“..Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these..” Lk12v27
TL;DR Jesus’ call to consider the lilies surely applies to all of nature, and so, consider Covid. “Considering” is not nothing, it is not casually observing. Considering demands we see rightly, contemplate holistically and interpret accurately. Before solving for the effects of Covid, in a God-breathed cosmos, Christians should study Covid-as-Covid.
[1] Consider the Lilies: Versus unconsideration
Consider the lilies. Before we think about thinking and look into looking.. Why does “consider” need saying? What is it to not consider? Why are qualities of lilies not self-evident? What strength of emphasis does Jesus’ “consider” carry, and against what resistance?
Sight is, even ironically, a preeminent metaphor for faith. The paradox of eyes-of-the-heart hoping-in-things-unseen. What is the opposite of “considering”? And, in this time of Covid-19, what are the forces that war against an accurate and transformative apprehension of nature-as-nature, man-as-man, God-as-God?
🧑🦯 1.1 Unconsidered Lilies: Basic Blindness?
We all, in different ways, are partially sighted, blinkered by birth and circumstantially eclipsed. But this sight-loss is not the last word on an inability to consider the lilies. Sight is not everything. Consider that Gloucester “stumbled when he saw” (King Lear). And, consider that John Hull lectured in the prophetic (see the utterly majestic, extended Notes on Blindness).
While on the one hand, such better perception of spiritual truth apart from sight is recognised in such as the blind beggar’s recognition of Jesus as the Christ in Lk18. So, it is not blindness, per se, that keeps us from considering the lilies.
On the other hand, the Bible invokes literal blindness plainly to illustrate a spiritually blind condition, and its cure:
“..I see people, but they look like trees, walking..”Mk8v24
“..And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes..”Ac9v18
Thusly, even more so, literal blindness does not keep us from considering the lilies: quite the opposite, Covid’s very literal invisibility offers an invitation to engage, as one would, an unseen spiritual realm. Thusly blinded, we should doubly consider Covid precisely in its invisible qualities.
🧩 1.2 Unconsidered Lilies: Complexity and relativistic revelation?
“..this is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand..” Mt13v13
If nature-as-parable is so encrypted, can one consider it? Can his meaning be known? Can Covid’s meaning be known? What even is a lily? Why does Jesus speak in parables?
Jesus makes clear in this verse that his parables are no mere illustrative allegories or quaint memory aids. So it is with nature, and so, while the parables of nature rely heavily on viewer participation, they are not relativistically vague exercises in reader-response, they are not a Change-We-Can-Believe-In presentation that allows everyone to vote for the Obama they feel able to project their own Hope onto ~ they are more-than what-you-look-for-you-will-find. Nature, mindfully engaged through an interpretative community, should meet you within your projected hopes and preconceptions, but critically, even offensively, even divisively.
Far from a Bible-code-as-secretive-communication to those capriciously predestined, parables, and indeed all of nature, are designed as imaginative environments in which your identity-as-a-knower is engaged, revealed and challenged. Jesus cares about your identity, the self-image you practice faith with, your self-understanding, your projected comportment. Why does Jesus speak in parables? Why does nature exist? Why is salt salty? Because the medium is the message, and his message concerns your identity, and your identity is defined by your parable reception: you are your ability to receive parables, you are the person that your reception of nature transforms you to be.
So, it is not complexity, per se, that keeps us from considering the lilies. You can change your mind, you can renew your mind. By considering nature - you grow not only your apprehension of a fixed thing, but you are transformed as a dynamic interlocutor with a dynamic poetic object. It is complex, but not inaccessibly complex. Nature was authored by a God who intended nature to be read, so to transform its readership.
🙉 1.3 Unconsidered Lilies: Doubt? and Doubting Others?
“..the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”..” Mk9v24
“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Jn20v25
Partial understanding is not insufficient. Countering the peculiar vice of Phil PJ, an Enneagram 5 ~ rather, a recognition of inadequacy changes the relationship. Doubt and epistemological humility are crucial to the scientific method, to artistic production, to team building and the establishing of the good. Jesus critiques, while he also credits, the unfinished faith of the father of the child. Just so, one can consider Covid’s meaning partially, if such is done with humility and a self-awareness of one’s limited understanding.
So, I proffer, it is not what we don’t know that keeps us from considering the lilies - but the paralysing idealisation of objectivity-or-nothing.
“..Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said..” 1Cor14v29
If you want to read fast, skim alone. If you want to read deep, read together.
