Wheels Without Wheels: Out of Sync with Creation

Not long ago I was reading a 26 year old essay by Wendell Berry (“Two Economies” – included in Berry, The Art of the Commonplace) in which he refers to a short section of a 200 year old poem by William Blake, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, when I discovered a one month old news release - and it suddenly all made sense. Sort of.

Okay, I’ll explain. Here’s a bit of the poem:

I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe
And there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages dire
Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton. black the cloth
In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden: which
Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony & peace.

Now the essay. Berry is trying to untangle Blake’s sometimes mysterious language for us, noting a double Biblical reference to both the harmony of Eden and the Prophet Ezekiel’s vision of “wheels within wheels” (Ezekiel 1):

By “wheel without wheel”, Blake meant wheel outside of wheel, one wheel communicating motion to the other in the manner of two cogwheels, the point being that one wheel can turn another wheel outside of itself only in a direction opposite to its own. [This metaphor] becomes “Satanic” when it becomes a ruling metaphor and is used to describe and to organize fundamental relationships. Against the Satanic “wheel without wheel”, Blake set the wheels of Eden, which “Wheel within wheel in freedom revolve in harmony and peace.”

There’s more in Berry, and a lot more mystery in the Blake poem itself – I commend them both to you! – but the irony of this reading experience came with a brief excursion into multi-tasking, which is how I found the news release. The National Science Foundation used this headline on their release: Earth's biogeochemical cycles, once in concert, falling out of sync .

The NSF was reporting on some research that had just come out at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America:

Researchers are discovering that biogeochemical cycles--whether the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle, or others--happen in concert with one another. Biogeochemical cycles are "coupled" to each other and to Earth's physical features.

"Historically, biogeochemists have focused on specific cycles, such as the carbon cycle or the nitrogen cycle," said Tim Killeen, NSF assistant director for geosciences. "Biogeochemical cycles don't exist in isolation, however. There is no nitrogen cycle without a carbon cycle, a hydrogen cycle, an oxygen cycle, and even cycles of trace metals such as iron."

Now, with global warming and other planet-wide impacts, biogeochemical cycles are being drastically altered. Like broken gears in machinery that was once finely-tuned, these cycles are falling out of sync.

Do you see what grabbed my attention? “Like broken gears in machinery that was once finely tuned…” Blake’s Satanic cogs? It would appear so…

What is my point?

200 years ago William Blake witnessed the arrival of the industrial revolution with great misgiving. He saw giant factories belching smoke and fumes and filled with whirling machinery (“Satanic wheels”) as far more dangerous than sources of smoke and pollution, far more damaging than the injuries being caused. They represented a new force, a force in fundamental opposition to the harmony in God’s creation. But who listens to poets?

26 years ago Wendell Berry sees the same process at work, grown that much more powerful, that much more virulent, that much more dangerous. Who listens to essayists?

And now, in 2009, we can hear scientists – no wooly headed poets these guys – saying the fundamental cycles of creation, cycles we never even knew existed until a few years ago, are “out of sync”. Now there is a lovely modern euphemism whose gentle sound belies its potential for calamity. “Out of sync” in a wrist watch or wall clock means little – precision doesn’t matter. “Out of sync” (or out of tune) in a musical instrument means disaster for the performer but no harm for the rest of us (unless we have to listen). “Out of sync” in a medical instrument, however, probably means death.

What do you suppose “out of sync” means when we’re talking about some of the fundamental processes of God’s creation? I don’t know either, but I don’t think it’s good.

So what shall we do?

Well, if we want to get ourselves “back in sync” with God’s creation wouldn’t you think it would be good to get “back in sync” with God?

Now, there’s a thought…

Ed Brown is Director of Care of Creation, an organization dedicated to 'mobilizing the church to respond to the environmental crisis.' Read more at careofcreation.net and Ed's blog at ourfathersworld.org