As I'm sure by now some of you have noticed, I'm not the easiest of writers to understand. But lately I'm beginning to wonder if I'm getting worse instead of better. And in particular concerning a recent blog entry - and the plight of a few of my readers (or possibly more than I'd care to admit or imagine?) who may have had rather a hard time following all its various twists and turns.
I mean, of course, my four-part Labor Day reflection, "A Less Debilitating Busyness." If you're one of those frustrated readers, believe me when I say you have my sympathy. And that your difficulty is far more a reflection on me than on you - and by no means a good one. But for now, let me see if I can't clarify some of the main points of an admittedly difficult meditation.
What I was trying to explore was our fallen human appetite for glory and grandeur - almost any way we get them, in fact. Sometimes even at the price of great contest and suffering, both to ourselves and to each other. I've at least touched on this distinctly agonistic, as opposed to hedonistic, aspect of our present Century's capitalism* - not to mention of other facets of our Modern lives - in a few different places. Most recently in my latest post prior to this one, but also here, and here. Perhaps even as far back as here, from 2011, or even here from 2009 (principally the second-to-the-last paragraph; apologies for the "missing" comment, which I inadvertently deleted and can't seem to restore).
* In contrast to that of the Twentieth Century, as touched on, again, here, and explored a bit more in depth here, just a few years back.
But in the Labor Day essay I had one chief focus. I was concerned with how this lust for greatness, if you will, in turn has shaped three things that I believe are very much at the forefront of our Global Modern Life:
2) the way we work, both commercially AND charitably;
3) the way our Modern Life tends, if not to equate "hard" love and hard work, at least to understand them as practically more or less interchangeable (as in Love = Work = Drudgery - and vice versa). And along with that, as a result, how we can often make the "challenge" of love - and even of work itself - more daunting, and so more stressful, than it really needs to be.
Not, indeed, that we always foresee the stress as it comes churning down the track. Sometimes it can seem like great fun to make a big high-intensity production out of everything. And especially of things that seem simple and easy enough in themselves. (Like, e.g., even household tasks that we insist on doing as if we were on a high-speed assembly line. Or operating a McDonald's drive-thru window.)
Or else, if not exactly fun, "productionizing" the stuff we do can seem like great heroism, or grandeur, or glory. And preferably such as accrues to ourselves and nobody else. One thing we can be sure of, however. Any big production, however instigated, is sure to involve some or other high degree of stress. And the bigger, the intenser, the more high-stakes the level of drama we try to insert into any situation, chances are, the greater the amount of stress likely to be inflicted on all concerned. Including, ultimately, ourselves.
The obvious corollary being that any human creature can only handle so much stress. Now it may be very convenient - as well as comforting - to think of stress as coming primarily from other people, or from situations and pressures beyond our control. And yet how is it that, so often, the very worst, most grueling stresses are those we inflict on ourselves. And, as often as not, in an effort to do good - often a very heroic (or at least strenuous) good - to somebody else. We assume we are doing more good because we're getting more and more worked up, and bent out of shape. But NO love is gauged, nor is it made somehow more authentic, by its mere arduousness or difficulty: sometimes the easier thing to do is also the kinder, quieter, more gently ministering thing - for all parties involved.
The obvious corollary being that any human creature can only handle so much stress. Now it may be very convenient - as well as comforting - to think of stress as coming primarily from other people, or from situations and pressures beyond our control. And yet how is it that, so often, the very worst, most grueling stresses are those we inflict on ourselves. And, as often as not, in an effort to do good - often a very heroic (or at least strenuous) good - to somebody else. We assume we are doing more good because we're getting more and more worked up, and bent out of shape. But NO love is gauged, nor is it made somehow more authentic, by its mere arduousness or difficulty: sometimes the easier thing to do is also the kinder, quieter, more gently ministering thing - for all parties involved.
