KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 30 January
Something rich and strange
“Be still and know that I am God,” the psalmist says (Ps. 46. 11). It speaks to the life of the School in the recognition of the need to be still and quiet within ourselves in order to begin to think reflectively. Such is Chapel. Quiet moments that are not about this and that in the busyness of our daily lives, not about the competing concerns that stir up emotions and excite distress and discord, but a time of contemplation and quiet about the universal aspects of our humanity.
We have been considering, in the context of ‘epiphany,’ the idea of ‘complementary universalities’ as opposed to conflicting or ‘competing universalities’. One example is the universality of suffering common to the human condition in one way or another but differently addressed by the various world religions and in the competing social and therapeutic ideologies of contemporary culture. We have tried to connect “the gift of myrrh,” in the classic Epiphany story of the Magi-Kings, with Jesus in the Temple making known to us that he “must be about [his] Father’s business,” and with the first miracle, “the beginning of signs” which turns upon his “hour,” an explicit reference to his passion and death out of which comes resurrection and life. All three speak to the radical meaning of ‘epiphany’ as the making known of the essential divinity of Christ and the idea of God’s will and purpose for our humanity. God seeks the ultimate good for our humanity which is not found simply in the circumstances and actions of our lives but in our being found in God’s all embracing will manifest as love. This way of looking at things has parallels with other religions and philosophical traditions.
Diotima, the fictional female philosopher in Plato’s Symposium, argues that “the object of [our] love,” meaning our desires, “is that [we] should have the good” and to “have it forever.” “Love,” she says, “is the desire to have the good forever.” Good here is not simply something subjective and personal. It concerns the good of all within which we find the good of ourselves. But how to attain that ideal? That is another question and one which the Epiphany stories undertake to show by way of the motion of God towards us that complements our desires for something universal. Epiphany is miracle, the miracle of life itself in God who is the source and end of all life. In the Christian view, this focuses on Christ. “In him was life; and the life was the light of everyone.”
