A Less Debilitating Busyness III, IV

III  (as continued from Parts I and II here)

 
My point is that humans can make a high-stakes drama out of anything. Certainly we moderns are no slouches compared to even our first-century ancestors. There is no work we humans do - no matter how inherently small, quiet and domestic - that we can't somehow find a way to make it BIG, complex, operational, challenging. To say nothing of globally arduous - and even agonizing. At the same time, there's no work we do that's so intrinsically complex and arduous, SO globally loud and overwhelming and interconnected, that God cannot somehow uncomplicate it. Or disentangle it. Perhaps even make it gentler, and quieter, and more local again.*

*Indeed, just from my own past two years' experience I can testify - and not just with home projects either - how uncanny are the myriad, gently insinuative ways in which our Maker may cause us to spill and drop and break things ever more gradually less . . . and less . . . and all, bizarrely enough, while actually saving us time. Which of course you're free to dismiss as so much anecdotal evidence. RIGHT: as if these infinitesimal building-blocks of personal training and discipleship have not, time and time again, proved themselves the immovable cornerstones of much bigger efforts, initiatives, even institutions. Then again, when hasn't Man Almighty been busy inventing "operations" either too small or too big for God to enter in? Which, naturally, leaves almighty US no choice but to be the sole lords of these "mere human" domains.

But please note the kind of work, the quality of result I'm talking about here: not more sloppy, or makeshift, or passable, or "good enough," but at once both genuinely easier, and more excellent.

Of course I'm aware how much all this goes against our Modern Grain. I realize this Hypermodern Global World is not only an action-packed, but an (often intensely) action-valuing place. Maybe even a world that sort of - well, worships Action. And arguably to such a degree as no human time or place ever did before. Why, "JUST DO IT," right? I mean, it's not like any act of mere quiet contemplation can ever shed real light on this person, place or thing - whatever it is - that I'm so fiercely anxious to get to work on. Indeed (a really hands-on, practical mover-shaker might argue), what place can these virtues of antiquity - or in particular, any such antique mode as we used to call contemplative - have in a 24/7 globe where creative and productive activity literally never stops?

 
At the same time, note that our traditional medical ethics begins with the words "First, do no harm." Almost as if to suggest that some - I don't know - quaint spirit of contemplation? might actually add a note or two of cautionary, harm-preventive grace to our efforts. Whereas we hypermoderns, in our futuristic wisdom, seem able to grasp only the curative mode. And so presumably have rendered the old maxim obsolete. Our modern injunction (did we dare to advertise openly such a thing) should probably read "First do SOMETHING."

Do anything, it would seem. As in, "Even if you haven't a clue, just keep on doing something until you do it right, OR discover the right thing to do, OR . . ." 

Which surely is the most wondrous thing about any incessant, unstoppable, whirlwind human activity: I just keeping piling more and more new, self-interposed data onto my original subject, lest there be so much as a pause, or breath, in which the infernal smoke of my work can clear. Thereby making me at last able to see the thing I'm trying to work - or change, or reconfigure - for what it is. Apart, I mean, from my own machinations.

And again, note this Age is especially proud of how it likes not just doing things - and preferably with as few words as possible* - but also doing them up BIG. And with a big splash. Apparently this is one of the grand wisdoms of globalization (or of the militarization that seems always to accompany it?):  Everything's better when done on a large scale, and preferably made a grand spectacle of. "SHOCK AND AWE," as I believe was the fashionable phrase at one time. After all, whatever it takes to make the world happier, more peaceful, more productive, right? Beijing, Baghdad, Benghazi, bank bailouts - again, the sky's the limit.

*Definitely not words of explanation, or apology, in any case. Much less words of inquiry or reassurance.

Yet surely by now, one might hope, some of us have grown tired, poor and miserable enough to venture a cautious question: i.e., Is striving to make a hyped-up, arduously global ordeal of just about everything -  and with words that only further agitate and "hype it up" - is that really the key to doing the job right?

IV

What is it, then, about exaggerating the difficulty, or seriousness - or complexity - of a pending task that makes us not only unhappier (and often crueler) in the doing of it, but at the same time more full of ourselves, and more demanding of ourselves?

What is it, I wonder, about doing even the simplest jobs in a tense, self-scrutinizing, other-comparing hurry - full of the importance of our task and yet, it would seem, utterly dismissive of that task's own natural rhythms and flow (having "digitized" it, so to speak)? What is it about doing that, in particular, that almost invariably, sooner or later ministers to our pride? And not just any old pride either. At least not the kind we most conventionally think of - one that's smug, comfortable, self-congratulating. But rather is it the sort of pride that is above all ambitious, and anxious. Sometimes even brutally self-critical. Only not with the species of criticism we most need - the kind that actually makes us into BETTER, kinder, more attentive and discerning human beings, and human workers. As opposed to workers who are just busier, harsher, more nagging and complaining. Or, in a word, more perfectionist. 

