Totemic Transformations: Shouting Dark Secrets

We are not yet what we will be. We are not yet what we are becoming. We do not yet know what we do not yet know. There is no way, really, that we could be what we are not yet or know what we do not yet know until those things are manifest reality. Since the sense of not yet knowing what we do not yet know is perhaps the easiest idea to explore conceptually, let’s pause on that thought for a moment.

How do we learn new things? If we consider that question for a moment, we realize that we learn new things best when we can tie them to old things. A personal illustration springs readily to mind from my French lessons. I have never mastered the language to any degree: my reading level of French is perhaps at a fifth-grade level (minus the ability to conjugate my verbs with any degree of finesse and precision); my ability to distinguish spoken French is non-existent; my ability to pronounce French is maybe that of a three-year-old and that only with the words printed in front of me. Yet there has been improvement in my reading comprehension of French and one of the greatest obstacles for me to overcome was building up enough of a vocabulary that I could use the contextual clues of neighboring words to guess (at least somewhat intelligently) about the meaning of the verb or other unknown word in question. Given that written communication is an obvious strength (else you would not be reading these musings week after week), I have often noted that I pick up and retain what is to me an astonishing range of new English words, in part because they are framed against and set off by their neighbors; put another way, because of my love of words, the context becomes almost subliminal: after only encountering a word once or twice in print it often suggests itself to my consciousness during the writing process. But with French, I started from absolute zero, or nearly so, as having an adult’s grasp of English already privileges me in ways a human infant does not enjoy. For all intents and purposes, then, a new word in French was totally and utterly foreign, not connected to anything or reflective of anything, just sort of “hanging out there” on a limb without trunk or branches for support. Rote memorization was my only option and given that I am a very conceptual learner, that made my French lessons absolutely exasperating. Gradually, as I began to learn a small range of French words—not that I know many more now—I was able to build on what I had already learned to limited degree. The more I learned, the more I was able to learn and the more rapidly.

Now certainly, as we have suggested, the process is not entirely synonymous for adult learning and that of the infant. Infants come equipped by nature with the ability to “absorb” vast amounts of new information and particularly language formation. Psychological literature suggests that just as walking is a learned behavior but almost certain to transpire in a child without physical handicap, so too is language acquisition: if a child were born into a world without words, he or she would have to invent them. Language is more or less arbitrary—there is no particular reason why one country calls the animal chien and the other, meaning the same exact animal, calls it “dog.” Yet once these more or less arbitrary distinctions become embedded in our minds, they comprise a startlingly large portion of the actual structure or substance of thought. A bit like hair extensions that suddenly give those with shorter hair long, luxurious locks, words extend our conscious awareness, often creating an awareness of the environment that might not have been known before. Reminiscent of the Saphir-Whorf hypothesis, I often use the example with my students of the word “cuticle.” I may not have previously paid much attention to that lunar-shaped crescent, particularly not to the degree moon worshippers might who dance about and lift their fingers in the air to show the goddess her signature. Yet upon learning the word “cuticle,” I have of necessity (if I have comprehended the word at all) come to notice a part of my world that might otherwise be overlooked.

In a similar but exactly opposite manner, this awareness created by learning new words explains in part why to name something is to have a degree of power over it: the words on this page have already been subtly affecting your consciousness in ways you probably have not noticed, likely not causing you to contemplate much you have never encountered before, but making it more tangible so that it will affect how you perceive things in your world after you set aside this newsletter and attend to other matters. However, our object today is not to discuss the power of language and its ties with neural pathways, as fascinating and mysterious as the topic actually is when given much thought. Rather, we are talking about learning in general and its ties to spiritual reality.

Plato, through the mouthpiece of Socrates (and particularly in the Meno), had a conception of learning in which we remember what we have once known. This answer to how we learn corresponded to his belief that we are reincarnations and though we have passed through the sea of forgetfulness (whether in a literal mythical sense or simply in some way as of yet unexplained by the gods), we still in some way retain that knowledge in the idea of the forms. At some point, we had divine knowledge, but it was forgotten, blotted out. Yet, perhaps due to the immortality of the soul or some other reason, its complete erasure was not effected. When Socrates “teaches” the slave boy new theorems, then, he is only helping him “remember” by asking him leading questions.

