Motion

I’ve read a lot of books. When I was 29 years old I decided to be a writer and follow in the footsteps of my literary hero, Henry Miller. Like Miller, I decided not to write a single word for 2 years until I had read enough, until I had earned my stripes and done my “training”, and only then could I put pen to paper. And so, I read, and read, and read. From F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Kerouac, Dostoevsky, Thomas Wolfe, Normal Mailer, D.H. Lawrence, Dickens, Bukowski etc. etc. an endless flow of high literature and occasionally branching out into CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, and the likes of Gore Vidal and Hunter S Thomson. Since that frantic two-year period, after writing my book, I have continued to read, always with a book or two on the go, however these days more religious writers are replacing my literature giants; Thomas Merton, Fulton Sheen, Martin Lloyd Jones, NT Wright, Aquinas, Augustine, to name a few, and of course the bible, which I’ve managed to read end-to-end three times (and I’m constantly re-reading on a daily basis). What has struck me with all this reading, reading for knowledge and joy and inspiration and spiritualisation, was how with the millions of pages I’ve read, how some passages, or lines, or in some incidents whole books, stick with you, and shape you, and make you see the world differently. Rarely whole books have this ability; Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment was one such book, I remember being in a daze for weeks after its completion. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest was another, mainly due the sheer vast complexity of the thing. And The Catcher in the Rye was another such book, finally after all these years I found someone who I could relate to in the book’s main character, Holden Caulfield; there was a comfort in this, because all my life I thought there was something wrong with me, forced to see the world different to others, not being able to relate to people, having to put a on mask in order to maintain social contact, but finally in Holden I found a friend who viewed the “phoniness” of the world with equal sight. Then there was the small slither of passages within books or texts that had an impact, like a sucker punch to the stomach, knocking the wind out of you and forcing you to rethink your reality. “Jesus wept.” There are many passages in the bible that force you to sit in contemplation, however John 11:35 was the first one for me to have such an impact, ironically found in the middle of my high literature journey where word acrobats abounded. It made me re-think how you could structure sentences down to a magnificent simplicity. How could two words capture so much with so little? “Jesus wept”. First there is the name Jesus, the God-man, the new Adam, sinless and perfect, his path to the cross known, divinity walking amongst us – just in that one word you can sit and contemplate the meaning of this (the enormity of it) for a life time. And what did he do? He “wept”. He didn’t cry, or sob, or wail, he wept, and only those who have felt such anguish and sorry knows what actual weeping is, an uncontrollable cry from deep within that pours out, not merely with tears down the cheeks, but with body wrenching and heaving, weeping at the heartache felt, the very tearing apart of your being. And from these two words comes further questions: why did he “weep”? How is this weeping possible for God? Was God really “out of control”, even just for a moment? If this world has brought God to weeping, what hope for us? Two powerful words that resonate through the centuries. Which brings me to another bunch of words that have been formed together into a thought, an idea, and stopped me in my tracks, have woken me up to a reality that has been there all along, so alive and so beautiful, that once seen can never be un-seen.   

The Unmoved Mover

In one of my theology classes I was required to write an essay on “three key denials found in Augustine ofHippo’s Confessions (book XI) in relation to creation, time, and eternity”. Pretty heady stuff. In constructing my essay I stumbled upon Simon Oliver’s academic essay title, Augustine on Creation, Providence and Motion, which touches on the teleological philosophy of created things having a purpose, and therefore they are motioning towards their end goal. Writes Oliver:

“… an acorn will unfold its nature into an oak tree, a lamb into a sheep, a girl into a woman. These natural things move themselves, hence they have within themselves a principle of motion and rest.”

Augustine agreed with teleological thinking, however he was careful to note (in his book, The Literal Meaning of Genesis) that God was both intrinsic and extrinsic to creation, there was not just God plus creation, instead God is both “within and beyond the creature” providing “divine providence and creation’s orientation to specificends”. This dance of divine creation within and outside of the creature is set-out via an “established generaldirection of a creature’s motion towards a particular goal or purpose” (Oliver); the acorn motions towards the oak tree, the chick towards flight, the child towards knowledge. This divine general direction can be thought of as divine established “seeds” that are a “creature’s principle and contain in potential form its telos, they arealso the basis of creation’s intelligible motion in time because they establish a beginning and end”(Oliver). In other words, the divine seeds embedded in creation provide the creature the potentialities to motion towards its perfected goal (telos), meaning there is already a specific eternally established goal that it seeks. An oak tree will not motion towards flight like a chick does as the “divine seeds” of flight are not embedded in an acorn; the acorn does not carry the necessary potential for flight, hence it telos (its perfected goal) is a fully grown oak tree, not flight. It’s important to note however that for Augustine, God has not created once and then let creation take its course, like a great unfolding set in motion and then left to be, instead, creation needs God’s sustaining power:

