Again I say (not to sound oracular or pontifical, much less Dominical) - but again I say, Pray - and fast when you can - for the peace and free passage, the safety and sanity of the Persian Gulf.
And of course there's a specific reason - quite apart from the obvious - why I want to keep urging that message, through quiet times and loud. It is that frankly I don't trust any of our present global so-called leaders to be - well, sufficiently human in matters like these. To be sufficiently mindful of the people on the ground, anywhere. As distinct from people in high-rises the world over. Or in boardrooms, or control installations, or who likely have bunkers in reserve somewhere, whether owned or borrowed. In fact, I'm having trouble recalling any period in, e.g., the past 200 years, when the lives of so many world-scale leaders were more removed from, less directly invested in, or more thoroughly insulated against, say, the rougher parts of the lives of the people they govern, manage or employ. And if that peculiar deficit (but especially in this war-simulation-as-total-entertainment Age?) isn't likely to make otherwise rational yet powerful leaders think "All or nothing" or "Now or never" - at least with other people's lives - I don't know what is.
Because NO world leader should be that secure in his own mind. No one should be so big and rich and powerful and global, so placeless and countryless himself, that he's prepared to risk, much less write off, the peace and stability of what is still - for most of us ordinary peons anyway - a globally critical part of the world. I don't care how smart and indispensable, how accomplished and multi-productive and superior our Superhero is. No one of his stature and influence should be able to look in good conscience at any part of the globe, much less the earth as a whole, as chiefly the backdrop for some glorified, epic-scale, highest-of-stakes videogame. Or even a chessboard (however grand).
One more thing. It's possible that we already have more leaders like that than we can handle - leaders who think that way, here in the West and Russia and China and India. In that case, I was wondering if anyone might care to explain to me: Just how is that not the most serious and far-reaching judgment on us? And every adult one of us?
(Edited.)
31 July 2019
26 July 2019
A Weakness Stronger than Man
I
I notice we live in an age of many terrors.* Some might even argue, more than our fair share of hectic anxieties, fierce preoccupations, driven - and driving - obsessions. In other words, not just the sort of fear we tend to associate with some of our more cliche'd horror movies - the fear that panics or paralyses us, or keeps us from acting wisely. Or ensures that we always do the stupid(er) thing. But also the kinds of fear that goad us on, into further and more positive action. And perhaps even supply us with more solid incentives (that magical economist's word!) to do better, and be better. Leave it to our Great Global World to find both a productive and an edifying use for everything. And terror not least of all.
* And some of the strangest kinds too. One I find especially alarming - and that seems all the rage today in places like America, China and Arabia (and as I've been lately repeating ad nauseam in various quarters) - is the terror of not being terrifying enough. Almost as if any strength we have is wasted in being even slightly muted or held back, modulated or restrained; that all strength is only used adequately in being exercised to the nth degree. Which I suppose might be true enough when there's just one Giant in the room, with everyone else being pygmies, and he alone having that particular anxiety. But when you've got three or four Giants in the same "shrinking" room, and all of them like-minded . . .
So again please note, when I speak here of terrors, I mean not just those we Global Moderns may be happy to inflict on other people, other religions, other countries. In other words, I don't mean only those terrors that some of us may use to intimidate people whom we deem, say, not holy enough ("we" in this case being, for example, any portion of Sunni Islam engaged in or highly supportive of jihadism). Or not efficient enough ("we" here meaning any really big employer, whether private or public). Or not progressive enough ("we" = virtually the whole of our current Western corporate-political establishment). I mean also the terrors we suffer - or even inflict on - ourselves. Yes, even we fearless Americans. Like the sheer terror, the horror of our being, you know, NOT Number One.
Indeed, I'm by no means convinced that these various fears don't in fact all come down to one and the same terror. That is, I'm not at all sure that the same nightmares with which we moderns systematically torment those who fail to meet our particular standards aren't also the same basic horrors haunting us. Somewhere, I suspect, there's a geostrategic-mastermind jihadist lying awake most nights in abject fear that his man-eating god is every bit as rabidly, bloodily angry with him as he himself is with his favorite collection of infidels and MINOs (Muslims In Name Only). Which is to say, if your chosen god basically is according to as he does - and what he does best is to consume without remorse every creature who fails to meet his most exacting standards of worship and fidelity - well, what else is there left for you his disciple, but to go and do likewise?
Not sure what I mean? Well then, let's try approaching it from another angle, one hopefully closer to home. Let's suppose that my particular favorite god is Efficiency. And that my aim is to terrorize my otherwise worthless employees into ever-greater amounts of it. So what does that leave for me to do - other than become that much more terrifically (if not horrifically) efficient myself? Goose and gander, you know.
Not that I make any serious claim to grasp what's "really" underlying all this, whether here in the US or in China, in Europe or the Middle East. But from where I stand, the general assumption seems to run as follows:
If there is anywhere in the universe an Ultimate Strength - something one might want to call, say, Allah, or Evolution, or Productivity, or Progress - the only hope we have of making ourselves able to endure Its challenge, censure, wrath, judgment, etc, is to make ourselves consistently stronger . . . and stronger . . . perhaps even brutally so . . .
Sort of a "Be ye powerful, even as I Am Power."
The one common denominator I find in all this is a fear of weakness or unpreparedness of any kind, whether physical or technological, moral or spiritual. A dread that somewhere in the universe there's a challenge we humans aren't equal to; or an adversary to which we can't become morally (no less than militarily) superior; or an environment or other set of conditions which we're unable to stand up to, survive, overcome, dominate, and so reduce utterly to our own purposes and uses. Almost as if our whole career as a species, our entire sojourn in this universe were sure to be proved a lie and a fraud, except as we humans become the supreme, autocratic power in every corner of it. Again, even as our god is Power.
But now imagine my grossly amateur diagnosis to be more or less accurate. Suppose that our one supreme terror is in fact the fear of our own fragility. Then our most natural response, it seems to me, would be to want to terrorize - yes, you got that right - terrorize every ounce and hint of weakness out of everybody. Including both ourselves and each other. In short, our response would be pretty much exactly what I believe we've been doing with a particular vengeance these past thirty years or so. And all in a massive effort to be equal to, ready for, worthy of, etc, the challenge or the "coming" of Ultimate Strength - whether our readiness take the form of being morally pure, evolutionally perfect, technologically all-powerful, or politically "all-enlightened" or "correct."
And yet notice how often, time and time again, history proves itself to be nothing if not ironic. And even bubble-bursting. So wouldn't it be something if it should happen that all this time (c. 1995 - ?) we've been rehearsing for the wrong show? What if it turns out that we cutting-edge moderns - Superwahhabis, Superchinese, Superamericans, Superisraelis and all the rest - have all along been preparing for the wrong god, the wrong strength, the wrong crucible, the wrong judgment?
II
But now let's pause for a moment. And pardon me if, once again, I seem unduly hard on our nothing-if-not-wildly-ambitious Post-Cold War Era. Certainly we humans in any age have seldom been less than ambitious, restless, even champing at the bit. At the same time, it's no less true that we have always been far more fragile - at least when measured against what might be called the great sweep of universal time and space - than most of us would surely ever want to imagine, or concede. For my part, I can't think of any period of Western civilization - not even the Middle Ages! - when it was exactly the fashion to stress the marginality, weakness or insignificance of Man vis a vis the cosmos as a whole. And yet, all the same, doesn't it seem that certain Acts of Concession - to our essential cosmic frailty, I mean - have been much harder to manage in some ages than in others? But especially in times like these past three decades, when we superhumans have been blithely contemplating "coming into our own" - coming into a dignity at last commensurate with our true importance - and so finally beginning to exercise our full and rightful lordship over the whole creation. In any case, let me be last to suggest there won't come a time when Man has succeeded in colonizing - and so by implication conquering - just about about every corner of the galaxy, if not the universe.
And yet I wonder: As strong as we succeed in making ourselves, both individually and as a species, so as to endure and prosper in the most extreme outer-space conditions and environments, can any of us ever make ourselves strong enough within time - within history - to endure the fullness-of-presence of a God coming to us from out of eternity? Of course, here I mean not just any old god of our brilliant devising, but One who reveals Himself most intimately in our Scriptures, both Hebrew and Greek. Consider it carefully. Suppose He were to make Himself so palpably real as to silence the grumbling of all but the stupidest (or most suicidal?) of our atheists. And not just palpably, but brutally evident, to all of us, all the time. In much the same way that we humans are screamingly evident and crushingly real to so much of the sentient lower creation. Pity, in any urban area, the poor bird or rodent who happens to be an atheist or agnostic: who disbelieves in, or even dares to doubt, the existence of the Great God Man. Even at their most cautious, one false move, one chance miscalculation and these creatures are easily enough crushed under the weight of our glory. So what of it? Are we supposed to imagine any of us would fare any better - however "spiritually" - under the full weight of Glory Himself?
And so, when it comes to how ready even we Rapturously expectant Christians can be for the fullness of a conquering God, I'm moved to say,
First things first, and Last Things Last.
Better, I say, first to steep ourselves in that peculiar, lowly Divine presence with which we're already most familiar, and whose familiarity is often most apt to incite our contempt, if not outright disbelief. Better to be imbued with that, if you will, gentler glory of God that imbeds itself - even now - with and in and through time, before we go and try to brave that other kind: the all-conquering glory of God as it breaks in upon us at the end of time, and from outside of time. Better to submit to, better to imbibe and fully absorb first the weakness of God, as it continues to weave and entwine itself like tendrils into the stones and friezes, sculptures and cornices of our human history, than to presume that - even because we've worked so hard, and disciplined ourselves so thoroughly! - we're now ready to endure, much less welcome and embrace, that fiery strength of God which can only consume the entire structure, which can only be the end of all human history as we've known it. Better, in short - and for now - to be weak as only He is weak, that we may in due season be made strong as He alone (and not we ourselves) can strengthen us. Better for now, surely? - a patiently "weak" God, than a prematurely, impatiently strong Man.
