The Things One Can Never Forgive

It's taken me rather a long time (as usual) to figure this out. But sometimes history doesn't seem to cooperate very well with us. Sometimes history in a given place - like, say, the Middle East - instead of moving properly forward, can seem to close round itself in a kind of loop: a loop that suggests that its God - assuming history has a god - is either sorely unimaginative, or suffering from one degree or another of incompetence, or simply one who rather desperately needs our help. And in particular our help in breaking that history out of whatever holding pattern, or pattern of unprogressive recurrence, it's somehow stupidly got itself into. But all the more so if our religion happens to be a once and final, never-to-be-replaced-or-revised monotheism, whose advanced purity and austerity are such as to make pretty much all its predecessors (e.g., Judaism, Christianity) retrograde and redundant. If not positively harmful.

So now imagine such a loop, if you can: A blatantly lesser monotheistic people (however ingeniously cunning and conniving) with a most primitive and unspiritual notion, both of God and of their own relation to God, who somehow manage to return to a place from which they'd been most disgracefully (not to mention deservedly) expelled many centuries ago. And most troubling of all - at least from the standpoint of your own rightful deserts - they somehow manage to make a go, and even a kind of success, of it. To the point where not only their own numbers, but those of your own people keep increasing as it were inexorably. And however much they may want to ensure for you the exact opposite result.

Then again, someone else might argue, what difference should it make even if they were to to do the exact reverse - to try to increase and prosper your people, as well as theirs - given that they have absolutely NO business being there in the first place?

Consider, then, what it is even to share that same sacred space - the second holiest place on earth, in fact, and so surely the sole rightful possession of the world's holiest religion? - with a manifestly unworthy nation, and faith. Think what it is to have to concede the lion's share of it to a people you don't just morally object to, but despise, loathe, perhaps even abominate. Isn't it true, that sometimes the hardest of such a people's offenses to forgive, among all the myriad inconsiderations, degradations, gross injustices they inflict, are not so much their cruelties as their kindnesses, not their failures (of course), but their successes, not their hardness and miserliness of heart so much as their bounty and generosity. Think what a triumph of self-vindication it would be, if only you could mark just the former to their credit, and not the latter! Indeed, given their larger, indeed their prior and comprehensive unworthiness - which of course can only testify to the gross insincerity and untrustworthiness of even their "worthiest" present acts - sometimes it isn't enough to "cancel," to bring into disrepute their physical presence in the sacred space. Sometimes the only thing that will relieve your humiliation - the disgrace of their continued prosperity, and your ongoing misery (even as you - or some of you - partake of and benefit from their good fortune?) - is to cancel, undo, eradicate even the memory of their physical existence in that space. Or if, for the time being, their physical annihilation eludes you, surely you can bring about a moral annihilation like no other in the history of the world? Surely, armed as you are with the right side of that history, you can enlist on your side such an overwhelming preponderance of world opinion as will make it just a matter of time before the entire globe vomits them out . . . 

I can't pretend to know how far this is an accurate picture of the basic moral assumptions/quandaries of most Palestinians living in Gaza or elsewhere. But something tells me it's a pretty accurate, if broad-stroked, summary of the world-view of that infestation we call Hamas. And of those Palestinians, along with their apparently growing masses of supporters throughout the world, who have become more or less Hamasified. And as anyone, I suspect, who really knows the leadership of Hamas - whether pro or con, or from the inside or out - will tell you: It can never, ever be satisfied with even the most thorough and irrevocable extirpation of the Jewish state. Consider for a moment your fervently devout Hamas militant. As distinct from some more politically opportunistic supporter. For the true believer, Israel together with her allies, defenders, tolerators has arguably committed the great capital, and possibly unforgivable, sin against the (real) People of God. But even assuming the Jewish state's complete eradication, there remain those residual pockets of support and tolerance throughout the world to be dealt with. And even then, speaking just territorially, why stop there? Do not he and his comrades, or at any rate their closest co-religionists, have at least as good a claim to Cyprus and Crete and Greece and the greater part of the Balkans, to Sicily and Sardinia and most if not all of Spain? And those just for breakfast? 

Yet even apart from questions of territory, why should your devoutly Hamas militant make Jews/Israelis the most blameworthy of his enemies? They almost can't help it: being who they are, and so far as they intend to remain Jews, they really have no choice but to fight to the death those who seek (at very least) their collective amnesia. In short, as unrepentant Jews bent on their own survival, they're all but congenitally incorrigible. But what about the rest of us, who sympathize with, or aren't wholly convinced of the blasphemous absurdity of Israel's right to exist? Don't at least we have free will? And doesn't that make us at least criminally complicit with, and so even more culpable and deplorable than, Jews themselves? 

That is why I find myself more and more convinced that, whether we know it (yet) or not, under the self-appointedly "divine" judgment of Hamas we are all Jews nowadays. And above all those of us who have no intention of becoming even remotely Hamasified. In effect we are either with them or against them: either we are Jews in effect, or else we are those who, whether purposefully or not, have become complicit in the desire for (at very minimum) Jewish collective amnesia. Or other collective suicide. As indeed I frankly wonder if I haven't myself been complicit (and, yes, to my inestimable shame), because of my delayed response to October 7. 

