A Most Complicating Elite

Competence is nearly always a good thing. But there are times when it's not exactly the best predictor of prudence, or judgment, of proportion and restraint, of discernment, or even of humility. And sometimes it can seek out extreme ways of testing and proving itself, and others, the implications of which may be very disturbing. And not always for the better. 

For instance, these past ten years or so, I've been struck by the sheer abundance of highly competent people who like nothing better than a good stiff challenge. And sometimes the bigger the better. In fact (if I didn't know better), I'd say they may even seem depressed, or demoralized, when they find an otherwise efficient procedure running a mite too smoothly. To the point, indeed, where many seem almost driven to insert a fresh challenge, or to hunt or scrounge around for one, in situations where in fact little or no pre-existing challenge exists. Almost as if (as I've ranted in other places), there were nothing really worth doing except in the degree that it's difficult.

But now imagine that more of the world's visibly effective people were to choose simplicity as often than they chose heroism. Imagine if, for a change, even a bare majority of all the conscientious, focused, purpose-driven people in the world simply did the simplest, most obvious, most humble duty lying in front of them. Even if it meant nothing more than holding a stiff, heavy door open at the right moment for a person on a walker. Instead of seeking out - say, for the purpose of distinguishing themselves - some task that's more complicated and challenging, which might lay two or three or four steps down the road. Which latter task they choose, not because it's the one most natural to them, or reflects some innate gift or propensity or talent. Or even the one that gives them the most joy.  Rather do they choose the more difficult (heroic?), less immediate task, because it's the surest way, these days, of being taken seriously by certain People Who Count. And of gaining the confidence of these People Who Count. And of being lauded and promoted by them. Because, in the final count, isn't it only through THEIR earnest mediation, and intercession, and sponsorship, that any of us can be effective at all? 

Or maybe even just keep our jobs?

The Return of the Naive; or, My Hopeless Unfitness for this Great World

Yes, maybe I'm just naive, on these recondite matters. (As no doubt I am in so many of the ways of this most wisely elitist, esoteric, complexity-loving Great Global World.)

But why is it these days, I never fail to be amazed at all the various podcasts out there - most but not all of them hosted by women - which presume to dispense every sort of urgent advice to lovelorn young men. Or if nothing else, love-perplexed young men.

What I notice - and again, it may be just my incurable world-dullness - is that, however wide-ranging the prescriptions may be, they seem in general to boil down to tips on one vital issue: how to succeed in being everything (and why should she settle for less?) - EVERYTHING every self-respecting attractive woman supposedly wants in a man. Everything except, of course, for being oneself. Because everyone knows how limited, how hopelessly quaint, how pitiably antiquated that resource most always turns out to be. 

What bothers me most is the compulsively analytic, break-it-all-down, almost chemical focus of all this. Really, since when did masculinity - or any other component of male personal attractiveness - come down to something as simple and manipulable as a lab formula? As if what any of us has been made were a thing somehow elixir-able, distillable, reducible to something else, that we in our bold shrewdness "create", or concoct, and control. And so may freely spice and doctor up. Usually, I notice, more or less to the death of any real flavor. Again, as if any bottling we do, any mere potion we make of ourselves didn't cut us off irretrievably from an illimitable Source. As if, indeed, any reduction we perform on what God has made, however well-seasoned, weren't always a thing done at immense risk, and inconceivable cost, to both chef and preparation. But all the more, as in this case, when the latter two are one and the same creature.

And yes, I know there are lots of love-perplexed young women out there who seem more or less obsessed with control. (Which in practical terms often translates into obsession with a controller.) And that is commonly rooted in a kind of horror of anything hinting at real vulnerability, whether in themselves or in their prospective partners. At least in the relationship's so-called initial phases. Which ensuing clash of Titans typically not only erodes any basis their (mis)union might have had in friendship; it pretty much precludes any possibility of friendship between them in the future. With famously glorious results for our 21st-century Western stabs at marriage and raising families. Indeed, I wonder if our modern attempts at bringing "up" children would be half so hellishly hard if their parents weren't so busy trying discipline each other.

Again, I realize this is the glorious world we have made, whose latest Great Global version comes with the same old injunction, only this time still more imperative: ADAPT OR DIE. My question is, What's all this got to do with adapting to the God who made us? Except, of course, as a brilliantly efficient method of driving us ever farther away from Him?