Lastly, do you think maybe it's high time we put our fears "back where they belong," and where they can be put to most fruitful and productive use? I.e., not to make us terrified of our own fragility - such that we succeed only in becoming Holy Terrors, both to ourselves and to each other - even as we await the appearance of one more final god of terror to end 'em all. What I mean rather is to prepare, this time in earnest, for the real coming of the real Christ. To make ourselves reverent in the old-fashioned way, minus the military swagger and bombast: to be still, and knowing, and in awe. And most particularly to be in awe of what is in fact most worthy of our fear - namely, the holiness, judgment and mercy of a God who finds in our human weakness nothing to be ashamed or afraid of, precisely because He has already, and in His own human flesh, endured and redeemed it to the utmost?
I notice we live in an age of many terrors.* Some might even argue, more than our fair share of hectic anxieties, fierce preoccupations, driven - and driving - obsessions. In other words, not just the sort of fear we tend to associate with some of our more cliche'd horror movies - the fear that panics or paralyses us, or keeps us from acting wisely. Or ensures that we always do the stupid(er) thing. But also the kinds of fear that goad us on, into further and more positive action. And perhaps even supply us with more solid incentives (that magical economist's word!) to do better, and be better. Leave it to our Great Global World to find both a productive and an edifying use for everything. And terror not least of all.
* And some of the strangest kinds too. One I find especially alarming - and that seems all the rage today in places like America, China and Arabia (and as I've been lately repeating ad nauseam in various quarters) - is the terror of not being terrifying enough. Almost as if any strength we have is wasted in being even slightly muted or held back, modulated or restrained; that all strength is only used adequately in being exercised to the nth degree. Which I suppose might be true enough when there's just one Giant in the room, with everyone else being pygmies, and he alone having that particular anxiety. But when you've got three or four Giants in the same "shrinking" room, and all of them like-minded . . .
So again please note, when I speak here of terrors, I mean not just those we Global Moderns may be happy to inflict on other people, other religions, other countries. In other words, I don't mean only those terrors that some of us may use to intimidate people whom we deem, say, not holy enough ("we" in this case being, for example, any portion of Sunni Islam engaged in or highly supportive of jihadism). Or not efficient enough ("we" here meaning any really big employer, whether private or public). Or not progressive enough ("we" = virtually the whole of our current Western corporate-political establishment). I mean also the terrors we suffer - or even inflict on - ourselves. Yes, even we fearless Americans. Like the sheer terror, the horror of our being, you know, NOT Number One.
Indeed, I'm by no means convinced that these various fears don't in fact all come down to one and the same terror. That is, I'm not at all sure that the same nightmares with which we moderns systematically torment those who fail to meet our particular standards aren't also the same basic horrors haunting us. Somewhere, I suspect, there's a geostrategic-mastermind jihadist lying awake most nights in abject fear that his man-eating god is every bit as rabidly, bloodily angry with him as he himself is with his favorite collection of infidels and MINOs (Muslims In Name Only). Which is to say, if your chosen god basically is according to as he does - and what he does best is to consume without remorse every creature who fails to meet his most exacting standards of worship and fidelity - well, what else is there left for you his disciple, but to go and do likewise?
Not sure what I mean? Well then, let's try approaching it from another angle, one hopefully closer to home. Let's suppose that my particular favorite god is Efficiency. And that my aim is to terrorize my otherwise worthless employees into ever-greater amounts of it. So what does that leave for me to do - other than become that much more terrifically (if not horrifically) efficient myself? Goose and gander, you know.
Not that I make any serious claim to grasp what's "really" underlying all this, whether here in the US or in China, in Europe or the Middle East. But from where I stand, the general assumption seems to run as follows:
If there is anywhere in the universe an Ultimate Strength - something one might want to call, say, Allah, or Evolution, or Productivity, or Progress - the only hope we have of making ourselves able to endure Its challenge, censure, wrath, judgment, etc, is to make ourselves consistently stronger . . . and stronger . . . perhaps even brutally so . . .
Sort of a "Be ye powerful, even as I Am Power."
The one common denominator I find in all this is a fear of weakness or unpreparedness of any kind, whether physical or technological, moral or spiritual. A dread that somewhere in the universe there's a challenge we humans aren't equal to; or an adversary to which we can't become morally (no less than militarily) superior; or an environment or other set of conditions which we're unable to stand up to, survive, overcome, dominate, and so reduce utterly to our own purposes and uses. Almost as if our whole career as a species, our entire sojourn in this universe were sure to be proved a lie and a fraud, except as we humans become the supreme, autocratic power in every corner of it. Again, even as our god is Power.
But now imagine my grossly amateur diagnosis to be more or less accurate. Suppose that our one supreme terror is in fact the fear of our own fragility. Then our most natural response, it seems to me, would be to want to terrorize - yes, you got that right - terrorize every ounce and hint of weakness out of everybody. Including both ourselves and each other. In short, our response would be pretty much exactly what I believe we've been doing with a particular vengeance these past thirty years or so. And all in a massive effort to be equal to, ready for, worthy of, etc, the challenge or the "coming" of Ultimate Strength - whether our readiness take the form of being morally pure, evolutionally perfect, technologically all-powerful, or politically "all-enlightened" or "correct."
And yet notice how often, time and time again, history proves itself to be nothing if not ironic. And even bubble-bursting. So wouldn't it be something if it should happen that all this time (c. 1995 - ?) we've been rehearsing for the wrong show? What if it turns out that we cutting-edge moderns - Superwahhabis, Superchinese, Superamericans, Superisraelis and all the rest - have all along been preparing for the wrong god, the wrong strength, the wrong crucible, the wrong judgment?
II
But now let's pause for a moment. And pardon me if, once again, I seem unduly hard on our nothing-if-not-wildly-ambitious Post-Cold War Era. Certainly we humans in any age have seldom been less than ambitious, restless, even champing at the bit. At the same time, it's no less true that we have always been far more fragile - at least when measured against what might be called the great sweep of universal time and space - than most of us would surely ever want to imagine, or concede. For my part, I can't think of any period of Western civilization - not even the Middle Ages! - when it was exactly the fashion to stress the marginality, weakness or insignificance of Man vis a vis the cosmos as a whole. And yet, all the same, doesn't it seem that certain Acts of Concession - to our essential cosmic frailty, I mean - have been much harder to manage in some ages than in others? But especially in times like these past three decades, when we superhumans have been blithely contemplating "coming into our own" - coming into a dignity at last commensurate with our true importance - and so finally beginning to exercise our full and rightful lordship over the whole creation. In any case, let me be last to suggest there won't come a time when Man has succeeded in colonizing - and so by implication conquering - just about about every corner of the galaxy, if not the universe.
And yet I wonder: As strong as we succeed in making ourselves, both individually and as a species, so as to endure and prosper in the most extreme outer-space conditions and environments, can any of us ever make ourselves strong enough within time - within history - to endure the fullness-of-presence of a God coming to us from out of eternity? Of course, here I mean not just any old god of our brilliant devising, but One who reveals Himself most intimately in our Scriptures, both Hebrew and Greek. Consider it carefully. Suppose He were to make Himself so palpably real as to silence the grumbling of all but the stupidest (or most suicidal?) of our atheists. And not just palpably, but brutally evident, to all of us, all the time. In much the same way that we humans are screamingly evident and crushingly real to so much of the sentient lower creation. Pity, in any urban area, the poor bird or rodent who happens to be an atheist or agnostic: who disbelieves in, or even dares to doubt, the existence of the Great God Man. Even at their most cautious, one false move, one chance miscalculation and these creatures are easily enough crushed under the weight of our glory. So what of it? Are we supposed to imagine any of us would fare any better - however "spiritually" - under the full weight of Glory Himself?
And so, when it comes to how ready even we Rapturously expectant Christians can be for the fullness of a conquering God, I'm moved to say,
First things first, and Last Things Last.
Better, I say, first to steep ourselves in that peculiar, lowly Divine presence with which we're already most familiar, and whose familiarity is often most apt to incite our contempt, if not outright disbelief. Better to be imbued with that, if you will, gentler glory of God that imbeds itself - even now - with and in and through time, before we go and try to brave that other kind: the all-conquering glory of God as it breaks in upon us at the end of time, and from outside of time. Better to submit to, better to imbibe and fully absorb first the weakness of God, as it continues to weave and entwine itself like tendrils into the stones and friezes, sculptures and cornices of our human history, than to presume that - even because we've worked so hard, and disciplined ourselves so thoroughly! - we're now ready to endure, much less welcome and embrace, that fiery strength of God which can only consume the entire structure, which can only be the end of all human history as we've known it. Better, in short - and for now - to be weak as only He is weak, that we may in due season be made strong as He alone (and not we ourselves) can strengthen us. Better for now, surely? - a patiently "weak" God, than a prematurely, impatiently strong Man.