But now recall what I hinted at earlier, regarding both Jerusalem and Israel as a whole. As some might argue, surely it's only right that the holiest place on earth (or even the second holiest?) should be the exclusive possession of the holiest and most progressive monotheistic religion. In short, by rights it both belongs to and should be mainly inhabited by Sunni Muslims.* Yet within such a tight, uncompromising moral framework, it is hard to see how there could ever be room, much less legitimacy, for any Israel, any Jewish state, or even province or reservation or autonomous region, no matter how small or "humbled," compliant or acquiescent. And once again, why stop there - assuming the tables have been sufficiently and irreversibly turned? After all, now you're on a roll, and feeling more than ever unstoppable. "We have them on the run," as I believe one Hamas militant put it some years ago. And let no one underestimate the sheer momentum of outraged world opinion.

*I suspect Iran even in its Machiavellian stupidity will learn that soon enough.

Given, then, that iron framework of moral assumptions, along with its accompanying momentum, the real question as I see it becomes very simple. Even with respect to a "repentant," restitution-offering Israel: once you, her sworn enemy, are possessed of that degree of moral certitude and contempt, of that sense of almost cosmic injustice and outrage, may I suggest, it is no longer a matter of what vengeance, what sadism, what otherwise diabolic cruelty and atrocity you become (rightly) capable of. And against those who are, after all, Allah's own personal enemies. The question rather is what vengeance, etc, do you believe you're not entitled to?

Travails of a (sadly un-salesmanlike) Church Mouse

So what am I doing wrong?

Why am I having so much trouble getting volunteers for even a single (minor festival) day, involving at most an hour or two? And that requiring nothing more strenuous than keeping the church open? Just when did so many unselfish, caring, conscientious people - and most of them comfortably retired - become so unbreathably busy?

But here's a disturbing thought. The fact that the ministry isn't all that strenuous or challenging - might that be the problem?

My late father used to talk about certain things in life - however many or few - that were simply "more trouble than they're worth." In other words, not everything is worth doing merely because it's intrinsically difficult. Even in a church. And if even those ministries of the largest inherent worth can somehow be made easier, more approachable, more humanly breathable, then surely - in most cases - some measure of net gain will be secured?

Which to me only suggests, why, how far we've progressed from - what? ignorance? inefficiency? barbarism? God? - since 1970. 

My point is that, in today's operational world, I suspect my father's dictum would be all but incomprehensible. And not just in corporate venues, but perhaps even more so among busy church people. No doubt our modern rejoinder should be best rephrased as a question. As in: "Wait a minute: if it's not troublesome, then what's it worth?" Or, more to the immediate point: If I'm not contantly multiplying and accelerating the amount of trouble I'm enduring on your behalf, how on earth are you - much less anyone else - ever going to know how much I love you?

More and more it occurs to me that Love Today (even - or especially? - in its most giving modes) is not nearly so much a matter of relying and trusting - in God or anyone else - as it is of proving and demonstrating: proving our worthiness, our dedication, our willingness to sacrifice, our up-to-the-challengeness. And so, of course, the more visibly dramatic or even excruciating the challenge the better: the better to cover ourselves in . . . credit? respect? or even glory? 

And why not? I mean, how else does one distinguish oneself in any organization - much more that of the Church - than by taking on more and more and more? Again, you do want to distinguish yourself, right? I mean, if you're not willing to take yourself seriously, why should I? And if nobody takes you seriously, how are you ever going to be given anything really important to do, and so accomplish real and significant good? And on the largest possible scale? (Which is where everything really counts, you know.) Finally, if these are precisely the incentives that have made us most effective in the World, shouldn't we of the Church be able to at least triple their effectiveness? Or what's an omnipotent God for, anyway???

And then simpletons like me marvel at how our Modern Acts of Charity have become so grim . . . and tense . . . and strained . . . and (dare I say it again?) competitive.

Now remember, the point of competing is to win. By winning, we at very least demonstrate our competence, possibly even our fitness to exercise authority. Or even to wield power? Indeed, what good is virtue - necessary as it is - apart from the power and authority required to make it effective, and authoritative? 

The real question, I suspect, is whether and how far the most effective - i.e., the most loving - kinds of power are primarily external. Does our Maker more convictingly demonstrate His might by changing governments, or systems, or technologies? Or by changing hearts? 

Which latter is, of course, an immeasurably more gentle, osmotic, insinuative power than anything we mere humans have so far achieved. Yes, even with those we profess - and strain - to love. 

My final point, then, concerns the nature of power at its most inward. The kind of power that, before it does anything of a mere external nature, somehow actually manages to reach into, and enter deeply the silence of, and therefore change, our hearts. Why, if I'm not mistaken, there's even some fairly solid Scriptural evidence for it. Indeed, as the present Church liturgical season - now called Ordinary Time, but which some used to call Pentecost - ought to remind us: Power at at its most love-full (awful phrase, I know) should not be understood as something taken at all. It is not something that you win, or gather, or amass, or earn or summon or conjure. Power at its most godly, and thus humble, and thereby effective, is above all something you receive.