Perfectionist: Almost as if all real perfection depended solely on us, and always had. As if you and I were gazing out, for the first time, at the seemingly endless prospect of the original Eden from some grand palatial window. And feeling on the one hand wholly overwhelmed, yet also kind of furiously exhilarated, by what it's going to take to SUBDUE ALL THAT - to bring all that unimproved wilderness to its properly shorn, docile, tightly manicured perfection. All the various, numberless (multi-)tasks required, along with their just-in-time co-ordination - to be completed, indeed, just in time for the record-early deadline.

Talk about Pride in one's work. Along with the humiliation of just about everything (and everyone?) else. And lest we forget, Nature never sleeps: this is a War no less "endless" than its prospect.

Whereas I like to think of humility, in contrast, as a very different kind of agenda and project. Unlike all our Prideful Work or Workful Pride or whatever, it doesn't have to be such a hard, daunting thing to understand, or undertake. Think of humility, then, as that secret (neglected or forgotten) window, into the quietest part of the garden, through which we find ourselves making what may be, in fact, the strangest of all modern discoveries. That window through which we discover that, even in our busiest, demandingest work, what we hypermoderns so often call perfection is no longer the Key. At least not to the WHOLE operation. So that we no longer have to do everything with that angry, tense, micromanagerial meticulousness so popular today. The kind that tells us that not just our task or job, but the entirety of our success, our prosperity, indeed our very survival depends on our being, you know, perfect. ("What do you mean you're not clever? not SMART? You want to sur-VIVE, don't you? You wanna EAT, right?") Almost makes me wonder how simple, humble people in the past ever survived at all, much less made a living, without our monstrous self-promoting, self-judging Egos.

Or think of humility as that refreshment from the Garden in the cool of the day - if we could just open the (industrially-sealed) window. That quiet lowliness, if you will, which teaches us that, just because we no longer have to do everything with Today's hammering, harrowing perfection, we are now free to work even some of the biggest, most operationally urgent jobs wisely, flowingly, grace-fully. Perhaps even beautifully. And sometimes, as often as not, with that peculiarly old, still and haunting beauty - seemingly remote as our own birth - which yet also seems to anticipate and partake of what may be, in fact, the lowliest, most unexpected Perfection of all. Or surely, in any case, One very different from the kind we've grown used to performing in these digital times.

Imagine, if you can, a kind of Perfection that doesn't measure itself by what it disdains and discards, what it wastes and trashes and uses up, but rather by what It yearns to gather up and enfold into Its own bosom - even each one of us, and every creature. So that finally, at long last, you and I can begin to be something of what our Maker created us to be. And finally do the job right. Only this time, of course, minus Almighty Adam's (and Eve's) urgently necessary tension and strain, and anger.

(Edited.)

A Less Debilitating Busyness I, II: A Labor Day Reflection

I

This present world - for all its spiritual near-rottenness and decrepitude - yet has many practical talents and strengths. Yes, even NOW: in the midst of what may be the grossest misuse/abuse/dereliction of cream-of-the-crop, globally-sifted talent - and in the face of a global health threat no less! - that our world has ever seen.

Strengths, for instance, like our American Gift of Making Money, and drawing extraordinary profits from investments, in the most ingeniously circuitous ways. Ways that in turn can generate whole new industries, commonly called "financial," which in times of economic uncertainty may seem like the sturdiest house of cards you ever breathed on. 

We have other talents too, like the devising of technologies so miraculous, as it were, in their power to obtain and disperse "instant" results, they just might lead you to believe there's a technical - if not a technological - solution to every human problem. Until we wake up one day - in the midst of a world of global pandemic, violent domestic social unrest, and all-around massive public fear and distrust, alienation and confusion - to find that not only the problems but the (offered) solutions are more political than ever. 

 

But if there's one talent we continue to have and use in abundance - and even more so in this present Age? - it is the power to extract a loud, furious BUSYNESS out of the quietest, most inward, most penetrating things one could never imagine. Or, at any rate, things you and I likely could never have imagined, not if we lived another thousand years.

Things like, for example, the God of the fire and fury of Exodus coming to enter into the inmost corridors and recesses of the soul of His creature Adam. And then staying there permanently. And in a way so starkly, whisperingly quiet, that almost no one knew about it. Indeed hardly anyone even begins to suspect it - His Mother being perhaps the sole exception - until some 33+ years later. But please note how He does this: not by perching Himself atop some glorious, immovable summit of human maturity - like, e.g., the state in which our first parents were created in Eden - but by Himself living through every pre-adult biological phase, wise or "foolish," of our natural lives. Even as a fully helpless, fully human infant. "He came all so still." And what could be more silent, or more completely operative only in and through silence, than the Divine presence plunging right into, not just the "thick of things," but the thick of US - to calm all our human Seas of Galilee?

So how did we fallen humans manage to muck it up? What did we finally wind up making of this strangely still, unbroadcast, unfanfared First Coming? It's an oft-told tale, but all the more worth repeating, especially if we can hear it with fresh ears. In brief, our work was nothing less than the glorious spectacle - the wind, earthquake and fire - of a trial- and torture-prefaced crucifixion. Talk about scenes from a blockbuster epic. Which I suppose, when you think about it, is only too appropriate. The Spirit of (Self-made) Man tends to manifest itself through pretty much any glorious medium it can find - other than, of course, the still small voice.