On Being Maritally Perfect

These past 2-3 months, my good friend of 34 years has been living through the rapid - in fact, accelerating - implosion of his marriage of 40 years and 4 children. 

Saddest of all, it seems to be moving fast in the direction of a fairly punitive divorce. A divorce he's done nothing to contest. A complicating factor is that they're both evangelical Christians, who have been attending the same church for decades, and who share roughly the same views on theology and politics. To paraphrase Bernard Shaw, here are two very different people divided by a common religion. Neither does it help, in getting a grasp of the broader situation, that she is a pillar of the church: esteemed, respected, admired, listened to, confided in, sided with, by almost everybody. Plus she's also my friend.

So I tried to explore with her, in a recent conversation, how he might over the years have been unduly critical, or what might have been his more unreasonable demands and expectations. And I think she made it pretty clear that there were none. At all events, he wasn't channeling, or siphoning, or stifling their marriage in a way that made it harder and harder for her to be herself. No, again and again she made clear that the real sticking-point was not any demands he made on her. Rather it was his non-compliance - or more often, imperfectly willing, or imperfectly affectionate compliance - with what, surely, any serious Christian would have considered minor and reasonable requests for favors. And these, yes, in addition to any shared household chores he likely had already completed; but again, utterly reasonable in nature. And yet for some reason he persisted in feeling, and reacting, as though he was being nagged and hounded, whenever these issues came up. And kept telling her: "Stop treating me like a child." Her reply: "But you are a child."

When I asked her what he seemed most to expect from her, or from their relationship, apart from  those moments, passages and periods of real warmth and affection where they genuinely seemed to understand each other (and when all his duly appointed tasks had been completed), her answer was: "To be left alone."

Lately it seems to me that, at least here in America, a lot of married people expect from their spouses a strange and distinct kind of perfection. A standard that, however limited it may be in its particular sphere and range of expectations - say, household chores, emotional attentiveness, responsiveness, mind-reading, mood-gauging, etc - is nonetheless very exact, and exacting. The assumption seems be that one's spouse,  while not exactly a god (except maybe of his/her own personal and immediate perimeter), is nonetheless a radically free agent with regard to two key areas:

1) all moral endeavor they undertake - or are asked to undertake - and 

2) all moral outcome. 

In other words, within this limited sphere of defined expectation ("Gosh, ALL I was asking was . . ."), spouses are fully capable of being every bit as good - as appropriate, sensitive, responsive, reinforcing, completing, etc - as they want to be. With no margin for failure. Because, after all, they have absolute control over themselves. And therefore can safely be considered the gods of themselves. Such that in the event they fall short, it can only be because they've been either not trying, or trying not nearly hard enough. Thankfully WE, being (at least by comparison) the perfect husband or wife, are always on hand to help. Better yet, our help is essential to their grasp of their duties, for a huge variety of reasons. But especially given that we've already been applying ourselves so rigorously, and thoroughly, not just to framing the standard of excellence we've set for them, but to living it, weighing and measuring and judging ourselves by it. To the point where by now it practically breathes through every pore. Why on earth, then, should anyone - and least of all our spouses - be so ungrateful, so mean-spirited, so distrusting of US (of all good people) as to refuse our help?

After all, we're only doing the best we can.

Yet surely the proverbial fact remains: the race isn't ALWAYS to the most swift. Nor even to the most morally certain and sure. Worse yet, sometimes the result obtained isn't even directly proportionate to the effort expended. Or to the exertion and strain and heroism of that effort. Or, worst of all, even to your own self-consciousness, as it were, of how much you're really trying to do your best, to be the idealest imaginable husband or wife. Sometimes the BEST result - the best anyone could ever have wished for or imagined - is proportioned most directly, not to the fury of your fretting and striving, but to the patience and quietude, the attentiveness and heedfulness with which you consider the limited creature in front of you. In short, sometimes you achieve your best results by understanding first the nature, the needs, maybe even the yearnings?, of the one you're trying to change. Rather than by treating him or her as someone almost incidental, or experimental, to what may be the real project at hand: i.e, your use of your spouse as a gauge, as it were, by which to measure the moral worth or progress, or moral perfection of the story's real hero - namely, You the Changer. Almost as if You, and your Moral Integrity, were the fount from which all other good flowed; so that any good coming even from God must pass through you. Or indeed, as if striving to "be perfect" yourself were always the best way of helping someone else attain perfection. Whereas there may, in fact, be times when even husbands and wives don't need a strenuous moral exemplar, much less preceptor. Sometimes all they may need is someone to listen, and observe, or even simply pray. And in any case, always trustfully and expectantly, resting in the knowledge of that One who alone can perfect any of us with fulness of wisdom and love, and not just abundance of urgency, or zeal, or expertise.

