You say, "I discern clearly what I hear; but for me darkling still is why God should have chosen this means of our redemption." This decree, brother, lies buried from the eyes of each and ever one of those spirits less than adult in the flame of love."
- Paradiso VII. 55-60
Dante died 700 years ago (1321), and I find him to be more relevant and deeply engaging to the longings in our hearts than most any modern writer trying to sort out the meanings of love and the cosmos. He combines faith and science as they should be, co-mingled as colleagues and friends in the vast depth we study of God to try to understand just an ounce of God's love, which moves everything.
I think I am deeply moved by this concept, thanks to the Medieval aspects and beliefs. Though a geocentric cosmos was later proved to be false, the same ideas can all play out, with all the mystery included about how the plants move in circles around a centre and how they move in time with Love Himself, the Maker and the Intelligence behind it all.
To me, that knowledge and imaginative vision of the heavenly bodies and their organized system that allows us to live here on a planet with the perfect conditions gives me utmost assurance in God being who He says He is. No force could create and sustain a complex system of the cosmos other than a Creator, an intelligent mind. It is pretty darn clear to me, and to a lot of science today. There should be no bifurcation of science and faith - right there present in both is myriad beautiful examples of God.
Dante helps me see this all from his perspective from the 1300's where the world was a different place both in history and science. It is astounding how profound his knowledge of the cosmos and of God is, from his time in Italy (and exile) in the 1300's. That was all more than 700 years ago. Yet today there are still many arguments that try to provoke others to believe that there can be no God and all of this is a complete fluke, an accident, and we have no meaning or purpose.
How could anyone wake up and look at the dawn sky with multi-coloured glowing orbs of light emerging over the sleepy horizon as our planet turns, and not feel the awe and wonder of creation, and attribute that to a higher being/intelligence? Even as we sub-create, it is all pointing still toward the One Creator. We were made to sub-create. God gave us minds to wonder, learn, seek out knowledge, search for clues in the mystery, and aim to create as well. Since we are made in His image, perhaps that is why we have this hidden desire to sub-create and use our imaginations.
"O beloved of the first lover, O divine one," said I then "whose speech so floods and warms me such that I am ever more quickened, my affection for all its depth is scarce sufficient to render you grace for grace..."
- Paradiso IV.118-32
This book was published last year, the 700 year anniversary of Dante's death, analyzing three major works of Dante, the Vita Nova, Convivio, and Commedia. With extensive quotes from each of these volumes and textual analysis, it is rather a studious text, like being in a Dante course in graduate school. I rather enjoyed the depth, knowing that still much is over my head, but I am always open to being out of my depth, for there is room to grow and learn. I am very eager to read Vita Nova and Convivio now, as those are two works I have not yet read. I think this book left open for me a door that I may now enter into with some better knowledge of what Dante is conveying in his works.
What, then, we need to understand is this, that, for the reason shown above, everything has its own proper love. Just as simple bodies have within them a natural love for their proper place, which is why earth is always drawn to its centre, and just as fire has a natural love for the sphere above us bordering that of the Moon, and so always rises towards it, so the primary compound bodies, the minerals, have a love for the place where they are created, and where they grow and whence they derive vigour and energy; thus we find that a magnet always acquires its power from the place when it comes.
- Convivio III.iii
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