Thank you so much for your article on Sir Roger today. I enjoyed reading it. It’s strange how someone dies and then everyone tries to lay claim to their legacy. I confess I didn’t discover Roger until more recently, despite having spent my life studying philosophy and British literature. I confess I most ignored most people after the year 1900, believing the halcyon days of great writing to have passed and focusing on days long gone. I was greatly saddened when I realized I had only just discovered Sir Roger and he died within a year of me learning of him.
It’s strange, but even at his most atheistic (or agnostic), I found Sir Roger to be deeply religious. Even when he couldn’t take his own faith for granted (which is what many do), he was seeking God, looking for him. It’s hard to admit, but we all lack access to that which would uncontrovertibly confirm or deny the essence of our essential faith, whether in God or in random meaningless chance.
In such a world, sometimes the best way to find what we seek is to assert its counterfactual and chase the consequences to see where they lead. And I think Sir Roger sometimes seemed to be doing that. Even if our faith isn’t literally true, maybe it’s existentially true, maybe it’s philosophical or aesthetically true, maybe it’s true as a matter of practice or necessity, maybe it’s symbolically true, maybe it’s psychologically true.
And maybe, if it’s true in all those ways, it actually is literally true, too, or as true as reason can reveal without being able to take that final step of faith for us that says, yes, I will seek and learn and love as if this is what the world is and what I am and what we are for. I will put my trust in this vision.
And I think Sir Roger was always doing that. Always seeking that vision, always advocating for it. Even when his faith was weak, the vision called to him. And even if he could never take his faith for granted, maybe that’s not a bad thing. Being part of the people of God isn’t about owning him and assuming him. It’s about seeking him and following him. And I think no one can deny, in all his ups and downs, that that was Sir Roger’s desire.
Thank you again for you article. Stay well, and have a good new year.
Powered by Journey Diary.
Mr Nobody's Patented Blog 