Lastly, do you think maybe it's high time we put our fears "back where they belong," and where they can be put to most fruitful and productive use? I.e., not to make us terrified of our own fragility - such that we succeed only in becoming Holy Terrors, both to ourselves and to each other - even as we await the appearance of one more final god of terror to end 'em all. What I mean rather is to prepare, this time in earnest, for the real coming of the real Christ. To make ourselves reverent in the old-fashioned way, minus the military swagger and bombast: to be still, and knowing, and in awe. And most particularly to be in awe of what is in fact most worthy of our fear - namely, the holiness, judgment and mercy of a God who finds in our human weakness nothing to be ashamed or afraid of, precisely because He has already, and in His own human flesh, endured and redeemed it to the utmost?
07 July 2019
A (Yet) Stranger Prayer for Peace
One thing I know for sure:
I haven't got the slightest makings of a martyr, much less a prophet or seer. So I know that I know I'm not the only one, even within my local circle of church friends and associates, who has felt a near-desperate need to pray and fast for the state of our poor Union over this 4th of July weekend.
So what's the problem with us prayer-warriors? Why aren't we all rapidly becoming something more on the order of a gathering and swelling army? What's making it so hard for us to correspond and co-ordinate, at whatever distance we happen to be, in this (last time I looked) still-globalizing world? Certainly nothing these days seems to keep larger and more complicated human entities - particularly the prouder they are of their bigness, and the more jealous and ravenous they are to extend their influence - from co-ordinating and even combining across today's globe. But more on that presently.
Anyhow, needless to say I haven't any answers to the questions of the preceding paragraph. But I can tell you in any case what I've been praying for - concerning America - over these past four days.
Briefly, it is for the preservation of something I venture to call her real diversity. As distinct from any mere ideological kind. To begin with, I pray my country will remember that she is far more than any one thing, or combination of things (influences, currents, lobbies, ideologies, etc), that would try to congeal, harden, broad-stroke, streamline or homogenize - or brutalize - either
(1) herself;
(2) her Idea of herself (whatever that's supposed to mean); or
(3) her presence and influence in the world.
Above all, she is more than whatever makes her nowadays feel SO big and sprawling, endangered and besieged, angry and lunging and ravenous that (if I may rehash an old Western movie cliche) this earth just ain't big enough for the both of us. Both of us - as in, say, America and China. Much less any three or four or five of us. I pray in particular that she remember she is more, even today, than Washington, or Wall Street. Or even Silicon Valley. Or any other influence, however brilliantly successful or profitable, that disposes her to feel like - or worst of all, makes her feel she has no rational choice but to act like - a behemoth or leviathan. And in what to me seems more and more to be a thriving age of such monsters.
So yes, even in this hypermilitarized, devoutly corporatized Early Twenty-First Century, I believe America remains so much more than any of her (self-)stereotypes. Even as that sprawling, ravenous thing we call the Chinese mainland is more than Beijing; that ungainly monstrosity we call the European Union is more than Berlin or Brussels; that cauldron of luxury, misery and inhuman fanaticism we call the Arabian Peninsula is so much more than Riyadh. Or even Saudi Arabia.
So that, for the record, my prejudice isn't against just American behemoths. Rather do I viscerally detest the whole politico-economic Concept of Behemoth, Goliath, Leviathan, etc, pretty much wherever I find it. Except that nowadays, for some reason, I find certain far more consistent and persuasive (and possibly dangerous?) articulations of that concept coming out of Washington, Beijing and Riyadh, than anything currently on offer from Moscow. Or (dare I say it?) even Tehran.
The result then is a prayer, not for America only, but no less for those other Three Horsemen of Self-Anointed Apocalypse listed above. Among all four of whom - USA, EU, PRC, KSA (why do they all answer so well to acronyms?) - and despite certain apparently growing collisions of mind and body, there remains I think a remarkable kinship, or at least parallelism, of spirit. But is there such a thing as a spirit of monotonization?
Mind you, I'm not saying that certain currently prevailing traditions in America, China, Europe and Arabia have NOTHING to offer the wider world. I just wish they'd stop behaving as though they themselves, and maybe each other, were about to become the only games in practically anybody's town the whole world over.
In sum (after all that I'll try to be brief), my prayer is that they'd all stop trying to forget the following 4 points, or rather facts:
1) There is more to being Western, or modern, or enlightened, or even human, than can be encompassed under any version of the word American; and there is vastly, richly more to being American than could ever be found within certain narrow but forceful ideological currents of today, that may answer to names like Neojeffersonian / Manifest Destiny / Expansionist / Exceptionalist / Interventionist.
2) There is thankfully, even now, more to being European than being German, however brilliantly; and there is far more richness to being German than can be comfortably administered under words like Berlin, or confined within umbrella concepts like Prusso-German, or Lutheran, or Liberal Protestant, or post-Christian.
3) There is more to being Asian or even East Asian than being merely Chinese; there is fascinatingly more to being Chinese than being just Mandarin; and there's a whole universe of difference between being Mandarin and being a mere - let me see now - mercantilist technophiliac Confucio-Maoist authoritarian-cum-totalitarian.
4) There is a whole lot more to being Arab or Arabic than being Muslim; and there is immeasurably, blessedly more to being Muslim than can be either lodged or imprisoned within concepts like Wahhabi, or Salafi, or even Sunni . . . or (gasp!) Riyadh . . . or Islamabad . . .
I haven't got the slightest makings of a martyr, much less a prophet or seer. So I know that I know I'm not the only one, even within my local circle of church friends and associates, who has felt a near-desperate need to pray and fast for the state of our poor Union over this 4th of July weekend.
So what's the problem with us prayer-warriors? Why aren't we all rapidly becoming something more on the order of a gathering and swelling army? What's making it so hard for us to correspond and co-ordinate, at whatever distance we happen to be, in this (last time I looked) still-globalizing world? Certainly nothing these days seems to keep larger and more complicated human entities - particularly the prouder they are of their bigness, and the more jealous and ravenous they are to extend their influence - from co-ordinating and even combining across today's globe. But more on that presently.
Anyhow, needless to say I haven't any answers to the questions of the preceding paragraph. But I can tell you in any case what I've been praying for - concerning America - over these past four days.
Briefly, it is for the preservation of something I venture to call her real diversity. As distinct from any mere ideological kind. To begin with, I pray my country will remember that she is far more than any one thing, or combination of things (influences, currents, lobbies, ideologies, etc), that would try to congeal, harden, broad-stroke, streamline or homogenize - or brutalize - either
(1) herself;
(2) her Idea of herself (whatever that's supposed to mean); or
(3) her presence and influence in the world.
Above all, she is more than whatever makes her nowadays feel SO big and sprawling, endangered and besieged, angry and lunging and ravenous that (if I may rehash an old Western movie cliche) this earth just ain't big enough for the both of us. Both of us - as in, say, America and China. Much less any three or four or five of us. I pray in particular that she remember she is more, even today, than Washington, or Wall Street. Or even Silicon Valley. Or any other influence, however brilliantly successful or profitable, that disposes her to feel like - or worst of all, makes her feel she has no rational choice but to act like - a behemoth or leviathan. And in what to me seems more and more to be a thriving age of such monsters.
So yes, even in this hypermilitarized, devoutly corporatized Early Twenty-First Century, I believe America remains so much more than any of her (self-)stereotypes. Even as that sprawling, ravenous thing we call the Chinese mainland is more than Beijing; that ungainly monstrosity we call the European Union is more than Berlin or Brussels; that cauldron of luxury, misery and inhuman fanaticism we call the Arabian Peninsula is so much more than Riyadh. Or even Saudi Arabia.
So that, for the record, my prejudice isn't against just American behemoths. Rather do I viscerally detest the whole politico-economic Concept of Behemoth, Goliath, Leviathan, etc, pretty much wherever I find it. Except that nowadays, for some reason, I find certain far more consistent and persuasive (and possibly dangerous?) articulations of that concept coming out of Washington, Beijing and Riyadh, than anything currently on offer from Moscow. Or (dare I say it?) even Tehran.
The result then is a prayer, not for America only, but no less for those other Three Horsemen of Self-Anointed Apocalypse listed above. Among all four of whom - USA, EU, PRC, KSA (why do they all answer so well to acronyms?) - and despite certain apparently growing collisions of mind and body, there remains I think a remarkable kinship, or at least parallelism, of spirit. But is there such a thing as a spirit of monotonization?
Mind you, I'm not saying that certain currently prevailing traditions in America, China, Europe and Arabia have NOTHING to offer the wider world. I just wish they'd stop behaving as though they themselves, and maybe each other, were about to become the only games in practically anybody's town the whole world over.
In sum (after all that I'll try to be brief), my prayer is that they'd all stop trying to forget the following 4 points, or rather facts:
1) There is more to being Western, or modern, or enlightened, or even human, than can be encompassed under any version of the word American; and there is vastly, richly more to being American than could ever be found within certain narrow but forceful ideological currents of today, that may answer to names like Neojeffersonian / Manifest Destiny / Expansionist / Exceptionalist / Interventionist.
2) There is thankfully, even now, more to being European than being German, however brilliantly; and there is far more richness to being German than can be comfortably administered under words like Berlin, or confined within umbrella concepts like Prusso-German, or Lutheran, or Liberal Protestant, or post-Christian.
3) There is more to being Asian or even East Asian than being merely Chinese; there is fascinatingly more to being Chinese than being just Mandarin; and there's a whole universe of difference between being Mandarin and being a mere - let me see now - mercantilist technophiliac Confucio-Maoist authoritarian-cum-totalitarian.
