Spiritual “Hydrostasis”
(Truth in Balance)
Academy of the New Church
Charter Day Address
October 15, 2004
Grant H. Odhner
“Water, water everywhere, nor any a drop to drink.” Those famous words, based on a line from Coleridge’s poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” present a picture of a man in the middle of the ocean, an ocean of water, who is nevertheless parched with thirst!
In the grand scheme of the planet, the ocean actually contributes to the balance of fresh water that is necessary to human life. But the Ancient Mariner’s plight illustrates a theme we will be developing in this talk: namely, that water needs to be in the right form and in the right balance with other elements in order to serve its uses – especially in the human body.
Water is virtually the most important element in our physical life. Water literally bathes our planet! It is the chief means of communication – not only of its own life-giving properties, but of other nutrients. It carries these nutrients in streams and rivers and ocean currents, in the settling dew, in the rain, and in the cloud droplets that are borne to all corners of the earth on the wings of the wind. As these waters of the earth carry nutrients, they also moderate the earth’s extremes of temperature. They bring coolness to hot areas, and warmth to cold areas. Water is also the great solvent and neutralizer. It dissolves and carries away all sorts of wastes – diluting toxins as it goes, constantly restoring the “pH” of things to life-friendly proportions.
Water does similar things within the human body. Water accounts for between 60 and 80% of a person’s body weight. A 150 lb person contains about 10 gallons! Water transports nutrients around our body through the blood and lymphatic system, and it does the same on a smaller scale within each cell. It provides for regulation of our body temperature (both warming and cooling). It carries away wastes and neutralizes toxins.
Water facilitates these “uses” by serving as a medium in which elements are dissolved – proteins, sugars, and carbohydrates, for example, which serve as fuel and building materials. Especially important is the ability of water to dissolve salts into ions or charged particles. The interaction of these ions between cells literally makes for electricity! Without this “battery” in us we’d have no nerve-action, no muscle contraction, no metabolism, no hormonal communication, no life!
In order for water to serve these uses the body needs to maintain a delicate balance. Getting and maintaining enough water is obviously important. But the body must also make sure that the water is in the right places, in the right proportions. There are three places that fluids need to be: 1) in our individual cells (that’s where about 7 of our 10 gal. of “total body water” is; 2) in our blood (about 1 gal.); and 3) in the inter-spaces around the organs and between cells (the remaining 2 gal.). The body maintains these ratios. What’s more, the body needs to make sure that there is the right kind of water in these places. In order to serve as a battery, for example, the water in the cells needs to have a high concentration of Potassium ions, and the water outside the cells and in the blood needs to have a high concentration of Sodium ions. All this needs to be most carefully regulated. If not, we die!
The stories we read from the Word this morning were all about fluid balance. First we read the vision from Ezekiel – of the fresh water pouring out of the temple in Jerusalem, and flowing down through the parched Jordan valley and into Dead Sea (almost 4000 ft below – the lowest spot on earth!). As you know, the Dead Sea is “dead” because of its incredibly high concentration of salt. It is an example of water out of balance. Salt has been collecting in the oceans for eons, but there it is circulated and diluted by many sources of fresh water. The Dead Sea has no outlet. And the hot, dry climate in that deep trench in the earth guarantees that evaporation will keep any sources of fresh water from ever changing the balance for the better. But in our vision Ezekiel sees that Dead Sea restored to life by the constant, strong flow of water gushing from the Lord’s temple. His angel guide tells him:
It shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live. There will be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters go there. And they will be healed.… And it shall be that fishermen will stand by it from En Gedi to En Eglaim (villages on the banks of the Dead Sea); they will be places for spreading their nets. Their fish will be of the same kinds as the fish of the Great Sea, exceedingly many. 47.9-10
This would have been striking for Ezekiel to hear. He knew that any fish that had ever been carried by the Jordan into the Dead Sea had died in minutes. Nothing lived in those waters!
Our story from the Gospel of Luke is also about fluid balance. The Lord healed a man with dropsy. “Dropsy” is short for “hydropsy.” (Do you hear the “hydro” in “hydropsy?”) Dropsy refers to the abnormal gathering of water in the body. Today we call this condition by various names – Edema (when its in the limbs), Ascites (abdominal cavity), Hydrothorax (chest cavity), and Hydropericardium (when in the heart). We don’t know what kind of dropsy the man in our story had, but it’s not important to the spiritual meaning. The meaning clearly relates to lack of balance in matters of truth.
Water is the symbol for truth in the Word. In fact, it corresponds to truth. That means that in every aspect of the functioning of water in the world we see a presentation on a lower level of the functioning of truth in the human mind. What water does for the body, truth does for the mind.
We gather here today to celebrate the granting of a charter to this institution-of-learning by the State of Pennsylvania. And this provides an occasion each year for remembering our root purposes. The Academy of the New Church is dedicated to preserving, understanding, studying, and promoting the truths of the Heavenly Doctrine – those precious truths given by the Lord for the establishment of the New Jerusalem, the New Church. We are “about” truth. That is our business. We are about spiritual water.
Now our story about the man with dropsy suggests, on the surface, that there is such a thing as too much truth. The poor man had some kind of fluid swelling that was hurting him, and undoubtedly would have killed him. Too much “water” is too much truth, right?
We know that truth can get out of balance. The Heavenly Doctrine refers to this as “faith alone.” This condition is when people have the truth and on that account alone delude themselves that they are spiritually right with the Lord. They can talk well and think great thoughts, but the truth isn’t really serving its proper uses in their life. It is not entering into their life, like water into the cells – providing the spiritual electricity for right actions, neutralizing evil thoughts and desires and carrying them away… Rather that truth is merely collecting in pockets in their minds and obstructing things. This is spiritual dropsy.
