Back to School (08/05/25)
In [August] there is something in the air. It is the return to
school. [August’s] ambiance and purlieu, its hustle and verve, are largely related to this fact of our life: we are going back to school. The anticipation may be mingled with reluctance, but the anticipation is, nonetheless, all round us. And the return to school has its particular objectives too, both practical and profound. What is more, it symbolizes and embodies fundamental goals of the Church. The return to school stands for something vital in this life and even in the life
to come. Part of our humanity is curiosity, the love of knowing, the love of understanding and of growing wise.
The surface
reality has its own immediate appeal. Dear reader, someone you know is back in school this month. Is he or she in elementary school? Sitting perhaps in formal classes for the first time? Who needs to tell you this is a month of momentous things? This month little hands earnestly form letters and numbers on lined paper. Or they stretch and strain towards the ceiling, thereby declaring to the teacher (and, it would seem, to all the world) that a question is urgent to be heard or that a comment
cannot much longer remain repressed.
Older children enter new grades ready to confront new concepts and new disciplines. Graduates of elementary school find
themselves at the bottom again-lowly freshmen. It is back to school again, but it is all new. Formal schooling does come to an end. (It really does, although those in graduate school may sometimes wonder). But learning goes on. If learning were to come to an end we would all feel old. The church for us would no longer be "new." "If there were any end to wisdom in a wise person - the delight of his wisdom, which consists in its perpetual multiplication and fructification, would
perish . . . Then the wise no longer becomes like a youth but like one who is old and at length decrepit." (Swedenborg, Divine Providence 335)
We can never "graduate" in the sense of completing the process of learning. If we matriculate, as it were, into heaven we will sense even more vividly that we stand on the threshold of new learning. What we know is as but a drop to a great ocean when compared to what we do not as yet know. Without exception we are all at some beginning stage in the endless flow of learning. It is our good fortune to be recipients of the Lord's revelation. Let us enjoy the spirit of angels
who love learning, and let us be partakers of the spirit of the young who this month are back to school.
THERE IS A BEAUTIFUL
PALACE IN HEAVEN
IT IS CALLED "THE TEMPLE OF WISDOM."
THOSE WHO HAVE A KEEN SENSE OF
THEIR
OWN IGNORANCE ARE ABLE TO SEE THAT PALACE…
"There is a palace here, which we call the Temple of Wisdom. But no one can see it who believes themselves to be very wise, still less one who believes that they are wise enough, and less yet one who believes they are wise from themselves. This is because such are not in a state to receive the light of heaven from a love of genuine wisdom. It is genuine wisdom for a person to see from the light of heaven
that what they know, understand, and are wise in, is so little in comparison with what they do not know and understand, and in which they are not wise, as to be like a drop to the ocean, consequently as almost nothing." (Swedenborg, True Christianity 387)
- NCL editorial, 1980
(in this case attributed to Rev. Don Rose. Yours, Ethan)
