Druid's Prayer III: ... strength understanding... knowledge

[Alferian]

The third line of the prayer (to continue our discussion) is

And in Strength Understanding...

Again, the verb operating throughout the prayer is "Grant..."

We are granted the boon of protection, which leads to strength, and now this strength gives birth to understanding. Now that is interesting! One doesn't usually think of strength leading to understanding. But here again, I think the former lays the foundation for the next. Strength, as we have said, is physical and moral strength, the ability to act, to stand up for oneself and one's principles, to engage the world and wrestle with challenges. I think of the Arthurian Knight as the emblem of this strength -- nobility might be another word for it -- the ability to be powerful and to use power wisely and with justice.

So, in Strength [grant] Understanding. What exactly is understanding and why does it come before Knowledge? This puzzled me at first. Doesn't one accumulate Knowledge and then arrive at understanding of how things work?

Words are slippery fish. I came to think that maybe "understanding" (which I've supposed it translated from something Welsh, but can't remember what) means something more basic -- the very act of consciousness and cognition. The faculty of sapience that must precede formal learning and the acquisition of knowledge.

If this is a fair reading, then Understanding is like a superior sort of Strength. Built upon strength of body, mind, and character, this new power is the power of human reason,insight, intution -- the ability to see patterns in the world around us, to solve problems, to see cause and effect, to envision complex systems.

If this prayer represents something along the lines of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, then proctection or security are the foundation for the strength to act and do, and understanding is the Divine gift of human imagination and language that distinguishes from those anmals who do not have much or any of this ability to understand. Understanding is the root gift of the Bards, for it is the ability to see into past and future, to understand the causal relationships between events and the complex relationships among people in human society. Bards, it seems to me, not only evolved into the medieval troubadours and Renaissance playwrights. They also evolved into the medieval clerks and secretaries who created modern organizational structures and institutions. Their abilities with words, history, and records -- the understanding and imagination to manipulate what is not visibly and immediately present -- created the modern world we see today.

And so, then, next we will have to ask -- so what is "knowledge"?

How else can the meaning of "understanding" be expressed? What do you think?


Alferian

[Spanish Moss]

With protection we built our foundation of action and with strength we were given the courage to partake upon the journey, but are we to sail blindly? I think not. We are here expecting divine guidence, understanding and knowledge of what must be done inorder to make our way down the spiritual path. Understanding also implys acceptence; not living in the past, to be open and allow the change, but to understand that this is a process.

This lines intent is similiar to the serenity prayer.

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr




Blessings

[CopperLion]

My take on this line is that Understanding in the Druids prayer is synonomus with Wisdom (as those of us raised in the Christian environment were taught). Understanding/Wisdom has nothing (or little) to do with knowledge, but with an inner intuitive ability to sort things out and choose the best coarse of action.

[Seeker]

I would have to agree with CopperLion on this one...I relate the term "understanding" with wisdom...almost a kind of "street smarts" where, based on one's experience(s), you instinctively sort things out and decide on the best course of action inspired by one's own strength of spirit.

[DaRC]

The dictionary says:

To perceive and comprehend the nature and significance of; grasp.
To know thoroughly by close contact or long experience with: That teacher understands children.

To grasp or comprehend the meaning intended or expressed by (another): They have trouble with English, but I can understand them.

To comprehend the language, sounds, form, or symbols of.

To know and be tolerant or sympathetic toward: I can understand your point of view even though I disagree with it.

To learn indirectly, as by hearsay: I understand his departure was unexpected.

To infer: Am I to understand you are staying the night?

To accept (something) as an agreed fact: It is understood that the fee will be 50 dollars.

To supply or add (words or a meaning, for example) mentally.

I always tend to view it as a kind of overview or perspective. I have always found that if you don't feel protected / strong it is difficult to keep the detachment needed to 'keep things in perspective'.

Cheers, Dave.