By the same token, the harder thing we choose to do - precisely because it cuts most sharply against our own grain or nature - may justify in our minds that much less patience with the grain or nature of someone else. That is why I keep insisting: The more we measure the love in any charitable act by how burdensome or draining or dissipating it is, whether of giver or receiver (or preferably both), the more we may be tempted to use that very burdensomeness as a cloak to cover a multitude of sins. In other words, the easier we shall find it to pre-justify, in our "good and kind" act, elements of harshness, cruelty, even violence. And the greater the degree of harshness we deem "necessary" to mete out - say, to certain loved ones who keep failing to meet our expectations - the more our vision and discernment of them shall be clouded. I.e., the more we shall be prevented from seeing the subjects of our good acts in those creatures' initial, pre-intervention state. Because, in fact, the very violence of our demeanor, words, expressions, actions has already altered them, constricted them, made them less and less "themselves", and more and more the objects (or obstacles) of our will. And how are we supposed to bless, and love, any creature more, in the measure that we understand it less?
Really, is that so very hard to understand? -- Love as that which least alters the subject of our investigation, and of our ministry? So that we may at last see it - or him, or her, or you or me - most clearly for what it is? and so minister to it accordingly?
Which is to say, according to its own God-given nature, and not our own man-given, endlessly reconfiguring agendas. And all the more so when you consider that we are being led by God, through trustful prayer, (hopefully) every step of the way.
"Oh, but where's the challenge and SUFFERING in all that? Where's the drama and martyrdom, the heroism and glory?"
Well, hopefully nowhere. At least not on man's side, or coming from man's quarters. God's side of things is, of course, a wholly different matter. God may direct or allow any number of difficulties, even tribulations, to come our way. But notice that these "crosses" usually have the effect of disciplining, or even diminishing, our egos, rather than inflating and indulging them. In addition to being brutally hard, if not downright impossible, to rehearse "on our own," before our hour of trial and visitation comes.
Again, let me try to be clear on this point: we humans can no more "rehearse" or self-inflict our own trials than our wise global elites could have readied us for Covid-19. After all, no matter how hard it strives, there is only so much in this world that Blind Arrogance can prepare one for; at some point or other Vigilant Humility must step in to relieve. Until then, of course, we have our own, often very public, attempts to crucify ourselves. These most often do a very good job of puffing us up, and then in turn make us that much more demanding of others. But they're typically the poorest modes of rehearsal for the often very secret and silent crucifixions God may send or permit to cross our paths.
My point is that suffering is inevitable in this world of ours. And not just from malign things in "Nature" like Covid. We humans generate it almost as naturally as we breathe. And often precisely in those times when we least want to. The joy of God's - of Christ's - Cross lies in that it is no mere m1an's suffering that we are taken into the heart of, but our very own Maker's. Any door or path into Man's suffering, however noble and altruistic, can only imbed us ever more deeply in Man's misery. Which in turn can only generate more false glory, and even falser (self-)satisfaction. And then on to more misery. The miracle of Divine suffering is that it breaks into this familiar treadmill cycle of misery, self-martyrdom and glory. In the Cross we have a God who has made Himself so fully human, all the way to death, and beyond death, as to carve out of Himself, as it were, a prior path of suffering in which we can walk. So that we humans don't forever and always have to be spiritual-wilderness pioneers, constantly blazing a trail of our own through uncharted and hostile territory. I can assure you, God has fully charted Himself. And just because it is a path right into heart of Himself, it is so much more loving, gentler - even kinder! - a way to purification, and so to perfection, than any road we could ever make out of our own pain and sacrifice. And that, regardless of whether we break and pave our roads chiefly to impress ourselves, to impress each other, or to impress God.
In sum, then, my point is not to minimize the value and gain of suffering as a training and discipline in humility - i.e., a training in being properly sobered, and awed, by all the things we cannot control. Or that we strive to control at our own peril. But most of the gain involved depends on how grace-fully we accept and endure suffering as it is sent - not as it is self-inflicted, or self-provoked.
On the other hand, if that much less of my own self-travailing heroism and glory can only mean so much the greater satisfaction - the greater fulfilment - of the creature I'm trying to understand, why, shouldn't that be enough contentment for all around? As for my own glorious "merit," here's a question to consider:
Shouldn't it be enough - even for me - to know I am pleasing God so much the more (to say nothing of that particular creature of His whom I've been commissioned to bless)? Even as I'm pleasing my own self-image that much less?
(Edited.)