4) There is a whole lot more to being Arab or Arabic than being Muslim; and there is immeasurably, blessedly more to being Muslim than can be either lodged or imprisoned within concepts like Wahhabi, or Salafi, or even Sunni . . . or (gasp!) Riyadh . . . or Islamabad . . .
14 June 2019
The Direst of Straits (or, Bolton the Door to Peace)
You may call me the most voracious egotist you've ever met. But there are times (especially lately, I notice) when I do wish I was something on the order of a genius. More specifically, I wish I was one of those brilliantly imaginative observers of the world scene who can envision not just dozens of possible real scenarios and motivations among the globe's big players, but also the many different ways in which their various moves can interlock with, and feed off of, and even inflame each other. Rather like in a chess game?
At the same time, the fact that I'm obviously not - er, any of those things - may be one of the reasons why the following logic keeps on being inescapable to me, no matter how many different angles and perspectives I try to approach it from:
First off, let's suppose you're an individual of real geopolitical/geo-economic influence on a global scale. Let's say you're also of those American patriots (your word, not mine) who believes that America not only should but can become more or less the whole world - or else simply pick it up and put it in our pocket? - in much the same way that Guatemala belongs to us now. And all within a timeframe of not more than a generation or two. And yes, by all means "let's do this," you say - even if it should seriously risk bringing the rest of the world to the threshold of something like thermonuclear war. (And you know, really you may have a point there: I mean, given how thoroughly (hyper-)rational, roboticized, global-reach and "economistic" we Yanks have become, if we can't flawlessly fail-safe/backstop that particular countdown, who can?).
Secondly, suppose also that for one reason or another you feel morally obliged to hate, or loathe, or despise, or morbidly fear and distrust, not just the regime but - well, more or less the entire people of Iran. So much so, in fact, that your real aim - long-term or otherwise - is to unite all the variously skeptical, disaffected, dissident and even Western-leaning elements in that country solidly behind the mullahs' rule, with hardly a murmur of dissent left over (so that the famous metaphor of Caligula concerning the people of Rome in this case all but literally comes true, and the whole Iranian people fuses into one head on its massive body that you're now free, as never before, to cut off at one stroke. Amen.)
If those are your aims, then yes, however little short of a catastrophe their attempted execution is likely to prove for the peace and security of the world, I can find no logical reason why you shouldn't back to the hilt the current Iranian policies of Bolton and Pompeo.
On the other hand - and however little you may like or trust the regime of Iran - if the above three paragraphs do NOT describe your real positions, views and concerns, then I can see no reason why, frankly, you shouldn't be doing everything Divinely and humanly possible to send those two Maddest of Men, as the saying goes, packing and off to Cucamonga on the very next train. But maybe you can come up with one.
In any case, and regardless of where your animosities may lie, be sure to pray as never before for the peace of the Persian Gulf. And of course, as always (however it can be found these days), for that of Jerusalem.
At the same time, the fact that I'm obviously not - er, any of those things - may be one of the reasons why the following logic keeps on being inescapable to me, no matter how many different angles and perspectives I try to approach it from:
First off, let's suppose you're an individual of real geopolitical/geo-economic influence on a global scale. Let's say you're also of those American patriots (your word, not mine) who believes that America not only should but can become more or less the whole world - or else simply pick it up and put it in our pocket? - in much the same way that Guatemala belongs to us now. And all within a timeframe of not more than a generation or two. And yes, by all means "let's do this," you say - even if it should seriously risk bringing the rest of the world to the threshold of something like thermonuclear war. (And you know, really you may have a point there: I mean, given how thoroughly (hyper-)rational, roboticized, global-reach and "economistic" we Yanks have become, if we can't flawlessly fail-safe/backstop that particular countdown, who can?).
Secondly, suppose also that for one reason or another you feel morally obliged to hate, or loathe, or despise, or morbidly fear and distrust, not just the regime but - well, more or less the entire people of Iran. So much so, in fact, that your real aim - long-term or otherwise - is to unite all the variously skeptical, disaffected, dissident and even Western-leaning elements in that country solidly behind the mullahs' rule, with hardly a murmur of dissent left over (so that the famous metaphor of Caligula concerning the people of Rome in this case all but literally comes true, and the whole Iranian people fuses into one head on its massive body that you're now free, as never before, to cut off at one stroke. Amen.)
If those are your aims, then yes, however little short of a catastrophe their attempted execution is likely to prove for the peace and security of the world, I can find no logical reason why you shouldn't back to the hilt the current Iranian policies of Bolton and Pompeo.
On the other hand - and however little you may like or trust the regime of Iran - if the above three paragraphs do NOT describe your real positions, views and concerns, then I can see no reason why, frankly, you shouldn't be doing everything Divinely and humanly possible to send those two Maddest of Men, as the saying goes, packing and off to Cucamonga on the very next train. But maybe you can come up with one.
In any case, and regardless of where your animosities may lie, be sure to pray as never before for the peace of the Persian Gulf. And of course, as always (however it can be found these days), for that of Jerusalem.
07 February 2019
The State of Our Disunion
I'll admit, I'm forced to plead total ignorance regarding a matter of burning concern to many Americans today (even as certain Americans reading me are free to be appalled at the ignorance and presumption of what follows anyway, in my last four paragraphs).
What I'm at a complete loss to determine, of course, is the Larger Meaning of Mr Trump: how far is he merely a symptom of our present national sickness, or how far might he be even a small - infinitesimal? - part of a (no doubt deeply hidden and paradoxical) remedy. A medicine known in its fullest operations only to God. At all events, and regardless of what our president may be capable of, God would hardly be God if we found Him unable to write straight with even our crookedest lines.
Anyhow, for whatever it's worth my own hunch is simply this: We're never going to get better, much less get well, until Something Else happens. Something that may have next to nothing to do with who is, or becomes, president. For me the key question concerns any Nation itself, and in particular what about itself it is proudest of: therein, I suspect, lies its greatest doing or undoing. So long as America continues to take her greatest pride in those things for the success of which she depends most on herself - and least on God - she will only get worse. My point is that any run-of-the-mill Man-centered nation, any humanly-driven-to-distraction country can brood until the end of time on what makes it "exceptional": what makes it superior to other countries - or more genuinely utopian, or visionary, or enlightened. Or closer to Heaven. Any supposed advantage we have, provided we inflate ourselves enough with it, can be swollen far beyond recognition of its original basis in fact - swollen to the point, indeed, where it ceases to be much of an advantage at all. Like our vaunted much greater current entrepreneurialism, for instance. It's an unending marvel what especially we smart humans can convince ourselves of. Nor is it clear by any means - unlike, say, with angels - that any permanent hierarchy of worth or value exists, or even can exist, among nations, civilizations, etc. But rather it is, I suspect, more for what they have in common that all sensible countries will always be keenly alert to the stillest, smallest Divine whisper. While reserving a healthy skepticism for even the best of our human thunders, fires and earthquakes.
Again, in common. Because every country (companies seem to be a different story altogether), whatever else it may have or lack, has for itself
(1) a territory however small, and
(2) a people however stupid
- and either way, things way too complex and unpredictable ever to be left to any mere human ingenuity. That is why any sensible country is always going to love and cherish its people* and its territory far more than it could ever love any Idea or Image it has made of itself, no matter how messianic or salvific. Just think how often it is, even in everyday life, that discerning the real, God-discerned good - the real need - of any human creature involves charting a winding, elusive course between two sometimes intensely idealistic, and so by implication inhuman, extremes. And now consider whether that's any less true - or more? - of those territorial collections of human creatures we call countries, regions, states, counties, etc. (And either way, think about it: Is it really after all an Idea or an Image - say, of your wife or your kids - that you love? And what happens when they fail to conform - or even coincide - with it???)
* I mean seriously, how else are they going to get any smarter? Oh that's right - through unremitting competition with each other, and by being properly terrorized by the right boss. Never mind.
In any case I think it comes as no surprise when, in matters of national policy - whether domestic or foreign - questions are so often anything but simple. And so rarely favor simple, clear-cut, extreme solutions. The problem is seldom merely whether or not to maintain a presence or withdraw; to stand tall or stand down; to buttress or scale back an alliance or coalition. (And least of all when canvassing for partners in a coalition to restrain - not one but two? - brilliant, yet often brutal and clumsy giants: China and America).
Rather, whenever we consider the good of a place and of its people, the questions normally become in a sense both more modest and more urgent. Not how great we are, and how we ought to conduct ourselves accordingly - or even how much greater we're supposed to become - but rather, what is to become of us? That last being usually, at least in my experience, the point where real Deity - as distinct from the gods we've invented - comes into the picture. You may be unconvinced. But now think about your own life. When you sit down to reflect on how much better you are than other people - how much more exceptional, accomplished, etc - you don't usually need much help from God, do you? Normally one's own resources are more than adequate for the job. It is only as we think about what we need - about where, and who, we were before we were born, and where we're going to be after we die - that we begin to sense the need for God, even slowly, to enter into every part of us, as water creeps into the hollowest* cave.
*But also the loveliest, by virtue of the water's action?
Most often, then - and dare I suggest, not just with individuals but even the greatest (most over-extended?) nations - it's a matter of heedfulness: i.e., of listening, observing and fine-tuning; of degrees, balances, proportions. In sum, of the kinds of shades and nuances that, even for politicians, rarely if ever define themselves with any clarity, except through quietude and prayer.
And so I keep coming back to what for me seems more and more the real crux - or Cross - of our current impasse: Not how big or small of an idiot Mr Trump is - or any of his opponents, for that matter! - but what kind of ultimate humility we're all going to need, how much of it, and how soon, in order to stave off real humiliation.
