By John Taylor; 2006 June 09
The Guardian called our time the "age of responsibility," not the age of enlightenment, though you could say that one implies the other. Let us talk about that today.
A babe receives everything, including life, free and unasked for. Only much later does it learn that none of it was really free; nothing ever is. There are limits to freedom, and reasons that it is free. Parents and society nurtured us at a price, for a purpose. The latest estimate I heard was some sixty thousand dollars out of pocket for parents to raise a child, while the state invests much more, perhaps half a million dollars in health care, education and other supports. Not even the sun shining on our heads providing our whole planet with the energy for life is entirely free. An immense fusion reaction is literally burning up our closest star, albeit slowly and stably.
Enlightenment then is a loan, it comes at a price. For unity to be, diversity must stand aside, and in order for diversity to exist unity has to accept multiplicity. Each renounces an infinity of possibilities for itself in order to embrace the other. Such is love in love.
The reciprocal duty of enlightenment was initiated in the parables of the Lamp and of the talents. A lamp is made for a reason, Jesus taught; its purpose is to shine out into the darkness. Do not hide it under a bushel. By implication, we are servants created to serve God, hence it is our duty do all we can to make our as universal and enlightening as can be.
Similarly, the parable of the talents teaches that enlightenment is like a sum of money left in trust while the master goes away. The faithful steward is expected to invest it, to take a risk so that it will increase. A fearful, recalcitrant steward buries his talent under a rock. The investor is rewarded, the hoarder is banished to where there is "wailing and gnashing of teeth."
Here is what "fear of God" really means, not fear that paralyzes, that seeks to eliminate risk. Fear of God appreciates the debt of gratitude that God's bounty incurs, that every gift is by nature a loan, as is every good act. "Cast your bread on the waters; For you shall find it after many days," (Eccl 11:1, WEB); that freedom, more than any rule or expectation, entails responsibility and moral obligation. No matter how freely given, every bounty or gift establishes an equal and opposite reciprocal obligation. Healthy respect begins the original "free enterprise," takes risks in order to gain increase in the trust of God.
"Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the firstfruits of all your increase; so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine." (Prov. 3:9-10)
I have been listening to the recorded lectures of a Shakespearean scholar, Peter Saccio, who points out that the word "talent" itself, a unit of money for the Romans, entered most European languages as the word for latent abilities and virtues, for what the Writings call "perfections," all because of Jesus Christ's parable of the talents. Saccio points out that the protestant reformation expunged asceticism and monasticism because, as more people gained direct access to the Bible, it became clear that these parables contradicted any withdrawal or "burying" of oneself from the common run of society. It became understood that wasted talent is not just a waste; it is a mortal sin, an affront to God Himself. I would add that Islam had already eliminated monasticism several centuries before, and that Europe was finally catching up to the Middle East in this respect.
Anyway, the reason Saccio brings this up is that the lesson of the parable of the talents was a major preoccupation for Shakespeare. He adduces several examples, which I think are interesting enough for us to examine in detail here. In Twefth Night, for instance, a lady who has sworn off all contacts with the male sex for ten years as an expression of mourning for her brother is persuaded by a thinly disguised rephrasing of the parable of the talents to return to the marketplace of love. As well, the fourth sonnet laments cloistering the divine virtue of beauty, comparing the burying of its talent to a bad loan one makes to oneself, which is collected at the moment of death.
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free.
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
...For having traffic with thyself alone,
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee,
Which, used, lives th' executor to be.
And, almost at the start of Measure for Measure, the Duke Vincentio invokes the same metaphor that Jesus used, only a torch instead of a lamp,
"Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not.
...Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use."
Similarly, Hamlet sums up the logic of the first Baha'i principle, search for truth, saying that surely God did not mean for our mind to go moldy for lack of use: "Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused." In another poem that could be a prayer, A Lover's Complaint, Shakespeare writes,
"'Lo, all these trophies of affections hot,
Of pensived and subdued desires the tender,
Nature hath charged me that I hoard them not,
But yield them up where I myself must render,
That is, to you, my origin and ender;
For these, of force, must your oblations be,
Since I their altar, you enpatron me."
--
John Taylor
badijet@gmail.com
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