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The Old Sailor Syndrome
Address by Lars-Erik Wiberg
for Sunday, August 27, 2000
Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:16-22; James 2:14-20
Last July 30, from this very spot, you heard about how the Lord's Divine
Love and Wisdom is gentled for us as it is prepared by the Lord so that we
may receive it in the form of will and understanding and, even more gently,
feeling and thinking. To pick up the thread and quote from that message:
"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 . . . 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 and volunteer activities through which we make ourselves
useful." It is on the subject of making ourselves useful, at least about
certain aspects of that effort, that we do some exploring today.
If you have a good memory, you may recall that something was said from this
very spot a bit over two years ago in reference to bad examples,
specifically: ". . . We can often learn from bad examples because they show
us exactly what we should not do or should not be. The challenge for us is
to tell whether the example is bad or not." For this purpose what we need
is an egregious example. Such is defined as being: "outstanding for
undesirable qualities; remarkably bad; flagrant," in other words so bad you
can't miss it. Thus if someone were to provide an egregious example in
which he made himself less than useful, we would then have a way to guide
ourselves. We could figure out what he did that was wrong and why and then
avoid the same mistakes. That we have an excellent example, and that it
is provided in a magically light-hearted way is a tribute to the genius of
A.A. Milne (the author of Winnie the Pooh), as he describes one of the characters from his seemingly bottomless reservoir of whimsy. I refer to:
The Old Sailor
There was once an old sailor my grandfather knew
Who had so many things which he wanted to do
That, whenever he thought it was time to begin,
He couldn't because of the state he was in.
He was shipwrecked, and lived on an island for weeks,
And he wanted a hat, and he wanted some breeks;
And he wanted some nets, or a line and some hooks
For turtles and things which you read of in books.
And, thinking of this, he remembered a thing
Which he wanted (for water) and that was a spring;
And he thought that to talk to he'd look for, and keep
(If he found it) a goat, or some chickens and sheep.
Then, because of the weather, he wanted a hut
With a door (to come in by) which opened and shut
(With a jerk, which was useful if snakes were about),
And a very strong lock to keep savages out.
He began on the fish-hooks, and when he'd begun
He decided he couldn't because of the sun.
So he knew what he ought to begin with and that
Was to find, or to make, a large sun-stopping hat.
He was making the hat with some leaves from a tree,
When he thought, "I'm as hot as a body can be,
And I've nothing to take for my terrible thirst;
So I'll look for a spring, and I'll look for it first."
Then he thought as he started, "Oh, dear and oh, dear!
I'll be lonely tomorrow with nobody here!"
So he made in his note-book a couple of notes:
"I must first find some chickens" and "no I mean goats."
He had just seen a goat (which he knew by the shape)
When he thought, "But I must have a boat for escape.
But a boat means a sail, which means needles and thread;
So I'd better sit down and make needles instead."
He began on a needle, but thought as he worked,
That, if this was an island where savages lurked,
Sitting safe in his hut he'd have nothing to fear,
Whereas now they might suddenly breathe in his ear!
So he thought of his hut... and he thought of his boat,
And his hat and his breeks, and his chickens and goat,
And the hooks (for his food) and the spring (for his thirst)...
But he never could think which he ought to do first.
And so in the end he did nothing at all,
But basked on the shingle wrapped up in a shawl.
And I think it was dreadful the way he behaved -
He did nothing but basking until he was saved!
Let's first of all face up to the fact that there's a bit of The Old Sailor
in each and every one of us. Who among us haven't found ourselves with our
thinking in overload from diverse responsibilities darting this way and
that as we try to meet our obligations - - to meet an assortment of various
short-term goals, all of them different, and all of which appear to have
equal priority. We feel that we have to do everything at once and wind up
fatigued and frustrated. It happens to all of us, but we eventually sort
things out and vow to set priorities and not let things pile up like that.
And before we know it, we're in the same fix again. What happens to us?
What happened to The Old Sailor - - and in spades? Well there's several
things, and getting down to basics they involve the will and the
understanding, the feelings on the one hand and the thinking on the other.
Our Swedenborgian doctrine allows us to assess the Old Sailor's dilemma
quite accurately. First of all we learn that "Man has two faculties: will
and understanding. When the understanding is ruled by the will they
constitute one mind, thus one life; for then what the man wills and does he
thinks and intends. But when the understanding is dissident from the will
. . . the one mind is torn asunder into two." (Arcana Celestia ¶ 35) Well of
course that is happening to the Old Sailor; his will and his understanding
are working at cross purposes and the consequence is dramatic to say the
least.
