Perhaps the single most difficult thing any of us face is seeing ourselves in the reality that others see us, or as God sees us. Mirrors, cameras, sound recorders can help but just look at the personalities, pop stars and politicians one sees on television and do they really see themselves as the rest of us see them? There are so many things that cloud our own reality … our emotions, even a mirror presents a reversed image. Andrew Kania's reflection today explores this intriguing question and leads to the conclusion that ultimately the entire journey of our lives is to unmask this "unreality" of ourselves so that we see ourselves in the perfect way God sees us. It is powerful, short reflection which readers of Catholica will long value.

Three examples…

A man is walking alone, fast-paced, through the Scottish Highlands. The sunlight is rapidly fading, and before him, all round, lies a shadowy vista of peaks and valleys. Soon he cannot see more than twenty metres before him, now ten, now five, now every footstep enters the darkness. On he must push, it is cold; his hiking journey is now ending in nightmare. One step, another step, then the ground falls from beneath him, he quickly turns and grabs in both hands a rock face, and hangs — his feet suspended in mid-air. He tries to pull himself up — but he is exhausted. He just hangs. His fingers begin to ache with a lack of blood running through them. His face is battered by cold winds. He can hold no more. His hands slip and he has time to let out a mere start to a cry before his feet gently touch the earth, unbeknown to him, some fifty centimeters below the point where his feet had been dangling in despair.

Shaka (1787-1828)

A fierce and shrewd warrior, Shaka (1787-1828), is famous for being the modern day founder of the Zulu nation. At one point Shaka became the ruler of 250,000 people, devising military strategies that consistently baffled and subdued his enemies. Yet his military and political exploits aside, history also describes in some detail the love that Shaka had for his mother, Nandi (1760-1827), a love that went far beyond filial devotion, but verged on fanaticism. On seeing Nandi begin to age and become more and more frail, Shaka requested the medical assistance of a British physician, in place of the failing treatment by tribal doctors. Unbeknown to Shaka, the physician's treatment consisted in nothing more than the provision of placebo medication, a mirror, and boot polish for Nandi's hair. Nandi was convinced that her health was being restored seeing her grey hair magically disappear; her son was equally grateful for the 'fountain of youth' which had given his mother immortality. The deception continued, until Nandi's condition worsened and ultimately became bed-ridden. Only after the physician fled the Kraal, did Shaka begin to realize that he had been duped, tricked into believing that quackery was miracle medicine. The physician had made the great Shaka appear a simple primitive.

C.Y. O'Connor (inset) and workers on his famous pipeline

In a third case, Charles Yelverton (C.Y.) O'Connor (1843-1902), an Irish-born engineer, in 1896 began the construction of a pipeline which was to traverse a distance of 530 kilometres between Mundaring Weir, (on the outskirts of the city of Perth), and Kalgoorlie, the centre of the Western Australian gold-rush. Considered by many to be the greatest engineering feat of its time, the plan consisted not only of assembling the 760 mm in diameter pipe across unforgiving terrain, but also required the establishment of eight pumping stations as well as minor townships to facilitate the transfer of water. Under constant criticism in the Western Australian press, as well as in the State Parliament, C.Y. O'Connor the man who had also dredged the harbour of Fremantle to allow the port to increase its trade potential, took his life on the beach at South Fremantle — less than a year before fresh water 'miraculously' flowed in abundance across the desert and into the goldfields.

Seeing only part of the reality of our lives…

In all three cases described, we see individuals, who although living lives very real to themselves — saw only a part of the reality of their lives. In the case of the hiker, he believed that he was facing a life and death struggle, fighting to keep himself out of the jaws of an almighty chasm; in the case of Shaka we have a man, trusting in a charlatan, believing that this man is restoring his mother's health from the grave, unknowingly being duped by his lack of medical knowledge; in the case of O'Connor we have a man very well on-track to achieving one of the greatest engineering feats of his Age, falling into despair, for want of being able to clearly see the end of his toiling. One can be assured that had each of these men known the Reality of their lives, the choices which they made would have been vastly different.

St Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) speaks wisely when he teaches in his famous hymn, Adoro Te Devote…

"Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God's Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth himself speaks truly or there's nothing true."

In essence all that we see and live in this world are glimpses of a reality that we partake of, and but part-perceive. Only God has the larger picture, and thus only God can be trusted upon to speak Truly. As humans we are capable of speaking 'honestly', by reflecting on our lives or a particular circumstance and recounting these events or ideas in good conscience. Yet these reflections are a part fragment of an overall panorama, of which even the most honest of men or women cannot be required to fully understand. As such, the reality of our lives is hinted at by our senses, partly understood by our minds, and fully known by God alone. It is for us to serve our Creator as best we can, and understand that our responsibility is to do our consciences well in the short-span of life we have been given. Certainly we must slake our thirst for coming to understand the Truth, but in essence, as Aquinas notes, the greatest Truth we will understand, is that which is spoken out of the mouth of God and into the human spirit, through the Church. In our lives, success or failure, does not depend on how we envisage the end-worth of our life's labour, but rather in how our lives have contributed to the overall design of a Reality that only our Creator can fathom.

The philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753) once wrote in his, The Principles of Human Knowledge, that it is only the eyes of God perceiving all that He has created that gives any of us our existence. Moreover, Berkeley concludes that even the best of us, cannot fully understand the Reality of our lives:

"We take, for instance, the idea of some one particular pain into our thoughts, and account it evil; whereas, if we enlarge our view, so as to comprehend the various ends, connexions, and dependencies of things, on what occasions and in what proportions we are affected with pain and pleasure, the nature of human freedom, and the design with which we are put into the world; we shall be forced to acknowledge that those particular things which, considered in themselves, appear to be evil, have the nature of good, when considered as linked with the whole system of beings." (Berkeley, 1992, pp. 443-444)

Plato also reminds us in Timaeus about the limited nature of the human intellect in understanding the world, when he writes that:

"It is god who possesses both the knowledge and power required to mix a plurality into a unity and, conversely, to dissolve a unity into a plurality, while no human being could possess either of these, whether at the present time or at any time in the future". (Plato: The Complete Works, 1997, p. 1270)

It is for us therefore, in this world, to strive as best we can, with the talents we have been given by God, and in good conscience, for our own salvation, (and that of others), so as to come to the end point of our lives where a vision of God may be granted to us, a point outside of time, where all things will be made whole, and where we will eventually move fully from unreality into reality.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

[Andrew Kania's Archive]