Hamlet told his friend, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
More.
To this assertion the church says, Amen! From all eternity we witness the beatific vision of the Father, but before we can drink in an infinitely small portion of this glory, he points us on to the indescribable vision of the Son. Falling on our face, we look up to see him motion us on to the breathtaking beauty of the Spirit, who …and from this great ecstatic excess spilled the world that you and I are a part of. Each segment of this world speaks of mystery; each part points to the exuberant prodigality of creation’s God; each celebrates the splashing, wasteful, exhilarating gifting of the Creator.
More.
But not everyone agrees. The more fortunate (though less consistent) Materialist would have told Horatio that what you see is what you get. No god; no soul; no life after death. While the sad and small cadre of initiated skeptics would declare there is much less in heaven and earth than the young Dane imagined. These poor people believe that everything is ultimately nothing but chemicals randomly reacting. No love; no persons; no life.
Men and women, the sane ones anyway, have always known that they and others exist, that things aren’t like they’re supposed to be, and that life, beauty, justice and truth matter. In other words we’ve known that there is more.
There is something out there- something right here- that can’t be registered with our five senses, but it gives meaning to those things we can directly experience. It has substance, but no materiality. It is powerful and personal, but “unbodied.”
It’s become the convention to speak of this reality as a Spiritual one. The account in Genesis refers to it as “the heavens” in distinction to “the earth” and the Creed specifies that unlike all that’s seen, this created realm is invisible. It's this spiritual, substantial, heavenly, powerfully personal and invisible "More" that angels are a part of.
Before I begin thinking about angels specifically, it might be good for me to recall why I should spend time thinking about this stuff at all. The short answer is that it's relevant. While this is true in many, many ways, I need to remember its significance at the most basic level: angels and the realm they occupy matter just as air, coworkers and sunshine matter. Each forms the environment in which we exist.
Modernity has stripped us of this awareness. It’s split the single reality of creation in two. While there’s nothing wrong with distinguishing between things seen and unseen, it is a warping of reality to conceive of the two as divided or separated. It’s just not the way things are, and that matters.
Sandi and I were lying in bed the other night. She was trying to sleep and I was thinking about Fr. Stephen’s recent posts.
“Sandi,” no response. “Sandi you asleep?”
“What?” she mumbled.
“Are you sleeping?”
A muffled groan was the only response.
“Good,” I continued “You know why I’m talking to you and not Bekah?”
“What?” She sounded a little angry.
“Do you know why I’m talking to you and not Bekah?”
“No”
“Because she’s downstairs and you're right here.”
“What?”
“If I wanted to talk with Bekah, I’d have to go to where she is or fly her a message folded into a paper airplane or something. I don’t have to do that with you. You’re right here. Isn’t that cool?”
“Right here” or not, the conversation didn’t go much further, but I still think it was an important epiphany.
Modernity has managed to envision creation as being a two storeyed house. You, me and stuff…you know everything that’s real…is down on the first floor. That’s where we spend our lives. God’s upstairs.
He’s up there. We’re down here and that’s just the way things are. In this version of reality, life with God means something peculiar. We may imagine that we hear him walking around up above us, but we don’t expect him speak. It would certainly be disconcerting to hear him whistling down the hall. We don’t receive anything from his hand. We don’t talk spontaneously and naturally with him. Rather we use mechanisms to send him messages. We’ve never been in the attic, so we imagine what it must look like. One day, he’ll put down a stair, but until then those who are most committed to God msut be content with spending a great deal of time in that sort of theorizing. What else is there to do? What other form could a commitment to “the man upstairs” take? Christianity equals abstract thinkin’. Faith equals assent to doctrine. Given that ceiling/floor thing, what else is there?
There is something out there- something right here- that can’t be registered with our five senses, but it gives meaning to those things we can directly experience. It has substance, but no materiality. It is powerful and personal, but “unbodied.”
It’s become the convention to speak of this reality as a Spiritual one. The account in Genesis refers to it as “the heavens” in distinction to “the earth” and the Creed specifies that unlike all that’s seen, this created realm is invisible. It's this spiritual, substantial, heavenly, powerfully personal and invisible "More" that angels are a part of.
Before I begin thinking about angels specifically, it might be good for me to recall why I should spend time thinking about this stuff at all. The short answer is that it's relevant. While this is true in many, many ways, I need to remember its significance at the most basic level: angels and the realm they occupy matter just as air, coworkers and sunshine matter. Each forms the environment in which we exist.
