Providence

Brigitte and I spent a good part of our day yesterday discussing the meaning of fate—which in turn prompted yesterday’s post. But, of course—having once entered that portal—we also talked about providence. The difference between these two—fate and providence—is quite marked. The word providence is also rooted in the past; it used to mean foresight, the direct translation of the Latin, and thus prudence. Its elevated meaning, as God’s guidance and care or as God’s power sustaining and guiding human destiny, is relatively new. It dates from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Fate produces an impression of the impersonal. Therefore no one says: “How could a just Fate let this happen?” But we hear the question asked about God.

Strange how some things coincide. Late yesterday came word of a death in our extended circle of friends. Stephanie, a young woman of twenty-four, passed away. She died of a genetically inherited condition, the same condition that had taken her mother quite young. She died after a very brave and determined struggle, as she wished, at home—rather than in the hospital where she’d spent many of the last months of her life. Our linkage to Stephanie is through her grandparents.

It occurred to me that in this very cloudy world of matter, Brigitte and I had been notified, as it were, of this impending event through the invisible ether—before the e-mail arrived in the evening. Knew it—yet did not. Knew it but not in its personal reference. More than a hundred people die in the Detroit metroplex every day, but none as closely linked to us as Stephanie had been. Felt it—and thoughts of fate and providence arose spontaneously.

Brigitte had been praying every night for quite a while now for the rescue of the miners caught underground in Chile…and for Stephanie’s release from suffering. Providence is a difficult concept because it demands the suspension of human judgment. If God provides, God has reasons for everything that transpires, understands the why of everything, and ensures the best possible outcome. It takes less inner power, it seems to me, to endure the blows of fate than to accept providential arrangements that seem to human eyes as unjust, arbitrary, and a wanton disregard of all that should belong to a just and loving God. It requires the curbing of our pride. We’re proud of our understanding, of our power to penetrate all secrets. But we know next to nothing. If we saw all things exactly as they are, if we understood the really big picture, we’d see the sublime logic even of a death that makes us roll our eyes and shake our heads.

The Tragic and the Comic

As a youngster I thought it odd that the most famous Italian poetic work would be called The Divine Comedy. How could the divine be comic? I thought of it as serious. Later I came to understand that “comedy” is one of those words that had one meaning in ancient Greek and Roman times, another in the medieval centuries, and then regained its old classical meaning once more in modern times. You might say that one of the two parts of the word came to dominate the meaning in succession. The two roots are komos, which meant a revel or a carousal and oidos, which meant a singer or a poet. The two were still visible in Greek, komoidia. A revel, an amusing spectacle, carries the “funny” connotation, poetry and song carry the “serious.” In the Middle Ages the word had the latter meaning and was used for poems and stories. The Online Etymology Dictionary suggests that its earliest meaning in English was “narrative poem.” Dante’s intention was to signal a serious story but with a happy ending.

Amusingly the word tragedy also contains the root oidos, but the front part of it comes from tragos, meaning a goat. A tragedy is a “goatsong.” The root of this seems to be dramas that depicted satyrs, thus creatures who are half-goat half man. These meanings, again taken from my trusty online source, are in debate—but they please me; they suggest a deeper truth. The unhappy ending associated with this form of drama seems to suggest that the goat-half had its way. To unpack this line of thought a little more, let me return to my youthful wonder. How, indeed, could the divine be comic?

It might help to ponder another word in this context, the thing that we call fate. Its meaning is the course of a person’s life; the word is derived from “decreed” or “spoken” or “ordained,” as by a higher power—thus that which is determined. The word fatal does not come from some ancient tag for death; rather it comes from the fact that death is our unavoidable destination, our destiny. But is it? It is certainly the destination of the body, of the goat. Its meaning includes the idea of “unavoidable necessity.” That we have to live a life in bodies—that is fate. But we also have another part; and that part is free. How we live that necessary life—that’s up to us. If we identify with the immortal spirit, it suggests that, at death, we escape this realm of necessity and…well, enter the divine. The tragic results when we identify with the limited but necessary; the comic when we identify with the free and limitless. People have a fate; I’ve never encountered any reference to the “fate of angels.” Why? They don’t follow a necessary course.

The very core of our nature belongs to the high, the superior, the ultimately free. That nature, caught in this lower dimension, looking around, but still aware of itself, beholding the shenanigans, will simply have to laugh at what it sees. But its ability to rise above, to laugh at all this in light moments, testifies to a high gift which, in more serious moments expresses itself in poetry.