Reflections on the sacredness and significance of matter...
More than the sum of its parts
there is to all things an invisible spiritual component
I believe that everything in this world is more than the sum of its (visible) parts. For there is to all things an invisible spiritual component or dimension which transforms and transfigures the ordinary into the extraordinary, the mundane into the miraculous. It is the eternal element in the everyday. It is what gives meaning and life to mere things.Reductionism
If we look at anything in an (ontologically) reductionist, materialist way we can reduce it to a set of component parts with no meaning, purpose, significance, value or life. As Wordsworth put it, 'we kill to dissect' - or rather, in dissecting we lose the essence of the composed creation. A human can be deconstructed into flesh, bones and organs or further down into cells, then genes, then chemicals and finally atoms and their components; or else humans can be seen as 'just' apes or mammals.A comedian once quipped "life is nature's way of keeping meat fresh". Thoughts can be reduced to electro-chemical impulses; love can be explained as evolution's means of ensuring the survival or reproductive success of genes or species; Beethoven's 9th can be disassembled into a set of sound waves.
Incidentally, I don't believe there is such a thing as 'just' anything, whether it's sound waves, sinews or cells. Even these component parts have a kind of selfhood; they are something important even in and of themselves.
But furthermore, we know instinctively that all these sets of component parts are not what humans, thoughts, love, life or symphonies are - merely what they're made of:
"In our world", said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
"Even in your world... that is not what a star is but only what it is made of." (C.S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader)
The meaning of love?
It may well be true that romantic love is, on a biological or evolutionary level, merely the means by which humans are induced to pair up, mate and bring up their offspring, ensuring the survival of their genes. Viewed in this way it is a mere phantom, a meaningless but biologically-useful trick played on us by our DNA. But it can be both that and something more, for there is a spiritual as well a physical component to everything; an eternal as well as a temporal aspect. Human romantic love can - and I believe does - have a reality, meaning, significance and value that transcend and suppress its utilitarian biological function.even animals are not merely animals
Human beings are not merely animals; indeed, even animals are not merely animals. Our bodies and actions matter. Sex is not merely a meaningless and transient physical act; perhaps even eating and excreting have a sacredness, linking us all in the great chains and cycles of life in which all living creatures participate and interdepend.Matter matters
So matter matters. Matter matters in its own right, simply as itself, and it matters because of the spirit which fills, vivifies, lifts and transfigures it. Matter is spirit's body, its means of expression in a physical universe, the instrument through which its music plays.Perhaps then almost nothing is entirely meaningless - even the most apparently random of chance events...
A poem
The body's more than earth by nature formed,The brain is more than cells by sense informed,
The mind is more than brain's projection-screen
Where visions, dark subconscious-bred, are seen;
The Earth is more than soil swinging through space,
And man is more than monkey aping grace,
And music's more than heard-vibrating air;
For Truth is more than Reason can lay bare:
Beside, beyond, above body, brain, mind,
Unseen, ignored, rejected; undesigned
Designer, Maker, Lover, Source of love
and light and life, without whom none can live -
O Spirit, may we hear your soundless call;
For spirit is the greater part of all.
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