But let me point out something about dropsy. Dropsy is not itself a disease: it is merely a symptom. Since fluids are part of all functioning in the body, there are many causes of it. I will mention three.
First, obstructions in our veins are a cause of dropsy. Water enters our body cells through the bloodstream, and is moved around by the heart. When the veins become damaged or blocked, the blood pressure builds up behind the blockage and forces fluid into places where it does not belong. Any number of things can cause obstructions in our veins: injuries, tumors, cancer, lung disease, liver disease, etc.
Second, when the heart itself becomes diseased, it often pumps harder (initially) in an effort to compensate for its deficiencies; this rise in blood pressure can also result in fluid buildup, especially in the lungs or in the chest cavity.
A third major cause of dropsy is the malfunctioning of our kidneys. The kidneys are constantly regulating water in the blood, either by recycling it back into the bloodstream or sending it to the bladder to be excreted. The kidneys carefully regulate the amount and kinds of salt in the blood, so that the proper balance of ions is maintained in the different fluid compartments of the body (mentioned earlier). This salt-ion balance is kept within a very narrow and precise range!
I hope you’ve been thinking symbolically here, as we’ve discussed these causes of dropsy. If you have, you’ve already jumped to the conclusion that having too much truth is not really the problem, though it can appear that way! The problems we face with too much truth are really from things like spiritual heart disease[1] – when our “heart’s in the wrong place,” when our priorities are twisted by some selfish or ugly motive. When the loves that are meant to power the truth throughout our life and apply it, are not right, then all the truth we know and can discuss so intelligently is useless and even becomes an obstruction. … Or the appearance that truth is out of balance can be due to our spiritual kidneys not working properly [2] – when we are not making the careful discriminationsand judgments that we need to – to notice and get rid of false and self-serving ideas and attitudes… Or truth can seem out of balance when we are not maintaining the proper levels of spiritual salt[3] – which is affection for truth – the “affection for truth” being our willingness to be led and affected, not by whatever is easiest or what serves our short-term goals, but by what the Lord shows us... These are the kinds of problems that result in spiritual dropsy. And they all have to do with our loves, motives, and priorities.
We are about truth at the Academy of the New Church. Our charge is to foster a knowledge and understanding of the most vital body of truth given to the human race!
Yet we live in an age and in a culture that easily becomes impatient with the pursuit of truth, with academic ideas, analysis, theory. We want to move on to practical application. The Heavenly Doctrine affirms that the purpose of truth is to guide and give form to a life of neighborly love, life in society, useful activity. Theoretical matters of faith, we are told, should be for the sake of practical ones, ones that relate directly to life (AC 9297.4). But the Heavenly Doctrine also affirms that theoretical matters are important. They perfect faith and make it more useful – useful in the service of life, especially by freeing us from the evils that stand in the way – which stand in the way of our receiving the blessings that the Lord longs to give the world! Our third lesson suggested how important the investigation of truths is. We read:
True faith, by the abundance of truths cohering as if in a bundle…, becomes more lustrous, more perceptible, more evident, and clearer. And it also becomes more capable of being joined with the goods of charity, consequently more capable of being alienated from evils, and gradually more removed from the allurements of the eye and the lusts of the flesh, therefore becoming in itself happier. Especially does [such faith] become more powerful against evils and falsities, and thus more and more living and saving. TCR 352
… happier, more and more living and saving…
This perfecting of faith – through the gathering of an abundance of truths, seeing their connection and coherence, growing in our understanding of their significance, confirming them more and more fully in knowledge from the world… – this is the work that the Academy promotes. I say “promotes” because, if we are doing our use well, we will be looking to the growth of the Lord’s kingdom, the extension of His healing truth to all: to our students, to our church, to people everywhere!
Today we affirm this mission, and prayerfully turn to the Lord, who alone can keep us in a healthy balance as we rejoice in the “abundance” and “coherence” of the wonderful truths He has given us, and as we rejoice in the promise they hold for the world!
And it shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live. There will be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters go there. And they will be healed.… And along the bank of the river, on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food; their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their waters flow from the sanctuary. And their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine. Ezek 47.9-10, 12
Amen.
Lessons: Ez 47.1-2, 8-12; Lk 14.1-6; TCR 352
TCR 352
(3) According to the Abundance and Coherence of Truths Faith is perfected. This follows from the preceding statements, and is evident to everyone who collects the reasons, and observes carefully what results when a multiplied series of them cohere as a unit. For then one series strengthens and confirms another, and together they make up a form which presents a single act when put in action. Since then faith in its essence is truth, it follows, that according to the abundance and coherence of truths it becomes more and more perfectly spiritual, therefore less and less sensual-natural. For it is raised up into a higher region of the mind, from which it sees beneath it troops of confirmations of itself in the natural world. True faith by an abundance of truths cohering as if in a bundle also becomes more lustrous, more perceptible, more evident, and clearer. And it becomes also more capable of conjunction with the goods of charity, consequently more capable of alienation from evils, and gradually more removed from the allurements of the eye and the lusts of the flesh, therefore in itself happier. Especially does it become more powerful against evils and falsities, and thus more and more living and saving.
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Spiritual Hydrostasis - 1
[1] The heart corresponds to our will and its loves: AC 3883 and series.
[2] The kidneys correspond to our ability to examine ourselves, discriminate, make judgments, so that evils and falsities can be separated, and our life be corrected: AC 5377ff and series, AC 10032.
[3] Salt corresponds to the affection for truth: AC 2455.2. Also to “the longing of truth for good, and the conjunction of both; whence comes healing”: AC 10300.9