Henry Abbott

I’ll first note (though I’m not sure this is a necessary or useful allotment of my word count) that I write as a Christian and, more generally, as a believer. Consequently, the following reflections may not resonate with much of the Orient’s readership.

This week, I discuss the concomitant Maxims: One, be moved in the presence of invisible things, and Three, God is God. Each devotes itself to the project of demystifying life. Granted, my maxims themselves take fairly esoteric forms, complete with choice syntax. Even so, I find it the source of urgent concern that the fact of life is so commonly held as an impenetrable thing, beyond comprehension. This mindset yields a kind of dual complacency—complacency toward the events that compose a life and the forming of a system of beliefs to frame them. With Maxims One and Three, I attempt to instruct myself in how to accept magic without giving myself over to it.

“I don’t know” does not need to mean “I don’t know, so I don’t care” or, more accurately, “I don’t know, so I’ll pretend not to care because that’s terrifying.” The most telling marker of an individual who has given themselves over too fully to mysticism is succumbing to what I’ll refer to as the Spiral of Provenance. An individual who falls into the Spiral questions relentlessly the significance one might attribute to the daily events and occurrences in one’s life. Their common refrain is “What does this mean?” or “Who is speaking to me?” or “Why do bad things happen to me?” I require that there be a way in which one can embrace the invisible forces governing one’s life without attributing inane significance to things like the way the sun is shining some morning, the song that just came on the radio or one’s good hair day. The Spiral of Provenance breeds a particularly unbecoming brand of egotism. It is the kind that obfuscates causal relationships in favor of narrativizing the universe’s unique relation to oneself.

To be moved in the presence of invisible things is to accept the existence of ineffable, unempirical forces. Intuitions, gut feelings, sudden moments of glee and the spontaneous apprehension of unanticipated knowledge are all commonplace examples of invisible forces that impinge on my visible (tangible, embodied) existence. The consequences of such instances are ones I hope to accept and be changed by. How then does one embrace the invisible forces without demanding reasons?

Consider this possibility: Impossible perfection is endogenous to mundanity. Maxim One instructs me to recognize the invisible moments as the rational causal consequences of my prosaic experience, not as the fruits of deeply mysterious forces. It is a good and wonderful practice to let oneself be moved by the gravitas of one’s common life. By allowing for the impossible perfection to live within causality, and not within esoteric matter, one heaves oneself out of the grips of provenanced skepticism. This also permits the decentering of ego insofar as one makes room for the possibility that things can be good and wonderful because life sometimes shakes out that way and not because God cared to make you late for work one morning.

Following, I interpret Maxim Three, God is God, to more precisely mean “Let God be God.” It is a reminder that frees me from my propensity to overthink, overinterpret and hand-wring writ large. Letting God be God is to have faith in the guidance provided by invisible things without needing to decrypt my creator. This discussion veers into one of my adherence to determinism, though there will be more on this next week. Briefly, if one accepts the basic premise that the events of your life have already been determined (by God for me; perhaps by something else for you), then one’s obligation to life on Earth is to live the life, to resist skepticism towards its circumstances and to do well by one’s creator. One’s obligations do not include questioning God, psychoanalyzing Him or interrogating His line of reasoning. I want to make clear that I don’t advocate an anti-intellectual approach to religion. Belief can be easy, but it also must be complete and demanding. Thus, I extol the benefits of simplifying the notion of God (or of any higher power) in one’s life. I find it foolhardy and prohibitive to live as if one must comprehend the reason for X in order to appreciate X. Contrary to how we are instructed to live as students, more knowledge does not always mean more happiness.

Last week, I asserted that adherence to principles grants one liberty. Maxims One and Three allow me to relish in non-significance, to enjoy effects without scrutinizing causes. Thus, I am free from the ills that tend to find their way into the hearts and minds of believers: skepticism, conspiracy and paranoia.