Having thought often about such matters, I think there is a sense in which we often do know the answer to our own questions, or, not really that, but that often we have within ourselves the answer. But whereas for Plato that knowledge is innate and needs only a little prompting, I would argue that the prompting—the question—is itself a form of knowledge that we lack. The question, in this case, is the answer; the wisdom comes about in knowing the relevant question to ask. Put another way, if I have a piece of clay, within that piece of clay is the potential for the sculpture I hope to create. Yet the realization of that sculpture requires me to use my hands and perhaps various tools to uncover. Poetically and even on the level of metaphoric truth we can say that within this piece of clay exists a totem and we have but to find it. Yet in the cold, analytic distinctions of empiricism, what brings the totem bearing the busts of the ancestors and gods into existence is not native within the clay—it is merely the potentiality to be molded—but is rather native in our fingers, or, if we must stick with rigorous empiricism, is native to the mind that operates those fingers. Socrates, then, was “discovering” knowledge of geometric theorems in the slave boy just as a sculpture “discovers” a totem in a lump of clay. The answers regarding geometric theorems were inside him in this sense, but the true knowledge was the skilled, external questions that brought them forth, not the remembered past within: within the extractor was the skill, not overtly in what was extracted.

Yet can we dismiss Plato so easily? Is there not a true sense in which contained within a seed is not only the potential for a tree but directions for its very unfolding? Is there not a sense that within the womb, that which is forming is being supplied with elements for its journey into personhood even though admittedly helped along by the nurture of the outer world? At the very least, to return to our totem, there exists within the clay the properties needed to sculpt; we would not get nearly as far if we attempted to turn our fingers and the tools of sculpting on flowing liquid or shifting sand. Given that clay is inert and the slave boy has a beating pulse and a sense of consciousness, we are dealing with a subject more mysterious and nebulous than our metaphor might allow and we should perhaps tread with humility lest we overlook some fine detail or too readily conclude that we have the answer all stitched neatly together. After all, we do not yet know what we do not yet know: how could we?

A child learns. How a child learns, seen even with this cursory introduction, is a subject of great debate. But nevertheless, a child learns. And, of course, a child grows in more ways than the merely physical. That this growth process happens on a continuum few would deny: it is open to observation and easily documented. Children do not become adults overnight but pass through a series of interweaving and interwoven stages.

We have here been speaking of being born from the womb; the same could be said for being begotten from above. The spiritual life is characterized in Christianity by the metaphor of birth and its object is life eternal, an object that we have argued long and loud in previous issues has everything to do with the life that now—yes, this very instant—exists: eternal life has to do with all of life, to be sure—life to come as much as now—but life only happens one moment at a time. I am alive now; I have life now. If I did not have life, I could not be said to be living. To be living implies a state of continuance that necessarily passes through the now: I am alive, I am alive, I am alive, I am alive, I am alive: each sentence is required over and over to adequately capture the essence of life. We are alive and to be alive means that we have life: we live moment by moment and if we did not, we would no longer be living.

Now if we consider the idea of spiritual life and we consider that it is begotten from above, we have something of the sense of what it means to be spiritually alive. I eat, I drink, I sleep, I discard waste. I learn something new nearly every day and I am not the same man I was one year ago. One year ago, the man typing these words would not have understood them quite like he does now; one year ago, that man would have been lacking in a level of learning and knowledge that could have only been gotten by the addition of the last year of his life. His understanding of French is only moderately better; his ideas on paper do not seem that much different than they ever did, or at least not for the past several years he has been electronically inscribing them. How he has changed exactly he could not tell you, if for no other reason than the changes are permanent. He is not who he was one year ago and there is no way he can retrieve that person, for he is not that person any longer (if in no other sense than that he is more than he was). He certainly hopes that the changes that have been affected in his life have all been for the better, even though some decisions were not wise and others were plainly sinful. Yet because he has more consistently chosen the good and the true and the beautiful, he would like to believe that he has become a little better, truer, and possessed of more refined graces: that he has underwent an ontological transformation that has made him more than he was.

