Progress and Perfection Reconciled
Peace like a river.
Memory is one of the themes of this blog. More than memory, even. It’s the living reality of the past, the way nothing is ever lost, the truth that for the redeemed all things and all times are before our face, and we are united with all our past selves into a great, integral whole.
Brother Charlton has taken us to task a little bit for the implied Platonism of that theme. It is certainly true that the main thrust of Mormon thought has been to emphasize continual progress and growth, not static perfection in a timelessness where all the apparent movement and change of life can be enjoyed as one.
Isaiah promises us peace like a river. “How are rivers peaceful?” my Lovely One asked our children. That got me thinking. I realized that the metaphor of peace like a river reconciles Platonism and progress. It combines the promise of rest in the eternities with the promise of endless increase.
The river always flows. It is inexorable. An increase of waters is inherent in its nature. But from the bank, the surface of the water is the same. If there are movements, they are continually repeated movements. They are patterns. The motion is certain, so it is calm. The river has flowed long enough that all the obstacles have been worn down. The river has now become what it wanted to be. The flow is the peace.
Filed under: Deseret Review | Tags: afterlife, all things before my face, eternity, forever, LDS, memory and experience, Mormon, Mormonism, remembrance and memory
Legolas
September 26, 2014
For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change very little, and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream.
Bruce Charlton
September 26, 2014
In Heaven the Platonist is on the river bank, contemplating (‘enjoying’) the changeless but changing scene; the Mormon is swimming in the water, playing games with his family, between voyaging on errands and quests.
Then they change places!
Bookslinger
September 26, 2014
@BC. Prediction: as soon as you get your Temple endowment, you’ll be called to be a counselor in the bishopric.
Bruce Charlton
September 26, 2014
@Books – Thanks for the ?compliment (or is it an insider joke?).
@G – The irony/ joke is that in my account of the Platonist and the Mormon, in terms of our *actual* lives, you’d be the one in the water doing good – and I would be the one on the bank, lazing around…
G.
September 27, 2014
Bruce C.,
that was beautiful.
The other irony/joke is that splashing with my kids in the shallows of some river is literally my idea of the perfect outing.
Bookslinger
September 27, 2014
@BC: one of the side-benefits of my autism/Asperger’s is patty-ducking. (It’s a term I learned from some novel, of either Heinlein or Asimov.) “Pattern recognition through deductive and inductive reasoning.”
Though sometimes I get carried away, and it gets a little too close for comfort to the portrayal of John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind”, seeing patterns that aren’t really there.
I see G growing into a bishop.
I think you are already a bishop’s counselor, in terms of possessing the major ingredients. All you need now is, basically, the paperwork, and those ineffable/intangible things that accompany the Gift of the Holy Ghost and the Endowment. Your base of knowledge plus your observational/reasoning skills will allow you to perceive the changes those two events will bring about, and they will be great “aha!” moments. Those events will kindle the sparks in you into flames.
You’ve likely already received gifts/abilities/insights due to your seeking/investigation. Those are mere tastes of what is to come after the official events, and continue to be bestowed upon those who press forward.
Bruce Charlton
September 27, 2014
@Books – If that is how things turn-out – I’d be more than delighted.
Nate
October 1, 2014
Beautiful post. Perhaps we can reconcile progress and perfection by understanding life both as an individual and as a collective. To become one with all things, as they say, is to experience that timeless peace you talk about. But within that oneness, we fill the measure of our creation on an individual level, according to the (hopefully positive) influences that act upon us, including the influence of our own free will.