It's a rule, I'm told, that has been known to apply even to marriages of 30, 40 or 50 years. Because after all, what is it you're really trying to achieve, with your husband or your wife? And how will you know when success has been reached? If ever?p Most importantly, is it chiefly your own moral integrity that you've been called by God to secure, demonstrate, vindicate? Or rather, is it the real spiritual growth, maturity and happiness of your spouse? I.e., that same one whom (presumably) you've been doing your very best to love and be patient with, and pray for?

A Gabbard Worthy of the Sword

Ah, you ask, but is the sword - i.e., this present US administration - worthy of the scabbard?

There are some things only time can tell, of course, and likely that is one of them. But I do find it more than a tad significant that the once-doted-on ex-Democrat is without even well-wishers - much less fellow-travelers - from anywhere within her former party. Including the man whose 2016 presidential candidacy she apparently risked a good deal to endorse. 

Then again, one may dislike - or distrust? - her for all sorts of reasons and agendas. And I suppose not all of them unreasonable. (Though I do feel something like pity for anyone who presumes to doubt her - as opposed to, say, Samantha Power's? - professional competence.) But more than anything else right now I'd like to know who are her most visceral haters. And more to the point, what are their real, most visceral motives and agendas. Oh, I'm sure they have something to do with what we used quaintly to call "foreign affairs", and America's "standing in the world." Still I wonder: Just what does it mean to hate, detest, despise, revile, etc, a political figure whose only political hatred, to the best of my knowledge, is directed towards something perhaps most accurately described as jihadism. In short, her one most pressing foreign crusade has always targeted those who are, at least as much as any other contenders - and conceivably far more than even those lame, vile, pathetic, diabolic, retrograde, brilliant, bestial,  omniconspiratorial, omni-incompetent Russians (3rd paragraph from bottom) - the enemies, not of this or that country or bloc (or even of God's Chosen Country), but of the human race. 

Again, say what you like, wring your hands, clutch your pearls, what have you. I for one will continue to be relieved that, after what seemed like an interminable Senate confirmation process, the best woman finally, actually won. As opposed to the worst available woman being merely handed a nomination.

The Martyrdom We Seek; or, Why Voting for Peace Has Become So Bloody Hard

I find it funny how, in many quarters, the world today is said to be awash in selfishness. Perhaps as never before. Rather as if our biggest societal challenges all boiled down to a sort of pervasive, consuming apathy. And that, of course, regarding anything beyond our most immediate (and self-gratifying) individual concerns.

Yet ask yourself, as you look about this churning Great Global World: Do you really find any shortage, not just of altruism, but of literal martyrs, and martyrdoms? And these often of the most costly and and sacrificial kinds? (To say nothing of blood-sacrificing.) Notice, too, how they seem to run the very widest spiritual gamut: everything from Hamasian diabolism, to Ukrainean "sanctity," to world-class nations gambling their economic futures for some chimera of Armageddon-like "total victory." 

At all events (and however much or little each side reflects Real Differences of Light and Darkness), what they seem to have most saliently in common is a blithe determination to count almost no cost whatsoever. And least of all to "their own" side, or among "their own" kind.  Maybe the assumption is that any harm I risk to myself is worth whatever piecemeal, "by-a-thousand-cuts" damage I can inflict on you. Almost as if I were confident, even at point of total collapse, of some assured relief or deliverance - maybe one that's supposed to come, science-fiction-style, from out of an alien realm. Or perhaps from another dimension? Or other side of eternity?

(Which, if so, in turn makes me wonder just what sort of bubble we're actually living in.)

Might I suggest, then, that the problem with our present, 21st-century world is not that it flees suffering, or hardship, or sacrifice. That may have been a fair enough diagnosis of, say, America and American popular culture in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. But it's an extremely poor and misleading description, either of America or of our Americanized, globalized world - including both mainland China and Saudi Arabia - since roughly AD 2000. The trouble with today's world is not that it doesn't know how to seek and pursue suffering. Along with, in a twisted sort of way, reveling in it, self-martyring by it, using it as a way of building one's own side up and putting the other side down (presumably for not being "sacrificial," or "dedicated," or "compassionate" - or even progressive - enough). Our global 21st-century world has no problem whatever doing and celebrating any of those things. The trouble with us today - and what may give us every deceptive appearance of "conventional" seflishness - is that we don't know how to accept suffering. Certainly none, in any case, that's not of our direct and express making. Or adversity, for that matter. Or difficulty. Or sometimes even the slightest inconvenience. But in particular, may I suggest, when it "comes from God"?

