Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

39. Building New Dreams:Medea,Polonius, Plato, Socrates

        "The apparel oft proclaims the man," said Polonius to his son Laertes. Roman soldiers cast lots for Christ's tunic. Medea magic garment and diadem clung to the body of Jason's new bride until her death.  Paul admonished his followers to put on the whole armor of Christ so that they could withstand the wiles of the devil. Sir Gawain's girdle protected him from the sharp blade of the Green Giant.  Frodo cherished the magic ring that enshrouded him with the cloak of invisibility. In essence, the clothing metaphor is not a new idea; as early as 524 A. D. imprisoned Roman Ancius Boethius described Wisdom as a part of the clothing of philosophy personified. Boethius composed the following dialogue from his Consolation of Philosophy as he awaited his execution over a doctrinal schism between the Churches of the East and West: "I asked her why she had come down from the heights of heaven to my lonely place of banishment. "Is it to suffer false accusation along with me?" I asked. "Why, my child," she replied, should I desert you? Why should I not share your labor and the burden you have been saddled with because of my name . . . In olden times, too, before the time of my servant Plato, I fought many a great battle against the reckless forces of folly. And then, in Plato's own lifetime, his master Socrates was unjustly put to death—a victorious death won with me at his side. After that the mobs of Epicureans and Stoics and the others each did all they could to seize for themselves the inheritance of wisdom that he left. As part of their plunder, they tried to carry me off, but I fought and struggled, and in the fight the robe was torn which I had woven with my own hands. They tore off little pieces from it and went away in the fond belief that they had obtained the whole of philosophy (Boethius 39).