Chapter Eleven

Seventh Step

HEALING WORDS

   Love is the way that God speaks with us.
           Diotima to Socrates, SYMPOSIUM, 203a

HE OPENED HIS EYES.

He saw the hall was dark, and the fire was low. Diotima sat with the lyre in her lap. She had finished playing long ago.

He looked at her, and said in a hoarse voice, like one unused to speaking, "What was that? Who was it? Zeus?"

She put her hand to her lips to indicate she would not speak. She rose, and wrapped the lyre in a linen cloth. It cried out once like a bird, and was still. She poured him a cup of wine with her own hands, and mixed it with water, and left him. And he sat alone in the hall with the dying fire. Around him the weapons of the hunt gleamed darkly on the walls.

She retreated like a beautiful wave, never looking back. He wished she would stay, but knew she had left him so he could think and reflect. Yet what was he to think about the presence he had felt. What could he possibly understand about an experience like this – a shimmering feeling that was based as far as he could see on no reality and no facts. He had never experienced anything like it.

He tried to describe it. He tried to say, 'This is what I know about it,' but he was in the same position as Lichas who came to the wife of Hercules with two quite different messages, and was forced to admit, "Yes…I said something else the first time, because that's what I heard. To say I heard something is not the same thing as saying I think it's true."

"What do you mean by think?" he was fiercely asked.

Like Lichas, he could not say. He simply could not say what he thought about his experience. He could hardly describe it. He had felt a presence he had never felt before, something so extraordinary it left him speechless.

Had he met something divine? He did not know. He had attended thousands of religious rites in his lifetime, and had never experienced anything like this – this great mind, this light, this power, this unfamiliar and unspeakably joyful presence.

Socrates leapt to his feet, and began pacing out his thoughts. Before he had faced the stones he had assumed he was free, and he had taken freedom for granted. He had not known he was enslaved. Facing the stones had freed him. Though he had no illusions that he had finished with the stones, he had made a beginning. Being a realist he expected the stone of hubris would recur. If it did, he would tackle it. He intended to keep the feeling of freedom and creation that filled him when he finished with the stones, and thrilled him now. To be the man he truly was, a man stronger than the stones, a man who spoke truly and felt strongly and moved freely was sweet. He had not known how sweet freedom could be. How beautiful.

Eleutheria. Even the word for freedom was beautiful. For freedom Greeks had gladly died. They shouted the word aloud to the invading Persians at Salamis when they charged them in their ships, vowing their country, their children, and the sanctuaries of their gods would be free or they would die. It was freedom he felt when he destroyed the stones. It was freedom that allowed him to see more clearly and think more intensely. A man enslaved by stones never could really see or think. It was freedom that had allowed him to make a connection with a presence so powerful and so tender he was staggered.

But it was possible, even likely, that he had connected with nothing but a dream. He supposed dreams might be instruments of instruction or even, as Homer sang, might be sent by the gods. A dream phantom had come and spoken to Penelope one night before gliding away by the bolt of the door into the breath of the winds. But even Penelope had questioned the phantom's veracity, saying, "If you have indeed listened to the voice of a god..." To dream might be interesting, but it could hardly be accounted a fact. And where it was a question of authority or fact, he, like many Greeks, preferred facts. He would give no authority to this dream, supposing it was a dream.

“You have no way of knowing it unless you test it,” he muttered, remembering a line from Sophocles' drama about the women of Trachis. But how would he test it? He needed Diotima's help, and he would not get that tonight.

He stooped, and took a sip of wine, and as the fire winked out, left the hall. He crossed the court under a cloudy sky. He was a down-to-earth kind of guy, not prone to dramatic flights, even if he had just had an experience that filled him with excitement. Pulling his mantle around him Socrates bedded down in his quarters in the stable, and slept.

He woke next morning elated, and alone, except for the horses. He left the stable with a feeling of exhilharation, bathed in the cold spring, toweled himself off with the linen Melissa had provided the night before, and pulled on a clean tunic. His plan was to talk with Diotima.

