Wednesday, January 15, 2014

The Lord Is One

Life is wondrously incomprehensible.

I know; therefore, tender reader, I believe - and pray.


King Solomon's wisdom is unparalleled.  All is vanity and, indeed, nothing lasts.


And yet.  Worth justifies itself.  Truth, after all, is inherently so.


No good work lasts; over time, its material effects dissipate, spiritual consequences subside.  Goodness, though, is immutable and everlasting; thus, 
how Augustus converted Rome's meager brick to austere marble is why he did so.

Perhaps, tender reader, an explication is called for.

To the extent that one acts in an orderly manner, one acts rightly; to act in complete alignment with Him is to act best.  But since complete alignment betrays complete knowledge, no man acts best so far as he knows, but only well - to a degree, in experiencing that which we call pride.

Deliberation, the wellspring of nothing but vanity, is at best necessary vice.  Pondering the everlasting chasm between man and divine is the least effective way of bridging it.  The agent of order shuns deliberation in mind and in deed.  Of course, man, the mortal he is, must deliberate by virtue of his imperfect understanding, limitless desires, and finite time, but to shun an inherent component of human action is to minimize its effect and marginalizing the effect of man's wandering mind is more conducive to orderly action - the only path to achievement, the touchstone of greatness.

As one acts in a more orderly manner the how and the why of his action merge into one.  Deliberation stifles greatness by seeking a why for action besides its how - the only ultimate why.

An agent of order improvises, planning insofar as is practicable, deliberating insofar as is necessary.  He makes haste slowly.  Every moment, he does what he does because that is the best way to be, for his motivation for action is not even his method of action, but the action itself.

One does not ponder why Augustus left Rome a city of marble.  Yes, marble beats brick - and a city must be built with something, but that was true long before his reign and - Lord knows - remains so today.  No, Augustus left Rome a city of marble because he was Augustus.  It is how we was.  Worth, to the mere mortal, is by deed, but all worth stems from the worthy and how Augustus acted was, for a sufficient period of time, also why he acted for us to know him as Augustus - the man who made Rome.

Rome.  Rome.  Our maître â penser:
It is forbidden to man to give great names to the things of which he is the author and which he believes to be great; but if he has acts legitimately, the great thing will ennoble the vulgar name and it will become great.
Cyrus, Napoleon, Constantine I, Qin Shi Huang, Chandragupta Maurya, Charlemagne, Peter the Great.

Our maître â penser:
One of the greatest errors of this age is to believe that the political constitution of nations is the work of man alone and that a constitution can be made as a watchmaker makes a watch.  This is quite false; but still more false is the belief that this great work can be executed by an assembly of men.  The author of all things has only two ways of giving a government to a people.  Most often he reserves to himself its formation more directly by making it grow, as it were, imperceptibly like a plant, through the conjunction of a multitude of those circumstances we call fortuitous.  But when he wants to lay quickly the foundations of a political structure and to show the world a creation of this kind, he confides his power to rare men, the true Elect.  Scattered thinly over the centuries, they rise like obelisks on time's path, and, as humanity grows older, they appear the less.  To fit them for these unusual tasks, God invests them with usual power, often unknown to their contemporaries and perhaps to themselves.  Bousseau himself has spoken a truth when he said that the work of a founder of a nation was a MISSION ... If the founders of nations, who were all prodigious men, were to come before our eyes and we were to recognize their genius and their power, instead of talking nonsensically of usurpation, fraud, and fanaticism, we would fall on our knees and our sterility would disappear before the sacred sign shining from their brows.
Each people has a constitution by which their nation abides, through which their nation breathes, and in which their nation believes.  Those laws most fundamental to how a nation functions and according to which a nation must be ruled are never written.  It is belief in these unwritten laws that bind nations together, fortifying their peoples against sundry adversities, and strengthening their national souls.

Time erodes very nearly all.  The more that is written, the less that is believed - both by virtue of cause and symptom.  Constitutions' strength in binding its peoples together decay as their laws are pondered, articulated, and formulated.  A constitution erodes more quickly still when laws are questioned, debated, reformed, and, quite egregiously, voted upon.

Earlier ages produced greater men who were more pure in thought, laconic in language, and perceptive in intuition.  With greater raw intellectual power, the earliest men possessed a more complete understanding of the world; their wisdom penetrated more intimately and completely.  Monotheism is highest understanding - as sublime in simplicity as it is complete in meaning.  There, tender reader, forged one national soul not eroded by time.  Our Catholic maître â penser:
To this general rule, that no constitution can be made or written, a priori, we know of but one single exception; that is, the legislation of Moses.  This alone was cast, so to speak, like a statue and written out, even to its minutest details, by a wonderful man, who said, Fiat! without his work ever having need of being corrected, improved or in any way modified, by himself or others.  This, alone, has set time at defiance, because it owed nothing to time, and expected nothing from it; this alone has lived fifteen hundred years; and even after eighteen new centuries have passed over it, since the great anathema which smote it on the fated day, we see it, enjoying, if I may say so, a second life, binding still, by I know not what mysterious bond, which has no human name, the different families of a people, which remain dispersed without being disunited.  So that, like attraction, and by the same power, it acts at a distance, and makes one whole, of many parts widely separated from each other.  Thus, this legislation lies evidently, for every intelligent conscience, beyond the circle traced around human power; and this magnificent exception to a general law, which has only yielded once, and yielded only to its Author, alone demonstrates the Divine mission of the great Hebrew Lawgiver.
The original language was but His Word, which was also the the highest morality and the essence of governance.  The decay of languages, morals, and governance, illustrated by the proliferation of verbose sophistries, shameless hedonism, and written laws, are mutually reinforcing, intimately connected, and ultimately stem from the passage of time itself.  Only the law that owes nothing to time can redeem humanity from the harmful effects of it.

Since time immemorial, the national souls of peoples were fashioned out of combinations of the effects wrought of Elects' prodigious works and fortunate circumstances - all, that is, except one.  Unlike every other member of the Elect, Abraham was entirely aware of his mission, by virtue of having received His instructions through his mind's eye.  Thus was set in motion the Covenant.  Mere circumstances and prodigious works played no part in forging the Chosen People's soul.  Put simply, the national soul of the Jewish people is our Covenant with G-d.  That mysterious bond of which our our maître â penser marvels, by the way, extends directly from - and even is - the Covenant itself.  Evidently it ain't called eternal for nothing.

The essential condition of man, debased by soul and degraded in flesh, shrieks for deliverance, pleads for meaning, begs for want of purpose; this is both how and why the human condition renders redemption plausible, but the highest (and last) Elect renders redemption manifest.  Unlike all other Elects across the millennia, the final Elect will not engender a soul to his people, but rather unite the souls of all peoples. This unity can only be predicated upon an intuitive, unspoken, and universal understanding of Him - a most sacred inherited memory.  How appropriate it is for the Final Elect to both fulfill the prophecy cast by the only mortal lawgiver and honor the only Covenant established by G-d with an entire people by uniting the souls of all peoples in recognition of the veracity of the most fundamental a priori knowledge - His Providence.  The consummation of the world is the return of Judah's scepter, in the hand of King Solomon's seed, to the Temple.

It is only through this mortal משיח that we may be redeemed from our mortal state, as all the peoples of the world unite in recognizing Him, experiencing that permanent peace that only final and original unity delivers.  It is this Last Elect that is the first mortal to knowingly act in complete alignment with Him and, in so doing, permanently bridges the gap between mortal and divine.  Thereafter, that which is is that which should be.

Oh, Israel - the Lord, your G-d, is One.  Truly.

Forever.