[Laurelin Tauregwaithalion]

It seems to me that in the context of The Druid Prayer, strength applies also to perserverence. As we go forth and experience things, often we are in a position of strife. Strenth is required in order to continue moving forward instead of stagnating and becoming bitter. After we go through an ordeal and complete our trial, we can reflect on the personal strength it took to perservere through the trauma and understand what we really gained from the situation. Now, I've never been known as one of the "everything happens for a reason" school, but I do think that our experiences are important to our identity. Those of us who experience strife, perservere, find our strength, and learn to understand what we have learned have a sure path to practical knowledge. We must understand what we've gone through and what it means to us first, however.

--Laurelin

[Druidknight]

I think the difference between knowledge and understanding is the difference between say, mozart and salieri. Salieri played all the right notes, and was technically very good. He had Knowledge of notes, read music, etc. Mozart understood the connection to the divine source and was able to create, and channel that universal energy into his music. He understood WHY the music needed to be created, and he understood the nature of the music itself. You can apply that same dynamic to just about any endeavor human beings undertake. Some, Know; Some, Know WHY.

[Brigantiorum Jihana]

I think 'understanding' in this context has an element of compassion in it; here's the logic: through the gift of protection from the Deity/Deities (first line), we get the strength of character to weather our personal storms and stand up against 'the slings and arrows" etc (second line). Only when we have faced down our own fears and discovered where we are coming from, can we understand ourselves, have compassion for ourselves, AND understand and have compassion for other human beings with all their faults.

A sort of Druidic 'take' on the old seventies self-help book "How to be your own best friend"!!

Peace,

Jihana

[Alferian]

Darkhammer, I agree with you about the Mozart/Salieri difference. That's why it puzzled me for a long while why the Druid's Prayer puts understanding before knowledge. I mean, we often think of accumulating knowledge first, learning the basics, and then if we are lucky passing on to that level of further deep understanding. But the prayer seems to suggest that the divine gift of understanding needs to come first. CopperLion's comment about wisdom and street smarts is interesting too: its a talent, of sorts, an ability -- "understanding" -- that comes before, or independently of book learning, and which arises out of one's experience, or perhaps grows along with it?

I think we might as well carry on with the next line in this same topic thread, since they seem so interwoven.

And in strength, understanding,
And in understanding, knowledge...

So, this says to me that we must understand the world, we must first know how to look at it, before we go about accumulating knowledge. In modern terms, perhaps, the idea here is that our understanding is conditioned by the paradigm we look through. We see what we are looking for -- or only what our mental framework allows.

So, Brigantiorum, your comment about compassion and understanding really resonates with me in this sense. As followers of the Druids we see the world (understand it) thorugh a paradigm of union and compassion. Connection rather than separation, atomization, and dissection. The old Christian idea of nature and spirit as radically separated things, even opposites, the one divine, the other profane and corrupted -- this is one model. Another is scientific materialism and positivism which claims as a premise that nothing exists unless it can be proven through experiments that can be duplicated by anyone with the right machinery. The result of this premise has been to reject "spirit" entirely as something that cannot be observed by these methods and to rely on mechanistic explanations using atoms, molecules, and various forces like gravity, magnetism, and so forth. That's another paradigm.

The Druid paradigm (if one can generalize, of course) seems to me to include things like connection and compassion, an underlying idea of order in which mind, spirit, body, and nature are all interwoven. We often borrow the biological idea of ecology to describe this interdependence, but we go much further to posit a spiritual dimension that cannot be subjugated to scientific notions of reproducible results, observation, and measurement. The scientific paradigm relies on quantifiable results, while the Druid or esoteric paradigm accepts many things that can only be described qualitatively, cannot be measured, and cannot be reliably reproduced in a laboratory. They are not mutually exclusive paradigms but are quite different.

So, fancy words aside, we seek a particular kind of understanding. Laurelin raised another element of this view: that events have meaning. The Druid worldview is not predicated on the notion that the cosmos is made of tiny billiard balls randomly bumping together. It supposes that order comes not from random chance, but from intelligence. So, the strength to persevere is based on a faith that things don't happen for no reason, even if we cannot sometimes grasp the meaning or the cause. Even (indeed maybe especially) when they seem like "coincidence".