He found Telemachus and Peisistratus, Nestor and Melissa back from their hunt, and in the court. Telemachus' dog leaned against him, and gazed with absorbed interest at the field-dressed game. The dog looked the happiest of the bunch. Socrates had the feeling words hung between them, as if he had interrupted a quarrel. He was on a different kind of hunt, and he didn't pause. Congratulating them on their success, he went inside the hall to look for Diotima.

She was not there. He called her name, impatiently paced the shadowy hall several times, and was startled to see her standing, illuminated in the open door.

She looked into his face. Her gaze was like a gift. She saw the beauty deep inside him, and reflected his beauty back to him.

But he shook off her gaze, moving fast to stand right before her. "What was it?" he asked without any introduction.

She shook her head.

"You don't know what I'm talking about?" he asked, incredulous. But he saw, looking into her eyes, that she did know. "Why won't you say? Isn't this part of the instruction you're supposed to be giving me?"

"I can' tell you what you've experienced," Diotima answered. "That is for you to know."

"But you have some idea, or you think you do, and I want to know what you think."

And again she was silent. She had shifted her gaze, and was looking out the open door.

In the silence the thought moved toward him quietly, like a wave rushing silently up the beach, the whole thought rushing toward him with all its implications. "You're afraid. You're afraid to speak. My God," he said.

He turned away from her, as if taking the full onslaught of the sea, all its implications pouring over him, the force of the idea so strong and deep it was hard to keep his feet, but when he turned to face her he saw he was only half-right. She had every reason to fear, but she was not afraid.

"Let's investigate," she said lightly, using the verb historeo, a word Herodotus had used to describe his investigations, or histories. It was exactly what he wanted.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

"No."

"Good," she said. She looked at him thoughtfully, and smiled, so he felt toppled by a second wave, big and beautiful and unexpected. His eyes widened. She was looping the hem of her robe through her girdle. With her robe free for walking she strolled across the court, and led him into the trees, her hair gleaming in the shadow of the firs. They walked in silence, their steps quiet on the earth.

The morning was warm, like a loaf baking under the overcast sky. Their path led uphill. When she finally paused, her first words surprised him. "You remember PROMETHEUS BOUND," she said.

He remembered it. It contained one of his favorite lines, a reason for preferring freedom to tyranny that was seldom discussed. Aeschylus had written, There is a disease that is always part of tyranny – to never be able to trust a friend. As soon as you thought about it, you understood its devastating meaning. All the horror of families held captive by the violent and powerful, of men and women forced to betray each other to survive, of friends who could never be trusted with your life lay inside that simple line. Freedom was not an ephemeral idea. It was as necessary for life as water. PROMETHEUS BOUND, which had been produced many times, had other provocative lines. Bards often sang parts of it.

Diotima walked on, saying softly over her shoulder, "You remember that Zeus became sick of mankind, and decided to create a new race, but before he could destroy all mortals the god Prometheus took pity on us."

"'I realized they had eyes, but could not see; ears, but could not hear; they were like shapes in dreams, and lived lives without purpose,'" Socrates said, quoting from the play.

"Yes." Diotima stopped, and leaned back against a tree. "So Prometheus gave us 'flame-eyed fire, reason, knowledge of science and the arts, and hope.' And Zeus punished him mercilessly."

"According to the drama, and the muthoi, it was Prometheus who set Zeus on his throne in the first place," observed Socrates. He faced her, and rested his weight on the tree with his blistered hand above her head. She was flushed from walking fast, her skin was glowing through her khiton, but he ignored her loveliness to focus on hunting down his idea. "According to the muthoi, Zeus of the thunder-bolt is not the first god, he is not the creator god, though he is called the father of the gods."

She nodded, following his thoughts. "Prometheus sets Zeus on his throne," he said, "and discovers too late that Zeus is a tyrant who will chain him to a rock and send an eagle to eat his liver. Too late Prometheus sees how cruel and corrupt Zeus is." Though his words were shocking, he was merely quoting from Aeschylus' drama, and the muthoi that predated it.