“It is not, you see, like a mason building houses; when he has finished he goes away, and his work goes on standing when he has stopped working on it and gone away. No, the world will not be able to go on standing for a single moment, if God withdraws from it his controlling hand.” (The Literal Meaning of Genesis)

God still has an ever present providential part to play in creation, in the most radical form such as miracles, in the subtle forms of adaption (evolution?), and in the divine form of Wisdom.  However, as Oliver notes:

“God is not subject to motion or change; this is what distinguishes a cosmos saturated by motion from God who is replete and requires no motion as the means of acquiring perfection.”

A cosmos saturated by motion! It was these words that opened my eyes to the true reality we live in, the cosmos is “saturated by motion”, everywhere you look is motion, everything is moving, and with this movement is purpose. This movement is everywhere, we as humans are constantly moving, rushing here and there, the cities alive with people, the traffic, the transport, the pathways and hallways, everyone is in constant motion, even when we’re at rest we move, our fingers scratch, our eyes blink, our feet fidget, we eat, drink, talk, sing, and even in a comatose sleep state our heart still beats, the blood pumps through our veins, electrons flicker, our molecular system is in constant motion with enzymes, proteins, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus, all dancing unseen, always industriously busy. And outside the clouds moves, the sun moves, the moon moves, the stars and planets and solar system and universe, all move as space stretches outwards, time ticks by, ticking to a divine planned beat that we all swim in, the birds, the bees, the insects, the dogs, cats, outside my window the wind blows, the leaves rustle, the grass sways, the sun sets on another day, somewhere the tide goes out, the tide comes in, the snow falls, the ice melts the rivers run, the rain falls, evaporation, precipitation, the trees grow, photosynthesis, a natural orchestra in endless movement, a symphony of motion, touching everything created, everything seen and unseen, “principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”, our thoughts, our dreams, our ideas, our desires, love and hate, growing and dying, a new birth, holding hands, gentle kisses, nails hammered into the flesh, the side pieced, flowing blood and water, the resurrection, the Spirit, the eucharist, the Alpha, motion, motion, motion, and the Omega. And yet …

“God is not subject to motion or change; this is what distinguishes a cosmos saturated by motion from God who is replete and requires no motion as the means of acquiring perfection.”

Because God is perfection. He has no end-goal. He is all Being / Goodness. The source and fountain of all Being/Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. However, for Augustine, God is not absence of motion,

“Rather, God is beyond motion and rest in such a way that God’s life has to be described as a ‘motionless motion’ or, to use the words of Wisdom, ‘more mobile than any motion’.” (Oliver)

Oliver compares God’s “motionless motion” like a ball spinning so fast that it is hard to decern whether it is spinning in motion or standing still. This “motionless motion” is life itself; Augustine notes that if it were to stop or be with drawn all of creation would “perish forthwith”.

This notion of motion would also form the first argument (of five arguments) for St. Thomas Aquinas in regards to proof that God exists. For Aquinas God is the “unmoved mover” the first cause putting motion into effect:

“Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality …”

Thomas gives the example here of heat and wood, whereby wood has the potential to be on fire, but only through heat, in other words, the fire (actuality) is only arrived at via the wood’s “potentiality” to burn and for this to happen heat (motion) needs to be present. 

“Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold.  

The wood that is on fire cannot also have the potential to be on fire, however the portion of the wood that is not on fire still has its potentiality as the opposite of hot i.e. cold.

“It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover;”

If I catch a ball that has travelled from one end of a football field to the other, I can retrace how many times that ball had to be kicked by someone to reach me, but at some point, I would find the first kicker at the other end of the field i.e. the ball had to be kicked initially by someone to be set in motion. 

