One of my Facebook posts this morning was inspired by a note in Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. Today is the birthday of mathematician and mystic Blaise Pascal, born in Clermont, France (1623). At 16, he published an article on the geometric properties of cones, and a few years later, he invented the first mechanical calculator.
I first encountered Pascal in my teen years, questioning one of the contradictions in my church. Southern Baptists believed congregational voting could decide matters of right and wrong but I had been taught that morality is absolute, so it seemed odd to me that public opinion might decide otherwise. I later learned about other denominations, finally becoming a confirmed Episcopalian.
One night in November of 1654, Pascal experienced a divine vision, which he called a “night of fire.” He wrote an account of the experience and sewed it into his coat lining to carry until his death. After that night, he decided to forget the world and everything except for God.
He left Paris in 1655 and went to live in a convent. While living there, his niece was miraculously cured of an eye disease by touching a thorn from the crown of Jesus. He decided to write a book to convert skeptics to Christianity.
Pascal wrote a series of notes and fragments about his thoughts on religion, but he never completed the book. The notes were found after his death and published as Pensées (Thoughts, 1669). In that book, he describes his famous wager, arguing that if God does not exist, the skeptic loses nothing by believing in him; but if God does exist, the skeptic gains eternal life by believing in him. He also argued that it is the heart that experiences God, and not reason.
I never left the faith but during the last few decades congregational voting has caused more division in Christianity, including the Episcopal church, than the early heirs of Martin Luther could have imagined. The Good News meant to deliver Spiritual gifts to all the world has become just another footnote to the annals of religious history. Whether or not to allow LGBT people to join the ranks of the faithful is an echo of the days our deacons planned ways to refuse admission to black people who might show up to "cause trouble" back in the days of segregation. And for many, the matter of elective abortion is far more divisive than anything leading to the the Eighteenth Amendment (prohibition), blue laws and some cities and counties to this day forbidding the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages.
A few years after encountering Pascal I came across a piece by Kierkegaard which has sustained me in my spiritual journey. I suppose my career in the food business was providential since this refers to cooking.
One night in November of 1654, Pascal experienced a divine vision, which he called a “night of fire.” He wrote an account of the experience and sewed it into his coat lining to carry until his death. After that night, he decided to forget the world and everything except for God.
He left Paris in 1655 and went to live in a convent. While living there, his niece was miraculously cured of an eye disease by touching a thorn from the crown of Jesus. He decided to write a book to convert skeptics to Christianity.
Pascal wrote a series of notes and fragments about his thoughts on religion, but he never completed the book. The notes were found after his death and published as Pensées (Thoughts, 1669). In that book, he describes his famous wager, arguing that if God does not exist, the skeptic loses nothing by believing in him; but if God does exist, the skeptic gains eternal life by believing in him. He also argued that it is the heart that experiences God, and not reason.
I never left the faith but during the last few decades congregational voting has caused more division in Christianity, including the Episcopal church, than the early heirs of Martin Luther could have imagined. The Good News meant to deliver Spiritual gifts to all the world has become just another footnote to the annals of religious history. Whether or not to allow LGBT people to join the ranks of the faithful is an echo of the days our deacons planned ways to refuse admission to black people who might show up to "cause trouble" back in the days of segregation. And for many, the matter of elective abortion is far more divisive than anything leading to the the Eighteenth Amendment (prohibition), blue laws and some cities and counties to this day forbidding the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages.
A few years after encountering Pascal I came across a piece by Kierkegaard which has sustained me in my spiritual journey. I suppose my career in the food business was providential since this refers to cooking.
As a skillful cook says of a dish in which there are already a great many ingredients: "It still needs just a little pinch of cinnamon" (and we perhaps could hardly tell by the taste that this little pinch of spice had been added, but she knew precisely why and precisely how it affected the taste of the whole mixture); as an artist says with a view to the color effect of a whole painting which is composed of many, many, colors: "There and there, at that little point, it needs a touch of red" (and we perhaps could hardly even discover the red, so carefully has the artist shaded it, although he knows exactly why it should be introduced). So it is with Providence.
O, the Providence of the world is a vast housekeeping, a grandiose painting. Yet he, the Master, God in heaven, behaves like the cook and the artist. He says: There must be a little touch of spice here, a little touch of red. We do not understand why, we are hardly aware of it, since that little bit is so thoroughly absorbed in the whole. But God knows why.
A little pinch of spice! That is to say: Here a man must be sacrificed, he is needed to impart a particular taste to the rest.
These are the correctives. It is a woeful error for the one who is used to apply the corrective to become impatient and try to make the corrective the norm for others. That is an attempt to bring everything to confusion.
A little pinch of spice! Humanly speaking, what a painful thing, thus to be sacrificed, to be the little pinch of spice! But on the other hand, God knows well the man he elects to use in this way, and then he knows also, in the inward understanding of it, how to make it a blessed thing for him to be sacrificed, that among the thousands of divers voices which express, each in its own way, the same thing, his will also be heard, and perhaps especially his, which is truly de profundis, proclaiming: God is love. The birds on the branches, the lilies in the field, the deer in the forest, the fish in the sea, countless hosts of happy men exultantly proclaim: God is love. But beneath all these sopranos, supporting them as it were, like the bass part, is audible the de profundis which issues from those who are sacrificed: God is love.
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