Speaking of Whom, what was it our parents used to say, once upon a time? "DON'T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE"?

Why I am a Lay Franciscan

1) In a world growing more and more addicted to scale and complexity, Franciscans learn that small, simple acts of kindness and care may sometimes be both more pleasing to God, and more helpful to real (as opposed to projected, or imaginary) human creatures. 

2) In a world where one can never have enough, Franciscans learn that having less somehow gives us not only more time and energy, but also more awareness and compassion for the needs of others (both human and non-human).

3) In an asteroid-filled universe (not to mention a drone-puzzled Pentagon)  that can seem every day more terrifying and unpredictable, Franciscans learn small, simple ways, not only of making "nature" friendlier, but maybe even, by God's grace, of bringing out the friendliness that is already there (in ALL kinds of creatures)?

4) In a world where one can never be strong and secure enough, Franciscans learn that trustfulness and vulnerability often point the Way to a more God-filled security, and a more loving (because more humble) strength.  

5) In a world where things can never go fast enough, Franciscans learn that slowing down can both minimize mistakes, and multiply awareness and consideration of others.

6) In a world of "service with a strain" - where one should never quite be oneself - Franciscans learn that being who we are is sometimes the best hospitality, and that one's own nature is usually the amplest foundation for the fulness of God's grace.

Think of it! A love that actually FREES!

Yes, actually frees.

As opposed to, you know, those modern-design modes of big, ambitious, DYNAMIC love, of which we find no little evidence in the Great Global World today. The sort of bold, take-charge loves - whether erotic/sexual, interpersonal, operational, economic, political, progressive, global, etc - wherein we find ourselves so drivenly invested in, say, the progress, or the transformation, or even the perfection of the beloved, that we seem to be offering them just about everything they could ever . . .  not want. Or, to put it more directly: everything they could ever want, except freedom. And in particular the freedom to be just themselves. And nothing but themselves. So help us God.

Which aggressive charity also, by coincidence, just happens to be the kind of love that makes Us Knowing Ones more emotionally secure and self-assured. And persuaded of our own rightness, or Right-Side-of-Historyness, or whatever. Never mind, of course, about the diminishing effects it may have on the security and confidence of those we love. Or at least try, and strain, to love. After all, if they are in some key operational sense our inferiors (at least for the provisional time being), it may be asked: What right do they have to a security and confidence even remotely on a par with ours?

Still I wonder, is it possible for anyone - even for Us - to be too confident? To be too sure of even Our Own good intentions? There are limits, after all, to the power (or even the benevolence) of any mere human manipulation, however superior its source. Imagine, then, if just for one day we took these loved ones, in whose perfection we are so drivenly invested, out of our own capable hands. And left them, say, in God's. Could we be as certain of their attaining, as quickly, that same utmost potential that's surely an ace-in-the-hole under our generous oversight? But now further imagine, we had no contact with them for one whole week. Or month. Or even for an entire year? 

And now suppose that - unthinkable though it be, and a heinous breach of responsibility on our part - we were never to see them again. Granted, God remains in ultimate charge. And no doubt He will take care of them, after His fashion. Yet wouldn't He so much the more prefer to work through Us? And if not, then why on earth has He created us in His image?? More to the point, why has He empowered Us to be so much better - at least for now - than the ones we're trying to help???

Which brings me to what I think is the pivotal question: 

Can we trust God enough to allow people their completest freedom from us - from our  expectations, urgencies and agendas? From our desires and longings and lusts? And still enjoy, marvel at, be enraptured with the end product? But in particular when all the God-indwelt fulness of that freedom entails their souls' liberty, not just from our busy minds and wills and agendas, but from their own. And all the more so, it seems to me, when those same souls' utterly natural, unlabored breathing at last opens a portal to Something barely suspected, even from within their own hearts: A Love, graciously acting upon - and yet fully consonant with - their own free will, that actually enjoys our freedom too.