(Edited.)
What I'm at a complete loss to determine, of course, is the Larger Meaning of Mr Trump: how far is he merely a symptom of our present national sickness, or how far might he be even a small - infinitesimal? - part of a (no doubt deeply hidden and paradoxical) remedy. A medicine known in its fullest operations only to God. At all events, and regardless of what our president may be capable of, God would hardly be God if we found Him unable to write straight with even our crookedest lines.
Anyhow, for whatever it's worth my own hunch is simply this: We're never going to get better, much less get well, until Something Else happens. Something that may have next to nothing to do with who is, or becomes, president. For me the key question concerns any Nation itself, and in particular what about itself it is proudest of: therein, I suspect, lies its greatest doing or undoing. So long as America continues to take her greatest pride in those things for the success of which she depends most on herself - and least on God - she will only get worse. My point is that any run-of-the-mill Man-centered nation, any humanly-driven-to-distraction country can brood until the end of time on what makes it "exceptional": what makes it superior to other countries - or more genuinely utopian, or visionary, or enlightened. Or closer to Heaven. Any supposed advantage we have, provided we inflate ourselves enough with it, can be swollen far beyond recognition of its original basis in fact - swollen to the point, indeed, where it ceases to be much of an advantage at all. Like our vaunted much greater current entrepreneurialism, for instance. It's an unending marvel what especially we smart humans can convince ourselves of. Nor is it clear by any means - unlike, say, with angels - that any permanent hierarchy of worth or value exists, or even can exist, among nations, civilizations, etc. But rather it is, I suspect, more for what they have in common that all sensible countries will always be keenly alert to the stillest, smallest Divine whisper. While reserving a healthy skepticism for even the best of our human thunders, fires and earthquakes.
Again, in common. Because every country (companies seem to be a different story altogether), whatever else it may have or lack, has for itself
(1) a territory however small, and
(2) a people however stupid
- and either way, things way too complex and unpredictable ever to be left to any mere human ingenuity. That is why any sensible country is always going to love and cherish its people* and its territory far more than it could ever love any Idea or Image it has made of itself, no matter how messianic or salvific. Just think how often it is, even in everyday life, that discerning the real, God-discerned good - the real need - of any human creature involves charting a winding, elusive course between two sometimes intensely idealistic, and so by implication inhuman, extremes. And now consider whether that's any less true - or more? - of those territorial collections of human creatures we call countries, regions, states, counties, etc. (And either way, think about it: Is it really after all an Idea or an Image - say, of your wife or your kids - that you love? And what happens when they fail to conform - or even coincide - with it???)
* I mean seriously, how else are they going to get any smarter? Oh that's right - through unremitting competition with each other, and by being properly terrorized by the right boss. Never mind.
In any case I think it comes as no surprise when, in matters of national policy - whether domestic or foreign - questions are so often anything but simple. And so rarely favor simple, clear-cut, extreme solutions. The problem is seldom merely whether or not to maintain a presence or withdraw; to stand tall or stand down; to buttress or scale back an alliance or coalition. (And least of all when canvassing for partners in a coalition to restrain - not one but two? - brilliant, yet often brutal and clumsy giants: China and America).
Rather, whenever we consider the good of a place and of its people, the questions normally become in a sense both more modest and more urgent. Not how great we are, and how we ought to conduct ourselves accordingly - or even how much greater we're supposed to become - but rather, what is to become of us? That last being usually, at least in my experience, the point where real Deity - as distinct from the gods we've invented - comes into the picture. You may be unconvinced. But now think about your own life. When you sit down to reflect on how much better you are than other people - how much more exceptional, accomplished, etc - you don't usually need much help from God, do you? Normally one's own resources are more than adequate for the job. It is only as we think about what we need - about where, and who, we were before we were born, and where we're going to be after we die - that we begin to sense the need for God, even slowly, to enter into every part of us, as water creeps into the hollowest* cave.
*But also the loveliest, by virtue of the water's action?
Most often, then - and dare I suggest, not just with individuals but even the greatest (most over-extended?) nations - it's a matter of heedfulness: i.e., of listening, observing and fine-tuning; of degrees, balances, proportions. In sum, of the kinds of shades and nuances that, even for politicians, rarely if ever define themselves with any clarity, except through quietude and prayer.
And so I keep coming back to what for me seems more and more the real crux - or Cross - of our current impasse: Not how big or small of an idiot Mr Trump is - or any of his opponents, for that matter! - but what kind of ultimate humility we're all going to need, how much of it, and how soon, in order to stave off real humiliation.
(Edited.)
03 February 2019
How Not to Work with Other Humans
No doubt about it: People can be hard to work with. Even people in (the Catholic) CHURCH. And maybe most disconcerting of all - or so I'm told - even when both or all parties are harboring the very best of intentions.
Though I'll admit, exploring that latter point - how far I really do mean well, and can know that I do, etc - is a topic that's been leaving me more than a bit confused lately. Or rather, more than ever confused. I mean, if I can hardly be sure of the goodness, or sufficiency, or abundance of my own intentions (as in fact I can't - not if I plan to be a good Catholic), how much less can I presume to be sure of the badness or insufficiency or poverty of someone else's?
Indeed there are times, I can well imagine, when my very sense of the overwhelming goodness of my intentions succeeds in making me - well, pretty darn hard to work with. Which is to say, not just uncompromising, but far more obnoxiously uncompromising, than even I would find attractive. Or would, if I could but see myself in action. And might it be just this, as it were, mutually-canceling-out sureness of ourselves, on both sides, that makes it gradually harder and harder for us both to work together?
Collaboration can be difficult enough, then, given a standoff between two or more people, each of whom is more or less equally convinced of his own right intentions, and no less equally unsure of the other's soundness, integrity, maturity, etc. But now let's imagine an altogether different scenario. Suppose you and I were to become pretty much equally convinced of the same thing: of, say, my greater knowledge, and your greater ignorance. A kind of natural hierarchy might then follow, in which I agree to teach, and you consent to learn. And might that not clear away all or most of the pre-existing obstacles to our co-operation? Or is there yet one more thing that we both - or even just I myself? - might still need to learn?
My own suspicion (though it is one I hope to substantiate) is that there is, in fact, One Greatest Obstacle to my working together well - i.e., working in Christ - with someone who seems not to be of my own level or caliber. It is my sense of my own accomplishment, my own greater advancement. My all-but-unshakeable hunch that, however far you may progress - well, in any case you'll never quite catch up with me.
Now I welcome other suggestions. But frankly I can think of no greater roadblock to you or me, or anyone, working together in Love - in Christ - than that one. And I suspect that holds true, no matter how humble and sincere my sense of my own greater advance may be, or even how genuine and indisputable - to any number of observers! - the advance itself may be. "After all [or so I might protest], would I give any less deference than I expect from him, were it just as obvious that he was MY superior???" Well, maybe. And again, maybe not.
I'll grant you, the gulf between someone else's inferior learning, overall competence, or growth in holiness and my own - or your own - may seem all but unbridgeable. As in fact it may well be, in human terms, given of course the poverty of our natural human resources. Yet the stubborn further fact remains: Nobody but nobody can overturn even our most well-thought-out, solidly grounded hierarchies more surprisingly, more embarrassingly, or (for that matter) more efficiently than God. Who else but God could make an 11th-hour worker more productive than the one who's been working all 10 previous hours to the best of his prayerfully conscientious ability. Or make, say, a barefoot homeless church-restorer more theologically astute than even the holiest (or most administratively expert) cardinal. Given then these rather, let us say, unpredictable ways in which our Maker has been known to equalize the unlikeliest and unequallest of co-workers, I feel it may be time to ask my main question:
When do you suppose we Christians are going to learn how to do the really hard stuff right?
When are even we Catholics going to learn to co-operate, and work, and build and organize on the basis of - I don't know, our commonalities? and not just our differences? Or even in terms of what equalizes, and not just what subordinates (makes a hierarchy of) us?
No doubt some of you will think I'm being unduly hard on our poor, beleaguered, doing-after-all-the-best-it-can modern Church. And especially those of you who share with me a common Catholic faith. It's true that lately even we Catholics have been feeling a rather stronger-than-usual push from the world. Or at least in regard to some of our leadership's more experimental projects. Like, for instance, the chronic anxiety among certain bishops to make over the Church's image - or even her teaching? - in a direction somehow more modern, or relevant, or pastoral. Or more sensitively attuned to the ever-wisely-changing Spirit of the Times. In short, some of us have been feeling a perhaps stronger-than-ever reinforcement from the world, in our own current drive to place an ever more positive faith in Man Almighty.*
*Though - please be advised - always with God's blueprints, duly reinterpreted in light of the unprecedented nature, wisdom, emergency, etc, of our times, close at hand.
And that's just what leaves me more than ever confused. I mean, whatever the Great Globalizing World may be doing to redesign or reconfigure basic human nature - or even basic Catholic dogma - you would think that whatever even it has left of humanity might make it want to regroup, or take stock. That is, you'd think that something residually human (residually God-given?) in even the world at large might make it, too, want to stop, or pause, in its Great Push towards human overconfidence and redefinition. Remember, this is more or less the same Great World that gave us a largely redefined Europe, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, arguably even Turkey?, etc. And that may be bidding even now - however abortively - to give us a wholly reinvented Syria, Iran, North Korea, possibly even Russia and beyond. Given its less-than-glorious track record of the 21st century so far (and not just its Trump-record), one might have hoped that we all, Church and world alike, would want to consider putting a tad less confidence in our natural human powers. And maybe least of all in our global powers of discerning, arranging hierarchically, and deploying human talent.
