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As Gentle Rain
Address by Lars-Erik Wiberg
for Sunday, August 27, 2000
Scripture: Exodus 31:1-11, Isaiah 63:7-9; John 1:6-18
Portia / "Merchant of Venice"
Act IV: Scene I / William Shakespeare
"The quality of mercy is not strain'd
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice bless'd;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power then doth show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice."
About 140 years later Emanuel Swedenborg wrote in Arcana Coelestia ¶ 3921:
"For the Lord judges all from justice, and hears all from mercy. He judges
from justice because from Divine Truth, and he hears from mercy, because
from Divine Good. . . . When he judges from justice, he judges also at the
same time from mercy; for in all Divine justice there is mercy as in all
Divine Truth there is Divine Good."
Truly the Bard was before his time. Do you not sense a sort of analogy
here, a poetic correspondence to our receipt of the Divine Love and Wisdom?
The Divine Good and the Divine Truth? It is an imperfect analogy because
its subject, that of mercy, is a quality that we can accept in its
fullness. We can take it undiluted without ill effect. On the other hand,
we can not receive the Divine Love and Wisdom directly because the Love is
too fiery and the Wisdom too brilliant for us to bear. We would be
consumed if this direct emanation from God were not gentled. But the
gentleness is prepared, we might say, by virtue of God's mercy. Something
about how the Divine Love and Wisdom interact, as well as the way they are
presented to us, along with the personal preferences that we select and
express in our daily lives and work - - these are the subjects for todays
remarks. Meantime, the Bard gives to us an inspired memorial of the effect
of a great blessing coming down from heaven in a journey much like that of
the Divine Love, goodness itself, and Wisdom, truth itself. Keep this
glorious account in mind and enjoy its blessed essence, for when we move from the subject of
mercy to that of the Divine Love and Wisdom, we are considering our very
life itself, and it surely deserves a classic introduction.
Divine Love and Wisdom coexist only in the Divine. We here in the natural
world do not describe Love in terms of Wisdom, nor Wisdom in terms of Love,
for the simple reason that this can not be done here. Neither can be
employed to account for the
other. Here in the natural world, the world of our physical experience,
they are so totally different from each other that they are not even
opposites. Carl Jung calls such a relationship as being between
"incommensurables" - - we can't measure one by means of the other. The
only way for us to grasp our situation is to focus on the ways that we
actually receive the Divine Love and Wisdom, how they are divinely prepared
for us and made available to us so that we reflect them in the conduct of
our lives. And what is especially wonderful is that we actually do reflect
them in every-day living and working. We can't avoid so doing. And what
is even more wonderful is that the way this happens is not especially
complicated once we know what is involved.
We have all heard of the Will and the Understanding as being
characteristics which every one of us reflects to some degree. The Will is
of the Divine Love and the Understanding is of the Divine Wisdom. How
these interact is a bit closer to our grasp here in the natural world,
although they are to be prepared even further. For example,
It is not too obscure to sense that the Will (Love) animates and that the
Understanding (Wisdom) produces information. (Keep in mind that the term
Understanding is used in the sense of Comprehension. We often use the term
in the sense of a kind of empathy, a heart-felt characteristic. That is
not what is meant by the Understanding vis-a-vis the Will.) The essence of
Will includes a kind of active involvement and of Understanding a kind of
capacity for instruction. So it is apparent that the Will would animate
the Understanding, and the Understanding inform the Will. It is perfectly
acceptable that, although they are neither of them describable by the
other, they can work in concert in service to each other. The next
preparation makes this even plainer.
We have started with the Divine Love and Wisdom proceeding in a form that
we can identify as Will and Understanding. These latter are more easily
perceived through their derivatives which are Affections and Knowledges.
So from a rarified domain, that of Divine Love and Wisdom, we descend to the quite understandable territory
of Affections, interests if you will, and Knowledges, organized information
if you will. It is easily seen that Interests stimulate a search for
information. And in the reverse, disinterests stimulate no search
whatever. It is congenial now to be in this realistic and familiar domain
and to be talking about matters we all understand. But how incredibly
impressive it is to realize that it is of the Lord's Divine Love and Wisdom
that we are functioning in this straightforward way. What we are
interested in along with what we know is in the same league, you might say,
with the Divine Good and Truth, the Divine Mercy and Justice. And it gets
even better!
How often we have heard the terminology "Feelings and Affections." They do
belong together as, loosely, aspects of the heart. (Incidentally, in this
context Feeling means how we feel about something and not how something
feels.) Thinking is, of course, quite self explanatory. On the face of
it, Thinking and the production of knowledge are intertwined as aspects of
the head, so to speak. Interestingly, Carl Jung identifies Feeling and
Thinking as basic functions in his book "Psychological Types." They are
basic insofar as his system is concerned, and it does no harm at all to
consider them as such because they are highly useful in just the way he
intended for describing individual behavior. However, as Swedenborgians,
we comprehend Feeling and Thinking, Affections and Knowledges, as flowing
from a heavenly provenance, the Divine Love and Wisdom. They are derived
from that source for our use. But that use is for individuals in general
which is to say the overall population. What of individuals in particular,
that is you and I?
