Glimpses of Goodness in an ordinary life.
This I believe……………
Liken all of being to a great sailing ship, amongst its cargo is the Good. Wrapped tight and secure, tucked deep in the ship’s hold is its most precious possession; this is the symbol of the status of Good in the world. It is real in the Platonic sense. Just as the stars and the laws that govern them exist, just as the elements of the periodic table exist, so does the Good. It is woven throughout the fabric of reality, it is our golden thread. It seeps and flows, it permeates, it saturates and sustains all being. Perhaps the sun is a more fitting metaphor. It is the light that guides the ship. We are clothed in the frailty of human existence and are amongst the contents of the hold. We move toward the slivered cracks of light in the decking. Our posture ought to be that of beatitude.
This belief in the pervasive reality of the Good and the teleological necessity to follow it, I must admit can be difficult to maintain with all the strife in the present world. At times I feel like Voltaire’s pollyanna, Dr. Pangloss. The current condition of the Good is the biblical light under the bushel and its admonition:
“Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand?”
But we are a resilient species and though we do not live in the light of the noonday sun, we keep and tend and cherish the small flame. As Grod in the ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’:
…..uncovered a glowing coal wrapped in moss and stuffed into the hollow of an aurochs horn.”
For all my limitations, I am convinced that the Good has confronted me in ever so subtle fashions. I have sensed it in the stain glass windows of our little church, especially in the blue and purple, milky pastel rectangular panes. On Sunday mornings the rising sun casts sufficient light to project their diluted colors on the pew next to me. I have slid my hand into it like a puddle. In the winter it has the slightest warmth. I have also found evidence that the Good is real and irrepressible, even in these rain swept times, in our youth. I certainly do not mean this in a generic sense, but that I have gotten to know , in my line of work, a human spirit, in a rare few, that I am gloriously compelled to explain as a manifestation of Goodness. It is from their integrity, optimism, genuine curiosity and compassions that I infer this.