We also learn from our Swedenborgian doctrine that "works are nothing but
the will and understanding in act" (Arcana Celestia ¶ 6405) and that "all
things that come forth in act are called uses" (Divine Love and Wisdom
¶336) The Old Sailor is, in effect, presenting us with a recipe for
uselessness. His feeling and thinking are not working together with the
result that he can't follow through on anything at all. What is so
insidious about the fix he's in is that, although he obviously can evaluate
what he ought to do, and also seems to have the necessary skills to do it
all, he can't get started because his feeling and thinking, his will and
understanding are dissident. So let's get straight what ought to be going
on here to produce a different result.
Our doctrine tells us: "the will is the man himself . . . but the thought
is outside the man unless it proceeds from his will: if it does this the
will and the thought make a one, and together make the man." (Divine
Providence ¶ 510) Isn't the Old Sailor a perfect example of someone whose
thinking is running him ragged? He gets ready to do
something, and up pops another notion that distracts him and makes his
efforts futile. His thinking is dictating to his will and not proceeding
from it, and this makes a big difference in performance. We have to
remember that it is our will that animates our thinking and not vice versa.
It is the role of our thinking to inform our will, and even to invigorate
it, so that we act rationally, which is to say act in accordance with our
thinking. But we should never forget for a moment that our will is the
source of action and our thinking that of information. (This brings us to
the problem of acting before the necessary information is received, but
that's another difficulty we won't go into today. If that were his
problem, the Old Sailor would have done all those things that he never did,
but he would have done them all wrong.)
Our Swedenborgian doctrine teaches us that the Lord's Divine Love and
Wisdom is our very life itself, a life that we share with others, but that
is unique to each of us although we do have it from the Lord. This Divine
Love and Wisdom presents itself in our will and understanding, with the
will stimulating the understanding and the understanding informing the
will. This is our very life reduced to its principles. To the extent it
is working, we are animated and useful. To the extent it is not working,
we are very much like The Old Sailor basking on the beach, useless and
nearly lifeless, really a sad picture, but an excellent symbol, whether
The Old Sailor intended it as such or not, of faith without works.
One might be deluded into the notion that his attitude of resignation was,
somehow, a demonstration of faith that he would be rescued. But what he
was showing was not faith. "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:20) ,
which means all productive works are essential to faith, including
prominently, but not exclusively, works of charity.
The situation prompts a question whether there is an answer to The Old
Sailor's problem and to any such problem that we might have if we were to
inadvertently behave the way he did. Well there are two answers. One of
them you have already been hearing in what amounts to an analysis of what
went wrong and thus what should be avoided, but there's another helpful
notion in what Carl Jung makes reference to as what he calls "ideation."
Ideation is a kind of chained thinking, one link after another, that turns
out not to be thinking at all if we refer to our doctrinal model. It is a
situation that happens to all of us to some extent in which our thoughts
run together almost willy-nilly, one thought being stimulated by the last
thought and, most importantly, not by the will. It is a condition that a
Swedenborgian would describe as being "out of order;" it is reflexive and
reactive. It is ideas having us rather than we having them. It is a kind
of noise in the mind.
We have seen how, according to order, feeling stimulates thinking and that
thinking
does not, or at least is not supposed to, stimulate itself. But it does
happen to us just as it did to The Old Sailor, and what can we do about it?
The answer is deceptively simple. It is always a joy to find a
deceptively simple answer. In this case our mere awareness, our having
identified the symptom, carries with it the solution. All we have to do is
to be alert enough to tell ourselves to stop, to be aware that we are
falling into a non-productive, useless, pattern of helter skelter thought
that turns out to be the equivalent of inactivity whether we bundle
ourselves up in a shawl or not.
So we can protect ourselves from The Old Sailor Syndrome now that we know
what it is, and that it is contrary to order, and is the origin of false
starts, frustrations, and feelings of uselessness. We are delighted that
the Old Sailor was finally saved, but we would have been even more
delighted if he had figured out a way to save himself, which is something
that we can do for ourselves whenever our priorities are piling up, our
next tasks are vying for attention, and our thoughts seem to be getting out
of control. We can remember the Old Sailor; we can avoid ideation, we can
control our thinking, and we can give our will and understanding a chance
to perform as a team as we follow through and make ourselves useful - - one
use at a time.
Amen
Copyright 2000 by Lars-Erik Wiberg
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