Light On Dark Water

A Christmas Caryll (3)

Another point: don't imagine, as some people do, that all your questioning and seeking is a sort of prologue to spiritual experience. Of course it is a great spiritual experience in itself, and it is at present your way of union with Christ, who said, "I am the way, not simply, "At the end of the way, you find me." Also He said, "I am the Truth" and "seek and you shall find": so you can be sure that in seeking for truth you are in fact finding Him all the time; and I think that you are getting to know Him with the intimacy that a blind man learns to know a beloved but unseen face, through touching [it] in the darkness…

–Caryll Houselander, Letters

(The same basic point as yesterday's quote, but elaborated, and I really like that image at the end.)

Maclin Horton
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28 responses to “A Christmas Caryll (3)”

  1. Grumpy

    It’s a wonderful counterbalance to the ghastly elephant metaphor isn’t it! I was so saddened on the camino, one time, when someone asked a French middle aged Catholic lady how it could be that her religion is true but there are also (sitting at the table) Protestants, and other religions. She responded in French with the horrible story about the blind guys describing the elephant in different ways. I was so saddened by the degeneration of French Catholicism explicit in the use of this metaphor that I was speechless.
    The stupid elephant story only works – in one sense – if there is a divine revelation. But in another sense, one of the things which makes it so stupid is that we are supposed to know there is an elephant there.
    The elephant parable ignores the basic truth enunciated in John’ gospel: ‘Who sees me sees the Father’ We have touched him with our hands and heard his voice, and seen him with our eyes.
    But, at the same time, one does not want to respond to the elephant by defending a glaringly obvious revelation. Because,the other problem with the elephant parable is that the speaker cannot be one of the blind men – it has to be someone in a supposed impartial position who can see and adjudicate how partial everyone else is.
    It seems to me that Houselander’s metaphor of touching his face in the dark gets it exactly right.

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  2. Mac

    Well, that’s fascinating. I never gave any thought to the problems with the elephant metaphor, but you’re right.
    Having two grandchildren in the house at the moment I won’t try to say anything further. I wonder how I ever put two consecutive thoughts together when my children were young. I suppose I was a bit more supple then.

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  3. Janet

    This (Christmas Carylls) is a nice idea, Maclin.
    AMDG

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  4. Grumpy

    There was one from Abebooks for 145 dollars, and one from Amazon for 100 dollars. So I got the one from Amazon…

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  5. Mac

    !!!! I really had better keep an eye on the library copies and make sure they don’t get discarded (to anyone but me).
    Glad you like it, Janet. It’s fun for me.

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  6. Grumpy

    Just no one write in and say you know where to get it for four dollars. Just don’t do it.

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  7. janet

    That’s why I haven’t bought one yet.
    AMDG

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  8. Grumpy

    I shouldn’t have done it – it was extravagent. I banked a cheque this morning for 1000 dollars, for attending a conference. So I was feeling without a financial care in the world. Which does not correspond to reality….
    The essay I got from a PHD student on Houselander is so good I wish I could post it here!

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  9. Mac

    That’s pretty cool that you get paid for attending, though. It’s the other way around for me.
    Maybe it’ll eventually be a published dissertation? Very nice to have students doing good work.

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  10. janet

    I have been doing the same with a rebate from my property tax. I used most of it for presents.
    AMDG

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  11. Pual

    That blind-men-with-elephant story has always struck me as of very limited usefulness. For one thing, it can only be the product of an imagination not informed by any physical (or aural) contact with an actual elephant. If you ever did catch hold of an elephant’s tail or trunk, you would be well aware of something massive at the end of it, even if the elephant were drugged or otherwise incapacitated. To the extent that it’s useful at all, I’d have thought it was a warning about not jumping to conclusions without fully exploring the thing in question and comparing notes with others.
    I’ve never come across it in a specifically religious context, where the obvious response would surely be “Light in darkness, anyone?”

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  12. Paul

    That was me, by the way – typing too fast in the final stages of posting.

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  13. Grumpy

    John Hick originally used the elephant parable in a religious context. Now it is an ‘old chestnut’.
    Mac, it’s just an essay. I don’t think he intends to go on and write a PhD on Houselander. The PhD students take courses for 2 years and then they do something mysterious called ‘comps’ and then they write their dissertation.

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  14. Mac

    I couldn’t have given you any specific instance of use of the elephant, but I know I’ve heard it in a general debunking semi-agnostic context, probably in a religious ed textbook.
    I had to do “comps” when I got my MSc, after which I foreswore all further formal education, a vow I’ve kept for 33 years now. I remember the comps as being not as bad as I expected, but I think that was because they were trying to build up the program and wanted to give me the degree.

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  15. Paul

    I’m probably showing deep ignorance, but the name “John Hick” says absolutely nothing to me.
    If they are not intending to work it up into something publishable, can you encourage the student to offer the essay to one of those websites that makes worthwhile student writings available? (Like medievalists.net or earlymodernengland.com, only relevant.)

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  16. Mac

    I meant to say earlier, Paul, I liked your “obvious response” about light.
    That name didn’t mean anything to me, either–I assumed it was a theologian, and I’m not familiar with very many names in that line.

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  17. Grumpy

    Yeah, he was a liberal theologian who died in this past year or so. He
    invented the now common place model of world religions according to which they are all planets circulating the ‘Ultimate’.

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  18. Mac

    That’s an amusing way to put it.

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  19. Paul

    Well, there’s an element of truth in it. In that respect I suppose it’s like any heresy: one truth given undue weight in relation to others.

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  20. Grumpy

    Mac: That’s an amusing way to put it.
    No, that’s literally what he said! He said Christianity had to go through a Copernican revolution and realise it was not at the centre of the Universe

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  21. Mac

    Huh. Still a bit amusing, but in an entirely different way.

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  22. Paul

    And did he clear his throat and look round brightly while saying somebody would have to be the Copernicus of theology?

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  23. Grumpy

    Have you ever read Ratzer or B16 criticising religious ‘pluralism’? That is the view which was propounded by Hick.
    So you see why he uses the elephant parable – all those blind guys around the elephant are like planets orbiting a sun which none of them can fully see
    So as I said, I prefer Houselander’s touching his face in the dark…

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  24. Mac

    Indeed.
    Is that an intentional allusion to Chesterton, Paul? It’s very like something he says about heresy, maybe in Heretics.

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  25. Paul

    Not an intentional allusion to Chesterton. I’m sure he says something like that, though.

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  26. Mac

    It didn’t take long to find it: it’s in the opening paragraph of Heretics: “He says, with a conscious laugh, ‘I suppose I am very heretical,’ and looks round for applause.”

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  27. Paul

    I was thinking more of the arrogance of a man who would say “We need a Copernican shift”, but meaning “Shall I be Copernicus?”

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  28. Mac

    Right, I thought that was what you meant, but the air of self-satisfaction seemed to be similar.

    Reply

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