Straw Man

More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, Philippians 3:8-9 NASB

Loss – “On the feast of St. Nicholas [in 1273, Aquinas] was celebrating Mass when he received a revelation that so affected him that he wrote and dictated no more, leaving his great work the Summa Theologiae unfinished. To Brother Reginald’s (his secretary and friend) expostulations he replied, ‘The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.’ When later asked by Reginald to return to writing, Aquinas said, ‘I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.’”[1] What Thomas experienced changed everything about his life and work. The world’s greatest theologian, a man whose work forms the basis for virtually all Christian approaches to understanding God, encountered something he could not articulate, something that pushed aside his thousands of pages of argument, relegating it to the straw pile.

It’s difficult for us to comprehend the enormity of this experience. Yes, we run off and talk about Aquinas’ encounter with the living God, with a spiritual experience that surpassed his Aristotelian logic. But our explanations are really no better than the straw of his consignment. The truth is that we just don’t have words for this kind of thing. When it happens (and there is apparently no guarantee that it will), we enter into the “white space” between the words. We are swept away with the raw presence. Our categories of explanation fail us and there is nothing but the emptiness of YHVH in the place where we cannot go. “Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, where are You going?’ Jesus answered, ‘Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later’” (John 13:36). Robert Frost saw the direction but not the destination. “Miles to go before I sleep.” Where do we find such an experience of the presence of YHVH that there is nothing left to say for the rest of our lives? I’m afraid that that empty place, that “white space,” is somewhere inside the mouth of the grave. Death of self is only the hint of its reality, a sort of symbolic affirmation that we are ready for osmosis into His space. But it is only symbolic. The real is yet to come.

Some few mortals are privileged to experience the emptiness of death before they breathe the last. Most of us are not. So we build straw houses to keep out the dark when the truth is far more compelling. In the dark we will finally find Him.

Topical Index: straw, loss, Philippians 3:8-9, Aquinas, white space

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-did-St-Thomas-Aquinas-mean-when-he-said-The-end-of-my-labors-has-come-All-that-I-have-written-appears-to-be-as-so-much-straw-after-the-things-that-have-been-revealed-to-me