He had established his line of reasoning, but now he stopped, to warn her. "Aeschylus was threatened with death on account of what he wrote. Fortunately for him the court remembered his heroism at the battle of Marathon, set aside the charges, and freed him." He was signalling that pursuing his idea was dangerous for them both, but she gave no indication she was afraid or unwilling to hear him speak.

"'Pity the god who is known only by what misinformed men say about him,'" he said, quoting Nestor. However this was not the idea he was pursuing. He hesitated.

He was not afraid – it was impossible to hunt an idea while feeling afraid – but could he trust her? Athens demanded belief in the gods described by the muthoi. In this demand there was no exception and no freedom and divergence was punished by death.

He bent closer to her, so close they were almost lip to lip. Her eyes, grave and radiant, held his. Walking inside the door held open by her eyes he experienced a sense of homecoming so intense he knew he could trust her with his life. "If I met a god yesterday," he said softly, "it is not a god I have ever heard described. It is not a god whose name I know. I want to meet this god again."

"A-men," she said, using the Greek phrase that means truly.

And just then thunder rolled out of the sky. A wind sprang up. The sky grew dark and smoky overhead. Lightning flickered. He grabbed her hand as the thunder drew closer, and ran downhill toward a great rock he had noticed on the climb up, not the shelter of a cave but an overhang, at least, and away from the trees. Even in those minutes of their flight the wind rose, blowing harder, the first warm drops of rain began to fall. Another great crack of lightning leaped out of the sky. Thunder roared. The rain poured down all at once, as if released by an angry god. Heavy it was, and blinding, and he was still gripping her hand hard and running downhill, the cold rain that had lost all its warmth beating against them. For several moments the sky was silent as if gathering all its powers, then lightning-flashes cracked open the clouds, hurtling toward earth as they reached the rock.

The rock could give only partial protection, but to his surprise she was not dismayed by the rain, lightning or thunder. Inside his arms she looked out at the storm, and laughed with pleasure.

"I take it you don't think this is Zeus annoyed with me," he said.

"I don't know," she admitted, her eyes smiling into his. "But I doubt it."

He was sorry when the storm moved away, and light shone in the dripping trees, and she moved out of his arms, a cool breeze playing on her wet hair and dress.

He was silent on the way back down to the lodge. The rocks were slippery, and little gullies of water ran at a breathtaking pace down the mountain making their footing precarious. He remained silent through dinner. The hunters related their adventures, but he was frustrated, as preoccupied and anxious, he thought, as Telemachus' dog, who was waiting by the table for a bone.

A-men, Diotima had said. But what did she mean? And how was he ever going to test his experience?

The dog settled down with his bone, and she lifted the lyre into her arms, and he thought, I don't want to hear any songs. I want to talk about what is real. And then, changing everything, and healing his distempered spirit, Diotima looked at him, and said gently, "A-men."

With her he meditated on words, listening silently to the words she sang, then reflecting aloud on the words with the help of his memory, reason, and imagination. This was the first of their “meditations in fertile philosophy”. The words they meditated on were these: Love is a great spirit, interpreting and transporting what is human to the divine, and carrying the divine to men and women.

As Socrates meditated on the words, he felt as men and women do who practice logos meditations with others: Words come to life. They become as rich as earth: Love is a great spirit. They become as thirst-quenching as water: interpreting and transporting what is human to the divine. They become as luminous as light: carrying the divine to men and women. He held the words in his hands, and drank. His thirst was quenched, and stimulated. He was thirsty for more.

Love, he thought. Always love. He had been hunting the divine the only way he knew how, rationally, and he was being told once again that he needed love, about which he knew so very little.

The dog lay by Telemachus in the firelight, his head on his foot, with his eyes closed. "I have always liked dogs," Diotima said, glancing at him with a smile. "They know how to love."

Then she asked him to contemplate, and to seek with love the god whose name he did not know. NEXT »

©2006 CATHERINE GLASS