Adding God to the Equation

 Yesterday I wrote about Bishop Curry’s notion of intentionally summoning God to add to any equation, which I extend to mean to any problem/solution. It occurred to me in the middle of the night that is exactly what St Francis is doing in his famous prayer of peace:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy. 

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive, 

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, 

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

I am imagining these phrases as equations comparing dualisms. Note there is no = between them, rather some kind of hyphen. What happens at the hyphen might be Love, might be Divine. Add love and understanding to doubt and one moves toward faith. Invoke God’s mercy on despair and hope emerges. Adding God to dualisms not only makes them nondualistic and contemplative but also makes human solutions, divine paradoxes.