Some Post-Covidity Realizations

Oh yeah, and one more prayer (remember, I'm nothing if not monotonous):

God save us from what I like to call a morbidly global globe. God deliver us from a world so morbidly intent on its pre-set, sacred agendas - whether of Life As Radically Reset, or of Business-As-Rigidly-Usual - that it becomes unable to see a genuine interruption clearly. Like, for instance, Covid. Imagine having been able to see even Covid clearly. Which is to say, prayerfully, trustfully, proportionately for what it is. And not merely for what we can make of it, according to your, or my, preferred political narratives. God heal us, too, from a world that, in its twisted obsession with global scale, finds it even harder to see how the proportionateness, the fitness of a given pandemic response both can and often should vary - from country to country, region to region, locale to locale, etc.

A little late for all that, I know. 

And of course you and I can debate till our Lord comes home about how the whole mess was prearranged, more or less conspiratorially. My point is that even the most brutally unexpected interruptions can be exploited to death, once we crafty humans get our bearings. Worse yet, they can be brazenly orchestrated and manipulated - yes, sometimes even towards the death of Freedom As We Know It. Which does not exactly prove that some omnicompetent Blofeld had it all planned from the start. On the other hand if, as in this case, the ground zero of interruption - our very own corporately most holy and godlike Beijing (to whose wisest precautions how could we all not defer?) - if even the Mighty Interrupter Itself was, shall we say, hardly prepared for pandemic, how much less the rest of us mere mortals?

Our Strange Pan-human Journey

Just some bizarre, rambling and (to some) possibly incoherent thoughts as one might expect from me following another ridiculously long - nearly four-month? - sabbatical. Or if you prefer, consider it a further exploration of certain points and themes raised in my last post but one. Anyhow: 

As I understand the Scriptures, we humans one and all come from one God, whether we like Him or not, who also made all the other creatures of our common universe, whether we like them or not. (And we humans can be quite finicky about these things). Neither does the story just go on from there, forever and ever - open-endedly, as it were - as if our Point of Origin, did we so choose, might be one to which we will never return, even as we continue to move onwards and upwards, to bigger and better (yet strangely God-free?) things. 

Rather, the point is that, just as we've all come from God, so one day we shall all return to Him, whether for mercy or for judgment. Please note, then, that the bounds of this whole cycle - its starting- and end-points - are not just one and the same God, but are both quite involuntary: we did not choose them, and again, we may not even much like them. We may indeed wish we could go much farther - or even infinitely far - to places supposedly unbounded by God. And the whole time doing it pretty much on our own: with our Maker barely a memory, or having left Him once and for all "in the dust," as they say. But we have no choice in the matter.

On the other hand, I've been told, on good authority, that as we become reconciled to what we can in no wise change - when we choose to embrace, with love, That over which we have least power or control - we sometimes encounter a kind of blessedness altogether unique: one containing a core of rapture, indeed, so not of this earth as to be both "boundless," and boundlessly satisfying.

But if that be so, then clearly our human problem lies not with our start or finish - our Alpha and Omega, so to speak - but with what happens, and what we choose, in the meantime. I.e., between our birth and our death. In a nutshell, our common problem is this: In our various highly individual journeys of return to the God who made us, we often run into other gods along the way, many of whom represent themselves as being either the real terminus of our journey, or as some genuine if not indispensable help in getting there. Almost as if the God were using them as tentative-yet-necessary intermediaries, or guideposts, or way-stations of refreshment and renewal, to help and speed us along. And yet we know, quite to the contrary, that His Word is altogether adamant in its warnings against precisely that: against following, not just gods other than the Creator and Redeemer of Genesis and John, but even "an angel from heaven" (if such a thing were possible) come down to preach to us some other gospel of supposed redemption.

Right now, though, I'd like to draw your attention to one very specific and distinct "other god." I would like to pray with all my heart our Maker's protection - for all of us - against one kind of very familiar, most ingratiating, and possibly ubiquitous deity. One so familiar as to be, as often as not, some version of our own "best," or most sacred, or heroic, or productive or progressive Self . Plus - as if all that weren't enough - one who very generously bothers to meet us half-way, as it were. And all for no other reason than to hasten us on down the right Path. As the saying goes, what could possibly go wrong?

So what is my prayer?

God save us, I pray, from the kind of god who, no matter how well-intentioned and compassionate he may be - and however much real, tangible power he may be able to gain over maybe the better part of the universe -  nonetheless did not create it. And so is not really capable of understanding it. At least not in what we might call its real depths: those strange, often hidden deeps of meaning, resonance and longing ("secret as the soul") in which it too both desires, and finds its only satisfaction in, its Maker. God save us, in other words, from that god in relation to whom the Universe itself, just because it is powerful, yet rarely if ever seems benevolent or compassionate, can only be one degree or another of obstacle. Or competitor. Or enemy. Indeed, one suspects that the relation between them - between this god and this universe - can only be one of the most hardened enmity, and that for two reasons. First, because on the one hand, again, this god did not create this world, and so has no hope of really getting inside it - getting to know it "from within itself," so to speak. Yet on the other hand, he clearly is (or at any rate seems to be) the hands-down moral superior of this most cruel, uncompassionate creation. 

At the same time, precisely because this same god, no matter how he may love or want to help us, did not create us either - any more than he created the world - neither can he really get inside of us; his life cannot flow through us, because our own life hinders it. We can never be his vessels, or his members, but at best only his partners or his instruments. Or at worst (some would argue) his puppets. Indeed, it may be contended that - even if one assumes him to be completely "outside of" us* - still, he depends no less on us than we on him, and possibly more so. As powerful as he is or is able to become, his power shall always be limited by what he did not create, and so cannot ever really know the heart and soul of. Neither can he ever be secure and without fear in his relation to the universe, in the way that, say, its Maker is; indeed, precisely because he can neither satisfy its desire nor gain its trust, there is but one way he can "overcome" the creation's enmity: it is through power, and ever more power, control, and ever more control.