So, what does this say about Knowledge? Can we talk about Knowledge in general as a Druid value, or is it particularly knowledge of certain things (we'll come to Justice shortly!). But since Justice is mentioned so pointedly, the words seem to imply that there are larger fields of knoweldge that we wish to be granted by the Divine.

By the way, do you think that the idea of the Nature could be substituted for the Divine? Nature with a capital N is a sort of personification of an abstract idea: that what we call the natural world is a unified whole, not merely a fragmented collection of species and classifications and individual organisms.

What do you think?

[DaRC]

Alferian, I substitute nature for the divine within the Druids prayer. I posted it to your first thread but the post got lost.

The (D)Taoist worldview seems to hold the view that understanding is natural 'knowledge' whilst knowledge is unnatural learning. In many ways the concept is similar to Rousseau's view of the 'noble savage' or R E Howards stories where civilization is a corrupting veneer that takes us away from our true barbarian state which is at one with nature.

To me understanding is certainly comprised of compassion but also of knowing that nature is not kind or compassionate. As I say above there is also an overview or tolerance within understanding that allows a calm response. You need to have strength over your emotions to maintain understanding. As they say there are 3 sides to the truth:
"My truth, your truth and THE truth."

Knowledge is learnt knowledge, for me this is very tied up with the rune Kaunaz, and can be both a blessing and a curse. Modern science is the example of knowledge. This is why I think you need to have understanding before knowledge. Too many think that knowledge is wisdom. Too many think that we know everything. With understanding it can temper knowledge - just because we (humans) knew how to split the atom should we have done it?

Cheers, Dave.

[Amethyst]

<BTW, great topic Alferian!>

The "understanding before knowledge" with no mention of 'wisdom' seemed odd to me at first as well, but then I started to see wisdom as combining the innate, natural cognition-based understanding with the learned, scientific method-type knowledge we have to be taught.

And then I saw that there were many more facets to the ephemeral concept of 'wisdom', including (as I mentioned in the discussion on line II) the strength to view the event/item objectively.

Understanding for me, then, becomes the cognition of all views of the item: the physical and spiritual, the divine and mundane, my view and yours, his view and hers, the human and animal/plant (as appropriate), essentially the basic how question to provide objectivity.
Understanding is knowing the questions to ask.

To continue with my idea of the prayer being a wisdom how-to guide:

Step 1: Protection: to endure an event in totality
Step 2: Strength: to face the event objectively
Step 3: Understanding: to acknowledge the infinite viewpoints


Knowledge then comes from the active 'thinking' of the questions and attempting to determine the 'why' questions and now starting to delve into the answers.
Knowledge is finding the answers to the understood questions

Step 1: Protection: to endure an event in totality
Step 2: Strength: to face the event objectively
Step 3: Understanding: to acknowledge the infinite viewpoints
Step 4: Knowledge: combining the understanding I've gained, with the answers from my experience and observations

<... and onto Justice...>

[Druidknight]

on the question of nature, I believe it's an "as above, so below" kind of deal. Nature "understands" that all things in nature are interconnected and acts instinctively on that knowledge. nature doesn't(can't, like we do) intellectualize, it just knows, and in that knowing, is a reflection of the otherworld or divine interconnectedness of all things.

[Laurelin Tauregwaithalion]

Interesting thoughts, all.... First, Alferian, I'd like to say absolutely that I feel Nature (capital N) can be used synonomously with Divinity. Since I generally eschew assigning a "name" to my concept of the divine, I normally substitute Nature. With regard to the compassion or absence of compassion in Nature, I will have to resort to an anecdotal situation.