To answer this question, we must dig a bit deeper so as to discover by what
means we can see ourselves as individuals within the context of Feeling or
of Thinking. The way we get at this is simple in concept; we use words or
phrases. Execution of the concept is complicated somewhat because we will
have to introduce a new term. Let's look at an example, and let's pick one
that is dear to the hearts of all Swedenborgians. Let's look at Freedom
vis-a-vis Rationality. Ask yourself which one is the Feeling word? Not
too hard to fathom is it? We have Feeling implicit in the concept of
liberty, the affection for freedom - - free will itself. There's that word
Will derived from the Divine Love. Then on the other side we have Thinking
equally implicit in acting rationally, in rational use of the intellect - -
the exercise of free will but with understanding.
Let's look at another example; let's look at Personal Evaluation vis-a-vis
Impersonal Evaluation. Clearly the first is based more on how we feel
about this or that, and the latter more on how we think of it. But you say
"Wait a minute! What about this notion of "incommensurability" and "not
even being opposites? That may fit as far as Freedom and Rationality are
concerned, but it certainly doesn't fit Personal and Impersonal evaluation.
They are precise opposites, and one can be used to describe the other.
Why can't we just skip this whole business?
The reason we can't skip it is that we would lose some wonderful
opportunities to describe each other and to see how we differ as
individuals despite all of us reflecting, in his or her own way, the very
same Divine Love and Wisdom. That is something that is being given us
constantly through the Lord's Divine Mercy. Isn't it so that the more we
know about it the better?
So we can add a new concept which will allow us to skirt the precision with
which one would like to define the difference between a "Feeling" word or
idea and a "Thinking" one. We can tidy up these distinctions with the use
of "complementarity" which means simply that the notions placed in contrast
have an inevitable relationship, that the one has an abundance of one sort
of meaning that is absent in the other and vice versa. Now we can look at
"Freedom vis-a-vis Rationality" in the same way that we can examine
"Personal vis-a-vis Impersonal Evaluation," and we can look at a whole
bunch of other pairings as well. There is actually an enormous number of
them, and we relate to them in individualistic ways. In a real sense the
way we relate to them describes our individuality
As we go through a brief sampling, ask yourself "Where do I come in? Which
side of this Feeling and Thinking ledger do I seem to prefer? Do I always
prefer one side over the other? Am I about even or do I tend to skip
around?" Then we'll go back and see what your results suggest.
*In the complementarities "Desire vis-a-vis Analysis" we contrast visceral
attraction to something with a preference for picking it apart and
examining it. It is in our nature to
tend to favor one reaction over another in most cases when we are suitably
stimulated.
* In the pairing "Spontaneity vis-a-vis Constraint" we ask ourselves
whether we tend to react to a given stimulus with verve and vigor, off the cuff you might
say or whether we are more likely to mull it over for a while. Which do
you do?
* When considering "Moral Urgency vis-a-vis Testing" imagine a condition
that conflicts with your finer ethical sensibilities and ask yourslf
whether you are more likely to embrace an activist approach to the
situation, or would tend to prefer further evaluation.
* As to "Likes & Dislikes vis-a-vis Comprehension" when you are confronted
with a novel situation or idea, which seems to trigger first? whether you
like it or not? or whether you want to know more about it?
* In the pairing "Convictions Held vis-a-vis Information Sought" ask
yourself when you approach whatever has attracted you, do you tend to have
your mind made up at least partially about the subject, beyond mere
interest in it, or are you willing to leave your mind as a somewhat blank
slate and reserve judgment until you have learned some more?
* Why don't we pair "Emphasis on the Heart vis-a-vis Emphasis on the Head"
and simply ask ourselves which we feel, or think, better describes us in
our approach to others and the world around us?
* And as a final pair of complementarities let's look at "Values based on
Good or Bad vis-a-vis Values based on True or False" This is an almost
unfair choice to have to make because we all want our personal values to
hinge on both the adoption of the Good and True and rejection of the Bad
and False. But which seems to be stimulated first in your mind? The Good
of a thing or the Truth of it? One side or the other will most likely
have an edge. As with all the pairings it isn't a matter of one to the
exclusion of the other; it's more a matter of which comes first.
Looking back on the choices we have made, what are we doing? We are
starting to describe ourselves as individuals in a wonderful way, in a way
that derives directly from the Lord's Divine Love and Wisdom. There is
really nothing mysterious about how this very life itself emanates toward
us, embraces us, makes us who we are. There are many complementarities in
respect to Feeling and Thinking, and there are even further
complementarities in respect to Intuition and Sensation which we do not
have time for today but which work on the same principle. As a whole, you
can now see how these divine derivitives give us the means to develop our
individuality.
What is increasingly wonderful is that the very same derivatives that
describe us can be used to describe the work we do. Our very jobs, or as
we Swedenborgians like to put it, our uses, are extensions of our selves,
and we can describe them as well by means of complementarities. It is
therefore of the Lord's Divine Mercy that not only do we personally reflect
his Divine Love and Wisdom in our selves as individuals, but also in the
occupations and avocations through which we make ourselves useful. It is
as gentle rain from Heaven, from the Divine Love and Wisdom, prepared for
us.
Amen
Copyright 2000 by Lars-Erik Wiberg
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