*Never a safe assumption in any circumstances.

But while this god's power is clearly limited, we humans can, if we wish, extend it. We may have no more hope than he does of understanding this creation - at least not apart from the grace of its God. But we can nonetheless be partners with him in his project of taming and subuing it. Or failing that (and remember this is - at least from one standpoint - a most unruly, wicked creation), we can terrorize, eviscerate and beat it into submission. Much as you would any rudely obstinate and dangerous monster. After all, it may be argued, since when has want of real understanding - of anything - ever really interfered with Man's ability to control it, to utilize it, to turn it to good, sound, productive purpose. Oh, granted it has sometimes. But not, surely, when that purpose is comprehensively, technologically rational, unpoetic, unromantic, unsentimental, and above all, soundly utilitarian? Which is to say, when Rational Utilitarian Man is the One most utterly in control, both of himself and of his surroundings. On the other hand, if even our most rational purposes sometimes turn us to violent methods - due, again, to the obstinacy/unruliness/wickedness of the universe - or seem unduly harsh or cruel even to ourselves and to our neighbor: honestly, what else are we resourceful humans supposed to do? Be oppressed, so as not to oppress? And who is to blame us? or stop us?

The problem, as I see it, with this kind of god is that he cannot stop. He seems to be humble enough, because of his poignant awareness of his own insufficiency, and because he's forever imploring us to go beyond him. In a sense he's a very American sort of god; his first, his foremost, perhaps his only commandment is threefold: "Impress me. Surprise me. Surpass me." The implicit point being that just as he is not enough, but needs us to complete and go beyond and make him redundant, so do we in our turn need other things, that we in a very real sense have made (or at least much more than he can be said to have made us), to complete and go beyond and make us redundant. 

Are you with me so far?

But here to me is the most galling thing: The more has-been, obsolescent, redundant we all become - this modish yet all-too-soon-outmoded progression of gods - somehow the less we seem able to subdue, or pacify, or control, or even conciliate (much less be reconciled with) this growingly obstinate universe. Or even just this earth. Which latter no doubt will become the very soul of compliance and cooperation once we mere unenhanced humans - or most of us - have been duly superseded, and its new overlords are free to take our progress-so-far to the legendary "next level."

Now you can make of that likelihood whatever you like. For my part (and to return to my original prayer) I say: God save us from any intermediate, transitioning, ever-so-kindly-tentative god or series of gods. Yes, even when they all boil down to nothing more than our "very best" selves doing their best - or to that "sacred self" in each of us which most longs to please, or be closest to, or even "most like" God. God save us from that zealous deity who, however much he may strive or presume to love both God and man, cannot ever really (which is to say, lovingly) understand us humans: can never know us as me, but only as I; never as passive, or receptive, or contemplative, but only active; never as creation, but only as creating; can never know that inmost wellspring of need and longing, in you and me and every creature, which is all that waters and irrigates, solaces, refreshes and renews even our seemingly most independent creative acts. And just because he cannot know that in any creature which only its Creator knows best - cannot know its peace, but only its fear, defiance, ambition, aggression - so naturally he looks out on all nature, whether human or subhuman, and sees only a war of all against all. Hence, too, his own strange peace, which somehow always seems to resolve itself into one or another degree of violence, suppression, distortion, disfigurement: both of "nature," and of our own nature. Even as this same god proceeds, with the "very best" aims and intentions, to wreak or expedite the sort of havoc - climatic, economic, geopolitical, thermonuclear, what have you - which comes every month, every day* closer to the doorsteps of each one of us.  

*Or am I once again grossly overreacting? After all (as I've been told more than once), one singularly brutal and ugly global summer does not a climate-crisis make.

In short, God save us from that god who, as often as not - at least when he's not your and my most bravely self-transgressing, self-transcending Egos in disguise - is really the Devil. Which is to say, that One who, while he's not inaptly termed the god of this world, nonetheless did not create it, and so can never redeem it. 

On which note, once again, if I may: 

Pray for the peace and sanity of Kyiv. And the return to sanity of Moscow.

But above all, 

God deliver, cleanse and and heal America.

More Travails of Modern Love

No, I'm probably not one of the most giving souls ever to enter the doors of a church (much less the Order of Secular Franciscans). 

But from my observing of others who genuinely do give of themselves - along with the various hardships they encounter - may I hazard a speculation? 

This has got to be, I think, one of the most treacherous dilemmas facing anyone who's ever tried their best to love bitter, hardworking, self-consciously sacrificial people (which latter may be - let's face it - the great majority of us nowadays, in one busy venue or another?):

Namely, how you are to show them enough of the love they need, without making them either:

     (1) resentful of the obligation incurred; or 

     (2) jealous of your supposed moral high ground. 

Nor are they necessarily being petty or mean-spirited in thus responding. Much less Pharisaic. After all, even in charitable love - if one's aim is to obtain the very best results - can one ever be too competitive?

