Recently while reading Annie Dillard's book Holy the Firm I came across the following (pps 68 -71),
"Esoteric Christianity, I read, posits a substance. It is a created substance, lower than metals and minerals on a “spiritual scale” and lower than salts and earths, occurring beneath salts and earths in the waxy deepness of planets, but never on the surface of planets where men could discern it; and it is in touch with the Absolute, at base. In touch with the Absolute! At base. The name of this substance is Holy the Firm.
Holy the Firm: and is Holy the Firm in touch with metals and minerals? With salts and earths? Of course, and straight on up, till “up” ends by curving back. Does something that touched something that touched Holy the Firm in touch with the Absolute at base seep into ground water, into grain; are islands rooted in it, and trees? Of course.
Scholarship has long distinguished between two strains of thought which proceed in the West from human knowledge of God. In one, the ascetic’s metaphysic, the world is far from God. Emanating from God, and linked to him by Christ, the world is yet infinitely other than God, furled away from him like the end of a long banner falling. This notion makes, to my mind, a vertical line of the world, a great chain of burning. The more accessible and universal view, held by Eckhart and by many peoples in various forms, is scarcely different from pantheism: that the world is immanation, that God is in the thing, and eternally present here, if nowhere else. By these lights the world is flattened on a horizontal plane, singular, all here, crammed with heaven, and alone. But I know that it is not alone, nor singular, nor all. The notion of immanence needs a handle, and the two ideas themselves need a link, so that life can mean aught to the one, and Christ to the other.
For to immanence, to the heart, Christ is redundant and all things are one. To emanance, to the mind, Christ touches only the top, skims off only the top, as it were, the souls of men, the wheat grains whole, and lets the chaff fall where? To the world flat and patently unredeemed; to the entire rest of the universe, which is irrelevant and nonparticipant; to time and matter unreal, and so unknowable, an illusory, absurd, accidental, and overelaborate stage.
But if Holy the Firm is “underneath salts,” if Holy the Firm is matter at its dullest, Aristotle’s materia prima, absolute zero, and since Holy the Firm is in touch with the Absolute at base, then the circle is unbroken. And it is. Thought advances, and the world creates itself, by the gradual positing of, and belief in, a series of bright ideas. Time and space are in touch with the Absolute at base. Eternity sockets twice into time and space curves, bound and bound by idea. Matter and spirit are of a piece but distinguishable; God has a stake guaranteed in all the world. And the universe is real and not a dream, not a manufacture of the senses; subject may know object, knowedge may proceed, and Holy the Firm is in short the philosopher’s stone."
I reflected upon what she had written and came to the view that it was misleading as indeed were statements made in other parts of this relatively short book. I corresponded with some old friends on the matter who have more direct experience of ancient liturgies and received replies, fragments of which I set down here.
(1)
"I don’t know this book but I am always wary of writers who write of things beyond their (and of course our) understanding. Can I understand - which means, from my own experience - the whole of God’s creation? The contradiction she posits between an “ascetic’s metaphysics” and Eckhart’s supposed “pantheism” comes from her ordinary mind, which cannot understand anything on that level.
All I can say is this: “Holy the Firm”, which is in the Orthodox and Armenian liturgies, is an expression for Holy Denying, occurring in prayers of those churches, and in prayers/exercises passed down through the centuries. To understand this force, there must be such an attention that can experience this force as a force, and not identify with it (my resistance etc)."
(2)
"Holy The Firm is of course the second gesture in the sign of the cross in the Orthodox tradition - (Holy God, Holy the Firm, Holy Immortal) - it is Matter, (to me), in a way - the Son, born to Flesh - and the sign of the cross is a dynamic movement, not a statement - God becomes Flesh, and time is able to be exited.....because it is such a miracle that in this dense earthly place, of constant arisings and endings - Endlessness can appear (and what could be a better name for that force?)
That is my "simplistic understanding"!
My French is poor - but I can never ever forget N’s talk once, in the crypt (dedicated to Mary Magdalene - there is a strong tradition of devotion to her in the south of France, legend has it she ended up living in a cave not far from the monastery) - on the Three Aspects of Mary - and Mary can also be understood as the Denying, or Firm force - the one that gives rise to Matter, the Mater.....the Mother.... and they were
(1) Mary the Mother of God, the Theotokos - the capacity to actually conceive/bring to life the Redeemer/Saviour.....
(2) Mary Magdalene, the Consort of Christ, the Intimate companion.....and who knows what her capacity is, but it has been powerfully erased by history, and began to be erased within decades.....despite her amazing (and suppressed) Gospel - and
(3) Mary, the sister of Martha, in the gospel story - the one who eschewed "activity" in favour of sitting quietly, and "anointing the feet" - touching the base. Annoying and alienating her sister Martha, who felt the important thing was: to DO, and to be seen to be DOING. It echoes the revelation of Theresa of Avila....who was initially insisting that "Jesus is to be found among the pots and pans", but that was before her revelation!"
These replies corresponded with an unease I had felt concerning several passages in the book, and whereas in parts Holy the Firm has fine descriptions, overall it reveals some confusion not least when the author writes about creation and the present and future suffering of a child, a central figure in the book whose face was severely burned in an aircraft accident.
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