Sunday Driving on the Innerstate

The Trinity is an idea that seems to baffle many Christians, let alone non-Christians -- the notion that God is the mutual and co-eternal indwelling of three persons in one, one of whom is paradoxically fully human yet fully divine. Although it sounds complex, at the same time, we are assured that God is intrinsically simple (i.e., not an aggregate), so there must be something about this formulation that is as logically clear and necessary as any rule of geometry -- say, "a line consists of two points." Not to entirely demystify it -- mystery being an important mode of knowing -- but there must be some way to cut through the centuries of speculation and see through to the beautiful simplicity of it.

As always, I am driving while intoxicated -- which is to say writing while coontemplating -- so you will forgive me if I careen off the road and end up on Route 666. This can happen when traveling the innerstate, especially if one uses an excessively freeway. I will leave it to you to decide whether that's a fully deployed windbag in front of you or a hot-air balloony trying to lift you by your buddhastraps into the pneumatosphere.

In his Theo-Drama, Balthasar -- who was apparently Pope John Paul's favorite theologian -- say, did you know that JPII also had a copy of Meditations on the Tarot sitting right smack dab on his surprisingly little desk, for which Balthasar wrote the epilogue? -- which only goes to show you that this wonderful man might have worn an imposing pointy hat in public, but a soft and inviting coonskin cap in private... say, where was I? Let's just start over.

In the Theo-Drama, Balthasar likens what we in Coonland are calling "the arc of salvation" to a stage play that reconciles the problem of divine and human freedom -- which is to say the paradox of infinite and finite freedom. For if the soul is created, how then can it actually be truly free?

For example, "facing forward," it always looks like we have a more or less radical existential freedom -- at least those of us privileged to live in the West.

But "facing backward," we can often see that our freedom was more or less of an illusion. To cite one obvious example, psychoanalysis deals with the study of the unmetabolized past-in-the-present, otherwise known as the unconscious. As we explore the unconscious and its repository of mind parasites, we can see how these entities limited our freedom -- not to say fulfillment -- due to agendas all their own -- agendas we can only detect in hindsight. Although a mind parasite exists, so to speak, in the "space" of the mind, it is only by surveying our past and looking at certain dysfunctional patterns in time that we can see the workings of the little buggers.

But at the same time, if you are on any kind of spiritual path and survey your past, a different kind of pattern will emerge. In fact, for most people -- and for Coons by definition -- it will appear coontrived, which is to say that it will look as if it were guided by the workings of a sort of predestination. On the one hand, we can all be relieved that we have arrived at this happy deustination. But on the other hand, it can be a little unsettling to realize that the freedom you perceived at the time was not as free as it looked, in the sense that your life was being dreamt by a "supraconscious dreamer" of which you were unaware at the time.

What this suggests is that the "ontology of the moment" contains two streams of karma, as it were, one of which is pushing you forward into the past (the mind parasites), the other of which is pulling you back to the future -- in other words, this latter karmic stream beckons you to paradoxically "become what you already are."

Yesterday we discussed the idea of spatial, "geometrical" truth vs. temporal, "musical" truth. Our lives are a combination of geometry and music, of adventure and law, of harmony and melody, of freedom within the constraints of some kind of hidden necessity. Our "life" consists of the more or less winding road we take to re-arrive where we startled and even jumped into our skin. In the words of the Poet,

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

Now, Balthasar has a very interesting take on the Trinity and its relation to the cosmic theo-drama. Jesus, because he was all-man, had to be no different than the rest of us in this respect. As such, just like us, he could not fully know or understand the nature of the drama in which he was situated. If he had known, then his passion would have been something less than that -- more of a detached "dispassion," as he simply "played out the clock" -- as in a one-sided basketball game. Not to sound blasphemous, but it would have been much more like the Life of Brian than the Passion of the Christ. Jesus could have been on the cross glancing at his watch, knowing that, outward appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, there was nothing to sweat about -- let alone blood. "I'm cool. It's all good."

Thus, just like our lives, Jesus had an element of horizontal freedom -- which is to say existential nothingness -- within the constraints of a much larger drama in which he was taking part. While he obviously had "hints" of a larger purpose -- as indeed we all do -- the human Jesus could not have been privy to the whole script. And in fact, Balthasar uses the metaphor of playwright, director, and actor to conceptualize the situation. The Father is "playwright"; the Son is "actor"; and the Holy Spirit is "director" (one is reminded that JPII was an actor). As Edward Oakes explains,

"a successful theatrical production always depends on the harmonious cooperation of three freedoms, which are not however equal: for the director must serve the script and the actor must serve both; yet the actor cannot simply afford to be an automaton if the production is to be successful: some unnamed element... must be engaged if the play is to emerge before the audience as playwright and director intended it."

As Sachs (quoted in Oakes) writes, "The fact that the actor-Son has the responsibility to play the role given him by the author-Father, as 'whispered' to him in each moment by the prompter-Spirit, does not exclude the actor-Son's interpretive freedom. On the contrary, it assumes it and provides the material in which his freedom as an actor can become concrete. Therefore, although the author has a definite primacy with regard to the actor and the prompter (or director), it is by no means a tyrannical relationship. The author continues to be present in his work but as one who opens up the creative 'space' of the part."

Thus, even Jesus struggles with the two "streams of karma": a literally infinite gap -- the gap of God's absence or withdrawal from creation -- exists between the O, my father, let this cup pass from me, and the it is accomplished.

Back to our own lives, in which there is a curious freedom that accompanies surrendering to that which we are and He Who Is. Looking back at our lives, we can see that we were least free when we thought we had the most freedom, and most free when we finally gave up the faux freedom. Balthasar compares it to the artist who moves from the persecutory space of being tormented by indecision and infinite possibility, until he is finally "possessed by the idea inspiring him and surrenders himself completely to its imperious and peremptory demands." This feeling of being "seized" and "surrendering" describes exactly what it felt like to write my book, and increasingly, to write these posts. Or to live my life, for that martyr.

So history -- both personal and collective -- is a God-given space of freedom in which we are free to choose the path back to ourselves and to God. All roads lead to the same place, but some get there faster than others. And some routes are much more scenic and beautiful.

If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dreams
Where immobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again

From the far side of the ocean
If I put the wheels in motion
And I stand with my arms behind me
And I'm pushin' on the door
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
To lay me down
In silence easy
To be born again
To be born again....

In another world
In another time
Got a home on high
Ain't nothing but a stranger in this world
I'm nothing but a stranger in this world
I got a home on high
In another land
So far away
So far away
Way up in the heaven

In another time
In another place
In another face.... --Van Morrison, Astral Weeks