Pray for the peace of Kyiv.

God heal America.

A Most Unruly God

For all our modern advances, even today the universe can seem like a scary place. One that even now seems more than capable of swallowing us whole at a moment's (or an asteroid's) notice. 

And so of course, in an unruly - yet by no means uncontrollable - material world, hey, thank God for science, right? And for all the micro-burrowing, omni-excavating technologies that increasingly make the Progress of Science possible. If not inevitable. Thank God for those god-like atom-smashers, asteroid-deflectors, face-recognizers, fMRI scanners, etc, to whom all hearts (and guts) are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets of the universe are hid. I mean, even on the odd chance that we ourselves should wind up getting smashed, surely the risk incurred is one worth taking?

I'll admit, nowadays this expanding cosmos can often seem like that. Like some Ultimate Megahazard against which no insurance is ever too costly. Like a place not just overwhelming, but almost maliciously confusing in its infinitude, its elusive complexity, its wildness and callousness and treachery to whatever is human. Or whatever is "sentimentally" human, in any case. In short, a cosmic jungle, that not only offers no haven or even foothold for innocence and trust, for surprise and wonder (much less delight), but which only the most proudly, ruthlessly sophisticated human minds can ever hope to map and control, organize and productivize. And so, of course, "really" know. So that if, say for instance, modern America is fast becoming the sort of place that is "no country for old men," even so our wider cosmic habitat - the more we study and explore it - is more and more revealing itself to be no universe for little children. Not even children "in spirit." And just as our once seemingly limitless American wilderness may have demanded 

    "men for [commensurate with] my mountains,"

so now our one hope of intergalactic survival may be to become the sort of self-transhumanizing species that can indeed "equal" an expanding cosmos - but only to the extent that we control it. And - perhaps just as likely - only control it in the degree that we despise, and brutalize it? Remember, no sophistication without an ever-so-knowing, withering contempt. And surely most of us are familiar with those adult "real life" situations (most of real life, actually?) in which it all comes down to a choice of eat or be eaten, torture or be tortured, etc.

We "Biblical" theists, of course, continue to admit there may be room for a slightly different perspective. That is, we continue to confess to a more or less Biblical Creator. I.e, a deity who not only created every thing, but who persists in being on the most searchingly, yet respectfully, intimate terms with every thing He created, however glorious or "insignificant."  To such an extent, indeed, that He alone is able, not only to "take the edge off" our creaturely propensities to answer terror with terror, torture with torture, etc, but actually to find an older, deeper place within each of us. A place where "deep calls unto deep" - even, say, between man and rodent? - precisely because each one of us creatures is no longer seeking merely its own territorial power, but somehow also the presence - and so maybe the peace - of its God? 

In brief, we still confess to the sort of Maker who's no less mindful, and patient, and lovingly accepting of each being's vulnerabilities than of its strengths. And who knows that sometimes a creature is never more vulnerable than when it's trying to be most "in charge," and self-transcending. Or terrorizing. The point here being that there is nothing human (or even transhuman) that can exceed not just His grasp, but His wisdom, and empathy. And Final Judgment. So that if  - just maybe - there's some vestige of wistful innocence in even the unpromising soul of a tiger, or a Titan, or a Donald Trump, surely He, if anyone, will be the One who can show us how to find it? Or at any rate, far more effectively than the most arrogant transhuman worldliness could ever beat or torture it into submission.

The question, I suspect, on the minds of today's more globally-minded technocrats (so far as they think of God at all) is whether He's still up to that job. That is, the job of being "on top of" the whole universe, not just from top to bottom, but from start to finish. Can even He keep up with its ever-unfolding, infinitely multiplying strangeness and perversity? Or even our own? Much less with our own ever-exploding human science and technology? 

Or do we still, just maybe, have a Biblical God who remains what He always said He was? Who knew every conceivable crook and crevice of an expanding universe long before there was a human, or even a human science, to map and "conquer" it? A God who is every bit as "superior" to us at the end of our vast sojourn of progress as He was at its beginning? An author and a finisher so wholly incommensurate with every other "greatness," and yet so utterly childlike to the very core of His being (be He never so "adult," vast and wise), that our mere human pretensions to adulthood and maturity, to superiority and hierarchy, to greatness and progress and self-transcendence all boil down to one humongous joke from Hell?

Pray for the peace of Kyiv.

God heal America.

(Edited.)

A Risen Humility

Almost 2000 years ago, the shattered body of the One (and only) God-man was taken down from a hateful instrument of torture, and placed in a most lovingly prepared tomb. And all by the same species that had Him crucified. Clearly, quite a radical departure from what we did when we killed Him. In any case, at least we got the burial part right. 

But now imagine us, even as a species, becoming rather more hopeful than that. Or more brazenly ambitious, as some might prefer to call it. Imagine us, or some of us, actually trying to revive the body we had buried, by the ingenuity of our own mere human devices. Of course, it's hard to picture anyone in AD 33 envisioning that prospect with any degree of confidence. But today? . . . 

Now note: Our Lord had to be fully human in order to die. It takes a fully human body to be well and truly dead. But it takes nothing less than the God-man who indwells that same body to know, and to accept, that it is in fact broken beyond all hope of human repair. Broken, indeed, beyond anything but what a fully Divine restoration can accomplish. Left to our own human devices - even with the best of intentions - we would still, even now, be trying to resuscitate it. Or transhumanize it.