This weekend I saw a special on Killer Whales. Some Orcas hunt baby seals seasonally. They train carefully, practice on penguins, and toss/torment their prey. While, during this display, they may seem to be relentless killers, the film also caught something remarkable. After the whales had eaten their fill, and tossed their share of seals, the last 'catch' of the day was gently returned to the beach, unharmed. So, after killing several baby seals, one of these Killer Whales personally escorted a baby seal back to its safe little beach. Is it an act of compassion? There's no way to tell. It could be a sort of insurance policy that there will be seals next year. It could be simply because the whale was no longer hungry. Or, it could actually be because one of these whales, having eaten her fill, found it prudent to return one of the seals to the beach and ensure its safety (maybe even out of compassion for its parents... Orcas have very tight-knit family structures). Nature can be a kind provider or a vicious killer. We don't get to pick and choose. I think there's an understanding in the whales that we haven't yet figured out. It isn't knowledge, it's understanding (and, I would assert that it came before knowledge alone).

--Laurelin

[Spanish Moss]

Coming to this discussion late it seems my thoughts have already been posted. I agree with Amethyst on this one.

[Alferian]

The (D)Taoist worldview seems to hold the view that understanding is natural 'knowledge' whilst knowledge is unnatural learning. In many ways the concept is similar to Rousseau's view of the 'noble savage' or R E Howards stories where civilization is a corrupting veneer that takes us away from our true barbarian state which is at one with nature.

Hi Dave,

Hmmm. But do you think any learning can be truly "unnatural"? Sounds like the splitting of human culture away from nature. It's a distinction that has its uses, but it seems to me that as we understand ourselves to be part of Nature and understand that creating culture, myth, fantasy, religions, games... etc. are all part of our human nature, that we ought not characterize anything humans do as "unnatural." Rather, it seems to me an example of one part of nature sometimes working at odds with another. Take the chemical industry, for example. That whole field of knoweldge has revolutionized human material culture in the 20th century -- plastics, fertilizers, dyes, artificial fibers, pesticides, vitamins, and on and on. We are sometimes inclined to think of this sort of artifical creation as "unnatural", but in what sense? It depends on human artifice and creativity, true -- but is that not also part of Nature? The industrial processes end up harming the natural ecosystem all too often, true. But is that not just an extention of human waste and excrement? Is it unnatural for humans to have overpopulated their habitat and not been smacked down by natural forms of death and disease? Maybe the cycles involved are just bigger than we are used to seeing: not quite the same as the population and die-off cycles of other species.

What would you consider an example of "unnatural learning"? Do you think there is a noble savage underneath corrupted civilized human beings? I love Rousseau, but I don't think he has it exactly right. Can we put it in other terms that avoid a wholesale dichotomy between culture and nature?

To me understanding is certainly comprised of compassion but also of knowing that nature is not kind or compassionate. .

So, do you believe that compassion and kindness are uniquely human traits? How do you know? Again, I feel like you are separating humans from Nature rather than including them. I don't think anybody believes that Nature (as a whole) is always compassionate. Is anyone always compassionate? I sometimes thing that Islam sees Allah as always "merciful and compassionate" but I'm not sure of that. In Judaic and Christian theology God is composed of everything. I Kabbalah there is compassion, mercy, and justice. Even if we personify Nature as Mother Nature, I doubt many would arrive at a mother who is always sweet, kind, gentle, and permissive. Even my mother wasn't like that, and she's about as close as they come!

I'm straying from the topic here, but this idea of personification comes back maybe to the first line again about God, Goddess, Divine, Spirit, or Nature. The personification of the Absolute, or of Nature (a different sort of infinity?) brings us into a relationship with the Divine that very often ties into our experience of being children with parents who are vastly more powerful than we are. So, the tendency to speak of Fathers and Mothers when talking of divinities makes a lot of psychological sense. But the view of Mother as someone who is purely nurturing and always providing, always available, and never dealing out discipline and lessons -- that's an infantile fantasy that can only be rooted in the very first weeks or months of life -- maybe even in the womb. Once we are born, inevitably things begin to intervene and our rosy perfect world of constant warmth and food starts to fall apart. We strive to recreate it all our lives, I suppose, but its not exactly a fair view of Divinity, much less of Nature.

