Outstanding Nigel. Your handling of "fate" carries explanatory power for which I'm grateful. It helps me reflect both on my own life but also some of the sharper edges of my own vocation. I've often pondered why, decades ago, my fist-shaking rage at Auschwitz--as an atheist--should so pre-occupy me that--after much testing and scrutiny--it would lead me (but not all others) eventually to Christian conversion. Why did I respond so strongly? It never felt like a choice. It felt like something thrust upon me. You've written elsewhere about the 'mysterious interpenetration of history and the human will.' Mysterious indeed. I have no final explanation for how my own experiences (and surely the histories of the generations of my fathers before me and those of nearer relations) result in imperceptible nudges and biffs, bops, and bounces until I have been reshaped and redirected in myriad ways. To say nothing of that fate which seems simply to have thrust upon me wholesale. I cannot account, on my own, for who I now am. But, this side of faith, that is not so much unnerving as humbling. I am grateful.
I also wonder how this notion of fate might help us as we contemplate enemy love. We cannot write off to mere "fate" the terrible things we might do, but even as we contemplate the (sometimes) terrible enemy standing against us there ought to be a measure of humility. For some mysterious reason I do not find myself suffering particular temptations that others apparently do. The situations in which I find myself--both by chose and by fate--do not draw the attention of the SAS or Navy SEALs. You know me well enough to know I am not suggesting fate offers any excuse, but change the name, the history, or the fate and it might well be me in the crosshairs.
One question. What do you make of Auden's phrasing: "honour the fate you are." In my thinking--and throughout your talk--you describe fate as a thing we have, not a thing we are. Is Auden making a distinction with a difference?
Outstanding Nigel. Your handling of "fate" carries explanatory power for which I'm grateful. It helps me reflect both on my own life but also some of the sharper edges of my own vocation. I've often pondered why, decades ago, my fist-shaking rage at Auschwitz--as an atheist--should so pre-occupy me that--after much testing and scrutiny--it would lead me (but not all others) eventually to Christian conversion. Why did I respond so strongly? It never felt like a choice. It felt like something thrust upon me. You've written elsewhere about the 'mysterious interpenetration of history and the human will.' Mysterious indeed. I have no final explanation for how my own experiences (and surely the histories of the generations of my fathers before me and those of nearer relations) result in imperceptible nudges and biffs, bops, and bounces until I have been reshaped and redirected in myriad ways. To say nothing of that fate which seems simply to have thrust upon me wholesale. I cannot account, on my own, for who I now am. But, this side of faith, that is not so much unnerving as humbling. I am grateful.
I also wonder how this notion of fate might help us as we contemplate enemy love. We cannot write off to mere "fate" the terrible things we might do, but even as we contemplate the (sometimes) terrible enemy standing against us there ought to be a measure of humility. For some mysterious reason I do not find myself suffering particular temptations that others apparently do. The situations in which I find myself--both by chose and by fate--do not draw the attention of the SAS or Navy SEALs. You know me well enough to know I am not suggesting fate offers any excuse, but change the name, the history, or the fate and it might well be me in the crosshairs.
One question. What do you make of Auden's phrasing: "honour the fate you are." In my thinking--and throughout your talk--you describe fate as a thing we have, not a thing we are. Is Auden making a distinction with a difference?