The believer considers they have found signal, but their testimony ought to be doubted if it is not corroborated - hence four gospels, hence twelve disciples and a cloud of witnesses. It is important to the validation of signal against noise that the issue should be reproducible on other devices otherwise it is deniable as an artefact in the data, and not a pattern.
But, more than that. God’s multi-personal personhood as revelation is meant to be interpretted multi-personally. It is apprehended only properly through co-attended joint attention. The knowledge of God presupposes community - and, more than that, it is intended to invite community and sustain community as a symbiotic practice ~ the living body of the living word. (so 1Co14v29) Thus, God’s revelation of God also presupposes interpretation as a process in dialogue as a practice - community is a process because a community is non-static is necessarily situated in and dynamically variable across time.
So, it’s not doubt per se, that keeps us from considering the lilies, but a resistance to collective co-attention and interdependent perception predicated on trusting the diverse witness of others through interrogating the witness of others. Siloed filter bubbles impede this generous orthodoxy by isolating us from a more resilient consensus.
😴 1.4 Unconsidered Lilies: Inattention
“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning.." Lk12v35-36
So many are unbovvered (ref..). So many are living that de-Socratic unexamined life which is not worth living. It is possible to address the world with such distracted disinterest that lilies do not appear as-lilies but as a mere back-drop to another dream. Against this, the Bible’s call to consider is a relentless call to wakefulness - the difference is actually seeing, careful and conscientious seeing
Jesus, the original #staywoke. Jesus, the original #redpill. Wakefulness as analogue for faith's earnest attention, lucid anticipation. The opposite of being woke is sleepwalking. The secular prophets The1975 previously plastered Is6v9-10 on London phoneboxes, raging against modernity's sleepfulness. Wake up. We who would float down the Liffey in a dulled torpor of mental absenteeism. Wake up. Out of that stasis, as Hans Solo in carbonite, we who are frozen in fear, in debt, in slavery. Wake up. Away from your devices, resist regression to the womb of television's totalising anaesthetic [see Seller's Being There, Carrey's Cable Guy, Carpenter's They Live, Fincher's Fight Club - prophetic alarms for those raised by television to sleepwalk] Wake up. I tend more often to think of sin-as-cancer, or sin-as-calculated-commission, and less often to consider sin-as-coma ~ that, neglecting to be sensate, omitting to do anything at all. Oh, light in our eyes, awake my soul. Wake up, it is a beautiful morning.
🚑 Covid illustrates that life's tragedy and need is 24/7. Nature never stops. Albeit cynically, the famous street pastor McDonalds understands this opportunity: If you're awake, we're awake. ~ Always be ready to give a burger for the haste that is in you.. Mt25v40's least of these don't wait to present during office hours. You are all key workers. You are the world's existential emergency services, with ontological ambulances, a philosophical fire engines. To be woke is to serve, conscious of the purpose of consciousness, ready with a default availability, serving to enable the many ways that Christ is perpetually returning in the guise of the strange stranger - if I would only let them in.
What. Do. You. See? Am8v2 Jr1v11 Zc5v2..
Considering the lilies requires wakefulness, and wakefulness is a public service - especially in a time of Covid.
Lk17v19-20"..not coming in ways that can be observed." 👀 "..observed" here is paratērēsis παρατηρήσεως a word signifying scrupulous, superstitious, captious observation say the commentaries (see usage in Lk6v7, Lk14v1, Lk20v20) The dogmatist's scrutiny is a weaponised look akin to the laser sight of the male gaze, it objectifies the observed, rendering a whole universe as merely and scientistically instrumental, disautonomous, violable, fungible.
🙈 The eyes of my heart are jaded lenses reaching foregone conclusions by loaded questions and selective hearing. I tint therefore I am. My reader-response creates its own meaning. I see but do not perceive Mk4v12.
🙈 The eyes of my heart are clouded with the fog of a cultural war, the tyranny of urgent and marketised noise. Both the depth and breadth of my scarce attention have been auctioned off to pay for goods and services. With mind full, I am unmindful and inattentive, substituting all for a projection in the image of my siloed self.
🙈 The eyes of my heart are looking for the wrong thing in the right place Jn5v39; (or, tenuously, the right thing in the wrong places in the wrong ways Mt23v15)
👀 Unprejudiced unfiltered attention to what is actually there. Comporting one's whole self towards the whole of reality as it actually is. But how?
🗿 1.5 Unconsidered Lilies: Becoming Idol.
