of God's Creation.
How is this?
Basic metrics have improved, in a lot of places. Yes, some of this is propaganda of the religion of Progress, but there have been some bright spots, regardless. Yet while God toils uphill, on towards that lonely cross, with Frodo & Sam, (or they with Him it hardly matters in such a pinch), to make all this painfully come about, our chattering “elite” are busy dividing-to-conquer, propagandizing and stifling dissent, while preaching the Faux-Liberaux Rainbow Crusade. They are aping God, and not doing a very good job. They are tearing a lot of stuff up. They are turning into the Dark Lord.
God died (metaphorically) unceremoniously about 200 years ago. But because there’s good evidence humans actually require someone or something to revere and to center culture around as a source of meaning, the bearded, robed God of the Bible was replaced with technocratic Science™, and scientists, as the object of worship in industrialized society….Despite the pervasive nihilism of the modern Western era, our unbreakable desire for meaning remains. Despite the individual-centric consumer culture that corrodes our psyche, our social connections – to our families and beyond to the larger community – continue to define our orientation in the world. Link
The way things stand, they got rid of God, and then substituted Power. But this always means Politics, and one group's rule being arbitrary.
We curse the one benighted chap
Who felled the Sycamore at the Gap
But tolerate those richer guys
Who burn whole forests, seas and skies
Link
We can't just "go back" to the 1950s, the 1850s, or the 1250s. The Gothic Springtide of high Christianity, cannot simply be role-played or lovingly restored. Once upon a time, “Civilization” (eg., the Middle Ages) meant that there was a known Intellectus and Ideal, towards which men ordered and oriented (even if only as postulants, not as knowers), no matter the cares of the world or the delusions of man. Pitrim Sorokin and Oswald Spengler (among others, like Arnold Toynbee) documented exactly when and how and why, on the physical level, civilizations “decline”. We are in such a one, now.
The birth of the Gothic - 3+4 = 7.
The most tragic predicament of the declining society, is that one has the resources, but not the will or the power, to save it. David Bentley Hart’s words don’t do full justice to Lutheranism, but they do describe our Elites, the ones who think that “they have won”:
“the ghastly Wagnerian opulence of Jüngel’s cult of Verwesung [decay] and the dark, late romantic coloratura of his unwholesome theological Liebestod [love-death]…”
It would appear (in the late stage of Industrialism), that all Modern -Isms are Religious Death-Cults.
But does the seeming Omnipotence of Insanity make us lose all Hope? We give the answer of the Eternal No. For God does not “roll this way”. In the depths of the absence of Heaven and the death of the Earth, the rise of the New Moon testifies of the ongoing work of the living Lord.
“God is, so to speak, infinite discourse, full of the perfect utterance of his Word and the limitless variety of the Spirit’s ‘reply.’ Here, in the most elementary terms, is Christian metaphysics: God speaks God, and creation occurs within that speaking, as a rhetorical embellishment, a needless ornament” (p. 291). Hart is not, however, interested in reviving “any naïve natural theology.” For him, the analogia entis has nothing to do with an essentialist analogy between created being and divine being: “the analogy of being does not analogize God and creatures under the more general category of being, but is the analogization of being in the difference between God and creatures; it is as subversive of the notion of a general and univocal category of being as of the equally ‘totalizing’ notion of ontological equivocity.” (pp. 241-42). Being itself always already differs, and our being lies before us “as gratuity and futurity,” so that “the analogy of being … is the event of our existence as endless becoming” (p. 243). In this event of becoming, we participate in the beauty of God’s own infinity: “God is the infinity of being in which every essence comes to be, the abyss of subsistent beauty into which every existence is outstretched” (p. 245). Precisely as we participate in God, our own differences are accentuated ever more sharply – indeed, Hart suggests that the eschatological kingdom itself will simply be “the endless liberation of difference into the light” (p. 400). For Hart, therefore, the analogia entis does not concern my being as such, but rather the event in which my act of being participates in God’s transcendent act of being and thus receives from God its own otherness and particularity. The analogia entis thus describes my freedom to be, my emancipation from the totalising violence of identity (p. 245). Ironically, then, while the analogia entis has often been understood as the reduction of differences to some essential similarity (e.g. that God and creatures share in common something called “being”), Hart brilliantly reverses this line of thought, so that “the analogy of being finds truth in the ever greater particularity of each thing as it enters ever more into the infinite that gives it being” (p. 247). Or, to put it more sharply: the analogy of being describes the triumph of the infinite over every kind of totality. Hence, although Hart seldom uses the term “analogy of being,” one could perhaps argue that the reformulated analogia entis is really at the core of his entire dogmatic proposal.
God’s Victory, even through the fiery end of the world at the end of days, would be complete, flawless, and immaculate. His triumph is as mathematical as Georg Cantor’s proof of the uncountability (even with transfinite rational numbers) of the infinity of the Real Numbers. It’s already here, and it never left.
It’s also as inevitable as the return of Spring, after a long Winter.
Blessed art thou, O Lord | God of our fathers; praised and exalted above | all forever
Blessed art thou for the | Name of thy Majesty; praised and exalted above | all forever.
Blessed art thou in the temple | of thy holiness; praised and exalted above | all forever.
Blessed art thou that beholdest the depths, and dwellest be | tween the Cherubim; praised and exalted above | all forever.
Blessed art thou on the glorious | throne of – thy kingdom; praised and exalted above | all forever.
Blessed art thou in the firma | ment of heaven; praise and exalted above | all forever.
Glory be to the Father and | to the Son, and | to the Holy Ghost;.
As it was in the beginning, is now and | ever shall be, world without | end. Amen.
Grace does not destroy, but rather, perfects, Nature.
This is what is Real. Beyond that, it is "higher up, and further in". Do you notice that God is in the depths (between the Cherubim), in the throne of the Kingdom (Middle Earth), and in the Heavenly Places?
What else have we missed, all these years?
The New Moon of the Grail - symbolizing the ever more perfect union of Heaven & Earth
Hope you doing well Sir, WAGMI.