After all, what is globalization in principle? (Assuming, of course, we cretinous humans ever prove ourselves worthy of its wisdom and beneficence.) It is all the best people from throughout the world, aggregated so as to do all the best things in the very best possible ways. The upshot of which is that, today more than ever (or at least until The Donald came along, or Barack, or George II or whoever), the cracks through which sometimes even the best talent was occasionally known to fall are at last being properly sealed. The tacit premise being that if we've overlooked you today, sister, you're probably not worth looking over. Or, to put it more sacrally, what Man has seen fit to demote or downgrade let no god exalt.
But now notice, too, how this same Great World and Age, if you will, continues to exalt, refine and purify Robotic Intelligence. Possibly even to the point where some of our more forward-looking types will soon be moved to say (again, putting it more sacrally, if not Scripturally): "It is no longer I who live, but Roboticity that lives in me." (Almost gives me goosebumps.) But in any case, why stop there? Who's to say, in some not-too-distant future, just how some fervent souls may be newly inspired to reinterpret St John's own words:
"What we shall be has not yet been revealed."
Leave it to our Age - at least I shouldn't be surprised? - to discover in I John 3:2 the kernel of a state-of-the-art transhumanist manifesto.
Now, joking aside, I realize this whole thing is a much longer, more winding thread than certainly I could ever follow unassisted. At the same time, much like a cat with a spool, that's hardly enough to stifle my curiosity. For one thing, I can't help noticing that this same Great World, for all its unprecedented pooling of global talent, has so far failed to ensure even a modicum of predictability, much less peace, to the Korean Peninsula. If anything, rather the reverse (or at least until fairly recently?).
Note also that the two biggest stakeholders in the matter - outside the two Koreas themselves - are also the two mega-economies both
(1) most deeply enmeshed in each other, and
(2) most heavily mortgaged to Our Robotic Future.
Now I also realize that, in this recent Age of Trump, Trade War and Shutdown, certain options that were previously wide open may have been rather sharply foreclosed or curtailed (or are they being in fact opened wider?). Besides which, God knows what other vital points I may be missing. Still in all, does anyone mean to tell me that, in the course of the previous 17+ years of the Utmost Sino-American Commercial Trust and Intimacy, these two prodigies - what with their superior aggregate wisdom, efficiency, rationality, roboticity, etc - could have done NOTHING to walk us back from that brink?
No doubt that's a job for our Super-robots of the Future. My question is how distant a future. How soon on the horizon can we expect geopolitically-inclined robots who've been engineered to surpass the combined human resources of both Superchina and Superamerica? Even if it's within the next 5 years - even if by then our AI advisers are in their turn able to engineer some sort of breakthrough geostrategic revolution sufficient to guarantee a lasting peace - what if we fail to invent them fast enough? so that they can't intercept us in time?
So much for the world, of course. That still leaves the Church, to whatever degree she's managed to keep herself pure and unspotted from today's omniconfident globe. Now I'm also aware that, inside the Church no less than out, we've been raising to a fine art (if not an exact science) the business of promoting individuals with some Pretty Impressive Pasts. Or certainly credentials, in any case. Or if nothing else, resumes. My question is, at what point does my oh-so-heavy, weighty, gloriously impressive past cease to be a gateway to a happier future - my own or anyone else's - and become only so much lumber and stubble waiting for the right spark? At what point does, say, 8 years or more of intensive seminary higher education become more of a barrier than a bond between pastor and parishioners? or more an overhanging ledge than a level, straight, easy doorway path? Or even, as we're discovering these days, more of an inducement to pride and (sexual) depravity, cynicism and compromise than a portal to further holiness?
Perhaps most dangerously of all, at what point do I - say I'm a priest, deacon, chaplain or other minister - at what point do I become too keenly conscious of even the most genuinely giving, serving and sacrificial career? ("Ask me how I've suffered."*) So that it ceases to make me humbler and more grateful, but if anything, slowly, quietly more sullen, bitter, jaded? And meanwhile, all the more stoically disgusted with the ingratitude and incomprehension of the people I'm serving?
*Or so I read once, many years ago, on a bumper-sticker. As I recall, I actually rather liked and identified with it at the time.
Now I realize that the Church even here on earth, and in this present time, is more than a human institution. It would just be so much more reassuring these days if every so often she would act like it. You would think that she of all human entities (and even quite apart from what makes her Divine) would see the practical point of scrutinizing - more prayerfully? more expectantly? - the gifts and treasures actually secreted by God in our human nature. As distinct from the ones engineered by even our best talent-scouting, vocation-discerning, fund-raising and -budgeting hierarchies. In short, you'd have hoped that by by now (or at least since c. 2002?) she'd want to lend a more discerning ear to the various unter-Marys tucked within her fold, in Bethany and beyond. And especially the ones all our Ubermarthas have been busy drowning out. Then again Martha, almost as it were by definition, nearly always has the bigger, completer resume.
Again, pardon me if I seem nitpicking. It's just that the older I get, the more it seems to me that if there's one piece of work that's hardest to yield up to the Potter, it is the one belonging not to the future, but to the past. And all the more so when the poor clay-in-question happens to be my own miserable Life (though I keep suspecting both its credits and its debits are seldom nearly as commendable, or unforgivable, as my ever-anxious self-importance would have me believe).
My point is that in a sense, we can know the past - even our own pasts! - hardly better than we know the future. It's rather like using only chemistry and physics to comprehend the entire earthly life of Christ, from Conception to Ascension. As with any living thing, we can't really know its insides, except as our Father takes us by the hand . . . In and of itself, the Past is as full of sediment and depth, echo and resonance as any good old folk-tale. Or good old oak-tree. Most often the best we can do, again, not just with history but with the past of our own lives, is to analyse and categorize and quantify it, usually pretty much to death. Or, failing all these, we can always moralize about it. We can make ourselves more or less the Ultimate Judge of the quotas, the real measures of good and evil in our lives so far, and of exactly where in our lives those quotas are to be found (always with God on hand as Chief Consultant, of course).
And I think this last exercise, in particular, is the one we do with the most disastrous results: the reason being, as I understand it, if there's one tool of information our Maker holds extremely close to His vest - loaning it out here and there only on probation of our strictest humility and prayerfulness - it is the moral weights and measures of our lives. Too often we think of God as redeeming primarily our futures; after all, what's done is done. And surely some of us in any case have managed to gather under our belts - in however many or few years of life - rather a hell of a lot to be proud of, and to take positive credit for. So who can know our real credits better than we do? Who among us - and least of all the most accomplished - can afford to have even God messing around with, reappraising, reapportioning that roster of solid achievement?
Though I'll admit, exploring that latter point - how far I really do mean well, and can know that I do, etc - is a topic that's been leaving me more than a bit confused lately. Or rather, more than ever confused. I mean, if I can hardly be sure of the goodness, or sufficiency, or abundance of my own intentions (as in fact I can't - not if I plan to be a good Catholic), how much less can I presume to be sure of the badness or insufficiency or poverty of someone else's?
Indeed there are times, I can well imagine, when my very sense of the overwhelming goodness of my intentions succeeds in making me - well, pretty darn hard to work with. Which is to say, not just uncompromising, but far more obnoxiously uncompromising, than even I would find attractive. Or would, if I could but see myself in action. And might it be just this, as it were, mutually-canceling-out sureness of ourselves, on both sides, that makes it gradually harder and harder for us both to work together?
Collaboration can be difficult enough, then, given a standoff between two or more people, each of whom is more or less equally convinced of his own right intentions, and no less equally unsure of the other's soundness, integrity, maturity, etc. But now let's imagine an altogether different scenario. Suppose you and I were to become pretty much equally convinced of the same thing: of, say, my greater knowledge, and your greater ignorance. A kind of natural hierarchy might then follow, in which I agree to teach, and you consent to learn. And might that not clear away all or most of the pre-existing obstacles to our co-operation? Or is there yet one more thing that we both - or even just I myself? - might still need to learn?
My own suspicion (though it is one I hope to substantiate) is that there is, in fact, One Greatest Obstacle to my working together well - i.e., working in Christ - with someone who seems not to be of my own level or caliber. It is my sense of my own accomplishment, my own greater advancement. My all-but-unshakeable hunch that, however far you may progress - well, in any case you'll never quite catch up with me.
Now I welcome other suggestions. But frankly I can think of no greater roadblock to you or me, or anyone, working together in Love - in Christ - than that one. And I suspect that holds true, no matter how humble and sincere my sense of my own greater advance may be, or even how genuine and indisputable - to any number of observers! - the advance itself may be. "After all [or so I might protest], would I give any less deference than I expect from him, were it just as obvious that he was MY superior???" Well, maybe. And again, maybe not.
I'll grant you, the gulf between someone else's inferior learning, overall competence, or growth in holiness and my own - or your own - may seem all but unbridgeable. As in fact it may well be, in human terms, given of course the poverty of our natural human resources. Yet the stubborn further fact remains: Nobody but nobody can overturn even our most well-thought-out, solidly grounded hierarchies more surprisingly, more embarrassingly, or (for that matter) more efficiently than God. Who else but God could make an 11th-hour worker more productive than the one who's been working all 10 previous hours to the best of his prayerfully conscientious ability. Or make, say, a barefoot homeless church-restorer more theologically astute than even the holiest (or most administratively expert) cardinal. Given then these rather, let us say, unpredictable ways in which our Maker has been known to equalize the unlikeliest and unequallest of co-workers, I feel it may be time to ask my main question:
When do you suppose we Christians are going to learn how to do the really hard stuff right?