“..Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see, but see not, who have ears to hear, but hear not, for they are a rebellious house..” Ek12v2 (repeated: Is6v10; Jr5v21; Mt13v15; Ac28v27; Ro11v8)
“..Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see..” Ps115v4-5 (repeated: Ps135v16; Dt4v28; Dn5v23; Rv9v20)
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets..” Mt23v29-31
We become what we worship - venerating sightlessness, enshrining non-disclosure, kowtowing to corporate opacity, electing unanswerable candidates, and in all cavorting in an eyes-wide-shut don’t-ask-don’t-tell festival of short-sightedness and deniability, we are a people perishing for lack of vision. If we cannot see the lilies-as-lilies, it is worth interrogating who we have venerated and what their vision is like.
Idolisation which leads to blindness is done so easily and by well-intentioned people. Octavia Hill, a hero of mine, explicitly stipulated that she not be replicated as a system or the image of a thing, but rather any legacy would be engaged as a desire to see:
“When I am gone, I hope my friends will not try to carry out any special system, or to follow blindly in the track which I have trodden. New circumstances requires various efforts, and it is the spirit, not the dead form that should be perpetuated. When the times comes that we slip from out places, and they are called to the front as works, what should they inherit from us? Not a system, not an association, not dead formulas. We shall leave them a few houses, purified and improved, a few new and better ones build, a certain record of thoughtful and loving management, a few open spaces, some of which will be more beautiful than they would have been, but what we care for most to leave them is not any tangible thing, however great, not any memory, however good, but the quick eye to see, the true soul to measure, the large hope to grasp the mighty issues of the new and better days to come – greater ideals, hope and patience to realise them both.” Octavia Hill - Letters to Fellow-workers
Covid-as-Covid has become a caricature of a thing. If you are to see lilies-as-lilies, you cannot reduce lilies to the image of a lily. Rather, consider Covid, as you might consider the lilies, as Martin Buber considers a tree (from I and Thou):
“I consider a tree. I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background. I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air—and the obscure growth itself. I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life. I can subdue its actual presence and form so sternly that I recognise it only as an expression of law — of the laws in accordance with which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or of those in accordance with which the component substances mingle and separate. I can dissipate it and perpetuate it in number, in pure numerical relation.
In all this the tree remains my object, occupies space and time, and has its nature and constitution.
It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness. To effect this it is not necessary for me to give up any of the ways in which I consider the tree. There is nothing from which I would have to turn my eyes away in order to see, and no knowledge that I would have to forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and type, law and number, indivisibly united in this event. Everything belonging to the tree is in this: its form and structure, its colours and chemical composition, its intercourse with the elements and with the stars, are all present in a single whole. The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it — only in a different way.
Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutual.
I’m writing this preamble preemptive exploration considering considering to nudge a mode of seeing that would render it possible to see anything at all as more than the sum of its parts. As long as the Coronavirus remains an It, we will solve for it as an effect. It is possible to look at Covid and not see it - to miss the wood for the trees. Rather, consider.
🙈 1.6 Unconsidered Lilies: Willed blindness
“..What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.”..” Rm11v7-10
Paul's Notes on Blindness, and just as devastating in our preeminently visual age, we are snared in our own neon oblivion, so busy sightseeing we're blindsided. Or I am, plank-in-eye religiouse, blinkered and navel-gazing, short-sighted and eyes-averted from the real of the world's needs, I blacken the darkened glass I see through dimly with my own grime.
I construct my own systemic un-sight. So, consider again “I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw.” And ask, Jr1v11 What do you see? // Mt13v13 What do you not see?
🤞 1.7 Unconsidered Lilies: Blind-leaders-culpably-mis-leading-the-blind
“..You blind guides..” Mt23v24 (as also Mt15v14)
“We're not blind. We've got eyes in our heads.”
“..they must be darn good ones if you can see in here..”
“In where?”
“Why you bone-head.. in this pitch-black, poky, smelly, little hole of a stable.”
“Are you blind?”
“Ain't we all blind in the dark!” said Diggle.
“But it isn't dark..” said Lucy. “Can't you see?..” CS Lewis - Last Battle
It is a fine line between compassion for humble blindness (“still without understanding” Mt15v16) and culpable malpractice by those leaders who should be visionary but rather throw shade to hide their sin (“blind guides” Mt15v14). Jesus may be incredulous at the disciples limited perception but he is scathing of the Pharisees, whose blindness is wilful, saying of what light there is that it is not, construing life as a language game, as a hunt in a dark room for a black cat that's not there, fumbling in a dirty stable (and so their preoccupation with hand-washing). Truly, we “see only in part” 1Cor13v9, and truly not all of us are “eyes” 1Cor12v17 but as a minimum, those who “oversee” 1Ti3 must see.
Before considering Covid, I should consider my own blindnesses, born-blindness, willed-blindness and inattention.