The growth of conscience

Recently, as I browsed editions of John Donne's works on Kindle Store, I ran across the following passage in the biographical sketch of Donne by Izaak Walton (who also wrote "The Compleat Angler", if memory is right):

...there be many pious and learned men, that believe our merciful God hath assigned to every man a particular Guardian Angel, to be his constant monitor, and to attend him in all his dangers, both of body and soul.

When I was a child at Our Lady of Good Counsel (Deepdene), I used to believe the same thing as Walton's wise men. I was a better person for it. Better at any rate than I am now. I would work and I would reach out, and in many ways it drove me to better myself. Who would not be a better person? To believe that your thoughts and your deeds are known by one who wishes you well and will make a good account of them in the hereafter? To believe that nothing is secret or beyond the ken of the guardian angel, but all is known, even the events that would pain or grieve him or her to know? My conception of the guardian angel is not as a manifestation of Jesus (none of that bumper sticker nonsense, What Would Jesus Do?), but rather as an observer or scribe that records, that notes, that watches, without interfering, but in a kindly manner, with love and patience, as well as sadness and joy according to one's acts. God to me is something remote and vast, like the ceiling of the sky. It is too difficult to be accountable or obligated to something so intangible. Yet if God gave to an angel the duty of watching me, then I can relate to him or her on a personal and emotional level, and believe that he or she is nearby - in the same room - or if I am walking the streets, behind me. There is much to be said that this notion of the guardian angel is an exceptional delusion of grandeur. My smallest act, my passing thought - how arrogant, how irrational, for me to believe that all this is under some kind of watch. But then I place against this what I understand to be God's interest in all things - for as infinite as God must be, so must His capacity be for oversight and scrutiny of everything that comes to pass on the Earth and in the Heaven He has created. Then, too, I add the consideration that the life, acts, and thoughts of each man and woman of us, according to my understanding of our role on Earth, are ultimately to be tested and weighed by God. I hasten to interpose that I have never been convinced that God's final judgment is some sort of catastrophic, vengeful thing, as Revelations would have you believe, or some passages in the New Testament. Instead, as I see it, the final judgment is simply an assessment of how I or you or someone else exercised our choice in the brief period we were privileged to live on Earth. For each of us springs into life and passes out of life, and the beautiful yet wonderful mystery of life is that we are each free to live it as we see fit. If by chance God's plan is made known to us - that is, His plan that brought each of us into existence to see how we choose to live - then it is even more interesting to see what choices we make. And for these reasons, I am thinking of returning to my old belief that a guardian angel is somewhere near me at all times and on all occasions. In recent times my life, my choices, my respect for myself, have reached their nadir:

Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord; Lord hear my voice.

If my belief is right, all along, it seems, someone has been watching me, someone has been noting, someone has been recording. Now let me make the rest of my life take a turn for the conscientious, the right, the good, the kind, the loving, the respectful, and the altogether better. So let it be.

Long ago, a saint now mostly forgotten wrote a letter to a man called Timothy. In that letter he had a consciousness of his own impending death. This is what he said:

"As for me, my life is already being poured away as a libation, and the time has come for me to be gone."

To be gone is to be expected, and conforms with the experience of the whole of creation since the beginning of time.

A wonderful written passage

"It was while gliding through these latter waters [the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly from St. Helena] that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow..."

- Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter LI, "The Spirit-Spout"



A little touch of Montaigne in the night

Recently, I signed the contract and paid the deposit for an off-the-plan apartment. Some twelve months are still to pass before completion, but I am hopeful of imparting aspects of my personality onto the finished product. Specifically, at this point in time I am contemplating:

• eschewing a television because modern tv programs are insufficiently stimulating
• fostering learnedness with a selection of good books, professional and otherwise, though not so many as to overwhelm
• embracing transcendental meditation with a peaceful routine

One of my aspirations is for my future partner, upon entering my apartment for the first time, to find it clean, tidy, modern, spacious, airy, well-suited to living, laughing and contentedness, a place that she would be pleased with. I will try and cultivate these attributes now, as well as learn all the skills that I'll need - cooking and cleaning being chief among them, with ironing following fast behind!

My initial plan was to adopt Montaigne's practice of adorning his living space with favourite or meaningful quotes from authors. However, I think the body corporate would have conniptions if I had them welded in like Montaigne!

Here is a little touch of Montaigne in the night -

First, on the quality of loving-friendship:

"Moreover, what we normally call friends and friendships are no more than acquaintances and familiar relationships bound by some chance or suitability, by means of which our souls support each other. In the friendship which I am talking about, souls are mingled and confounded in so universal a blending that they efface the seam which joins them together so that it cannot be found. If you press me to say why I loved him, I feel that it cannot be expressed except by replying, 'Because it was him; because it was me.'"

Second, on the true task in life:

"If you have been able to examine and manage your own life you have achieved the greatest task of all. Nature, to display and show her powers, needs no great destiny: she reveals herself equally at any level of life, both behind curtains or without them. Our duty is to bring order to our morals not to the materials for a book: not to win provinces in battle but order and tranquillity for the conduct of our life. Our most great and glorious achievement is to live life fittingly. Everything else - reigning, building, laying up treasure - are at most tiny props and small accessories. "