Again, a wholly Divine restoration. And grace. And tenderness. And solicitude. 

Of course I'm not expecting that this same human race is somehow - and at this late date - going to discover a humility (or even a tenderness) in any way approaching that of a Divine Father and Son. But may the shattered, self-crucified body of this world please note, and take heed: It can no more repair itself, than the best intentions and ingenuities of 1st-century mankind could have revived the body of its Christ.

Happy Easter.

Understanding Love Today

Tell you what: Do you want to be a better person? One that's more truly, assertively, progressively loving?  But above all, loving of that priceless quarry, the Sacred (preferably immigrant or refugee) Stranger??? 

Well, you've heard it said there's no time like the present. In the same way, there's no better place to begin than your own backyard. I.e., among those most familiar, nearest and dearest of your immediate circle. You know, precisely the ones most (understandably) apt to get on your altruistic nerves. 

That being said - and assuming you're serious: 

Here, at last, is one seriously big, bold, brazen, progressive, take-no-crap-from-Russia list of GLOBAL criteria, not just for recognizing Authentic Charity - besides rigorously applying it to the most devil-detailed spaces of your personal lives - but for sifting it from all the milksop lily-livered counterfeits out there. Anyhow, here goes:

(Modern) Love is . . .

Whatever, in any given opportunity for help or concern, makes you feel you've got to DO THE MOST, and make the biggest fuss (because remember, Life at its best is a strenuously busy thing). In short, whatever makes you most feel like everything depends on YOU. 

Whatever makes you feel - nay, believe - that the most diligently strenuous, conscientious interference ALONE is the thing that can (1) best help any creature, and (2) best overcome any obstacle, whether "natural" or spiritual. That's right, even if your zeal-to-interfere sometimes pushes you uneasily over the borders of what an ignorant observer might call violence.

Whatever makes you feel least at peace about leaving any creature in peace. Even for a minute or two (remember, you're probably all that's keeping them safe and occupied). Any creature - whether it's your pet, or the stray cat, or your child, or parent, or spouse or significant other. Or your parishioners/congregants. Or even those otherwise stupid and worthless employees of yours whom you know you depend on, but who can't seem to do anything right by themselves.

Whatever makes you put yourself and your action, and your motives, and the purity and progress of your spiritual state, at the ABSOLUTE CENTER of whatever act of goodness you are performing.  As opposed to placing your focus primarily on that creature who is the object of your good act. Or worse, on that creature's supposed "nature" and "needs" (which, in any case, one can hardly know or be sure of anyways). Remember, love is not an act of knowledge but of pure, naked WILL. By your sheer force of will you should be able to move, not just mountains, but hearts, souls, nations, productivities, profits, even genders. But if that's the case, then why should understanding - of anyone, or any thing - be any part of it? Shouldn't my sheer drive, determination, discipline, self-denial and PURITY OF INTENTION be enough to love them all effectively? Since when has love ever not been enough? And if we know it is, then what's knowledge or wisdom got to do with it?

                  *                   *                  *                  * 

So what do you think? Am I (once again) grossly over-reacting, or exaggerating? Or just might that - all of the above - be the one most discouraging, most crippling handicap of the way we love today: namely, that it is all but indistinguishable from the way we work. And further - and at the risk of being a broken record (my stock in trade) - that we do both our love and our work badly, because we treat them both as if they were almost entirely the products of our own will. 

But now imagine we took the prayerful time to see where our acts of charity actually come from. Yes, even those that seem most purely of our own resolve and determination.

Whatever else we might glean, I think we would know, at long last, that our charitablest acts are far more a matter of self-yielding than of self-assertion or self-conquest; of releasing and refreshing, rather than regimenting and rigidifying our souls; of a kind of childlike trust, far more than even the most fiercely grown-up decision and determination. Because if we cannot be children even before God, how do we keep from adulterating, from brutalizing, even our sternest, moralest, most determined resolutions? And if we don't ourselves know how to be needful - to be hungry - in the presence of God, how shall we ever hope to understand the needs and hungers (as opposed to the whims, wants, ambitions, resolutions, etc) of anyone else?

Pray for the peace of Kyiv. 

God heal America.

(Edited.) 

Loving God with Only Half of Ourselves (at most)

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: 

These are intensely, even savagely purposeful times. Which is to say, most of us tend to take our "higher" purposes - moral, political, theological - very seriously. And in particular those on which we've duly and morally deliberated. The apparent assumption being that we, as a Radically Enlightened Aggregate Globe,* are finally getting on the Right Track, or Right Side, or whatever. Which can further mean that, depending on how enlightened and virtuous we deem our Purpose to be, most of us don't take any too kindly to things not turning out the way we intend. Especially when we've already pre-determined what the proper course of events and outcomes should be - like, again, say, a Right Side of History. Not to mention how our own actions - and yours too, for that matter - should ideally reflect and reinforce that right pattern. With no exceptions or deviations. 

*Whatever the grosser deficiencies/sins/errors of individual nations and states: Hungary, Florida, etc.

And yet, as much as most of us would like to do exactly what we intend to - with not so much as the slightest deviation arising from impulse, perplexity or circumstance - the fact is that our actions don't always conform perfectly to our intentions. Being human and fallen, we often fail to live by the things we profess. Or else certain other things get in the way - often despite our own best efforts - leaving us frustrated, or discouraged, or chastened. Sometimes even humbled. 

