Creation and the Wings of Birds
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Last time, we discussed "winged words" as an analogy to prayers of supplication. Birds sing in the trees, and we humans in our own way sing out "winged words" to God our Creator and protector, begging His mercy and favor. Consider how the Qu'ran expresses this analogy of two wings of a bird in the most universal of relationships based upon reciprocal kindness, that of parent and child. After forbidding what we now call elder abuse It then prescribes the following prayer for parents:
"And, out of kindness, lower to them the wing of humility, and say: `My Lord! bestow on them thy Mercy even as they cherished me in childhood.'" (Q17:24, Yusuf Ali)
The image here is of a God with two "wings" brooding over His young, creation, one wing being overlordship, triumph and majesty and the other wing His humility, kindness and mercy. The wings balance out to make a perfect Being, both proud and humble. Only God is Self-obsessed and utterly humble and selfless at the same time. But we are created in that image, and lives balance out in a similar way, though chronological, extended through our lifetime. We start off in utter humility and dependence upon our parents, then we mature gradually, and in the end we help them in their dotage. As the Qu'ran says, we should all the while be offering "winged words" on behalf of the two souls to whom we owe our very lives.
As with a bird in flight, both of the "wings" of God's perfections work together at the same time. Birds do not normally flap one wing and then the other, they flap them in tandem. God transcends our limits, and here is a hint of the full beauty of this most natural of analogies. We worldlings do not fly like birds, we walk upon the cold, dank earth. Unlike a bird in flight, only one foot touches ground at any one time as we walk. Similarly, we cannot hold pride and humility in our limited minds at the same time, or mercy and justice, or any other of the other apparent contradictions. Divine virtues only God can reconcile and work in tandem for perfection.
If we build our understanding upon one "wing" or the other, we become lame. Like a bird in flight, we need both legs to walk. In the terms that Socrates taught, to try only to build up an intellectual system with the mind alone makes us mere sophists. A philosopher, a lover of wisdom, on the other hand, balances the practical with the mental and spiritual. Our fundamental need to balance work in worship and to derive worship from work, Plato explicated in his master work, the Republic,
"The mistake at present is, that those who study philosophy have no vocation, and this, as I was before saying, is the reason why she has fallen into disrepute: her true sons should take her by the hand and not bastards."
"What do you mean?"
"In the first place, her votary should not have a lame or halting industry. I mean, that he should not be half industrious and half idle: as, for example, when a man is a lover of gymnastic and hunting, and all other bodily exercises, but a hater rather than a lover of the labour of learning or listening or enquiring. Or the occupation to which he devotes himself may be of an opposite kind, and he may have the other sort of lameness." (Republic, Book VII)
Our two legs are our inner consciousness and the outer physical activity of the body. Both must work in sequence if we are to walk forward efficiently. Unlike the soaring bird, using both wings at the same time, in this world we work one or the other, body or mind, rarely both at the same time. It takes a great deal of faith, steadfastness and love to unite the two harmonious, as Plato also taught:
"Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting." (Plato, Symposium)
A true lover, as Shakespeare said in The Two Noble Kinsmen, is one whose love grows even as his body corrupts in old age. In other words, love is one wing, justice is the other, for only justice pays due attention to the corrupting, unstable body without forgetting the eternal.
The origin of this polarity is deeply rooted in creation. The Jewish Bible portrays God starting things going by bringing them out of the void by a direct act of will. It starts off a dark, formless void and His light makes the first day and night. This is the first dichotomy, light and dark. The beginning of light separated night from the first day. Before, it was not a lonely chaos as in other creation myths, for even then God "hovered" nearby; in one translation, "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters..." (Gen 1:2, KJV) After that creation continued, and in a seven day cycle still proceeds, but God never leaves, even in the day of rest. This first, primal dichotomy of light explains the fundamental difference between what we humans create artificially and what God makes, naturally.
We are limited, and what we make is dead, a mere implement, tool or utensil. In contrast, God creates natural, living beings, good in themselves, worthy of love, and He continues to guide their development. Only God creates a bird with its perfectly balanced wings enabling flight. Our tools and machines, on the other hand, wonderful as they seem, are not living, they lack an entire dimension that divine creation possesses. The inventor does not "hover" nearby. They cannot evolve intelligently because their creator is separate, distant, gone. God is not an absentee "clockmaker" who makes it, winds it up and leaves, as the deists fondly imagined. Natural things have their Creator ever with them, assisting and guiding every second. This observation is hardly new, even outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. It was made, for example, by the Roman stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius,
"Every instrument, tool, vessel, if it does that for which it has been made, is well, and yet he who made it is not there. But in the things which are held together by nature there is within and there abides in them the power which made them; wherefore the more is it fit to reverence this power, and to think, that, if thou dost live and act according to its will, everything in thee is in conformity to intelligence. And thus also in the universe the things which belong to it are in conformity to intelligence." (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)
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