"But the Crucifixion was utterly necessary for our salvation," you tell me. Indeed: and AMEN. My question is what made it necessary. Was it really the best in us, or the worst? Was it the depth of our secret human yearning for holiness, or self-sacrifice, or suffering, or spiritual heroism - real enough motives even today, I'll grant you - that made the crucifixion of God the Son both necessary and inevitable? Or was it the depth of our sin?

On the other hand, are the two factors really - always - as mutually exclusive as we're so often wont to think?

Indeed, what I'd like to suggest is that the two are often intertwined. That it is precisely this Depth of Sin - imbedded even (or especially?) in the very tissue of our noblest aspirations - that tempts us to make such a Big Angry Deal out of things that in themselves may be very simple, or loving, or kind. Or that tempts us, in this instance, to make such a big, bustling, noisy, nerve-wracking Production out of not just God's own coming, but sometimes every other major event and action in our lives.

Now the popular narrative, as I understand it today, is that the great mass of human beings are in essence pleasure- and comfort-seekers. As opposed to sacrifice- and glory-seekers. Most of us - so the legend has it - want nothing better than to live a safe, quiet, comfortable life. 

Which may be true. I just wish I could find more 21st-century evidence of it. The general rule I've most often encountered is that we mere humans tend to take glory any way we can get it. Even via the ministrations of a certain Tempter. And especially when it seems we have reason to suspect our Maker has been holding out on us (as no doubt Eve felt on first listening to the enlightenments of the serpent.) But all the more so, it seems to me, when the Glory-in-question is our very own self-made, self-won holiness or righteousness or spiritual heroism. Of course it can be a difficult road - indeed, as often as not it may prove not to be just hard, but excruciatingly hard work. Then again, even in mere carnal terms, do we humans always balk at the long, hard, grueling slog? Especially when the prize is a glory of one's own, and Nobody else's?

II

But now let's go back for a moment to the Crucifixion, as almost a kind of prototype of human self-glory. To many of us today it seems the very apex of human evil; I doubt if it seemed quite that way to many, if not most, of its participants. One point is clear to me: human beings are not monsters, at least not from birth. Or normally even within the first six to twelve years of life. And however many adult, well-adjusted, "mature" monsters may have been complicit or participant in the Crucifixion, for many of the others I have no doubt it was real, and really hard, work. The kind of work which often goes most directly against our natural human grain. Work in which, yes, anger, outrage, indignation towards Jesus surely played their part, at least among the more fanatically correct Judaeans and Romans. Along with a sort of anything-but-innocent satisfaction, or self-vindication. But real joy? Of all natural human sentiments, it's the one I find hardest to imagine there. On the other hand, I can well imagine some of our Lord's more idealistic tormentors - say, the Sauls of Tarsus among them? - applying themselves all the more vigorously to the ugliest features of the most odious task ever completed.

And all the more reason too, I suppose, when it might be argued that both offended parties, Judaean and Roman, were aiming at a certain angry, narrow, yet - on their own terms, at any rate - by no means indefensible Perfection. One of simple, un-nuanced secular Law and Order in the case of Pilate; one of the most authentic fidelity to Divine Law, together with vindication of the absolute unity and utter transcendence of that Law's God, in the case of Annas and Caiaphas. Both choices also being marbled, it's true - at least when measured against the strict letter of either code's standard of justice - with no small degree of corner-cutting, together with the vilest of worldly compromise. Still in all (a really hands-on, practical person might argue), the "real world" being what it is . . . and given the nature of omelettes . . . what else could they do?

Which "real world" is still, of course, very much with us. And if anything even more stridently and, well, uncompromisingly demanding of compromise, than was the Roman world of the 1st century. For now, suffice it to say that, in any age, we humans have garnered an impressive degree of expertise in making the most glorious Productions out of relatively small, manageable events, annoyances, obstructions, etc. Even in our own personal lives. (Which may go some way towards explaining our unflagging US divorce rates.) Not to mention public events on a much larger scale. And in particular, I notice, we restless, ever-dynamic and -impatient Westerners. At all events, we've proved ourselves no laggards in the fine art of crucifying innocents for the sake of some political expediency or necessity. 

But perhaps you'd like something in the way of more recent or current examples. What can I say? Other than to take your pick from our Western/US track record of the past 20 years: Full-spectrum dominances; Wars on Terror; MEGAbig outsourcing arrangements with post(?)-Communist China; Middle East hostile takeover-reorganizations; massive drone operations that, for all their superhuman precision and accuracy, have no light civilian impact; SARS and other epidemic rebounds; TBTF recession bailouts; sky's-the-limit national debt; Libyan civil wars; NATO enlargements; Russian encirclements; Iran embargoes/provocations; Yemeni genocides - yep, right down to our all-time show-stopping Mega-SARS Encore, unfolding even as we speak. I mean, the list itself may not be endless, but very likely the long-term consequences are.

(Edited.)

(continued here)