Yet even then, I think, far too often (but especially in these Russo-Ukrainean times?), the solution for far too many of us is simply to double down on the Original Aim. As if conforming our actions perfectly to Its requirements was a mere matter of greater discipline and tenacity. Of putting all our mind and will to it, and thus getting exactly what we intend. To the point, indeed, where not just our own Best Selves, but whatever god, superior being, higher power or larger purpose we esteem ourselves to be serving, is presumed to be in fullest agreement with our tenacity. And even with our "stubbornness," if you will. And self-frustration. And self-disgust. Almost as if this Higher Power or Purpose were not just requiring nothing more of us, by way of command, but could offer nothing more to us, by way of grace, and help. Other than maybe "That's right, do it again! But this time DO IT RIGHT!" 

And seriously, what's the use of any god that's unable to be gracious? or even illuminating? What's the good of any supreme being, power, purpose, plan, etc, that merely rubberstamps all our most self-obsessive moralistic compulsions?

So, again, I find this to be an Age that fervently believes in and swears by discipline - indeed the all-but-limitless power of disciplined self-invention and self-command - to open just about every door, and to remove practically every obstacle. Including those involving what some would call - or used to call - nature, or gender, or national identity. Or even, sometimes, the barest semblance of national, regional or local autonomy, and self-determination. After all, if truth is Truth - and how much more our hard-won truths of self-creation and self-discipline? - and if our Truth be such that it must be expounded not just economically but militarily throughout the globe - then why should it be constrained by borders of any kind, whether geographic or biological? 

An older generation - one, say, more conscious of its debt to German moral philosophy - might somehow feel like it's been here before. Might even recall lots of stirring talk about the Power (or even the triumph) of the Human Will. And by no means only among those German belligerents, along with their many admirers, of the Second World War. But however we like to phrase it nowadays, I find this generation to be one that believes in the power - the almost boundless power for good - of choice, decision, resolution, DISCIPLINE. 

At the same time, again, we all know how even the best-laid and most disciplined resolutions can fail us. What we often fail, I think, to realize is how sometimes even our best decisions can have outcomes worse than failure. How not just the worthiest, but the most successfully-carried-out resolves can warp, distort and denature our actions. To the point where, even with some of our apparently most successful executions of aim, the result becomes something different - indeed disturbingly different  - either from what we intended, or from what those most affected by our actions might have wished we'd intended.* But either way, the result is revealed to be something deeply disappointing. If not downright brutal and ugly.

*Just think of all the civilian populations of Libya, Syria and Yemen who during these past twelve years were terrorized, oppressed and dislocated, either by ISIS, or by what were very likely ISIS- or al Qaeda-fellow travelers or competitors. And who now have every reason to wish that the intentions of US policy-makers had been either very different, or very differently executed.

But, again, this is nothing if not an Age of fierce, even implacable resolution and determination. And so nowadays we have all sorts of people, professing a wide gamut of religious and quasi-religious beliefs, who are firmly resolved upon loving (what they take to be) God and neighbor, as if the matter depended entirely on their mere strength of resolution. And determination. And DISCIPLINE. 

My question is, How's it all really working? And working out? To what extent is it making us more effectually charitable, and compassionate? And in a Way that actually changes us for the better? And not just for the more staunch and resolute? And up-in-arms? And confrontational?

What I think we've been learning, but especially today - and that from the hardest of teachers - is what a miserable thing  it is to try to love God with only a part of oneself: what an angry, barren, recriminatory thing it is to resolve, and strive, and strain to love God with all one's mind and strength, before we have first yielded to Him our heart.

Now of course no moral act is ever a matter of mere emotion - as this Righteous Age never tires of reminding us. But that doesn't mean our emotions cannot be allies, and even conduits and instruments - imagine it! even of the God who made them. And of course there is more to us than our hearts, nor are they all of us that matters. But personally I know of no better portal to the soul than the affections - at least when we have allowed them to settle, so that our oldest, most secret desires are at last visible from the pond's surface: no clearer sounding into that Depth of us which hungers most desperately and ravenously, as it were, for God. In any case, and whatever the passing deceptions and superficialities of our hearts, they reveal a very different - if I may say, a far more childlike? - face, as we allow God to be their molder and sculptor. And lover. They may even point the Way to a soul we hardly knew was there, much less realized that it, too, has a voice, and a longing, and a wisdom. "Oh, but who could have imagined it? I mean, just what exactly does the soul DO?"

Well, I can hardly claim to be anything like an expert on the soul's actions. But if nothing else, I suspect it knows a far gentler and surer path to love, whether of God or of neighbor, than even our most staunchly convictioned vehemence of intellect and will. Not to mention - provided we let God be its searchlight - it tends to know and search us. And far more thoroughly, I believe, than all our most brilliant combinations of heart, mind and strength could know the life of a mouse. Much less that of any man or woman. And maybe least of all a child's?

Pray for the peace of Kyiv.

God heal America.

Why Klaus Schwab is My Favorite Modern Poet

I

Unhappy First - and please God last? - Anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainean Mutual Madness. 

And pardon, again, my disgracefully long hiatus.

