Diary of a Realist: Clive James

Diary of a Realist: Clive James

Poem: “Event Horizon” (from 'Sentenced to Life' – Poems 2011-2014)

For years we fooled ourselves. Now we can tell

How everyone our age heads for the brink

Where they are drawn together into the unplumbed well,

Not to be seen again. How sad, to think

People we once loved will be with us there

And we not touch them, for it is nowhere.

But once inside, you will have no regrets,

You go where no one will remember you.

Poetic realism (or license) from a Realist?  But to see all this differently, I have chosen religious faith!   Elsewhere, the poet has a line (in 'Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven'):   

                                                                            

                                                       “ . . . .  any vision of eternity 

                                                        Is with us in the world, and beautiful . . . “

Faith also provides us with an undeniably 'earthly' vision of the hereafter, grounded nowhere if not in the here-and-now (dogma aside). How does the faith of a Realist react to the thought of “life after death”?  Eternity, by this reckoning may be visioned more as a relationship. Only a deep and sincere faith implicating the 'other' can make this relational, rather than an abstract. Else, fooled again!

The poet continues (in “Event Horizon”):

Into the singularity we fly

After a stretch in time in which we leave

Our lives behind yet know that we will die

At any moment now. A pause to grieve,

Burned by the starlight of our lives laid bare,

And then no sound, no sight, no thought. Nowhere.

What is it worth then, this insane last phase?

When everything about you goes downhill?

This much: you get to see the cosmos blaze

And feel it's grandeur, even against your will,

As it reminds you, just by being there,

That it is here we live, or else nowhere.

Diary of a Realist

“Miracles will never confound a Realist” (Dostoevsky), and the poet is more a Realist than anyone. Except, perhaps, a Realist with deep religious faith, “because it is not miracles that make a Realist turn to religion". A true Realist, if he is an unbeliever, “will always find the strength and the ability not to believe in a miracle (or mystery), and if faced with a miracle as an undeniable fact, he will sooner disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact”.

In a Realist, faith does not arise from the miracle, but the miracle from faith. The “miracle” of Jesus' Resurrection was believed by the Apostle Thomas – a Realist - “only because he wanted to believe, and maybe he already fully believed in his innermost heart even when he said, “except I shall see, I will not believe” (thoughts and quotations from reading Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”).

A True Realist

One of those crucified with Jesus, a “malefactor” who acknowledged who Jesus really was and made the request, “remember me when you come in your kingdom” (Luke 23: 42) was a Realist who deliberately elected to believe. His faith was real. In response, he was told “today, you will be with me in paradise”, that is, “remembered in Eternity”. This “good thief” chose not only to remember God with his last breath, but asked to be “remembered” by God in Eternity, in contrast to the ridiculing of the crowd and insults offered by the fellow criminal. Choosing to “fear God”, he was rewarded with “Memory Eternal” (Cf. a song or Chant from the Eastern Orthodox Christian Liturgy). The relational character of this exchange is evident in the “remembering” now, and the being “remembered” in the hereafter. Still nowhere, but Eternity? What a difference!

“A Future Full of Hope”

 

God's Plan: “A Future Full of Hope”

This is what God says through the prophet Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have in mind for you – it is the Lord who speaks – plans for peace and not disaster, a future full of hope” (Jeremiah 29: 11).

Jeremiah was the prophet who voiced the “word of the Lord” ratifying a new covenant for the house of Israel, to be established “by putting my laws in their hearts and minds . . . I shall be their God and they shall be my people”. This was understood by Saint Augustine “to be a prophecy of the Jerusalem above, whose 'reward' is God himself” - symbolic of the Jerusalem in heaven. But it references also “Jerusalem called the city of God”, the house of God in that city which had its fulfillment when King Solomon built the temple there.

