While outside the summer sun and cloud shadows moved over the moors, inside we were beginning with "God is Light" in Book III... a similar and potent blend of "unapproached light" emerging from "the rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite".
With Peter's help we could better understand Milton's sense of calling and inspiration and the difficulties he faced in losing his physical sight alongside the opening of his inner vision. In our small way, our group too is seeking for inner wisdom that sometimes is harvested from other gates than those of the physical senses.
Soon we were moving on to later passages and meeting the lost archangel Satan. Through him we grappled with some fascinating questions. Is it really freedom to forsake the service of God, in order to rule in hell? In our terms... is the freedom to do whatever the ego desires, really freedom? Or is there a deeper liberation in knowing ourselves part of a greater whole and acting in response to that, even when it constrains our personal preferences? Perhaps Satan's great independence is rather a tyranny and bondage? When he describes,
"A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven"
is he describing an inward freedom or fixed and limited state?
Then in Book V we encountered the Archangel Raphael speaking of the freedom given to Adam and Eve,
"God made thee perfect, not immutable;
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy power, ordained thy will
By nature free, not over-ruled by fate
Inextricably, or strict necessity;
Our voluntary service he requires
... freely we serve
Because we freely love,"
Eve meanwhile, in Book IX, pleads for the freedom to learn from experience, including mistakes,
"And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed
Alone, without exterior help sustained?
and later
"For good unknown, sure is not had, or had
And yet unknown, is as not had at all."
This stimulated much discussion in the group, for while many of us could see how we had learnt from making mistakes in our own lives, we wondered about the boundaries that we might also feel the need to set for our children or others under our protection. In such contexts it gets much harder to accept loss of innocence as the fruit of knowledge. Can we accept the diabolical as part of the process of enlightenment, and for others as well as ourselves?
Our day concluded with the poem, in a vision of Adam and Eve leaving Paradise that was sad and yet also hopeful and full of possibility...
"The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way."