Now consider that we have talked much about the idea of “on earth as it is in heaven”: that is, we have talked about the kingdom of heaven and its realization here on earth. We have suggested that the spiritual virtues of faith, hope, and love are all transformative virtues: they do not look to what is seen, yet they realize what they see, just as our sculptor begins with a lump of clay and ends up with a totem of his ancestors. We have said that “they realize what they see”: it came to my attention today on the forum, as I was reviewing a previous newsletter in which we were discussing Merton, that the latter’s words could stand some clarification. Specifically, he writes:

As first noted on the forum, without clarification, his words could suggest that we never will come into any kind of conscious possession of God: that our hope will always lack any feeling of his presence and will be perceptually (though not actually) substanceless. (One wonders to what degree an utterly unknowable God is superior to a God who is entirely absent.) Yet I believe what Merton bears out here is simply the truth that starts us on the journey. I did not know any French, save perhaps five words, when I started. Having never encountered French to any true degree, I had no context: it was all new, it was all fresh. It was an agonizing process, yet the more French I learned, the more French I was able to learn. One could say that “I grew in French” just as the spiritual pilgrim grows in grace and knowledge.

The transformative spiritual virtues—faith, hope, love, and their parents forgiveness and unmerited grace—are not based on worth and deservedness but rather create worth and sow their own just deserts. They look to what has not yet been realized, seeing the day as though it were a thousand years, the future as though it were the present. Yet what has not been realized right now may be realized a year from now: I am not the same man I was even as I am not yet the man I will be. One year from now, the transformative virtues will still look to what has not yet been realized. Yet in the course of that year, they will have realized various transformations, hence why we highlight that such virtues “do not look to what is seen, yet they realize what they see.” To believe in the unseen is not necessarily to believe in what cannot be seen, but rather to see the potential in all things: to have the vision of more and to see it through to completion until faith becomes sight. Recall our illustration of seeing flour: one person sees only flour. The other person also sees the flour, but in addition to the flour, she sees hot, steaming pies and the hungry being fed. Both persons see flour, but only one sees what is unseen. One sees only the things of earth, the other says “on earth as it is in heaven” seeing the kingdom of heaven brought to bear upon the kingdom of earth in which all things are made new and being made new.

We do not yet know what we do not yet know: how could we? In many instances, we live in Merton’s poverty, serving the God of the dark. We do not feel him, we do not hear him, yet we possess him by hope, by faith, by love. In the midst of the poverty, the darkness, the lack of feeling, the lack of hearing, and the lack of conscious possessing, there is a seed that is growing. There are ontological changes taking place beneath the surface, permanent changes: the kingdom of heaven if being brought to bear on earth, what is unseen is being manifest as sight. It is in the dark, inner chambers of the heart that the silent Voice speaks.

Our hope is not empty. It starts out in the dark, but does not stay there. If it only stayed in the dark, our hope would be a rather sorry human sentiment helpful only to the degree it whispered sweet lies, a thing completely contrary to the kingdom of heaven. Hope does not stay in the dark, but bursts forth into increasing light. It does not yet know what it does not yet know, yet it has within it the seeds of knowledge as it inclines itself toward its creator. His hands sculpt the clay that is man; he is the potter, we the clay; as Hannah Whitall Smith writes: “The lump of clay could never grow into a beautiful vessel if it stayed in the clay pit for thousands of years; but when it is put into the hands of a skillful potter it grows rapidly under his fashioning into the vessel he intends it to be. And in the same way the soul, abandoned to the working of the Heavenly Potter, is made into a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use” (The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life).

Archive note: See also the discussion forum thread regarding this newsletter.

The thing that we so often overlook is that the transformative virtues of faith, hope, and love are not child’s play: they are not unreal. They are very real: they are the means of acquiring what is not yet and their result is nothing short of ontological transformation. We could perhaps say of the totem: “That is a lump of clay.” Yet it would not really be accurate to call it a “lump” any more: it is more accurate to say, “This object is made of clay.” Our most likely response to the friend who asks “What are you looking at?” would be “A totem.” The transformation effected upon the clay is permanent and its most distinguishing feature now is not that it is clay—that is really quite incidental—but that is fully, totally, and utterly a totem. The very word “transformation” implies ontological change: trans (to cross over) form (shape, structure, essence): to pass from one state of existence into another. It is not merely clay in the shape of a totem but is instead the full-fledged reality: it is a totem. So too the spiritual virtues: they start out in the dark but they invariably burst forth into the light. Thus, in the kingdom of heaven, what is spoken in secret is in time shouted from the rooftops.

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