The Still Point of the Dancing Post

Yesterday we spoke of part/whole relations, and I've sometimes wondered -- for example, in the book of the same name -- if this principle applies to time as well as space. If so, then a ptee part of time would do duty for the holos of eternity. 

Or in plain English, every moment would be a reflection of all moments -- like an allforabit in the grammar of eternity.

You know how I hate to speculate, but out of nowhere yesterday's book touched on this possibility, in response to another fellow who argues that Aquinas' hermeneutic of the Old Testament is anti- or ahistorical, in other words, nonlinear and overly symbolic. 

Aquinas argues that God (from eternity, his eternal "present") creates because he has an end in view, [and] since God is God, moreover, we can assume that God's plan is efficacious... 

In the long run anyway, even if we can't see how at any given moment.  

In other words, if God is God, why can't he write with history the same way we write with language? Or why can't time be the language of eternity?

Thus, we can expect -- and we certainly cannot rule out -- that history has a unified meaning. Moreover, if God reveals that Christ is the key to history, then we can expect to find implicit references to Christ throughout history...

And not just vis-a-vis Israel, although that is where eternity would be most dense with references in time, or where Heaven has touched the earth, so to speak. 

(Not to jump down a different rabbit hole, but this book on How the World Religions Prepared the Way for the Phenomenon of Jesus highlights some of the references scattered all over the temporal and geographical place.)

Regarding the holofractal temporal resonance, Aquinas argued that

The author of sacred scripture is God, in whose power it is to signify his meaning, not by words only (as man can also do), but also by things themselves. 

This isn't so strange when you think of how man actually does the same in his creations, e.g., in novels and films. As Levering says, "It may well be of the very nature of history, in short, that 'the part illumines the whole.'" But that's all he says, leaving it to me to work out the details.

I didn't prepare anything, so you've put me on the spot, not unlike Augustine, come to think of it, who said (to paraphrase) that he knows all about time. Unless you ask him.

While I gather my few thoughts, let's ask the Aphorist if he has any.

Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End.

Very good, Nicolás, because that indeed implies that all times are copresent, and besides, the Poet speaks of time future contained in time past, and of all time eternally present:

What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. 

Hey, this guy's pretty good. It's not just poetry but gnoetry: A moment in time but time was made through that moment; and that moment of time gave the meaning. 

At the still point of the turning world.... there the dance is, / But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, / Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor / towards, / Neither ascent nor decline. / Except for the point, the still point, / There would be no dance, and there is only dance.

You get the point. In my beginning is my end, and that's all there is to it:

Or say that the end precedes the beginning, / And the end and beginning were always there / Before the beginning and after the end. Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden.

And now you know why the book of the same bame has those two sections -- Before the Beginning and After the End -- and why the language is so cracked and broken. The words slip, slide, perish / Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, / Will not stay still. Shrieking voices...

Well, no shrieking really. Nevertheless, I only steal from the best, except I call it borrowing. Nicolás, may we borrow another aphorism? 

One must live for the moment and for eternity. Not for the disloyalty of time. 

And now for something completely different, or at least a different angle, which is to say, the Koon Kult Klassic The Symmetry of God:

If it is to express the infinite and the eternal, theology cannot do without paradox, symbolism and myth.

And lots of cracked and broken gnoetry. Here's some from Thomas Traherne, recalling a childhood experience, when

all things abided Eternally as they were in their Proper Places. Eternity was Manifest in the Light of the Day, and som thing infinit Behind evry thing appeared... 

Time stood still between Everlasting and Everlasting, and yet there's the Dance referenced above, in "an instant that abides" (Aquinas).

Now, how can the instant express the eternal? Better yet, how can it not?

In order to speak of the eternal, it is sufficient to speak with talent of the things of the day.  

Or even of the moment: "For such a thing is instantaneously whole and unchanging -- it has no time in which to change" (Bomford).  

Stork raving infanity!

Likewise eternity is expressed in the very new, the new-born, in that which happens for the first time. 

Remama? Toddling loose & lazy beneath a diamond sky, too old, older than Abraham, too young, young as a babe's I AM?

The uniting of the old and new, or first and last, emphasizes this quality. The enthroned Christ of the book of Revelation announces himself as The First and Last and the Lord God himself is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

The end. Except to add that St. Augustine addressed God as Thou beauty, both so ancient and so new. We will continue this investigation of temporal holofractality in the next post.