When are even we Catholics going to learn to co-operate, and work, and build and organize on the basis of - I don't know, our commonalities? and not just our differences? Or even in terms of what equalizes, and not just what subordinates (makes a hierarchy of) us?
No doubt some of you will think I'm being unduly hard on our poor, beleaguered, doing-after-all-the-best-it-can modern Church. And especially those of you who share with me a common Catholic faith. It's true that lately even we Catholics have been feeling a rather stronger-than-usual push from the world. Or at least in regard to some of our leadership's more experimental projects. Like, for instance, the chronic anxiety among certain bishops to make over the Church's image - or even her teaching? - in a direction somehow more modern, or relevant, or pastoral. Or more sensitively attuned to the ever-wisely-changing Spirit of the Times. In short, some of us have been feeling a perhaps stronger-than-ever reinforcement from the world, in our own current drive to place an ever more positive faith in Man Almighty.*
*Though - please be advised - always with God's blueprints, duly reinterpreted in light of the unprecedented nature, wisdom, emergency, etc, of our times, close at hand.
And that's just what leaves me more than ever confused. I mean, whatever the Great Globalizing World may be doing to redesign or reconfigure basic human nature - or even basic Catholic dogma - you would think that whatever even it has left of humanity might make it want to regroup, or take stock. That is, you'd think that something residually human (residually God-given?) in even the world at large might make it, too, want to stop, or pause, in its Great Push towards human overconfidence and redefinition. Remember, this is more or less the same Great World that gave us a largely redefined Europe, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, arguably even Turkey?, etc. And that may be bidding even now - however abortively - to give us a wholly reinvented Syria, Iran, North Korea, possibly even Russia and beyond. Given its less-than-glorious track record of the 21st century so far (and not just its Trump-record), one might have hoped that we all, Church and world alike, would want to consider putting a tad less confidence in our natural human powers. And maybe least of all in our global powers of discerning, arranging hierarchically, and deploying human talent.
After all, what is globalization in principle? (Assuming, of course, we cretinous humans ever prove ourselves worthy of its wisdom and beneficence.) It is all the best people from throughout the world, aggregated so as to do all the best things in the very best possible ways. The upshot of which is that, today more than ever (or at least until The Donald came along, or Barack, or George II or whoever), the cracks through which sometimes even the best talent was occasionally known to fall are at last being properly sealed. The tacit premise being that if we've overlooked you today, sister, you're probably not worth looking over. Or, to put it more sacrally, what Man has seen fit to demote or downgrade let no god exalt.
But now notice, too, how this same Great World and Age, if you will, continues to exalt, refine and purify Robotic Intelligence. Possibly even to the point where some of our more forward-looking types will soon be moved to say (again, putting it more sacrally, if not Scripturally): "It is no longer I who live, but Roboticity that lives in me." (Almost gives me goosebumps.) But in any case, why stop there? Who's to say, in some not-too-distant future, just how some fervent souls may be newly inspired to reinterpret St John's own words:
"What we shall be has not yet been revealed."
Leave it to our Age - at least I shouldn't be surprised? - to discover in I John 3:2 the kernel of a state-of-the-art transhumanist manifesto.
Now, joking aside, I realize this whole thing is a much longer, more winding thread than certainly I could ever follow unassisted. At the same time, much like a cat with a spool, that's hardly enough to stifle my curiosity. For one thing, I can't help noticing that this same Great World, for all its unprecedented pooling of global talent, has so far failed to ensure even a modicum of predictability, much less peace, to the Korean Peninsula. If anything, rather the reverse (or at least until fairly recently?).
Note also that the two biggest stakeholders in the matter - outside the two Koreas themselves - are also the two mega-economies both
(1) most deeply enmeshed in each other, and
(2) most heavily mortgaged to Our Robotic Future.
Now I also realize that, in this recent Age of Trump, Trade War and Shutdown, certain options that were previously wide open may have been rather sharply foreclosed or curtailed (or are they being in fact opened wider?). Besides which, God knows what other vital points I may be missing. Still in all, does anyone mean to tell me that, in the course of the previous 17+ years of the Utmost Sino-American Commercial Trust and Intimacy, these two prodigies - what with their superior aggregate wisdom, efficiency, rationality, roboticity, etc - could have done NOTHING to walk us back from that brink?
No doubt that's a job for our Super-robots of the Future. My question is how distant a future. How soon on the horizon can we expect geopolitically-inclined robots who've been engineered to surpass the combined human resources of both Superchina and Superamerica? Even if it's within the next 5 years - even if by then our AI advisers are in their turn able to engineer some sort of breakthrough geostrategic revolution sufficient to guarantee a lasting peace - what if we fail to invent them fast enough? so that they can't intercept us in time?
So much for the world, of course. That still leaves the Church, to whatever degree she's managed to keep herself pure and unspotted from today's omniconfident globe. Now I'm also aware that, inside the Church no less than out, we've been raising to a fine art (if not an exact science) the business of promoting individuals with some Pretty Impressive Pasts. Or certainly credentials, in any case. Or if nothing else, resumes. My question is, at what point does my oh-so-heavy, weighty, gloriously impressive past cease to be a gateway to a happier future - my own or anyone else's - and become only so much lumber and stubble waiting for the right spark? At what point does, say, 8 years or more of intensive seminary higher education become more of a barrier than a bond between pastor and parishioners? or more an overhanging ledge than a level, straight, easy doorway path? Or even, as we're discovering these days, more of an inducement to pride and (sexual) depravity, cynicism and compromise than a portal to further holiness?
Perhaps most dangerously of all, at what point do I - say I'm a priest, deacon, chaplain or other minister - at what point do I become too keenly conscious of even the most genuinely giving, serving and sacrificial career? ("Ask me how I've suffered."*) So that it ceases to make me humbler and more grateful, but if anything, slowly, quietly more sullen, bitter, jaded? And meanwhile, all the more stoically disgusted with the ingratitude and incomprehension of the people I'm serving?
*Or so I read once, many years ago, on a bumper-sticker. As I recall, I actually rather liked and identified with it at the time.
Now I realize that the Church even here on earth, and in this present time, is more than a human institution. It would just be so much more reassuring these days if every so often she would act like it. You would think that she of all human entities (and even quite apart from what makes her Divine) would see the practical point of scrutinizing - more prayerfully? more expectantly? - the gifts and treasures actually secreted by God in our human nature. As distinct from the ones engineered by even our best talent-scouting, vocation-discerning, fund-raising and -budgeting hierarchies. In short, you'd have hoped that by by now (or at least since c. 2002?) she'd want to lend a more discerning ear to the various unter-Marys tucked within her fold, in Bethany and beyond. And especially the ones all our Ubermarthas have been busy drowning out. Then again Martha, almost as it were by definition, nearly always has the bigger, completer resume.
Again, pardon me if I seem nitpicking. It's just that the older I get, the more it seems to me that if there's one piece of work that's hardest to yield up to the Potter, it is the one belonging not to the future, but to the past. And all the more so when the poor clay-in-question happens to be my own miserable Life (though I keep suspecting both its credits and its debits are seldom nearly as commendable, or unforgivable, as my ever-anxious self-importance would have me believe).
My point is that in a sense, we can know the past - even our own pasts! - hardly better than we know the future. It's rather like using only chemistry and physics to comprehend the entire earthly life of Christ, from Conception to Ascension. As with any living thing, we can't really know its insides, except as our Father takes us by the hand . . . In and of itself, the Past is as full of sediment and depth, echo and resonance as any good old folk-tale. Or good old oak-tree. Most often the best we can do, again, not just with history but with the past of our own lives, is to analyse and categorize and quantify it, usually pretty much to death. Or, failing all these, we can always moralize about it. We can make ourselves more or less the Ultimate Judge of the quotas, the real measures of good and evil in our lives so far, and of exactly where in our lives those quotas are to be found (always with God on hand as Chief Consultant, of course).
And I think this last exercise, in particular, is the one we do with the most disastrous results: the reason being, as I understand it, if there's one tool of information our Maker holds extremely close to His vest - loaning it out here and there only on probation of our strictest humility and prayerfulness - it is the moral weights and measures of our lives. Too often we think of God as redeeming primarily our futures; after all, what's done is done. And surely some of us in any case have managed to gather under our belts - in however many or few years of life - rather a hell of a lot to be proud of, and to take positive credit for. So who can know our real credits better than we do? Who among us - and least of all the most accomplished - can afford to have even God messing around with, reappraising, reapportioning that roster of solid achievement?
And yet, even if just once, we let Him move about freely on the whole spread-out map of our lives, I daresay there's no guessing what long-buried treasures - some of such beauty and antiquity we'd barely recognize them as our own - He was liable to dig up. Or maybe even lend us pick and spade.
But if such be God's own exquisite discernment - His nimble light-fingered excavation, if you will - of the entire soil, rock and bedrock of our pasts (hard-won, non-negotiable achievements and all), think what even lighter and humbler, more playful and hopeful futures may await us. Might that even be part of what is meant by becoming like a little child? Consider what tiny trickle of past any child has - certainly little enough to be proud of! - and what a wealth of future to be humbly expectant for. Meanwhile we elders, with our (by comparison) fast-dwindling numbers of years ahead of us - and yet, hopefully, having dropped off even our most exemplary, productive pasts at the the nailed Feet of our Lord - what about us? Might our futures be that much less burdened, and so more open, than even a little child's? To go out almost as lightly baggaged as we came in - surely there are worse ways of dying?