“...seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.” (Summa Theologiae, Article 3: Whether God Exists)

Hence God is the unmoved mover, creating a cosmos that motions outwards from an act of Divine love. However, one aspect of this miracle of creation, saturated in motion, is that something set in motion i.e. having an initial starting point, will eventually stop being in motion. When someone dies they are lifeless – there is no motion; this is a consequence of living in time and space, in the material cosmos. Though God is unchanging, He is the motionless motion which means He his outside of time and space, He sits in eternity as the unmoved mover, summed up in God’s own acknowledgment of who He is, “I am who I am”, all Goodness (Being), Truth, and Beauty, the Alpha and the Omega.

Distentio animi

One of the obvious items of motion that we all feel is time, that mysterious concept that is constantly measuring our existence. This category of measurement can be classified into past, present and future. For Augustine, in his book Confessions, he notes that our concept of past time and future time is non-existent as,

“The past no longer exists and the future does not exist yet”

however, because we are conscious of intervals of time this non-existent past and future only means we can measure passing time,

“while time is passing it can be felt and measured, but once past it cannot, because it no longer exists.”

Similar with future events these are non-existent as future events cannot be seen in themselves as,

“they have as yet no existence, being still in the future”, however “there causes, or signs of them, are seen, because these already exist; hence they are not future but present to the people who discern them”.

So, for Augustine, time exists only in the present, resulting in his classification of time as,

“the present of past things, the present of present things, and the present of future things.”

This focus on the “present” is brought about through our ability to measure time by being conscious of it, though the result of this ability to measure time means that,

 “time is nothing other than tension of consciousness itself”,

as a distentio animi, a distraction, anxiety, disorder of the mind (dancing between past and future) from its true purpose to be aligned with God. And this alignment is found in exactly how God describes Himself as “I Am”, not “I was” or “I will be”, and in doing so makes “living in the present” as an alignment to divinity.

Unlike Aristotle who saw the “now” as a point on a line, Augustine had a sequential “either / or” approach to the present, however this concept places the “now” into a state of uncertainty as there is a constant shift of time flowing from future to present to past and in doing so causes a distentio animi, an anxiety / distraction, as we are constantly (in the present) looking backwards in memory and forward with anticipation. That said, Augustine notes that it is this concept of either / or in relation to present time that makes time what it is,

“as for present time, if that were always present and never slipping away into the past, it would not be time at all; it would be eternity”.

In other words, because we are material and spiritual creatures made in God’s image (Goodness) with a teleology that motions us towards the Good, arriving (hopefully) at the ultimate goal of perfected Divine Good in eternity i.e. in perfect harmony and knowledge of our divine maker God, true present time (i.e. not concerned with past or future) is where we find peace, where our anxiety and disorders of the mind (our distentio animi) fades away, why? Because in the true present our true natures (Goodness) are aligned to God (perfect Goodness) in eternity, which is our destiny, our home. Our constant thoughts of the past and the future are where our egos live, we are obsessed with both memories and expecations all centred around ourselves. There is a key line in Augustine’s Confessions that links time, and in particular the present, back to the Word, the Spirit,

“and the whole of both past and future flows forth from Him who is always present, and is by Him created.”

In other words, through the Spirit (always present) we have the ability to be directed back, away from distentio animi, to the Father, via the Son (Grace) into the prefect present, where in all this motion and movement we can “be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), stillness with our spirit, our soul, aligned to God in the true present where we find peace and happiness, or as Augustine sums up,

“Because God has made us for Himself, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.”  

In Summing Up

I stand on a busy railway platform that overlooks the industrial north where cranes and stevedores lumber in slow motion. There is a gentle rain as the western breeze blows the heavy clouds east. The sun is slowly sinking, sprinkling colours of pink and orange and red into the sky. Trains come and go. People come and go. The day comes and goes. Followed by night. And my thoughts turn backwards, into present-past time to when I was younger and reading frantically, desperately aspiring (into the future … into now?) to be a great writer. I recall Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, he wrote the book on one endless piece of paper, sticky taped together like a scroll, and typed the whole story in a frantic three week period. When he’d finished he said the scroll looked like a black road of type-written ink, which complemented the story of hitch-hiking and driving across America, the words bouncing to a rhythm, like the Beat/Jazz generation it represented, a constant movement as the character’s Sal Paradise (effectively Jack Kerouac) and his vagabond friend, Dean Moriarty chased the American Dream, finishing the story on a high literature note, capturing all the motion we constantly live in – because God’s motion is everywhere, it’s in us (our telos), in our past, our future, in our Cosmos, in our souls, in our art:

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.” (Jack Kerouac, On the Road)