So, anyway, Dave, I wonder if what you mean by Nature isn't compassionate and kind is rather than Nature is many things? Or do you think we are better off to get away from personification altogether on the grounds that we are just anthropomorphizing Nature -- projecting emotions onto organisms that don't really share our complex feelings?


Alferian

[Inga]

It gave me soms new insights to look at the word *in*

The prayer doesn't say one thing after another I think although it is something about speaking you have to do it word by word, one after another. That doesn't mean the poem is cronological in time, for me it is more like existing all at the same time, one item containing the others and so on. I drew circles and started with the last sentence the love of God(dess) and all existences in de inner circle. Like that I worked my way outwards. If you look at it then I see the outerring with protection end the deepest circle with the love God(des) and all goodness. Movement in time can be both ways....from within outwards and from without to the innercircle. The word grant is for me the bridge between the centre (which is the God(dess) acting towards the outer and the love of the God(dess) is the act the other way to protect your deepest love.

I hope this makes any sence to somebody. This is so hard to explain in another language. For me it's also like a pendulum ticking between active and passive....protection like a passive act to defent, strength active to stand in all kinds of movement you cannot totally controll, understanding like intelligent acceptence and knowledge like the active part to form new structures of that you have understood/accepted into your world. And so on...

I love this prayer by the way and this thread also

Blessings Inga

[DaRC]

Hi Alferian,

on the understanding & knowledge we wander into that tricksy complex psychological area that is the nature vs nurture debate where nature is the learning we are born with and nurture comes from the environment we grow up in. To be honest I think they are so intertwined it is better to view them as the weft and warp of our learning. I mention the Tao but other philosophies have understood that some things can't be taught but are either innate or can only be learnt by experience.

The Havamal has this to say:

5. Wit is needful
to him who travels far:
at home all is easy.
A laughing-stock is he
who nothing knows,
and with the instructed sits.

55. Moderately wise
should each one be,
but never over-wise;
for a wise man’s heart
is seldom glad,
if he is all-wise who owns it.

I can understand your point that 'we' (humans) are part of nature and that anything we do is therefore natural. However I think there is value in viewing them as polarized or as a dichotomy between natural and unnatural, or should we rather say sustainable and unsustainable or damaging / undamaging behaviour. Like you I don't think Rousseau has it right either. I think there is a tendency within the western world to look at indiginous tribes as perfect examples of sustainable behaviour that fit in their natural environment. If we look at these many indiginous tribes often they are happy to westernize. To put it another way it is only the 'natural' forces of disease etc... that keep their populations low and therefore sustainable within their natural environment. You are right though, the use of natural vs unnatural terminology muddies the waters. We need to view human behaviour as either sustainable or unsustainable.

The reason, perhaps, that I (from a Westernized) viewpoint regard human industrial activities as unnatural would be rooted in our Classical worldview. This is where the Xtian church is rooted as well (after the Council of Whitby that is - where the Celtic strand started to be crushed). Within the Xtian / Classical view there is this type of polarization between the spiritual and the mundane, the human and the natural.
Whilst I agree that within Xtian, Muslim and Judaic thinking there is the view that God is everything, the overwhelming mainstream opinion is of a paternal father. The panentheist view is not normally accepted. This paternal father figure encourages dogmatism. Dogmatism causes polarization. Polarization with dogmatism causes strife.

Are compassion and kindness purely human? No I don't think so. There is both mythical and factual evidence of humans being raised by wild animals. Dolphins have saved human lives at sea. This shows compassion and kindness within the natural world. However within the neo-pagan movement there is a lot of 'fluffy bunny' thinking. This is the sort of urbanized, divorced from nature, view that thinks it is the 'right thing to do' to release Mink from farms in the UK into the wild. This causes massive local ecological harm. So you have to be 'cruel to be kind' sometimes. It does come down to the semantics of what is compassionate and kind.
Is it compassionate to club a rabbit to death that is suffering from Myxemitosis - I certainly think so.