These past thirty years, we "Chimericans" in particular have experienced - almost ad nauseam, as it were - the extraordinary things Man can do when he places his confidence primarily in himself and his own powers of judgment and discernment. We Americans especially have seen these extraordinary things - including our steady enablement of Beijing? - reach certain very curious if not deeply troubling limits. Most obviously on our own national level, but also on the global. Neither just primarily outside the Church, but also well within some of her inmost corridors of power, influence and policy. For me the the central and final issue is how far we can afford to continue this furious pace of what are, in many cases, our hyper-adult, hyper-accomplished lives, routines, procedures, organizational agendas and goals, without serious Divine interruption of some sort. And especially - as we keep picking up the pace - the kind of interruption we don't particularly want, and haven't begun to be ready for.
And so I am moved to go back to my original question (Paragraphs 7-8) somewhat expanded: When are we going to start doing and allocating even some of the heaviest work - both inside the Church and out - on the basis of what a humble God can raise up, rather than what the wisest of men and women have (felt no choice but to) cast down? Might it even be high time we started drawing from a certain living well - one not unrelated to the waters of which Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman in John 4 (and all the more closely related, in that both of them bear His stamp and signature). I mean that simple, lowly, light-as-the-future beauty God has made each one of us - and may even now want to remake in us. As opposed, of course, to the complicated, glorious, past-burdened, achievement-constricted, ugly messes we've made of ourselves, and each other?
(Edited.)
But if such be God's own exquisite discernment - His nimble light-fingered excavation, if you will - of the entire soil, rock and bedrock of our pasts (hard-won, non-negotiable achievements and all), think what even lighter and humbler, more playful and hopeful futures may await us. Might that even be part of what is meant by becoming like a little child? Consider what tiny trickle of past any child has - certainly little enough to be proud of! - and what a wealth of future to be humbly expectant for. Meanwhile we elders, with our (by comparison) fast-dwindling numbers of years ahead of us - and yet, hopefully, having dropped off even our most exemplary, productive pasts at the the nailed Feet of our Lord - what about us? Might our futures be that much less burdened, and so more open, than even a little child's? To go out almost as lightly baggaged as we came in - surely there are worse ways of dying?
These past thirty years, we "Chimericans" in particular have experienced - almost ad nauseam, as it were - the extraordinary things Man can do when he places his confidence primarily in himself and his own powers of judgment and discernment. We Americans especially have seen these extraordinary things - including our steady enablement of Beijing? - reach certain very curious if not deeply troubling limits. Most obviously on our own national level, but also on the global. Neither just primarily outside the Church, but also well within some of her inmost corridors of power, influence and policy. For me the the central and final issue is how far we can afford to continue this furious pace of what are, in many cases, our hyper-adult, hyper-accomplished lives, routines, procedures, organizational agendas and goals, without serious Divine interruption of some sort. And especially - as we keep picking up the pace - the kind of interruption we don't particularly want, and haven't begun to be ready for.
And so I am moved to go back to my original question (Paragraphs 7-8) somewhat expanded: When are we going to start doing and allocating even some of the heaviest work - both inside the Church and out - on the basis of what a humble God can raise up, rather than what the wisest of men and women have (felt no choice but to) cast down? Might it even be high time we started drawing from a certain living well - one not unrelated to the waters of which Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman in John 4 (and all the more closely related, in that both of them bear His stamp and signature). I mean that simple, lowly, light-as-the-future beauty God has made each one of us - and may even now want to remake in us. As opposed, of course, to the complicated, glorious, past-burdened, achievement-constricted, ugly messes we've made of ourselves, and each other?
(Edited.)
02 February 2019
Joys of Digital-Age Consumption (or, The Fed's REAL Challenge?)
"Only the best for OUR CUSTOMERS!"
So shrieks - rather like a goblin or banshee, if you ask me - our Modern World of Enlightened Commerce. Always the same refrain, going on for - what, 25 New Economic years now? Even as it proceeds more and more to regiment its workforce, and to militarize (or "Communistify"? I almost want to say) its workplace. And all of it with such conviction, such self-vindication in fact, you'd have sworn at least every other employer out there was operating from the same rather novel premise: namely, that worker hell invariably means customer heaven. Or rather, more precisely, that we have all been split in two, with one's Working Self being required to endure a kind of secular Purgatory-verging-on-Hell, so that one's Buying Self might enter the Secular Paradise. And that, as a result of all this unprecedented wisdom-cum-progress - beginning, say, c. 2000? - the global human condition (leaving aside individual countries for the moment) was going to be not only immeasurably bettered, but ministered to, alleviated, uplifted in such ways as to leave forever in the dust the progressivest dreams of all our most dynamically enlightened forebears: Bacon, Newton, Locke, Paine, Priestley, Jefferson, Godwin, perhaps even Bentham and Ricardo. All merged into a sort of conglomerate Moses, constrained to view our 21st-century Promised Land from the far side of the Jordan.
Again, as great as they were, all in the dust. Not to mention everyone else, of every other political stripe and degree of error: Burke, Adams, Hamilton, Disraeli, Churchill, Kirk, etc. Which is to say, pretty much every Traditionalist Conservative, to use the current parlance (and really, who in his right mind would ever dream of conserving a tradition?).
In sum, just consider for a moment the sheer volcanic breakthrough of the Present Age: Everyone, no matter how close or far they were from Today's Consummate Wisdom, all to be Left Behind Irretrievably. Talk about a triangulating Singularity.
But to return to my first paragraph: Who, then - even now - is this sacred customer, basking as never before in the soothing waters of an unprecedented company concern, solicitude, appreciation?
All I know for sure is, it can't be me. Far from feeling even remotely any greater "love" from whatever company happens to be serving me - or even, in fact, its usual mercenary kindness and hospitality - I'm if anything more than ever aware of the stress of its workplace, the anxiety, the demoralization, the terror of being fired. Not to mention the superconfidence, if not smugness of its management ("Seriously, could YOU do what we do?"). Conditions not exactly calculated, one might think, to please your average individual customer. Though they may hardly at all bother - or may even greatly reassure? - a very different sort of patron. A fellow-corporation, for instance. Or an (exceptionally big?) investor.
So again, who is this more-than-ever revered and cherished customer, on account of whom the customer servant - i.e., pretty much every employee outside the boardroom - must be increasingly regimented, terrorized, automatized (that is, when she isn't being automated completely out of the picture)? Just who is it these days that the Servant is being sacrificed for? Is it really a humble creature of God - like, say, you or me? Or just another glorious creation of Man's, to which neither of us can ever hope to measure up anyway?
So shrieks - rather like a goblin or banshee, if you ask me - our Modern World of Enlightened Commerce. Always the same refrain, going on for - what, 25 New Economic years now? Even as it proceeds more and more to regiment its workforce, and to militarize (or "Communistify"? I almost want to say) its workplace. And all of it with such conviction, such self-vindication in fact, you'd have sworn at least every other employer out there was operating from the same rather novel premise: namely, that worker hell invariably means customer heaven. Or rather, more precisely, that we have all been split in two, with one's Working Self being required to endure a kind of secular Purgatory-verging-on-Hell, so that one's Buying Self might enter the Secular Paradise. And that, as a result of all this unprecedented wisdom-cum-progress - beginning, say, c. 2000? - the global human condition (leaving aside individual countries for the moment) was going to be not only immeasurably bettered, but ministered to, alleviated, uplifted in such ways as to leave forever in the dust the progressivest dreams of all our most dynamically enlightened forebears: Bacon, Newton, Locke, Paine, Priestley, Jefferson, Godwin, perhaps even Bentham and Ricardo. All merged into a sort of conglomerate Moses, constrained to view our 21st-century Promised Land from the far side of the Jordan.
Again, as great as they were, all in the dust. Not to mention everyone else, of every other political stripe and degree of error: Burke, Adams, Hamilton, Disraeli, Churchill, Kirk, etc. Which is to say, pretty much every Traditionalist Conservative, to use the current parlance (and really, who in his right mind would ever dream of conserving a tradition?).
In sum, just consider for a moment the sheer volcanic breakthrough of the Present Age: Everyone, no matter how close or far they were from Today's Consummate Wisdom, all to be Left Behind Irretrievably. Talk about a triangulating Singularity.
But to return to my first paragraph: Who, then - even now - is this sacred customer, basking as never before in the soothing waters of an unprecedented company concern, solicitude, appreciation?
All I know for sure is, it can't be me. Far from feeling even remotely any greater "love" from whatever company happens to be serving me - or even, in fact, its usual mercenary kindness and hospitality - I'm if anything more than ever aware of the stress of its workplace, the anxiety, the demoralization, the terror of being fired. Not to mention the superconfidence, if not smugness of its management ("Seriously, could YOU do what we do?"). Conditions not exactly calculated, one might think, to please your average individual customer. Though they may hardly at all bother - or may even greatly reassure? - a very different sort of patron. A fellow-corporation, for instance. Or an (exceptionally big?) investor.
So again, who is this more-than-ever revered and cherished customer, on account of whom the customer servant - i.e., pretty much every employee outside the boardroom - must be increasingly regimented, terrorized, automatized (that is, when she isn't being automated completely out of the picture)? Just who is it these days that the Servant is being sacrificed for? Is it really a humble creature of God - like, say, you or me? Or just another glorious creation of Man's, to which neither of us can ever hope to measure up anyway?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)