The Meaning of Blue: Recovering a Contemplative Spirit by Luke Bell Osb & The Earl Of Oxford

Author:Luke Bell Osb & The Earl Of Oxford [Osb, Luke Bell & Oxford, The Earl Of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621380825
Amazon: 1621380823
Publisher: Second Spring Books
Published: 2014-10-26T23:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Contemplating God

“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee

the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

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200

Chapter Seven:

The Father of Mercies

Beginning Again

t may seem that everything has now been said. We have

seen how human perception has become dulled in its

beholding of nature and its listening to the word, and

Ihow God in His Providence has used these in a special

way to lead humanity back to Him. Yet equally it could be argued that nothing has yet been said: I have only been dealing with means of knowing God, whether natural or sacred, and have not touched on the direct contemplation of God as He is in Himself. Indeed, I could repeat what I said at the start of Chapter Five when first broaching the subject of Scripture: it would be entirely reasonable to start a book about contemplation here, bypassing everything that has been said and beginning with the direct gaze toward God as He is in Himself. Indeed, many books about contemplation do start at this point.

The more discerning of these books, however, assume at least a familiarity with Scripture, liturgy, and the sacraments. And the best writers on these subjects would not presume to be able to wrap them up so as to preclude them from opening into the mystery of God in ways beyond the ken of their discourse. The truth is that both what has been discussed already in this book and what has not yet been discussed are needed. In finishing what I have written, I am beginning what I have to write. Let me explain why.

If we trust to our celebration of the liturgy to bring God to us, we are in the position of those mentioned in the psalm that says, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses.” That is to say, we have substituted means for end. The psalm goes on, “But we will remember the name of the LORD our God.” Significantly, the Name of the Lord could not ordinarily be spoken: the tetragrammaton was too sacred for utterance. This conveys the truth that God is beyond human 201

The Meaning of Blue

speaking. If we say our liturgical celebration has got Him nailed up in a box, there is no truth in us. Nature after the Fall became opaque for Man, who allowed it to replace for him what it was intended to convey, as though mistaking an envelope for the letter inside it.

Chapter Four explained how a further such fall is conveyed in the story of the tower of Babel: here a cultural or language system becomes the absolute, the name Man makes for himself, replacing the Name of the Lord. It is entirely possible for this opacity, this replacing of meaning with means, to happen with regard to the explicitly sacred. I have already commented, in Chapter Five, on how the Bible cannot be a closed system. Neither can the liturgy or the sacraments. If they are merely self-referential, they are closed to the divine.

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