By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
There are two possibilities—and only two: either we are to serve the all-encompassing whole, or it is to serve us.
The question, Is the part for the whole, or is the whole merely for the part? is not an incidental question. It is the question, once we set aside our natural self-centeredness and look at life, as we say, objectively.
(Tracking Charles Hartshorne, "The Modern World and a Modern View of God")
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The fundamental decision (optio fundamentalis) is the same for all: whether so to trust in the encompassing whole of reality that one is both free from all things—oneself and all others—and free for them; and then whether so to be loyal to the whole as to be loyal to all its parts, accepting them for what they are and thinking and acting accordingly.
11 June 2008; rev. 31 May 2009
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