Modernity has stripped us of this awareness. It’s split the single reality of creation in two. While there’s nothing wrong with distinguishing between things seen and unseen, it is a warping of reality to conceive of the two as divided or separated. It’s just not the way things are, and that matters.
Sandi and I were lying in bed the other night. She was trying to sleep and I was thinking about Fr. Stephen’s recent posts.
“Sandi,” no response. “Sandi you asleep?”
“What?” she mumbled.
“Are you sleeping?”
A muffled groan was the only response.
“Good,” I continued “You know why I’m talking to you and not Bekah?”
“What?” She sounded a little angry.
“Do you know why I’m talking to you and not Bekah?”
“No”
“Because she’s downstairs and you're right here.”
“What?”
“If I wanted to talk with Bekah, I’d have to go to where she is or fly her a message folded into a paper airplane or something. I don’t have to do that with you. You’re right here. Isn’t that cool?”
“Right here” or not, the conversation didn’t go much further, but I still think it was an important epiphany.
Modernity has managed to envision creation as being a two storeyed house. You, me and stuff…you know everything that’s real…is down on the first floor. That’s where we spend our lives. God’s upstairs.
He’s up there. We’re down here and that’s just the way things are. In this version of reality, life with God means something peculiar. We may imagine that we hear him walking around up above us, but we don’t expect him speak. It would certainly be disconcerting to hear him whistling down the hall. We don’t receive anything from his hand. We don’t talk spontaneously and naturally with him. Rather we use mechanisms to send him messages. We’ve never been in the attic, so we imagine what it must look like. One day, he’ll put down a stair, but until then those who are most committed to God msut be content with spending a great deal of time in that sort of theorizing. What else is there to do? What other form could a commitment to “the man upstairs” take? Christianity equals abstract thinkin’. Faith equals assent to doctrine. Given that ceiling/floor thing, what else is there?
The truth is, as Fr. Stephen says in his post, the world runs on pretty well without any need of that god's involvement. You end up sorta embarrassed for him. He’s not really needed. In fact, if he was to go away or to be replaced by someone else, how would you notice?
Now consider how that type of "personal relationship" with the god in the attic differs from the ones we have with the people we live and work with…the ones who are right here? What does a commitment to them look like? What if God, angels and all things invisible aren’t up there. What if they’re right here. Imagine that the house has only one storey.
Well, we’d have real conversations. The God who is never alone (he is the Lord of Hosts, after all) is sure to be surrounded by those who have gone before. Myriads and myriads of seraphic wings are beating constantly about our kitchen table, and we might be startled, but not surprised to see a candle flame flicker in a still room, a tumor suddenly disappear or a bush glow with fiery presence. We could say “good night,” even when we were alone, because…well, we never are.
I believe that’s the sort of world our God created. There’s only one storey. It’s the one we spend our days in.
Angels, departed saints and God surround us. These are the things unseen, but present. Occasionally God allows men and women a glimpse into what is already there. When God’s people were threatened by a besieging army, the prophet strode about as if nothing was wrong. His servant couldn’t understand this and was terrified at the seemingly inevitable outcome. “Then Elisha prayed and said, "O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see." So the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” II Kings 6:17 The angelic army didn’t arrive with the prophets prayer. The servant was allowed to see what was already going on…unseen.
Modern physics and mathematics give us clues (if only analogous or metaphorical ones) of how this could be. Dimensional limitation provides a helpful illustration. The author of Flatland asks that we imagine a world of only two dimensions. Think of a sheet of notebook paper. Embedded in this sheet are shapes of various constructions- triangles, squares and circles. They move around in this world of width and length with no concept of up or down. For in Flatland Up is the direction marked North on the page. Up is the top of the sheet. Down is at the bottom of the sheet of paper. Imagine their surprise if we began to speak to them from above the paper. Living in a world made up of only two dimensions, they hear a voice coming from nowhere.
“Where are you.” they ask.
“I’m up here.” We answer obviously.
The little polygon immediately turns toward the top of the sheet.
“I don’t see you.”
“Not North silly,” we chide them “Up”
“But North is Up” they argue.
No amount of explaining could make height an intelligible concept. It's a dimension beyond their experience.
I believe something similar is going on in the heavenly realms. They are higher, but not up.
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