MORNING NOTES

NOTE: As of summer 2004, I’ll be gathering here a selection of what I’ve called my "morning notes." As explained in my memoir, I began writing these notes during World War II, and have included a number of them in my text.  However, there were dozens of them that couldn’t fit into the memoir, and quite possibly will contribute to the text of another book. I’ll welcome comments from readers who explore these web pages. The first notes appears below, as of July 15, 2004, and more will be added during this summer.

    For several generations now we have been thoroughly "scientific." We have pretended to be sitting on a bridge above the stream of reality, watching the stream roll by. Occasionally we moistened a toe in the stream, but imagined ourselves above it, observing it from outside. Our belief that there was such a position stemmed from Descartes’ 17th century Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am.) And doubt everything else!

    Not many generations ago we had a different standpoint. From the religious perspective we certainly did not think of ourselves as doubting or above it all. Instead, we saw ourselves as believing and subservient. The ultimate reality was like clouds in the heavens, shining above. That theological perspective was summed up in Saint Anselm's 11th century Credo ut intelligam (I believe in order that I may understand).

    But for many of us today neither the strictly scientific nor the strictly theological standpoints make sense. We are struggling to find a "third" paradigm, a new perspective on where we stand in the order of reality, a new way of expressing how we are beginning to see things. To help us discover and articulate a new standpoint, Rosenstock-Huessy proposes an updated Latin formula to replace the Cogito and the Credo. Like them, it is expressed in just three words: Respondeo etsi mutabor (I respond although I will be changed).

    In this new perspective we are neither above nor below reality. We stand at its center. We are addressed by it, and we must reply. In the process of replying, by speech and act, we find that we have been changed. We make progress insofar as we make truthful (and that means timely) replies.

    In this new perspective, we do not "have" conceptual views about the world, nor do we "have" a God as the object of our religious thought. Instead, we "have" a role in the process of saying the word that needs to be spoken. We "have" a role in the process of changing our selves and our times. God is not a "being" dwelling above us, but "the power which makes us speak" (as Rosenstock-Huessy expresses it). Reality is no longer like a stream below us but like a stream through us.

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God Speaks First

    In terms of speech, we can say that the very order of language, grammar itself, tells us that God speaks first. We hear his thou addressing us—and we reply "Here am I!" God’s "existence" needs no special proof: his powers are immediately verifiable in all our experience of speech. We know him through our senses! Our mouths and throats, ears, eyes and brains are what make his spirit present. That spirit is not ethereal. It is not only dialogical; it is biological!

    Now, thinking about religion and respondeo, I’m reminded that how we respond to God is infinitely more important than how we conceive of him. Conceptions may be aids to response, but the sum of a person’s life is the response itself.

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