The human society – the earthly city - represented by Augustine's City of God had (and has) an unremittingly bleak outlook, but “Christianity offers mankind a hope besides which the gloom of the human condition is as nothing . . . always hopeful and, in the deepest sense optimistic.” On the other hand, “Augustine's discussion of the afterlife does not establish a clear picture of what awaits, but instils expectant hope, while nurturing the faith and trust that will enable the hopeful to accept what they find. The weakness of the human mind and its language are just too great in the face of the greatest mysteries. Theology can only instil reverence and leave behind a residue of hope.” As with that other mystery of the faith, the Trinity – the three-personed deity of Christian belief – we must be content “that it is so”. Some things just are beyond comprehension. 
 
George Herbert, a 17th century poet/priest of exceptional spiritual insight, attempted a deeper consideration of the mind of God: 

       I threatened to observe the strict decree

       of my dear God with all my power and might; 

       But I was told by one it could not be;

       Yet I might trust in God to be my light.

       “Then I will trust,” said I, “in Him alone.”

       “Nay, e'en to trust Him was also His:

      We must confess that nothing is our own.”

       “Then I confess that he my succour is”.

       “But to have nought is ours, not to confess 

      That we have nought.” I stood amazed at this,

      Much troubled, till I heard a friend express

      That all things were more ours by being His;

      What Adam had, and forfeited for all,

      Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.       (The Holdfast)

Realizing the impossibility of following to the letter the “strict decree” the poet said he opted to simply “trust God to be my light”. Even “trust”, however, was not the answer because “we must confess that nothing is our own”; yet even this confession avoided the bedrock truth: through Christ “having nothing” is, spiritually speaking, to have all (not to own all) because “all” is kept safe for us by the grace of God and “more ours by being his”. Or, as St Paul said, he heard the Lord say to him: “My grace is sufficient for you”. (2 Cor. 12: 10).

A 14^th Century writer with lofty spiritual ideals, Thomas A Kempis (d.1263), warned of the dangers inherent in aspiring to achieve spiritual 'perfection'. “Some”, he wrote in The Imitation of Christ, “presumptuous because of the grace of devotion, have destroyed themselves, because they have wished to do more than they were able, (preferring) to follow their heart's impulse than the judgments of reason”. He maintained that the intentions (intuitions) of the faithful depend more on the grace of God than on their own wisdom, “for in him to do they put their trust, whatsoever they take in hand”. 
 
Many devout Christians believe, and see very clearly, God's Will for their life. Some may eventually doubt this and reach the conclusion that they have “blown it”, thinking themselves spiritual failures. “Bible Life Coach”, Sheri Rose Shepherd (Sheri Rose Shepherd) has posted discreet advice to counter this misconception: “You, my beautiful friend, are not that powerful!” Human expectations are sometimes a bridge too far; there are mysteries beyond our understanding.

“The way of a man is not in himself” (Jeremiah 10.23), so we put no trust in the flesh, as St Paul tells the Corinthians: “I will all the more gladly boast (confess?) my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me”. “Left to myself I am nothing. Thou look upon me, I am made strong.” “It is God's to give and console, when he will and as much as he will, and whom he will, as much as it please him, and no more . . .” The Imitation of Christ (Chapter VIII)

We can never say that we have “blown” anything, since our apparent failures are all part of God's plan for our lives; if we never stumbled we would not experience the recovery that faith facilitates when, despite all, and having put our trust in him, we know “that in all things God works for the good of those who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8. 28. 
 

None of this is to deny the witness of scripture, that there is in God's plan for every human person a purpose, indeed for the whole world, “a future full of hope”. This is a promise that, taken personally and sincerely in faith, has the potential to radically alter the direction, indeed the end, of any life. The grace of God is ours for the taking on the basis of trust: “in him we move and have our being” (Acts 17.28). 
 
Prior to his recent death after a long illness a distinguished historian had this advice to others who are dying: “If you are, like me, faced with a terminal illness and Christian, you have been given the opportunity to prepare yourself to meet your creator. Be thankful that you have not died suddenly. You have been privileged and it is important that you should make use of this grace to set your affairs in order.” 

A Franciscan saint is quoted as saying “in books we seek God, in prayer we find him. Prayer is the door that opens God's heart” - whereby we accept God's mysterious will and purpose for our lives.

Geoff Wellings - October 2016.