However I think we are mixing the macro with the micro. Within the macro view of nature I don't think it is compassionate or kind. To anthropomorphize is a dangerous human arrogance at the macro level; right now there could be an asteroid a few parsecs away with the Earth's name on it. Within the micro world of nature there are random acts of kindness and beauty that happen and brighten the world for all. So in this respect I think Nature is many things - which is why I like to use it for the divine.

The way I view things is that it is unbalanced to athropomorphize the divine nature - it is projecting human emotions onto a cosmic pattern. However I think this is where the 'Gods' come in - they enable us humans to interface with the (and our own) divine nature. Which is why I prefer a pantheist view rather than a monist view - given the range of human thought / behaviour it allows greater flexibility for that interface that can steer us away from dogmatism and it's inherent dangers.

Ooops I have rambled on ;-)
Cheers, Dave.

[Laurelin Tauregwaithalion]

Dave,

Would it be fair to say, then, that on the Macro level, nature is neither kind and compassionate or unkind and without compassion? If we reject one type of "anthropomorphization" we must reject the other. That's precisely why I would assert that Nature is as kind as it is unkind. While, on the larger level, there is a lot of destruction involved, there is also growth and production. For each flower that goes to seed, there is a liklihood that others will bloom there next season (depending, of course, on environmental conditions). For each land devastated by floods, there is the possibility of growth in the next season as a result of the extra water in the ground supply. I would be wary of holding firmly to one side or the other. I would argue, probably, that Nature does not sit around and think, "I'll do this... it'll be nice" or "I'll do that... it'll lay waste to the lands." They all tend to be metaphors for the purpose of making things accessible. Things will be as they are. With humans, we just translate the unfathomable into smaller chewable bits (which, I believe, is why the concept of deities came about to begin with; but that's just one person's opinion).

--Laurelin Linrilwen Tauregwaithalion

[Alferian]

Good discussion! Thanks for clarify your views, Dave. This is very interesting and it takes a good deal of thinking to conceptualize.

I like your point about the monotheistic religions generally seeing God as a Divine Father, not the pantheistic idea of Divine in Nature or Cosmos. What is interesting to me is that when natural disasters happen the same people often struggle to figure out how such things could be intended as punishment or whatever by this Divine Father. Pagans who personify Nature as a benevolent Divine Mother would face the same problem in time of disaster, disease, life crisis. When we attribute human feelings such as compassion to Nature as a whole (rather than individuals) we do mistake something -- is it a matter of scale?

To take the asteroid example, we would consider that a God who hurled an asteroid at the Earth would not be considered particularly compassionate or moral (putting us out of our misery?). This story comes in the Bible with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah where it is portrayed as a clear example of a Creator punishing his disobedient and corrupt creations/children. Noah's Flood is another example, of course. I do think that Druids need to articulate some comfort for the victims of "natural disasters." Druidry contains some notion of a creative destiny, but not the idea of Divine Providence -- except to the extent that some of us believe in the intervention of spirits into material events, and that some us have a certain faith in the natual systems that have been time-tested by evolution. But asteroids and earthquakes are hard to put a positive spin on. Yes, tectonic forces are necessary, we suppose, to the overall dynamics of the planet, but asteroids? Do they represent anything but blind chance and the dynamics of astrophysics that has nothing to do with intelligence?

I wonder how asteroids can be fitted into our Druidic reverence for stones and their spirits? I guess one thing I would say is that stones and the Earth elementals have a pace of "life" and agendas that are even harder for us humans to grasp than are the pace and agendas of the trees.

You may be right, Laurelin, that we have to bite off little chewable bits. That's the scientific approach for the most part too. Still, we long for grand theories, eh? The Unified Field Theory, the Unified God Theory.

Inga, I really like your spiral reading of the prayer. That's brilliant! It would make a cool calligraphy project!


Alferian

[Donata]

Hi Alferian,

This is a wonderful thread/s! thank you for starting and continuing it.

I'm reading all the posts and enjoying them very much. I'm not contributing as there is so much here already - I just wanted to express my appreciation to you and to everyone who has added to this. This is such a deep meaningful prayer, with such possibilities for meditation and interpretation.

Blessings,
Donata