Willing the Good
Anecdotally…
As a first year student at Kings in 1980, I experienced Robert Crouse's lectures on the three books of the Divine Comedy. I found these books gripping and meaningful until we got to the part about the celestial rose. The vision of sitting around singing hymns and taking part in the order of the universe held no attraction for me. When Dante left Virgil behind to follow Beatrice, I guess he left me behind too. Not long after that, Fr. Crouse preached a sermon in which he explained that love was “the rational willing of the good.” I took great exception to this definition, sure to the bottom of my feet and to the roots of my hair that love was MUCH more than any “rational willing” of anything! This argument between us continued for many years, if primarily in my own mind. Looking back now, I see that this was all part of the same blindness on my part. As I aged and had more experience of life, I came to understand that rationally willing the good of another human may actually be something more than I could imagine at the age of 17. While I am still a 21st century human who thinks that emotion must play some part in love, I have come to accept that humans must be loved even when warm and comforting emotions are absent. And perhaps this is the hardest and most important way to love. I often think of Robert Crouse. What would he make of the unleashed negativity and emotion that we live with these days in a world where everything is politics? Probably he would smile and tell me that this is how it has always been. Perhaps he would quote Dante. Perhaps he would point out that a little more rational willing of the good is precisely what we need.