It's not that I didn't write anything. But even those scribblings of mine that attempted a holiday (much less a holy season) mood were pretty much desiccated by what I'd like to think of as my driest, deadeningest, most desperate-for-a-glimmer-of-hope Christmastide in memory. It was, in short, exactly the sort of "Antichristmas" all too appropriate for a world skating merrily on the brink of - but wait for it - potentially thermonuclear escalation. (Can't get too much of a righteous thing, you know.) And that, of the most epically wicked, apocalyptically insane war ever instigated by two equally mad  - and I suspect more or less evenly wrong - "great" powers. 

Then again, I've heard it said that every global generation gets the kind of Russia it's worked hardest for, and so most deserves. Plus, the renewed threat of an expectedly odious Moscow usually means some rise in the political stock of Washington. Making it all the more likely the same globe will end up with the kind of America it's worked hardest to appease and mollify - to say nothing of idolize? With the overall result being one any fool could predict: the whole world gets exactly the sort of omniconfident Hyper-america, and criminally paranoid Russia, everyone else most dreads. 

(Meanwhile a benignly[?] futuristic Beijing - much like the Walrus in the Lewis Carroll poem - sheds a bitter tear for us both. And then proceeds to sort out for itself the oysters - both Russian and American - of the largest size.)

But now recall how I described my latest Christmas: "driest, deadeningest, most desperate for a glimmer of hope." I'm not perfectly sure why. But I believe it has something to do with - and may even be a near-perfect description (if not indictment) of - our language today. And in particular that language we use to explore, and advocate, and celebrate those things dearest to us. Or that we profess to care most about. Or even such as we might have been tempted, once upon a time, to "wax poetic" about, as we used to say. Tempted, in other words, to try and find the most concise, musical, evocative words, and those "in the best order,"* with which to express our joys, and to "bring to life" those things we most delight in. Things, you know, like Christmas. Or, on a much more comprehensive scale, like the Future Peace, Progress and Prosperity of the World. 

*To paraphrase Coleridge's definition of poetry.

II

Which brings me to the subject of my title. Because if Mr Klaus Schwab, founder and presiding genius of the World Economic Forum, hasn't devoted the better part of a lifetime to caring about what he understands to be those latter things - Peace, Prosperity, a Global Progress seemingly defiant of all human limits and constraints - I'd like to know who has.

Still, the question has been raised as to why - in that case - he hasn't chosen livelier, more compelling, more humanly-accessible words to exhort us towards these goals. In a Guardian review of his 2017 prognosis The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Stephen Poole writes: "It is composed in the deadening language of executive jargon, addressing 'leaders' who want to know how to navigate an era of 'exponentially disruptive change'." 

He goes on to write: "As usual, this high-management style contains much fashionable vacuity (we should avoid 'linear thinking', it says, which is meaningless however you interpret it), and also a weird kind of imagistic brutality – the 'gig economy' companies such as Uber or Taskrabbit are 'human cloud platforms', as though the serfs who work for them are euphoric angels playing harps on a bed of cumulonimbus. To complete the style, just add a heavy dose of tech-utopian boilerplate, such as the claim that 'digital technology knows no borders', which of course it does: witness Facebook’s recent decision to comply with China’s censorship laws so it can operate there."

Poole qualifies this criticism by adding: "To be fair, Schwab shows in an appendix that he does know that the idea that 'digital technology knows no borders' is simply false, and throughout he is careful to be even-handed about the upsides and downsides of every technology he discusses. Artificial intelligence might be super-useful, or it might constitute 'an existential threat to humanity'. Biotechnology might cure all diseases, or it might create a schism of bio-inequality."

In keeping with that more qualified assessment, I'd like to submit the following direct quotes, as further evidence that Mr Schwab is no dry and brutal technocrat. Rather do we find him able to bring to his favorite topics not just nuance and sensitivity, but a very balanced concern for the possible human downsides of an exhilarating, yet also conceivably terrifying Age, and pace, of change.  

"The Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to empower individuals and communities, as it creates new opportunities for economic, social, and personal development. But it also could lead to the marginalization of some groups, exacerbate inequality, create new security risks, and undermine human relationships."

"As the novelty of wearable tech gives way to necessity - and, later, as wearable tech becomes embedded tech - will we be deprived of the chance to pause, reflect, and engage in meaningful, substantive conversations? How will our inner lives and ties to those around us change?"

Now call me a blithering literary ignoramus. But the more I study the matter, the more I find Mr Schwab, even as a prose-writer, to be one of our finest contemporary poets. Or at least to the extent that nuggets of real and excellent poetry, as a writer wiser than myself has suggested, can be found lodged in even the stubbornest, most calcified prose. None of which latter terms, I think, fairly describe the bulk of Mr Schwab's writing. Just consider for a moment what he has succeeded in doing, and how it puts him leagues ahead of the pack of some of our most serious living poets:

     1) he is more or less intelligible and straightforward; 

     2) he has something to share with the general public, and not just with some enlightened coterie of chosen colleagues and fans; 

     3) the things that he says are heartfelt - they concern those matters he most unabashedly cares about and hopes for (as opposed to finger-wagging and sneering at); 

     4) he manages to write, on topics and prospects that might otherwise be either hideously dull or horrifically alarming, with not just a certain elegant conciseness, but with a measured enthusiasm,  caution, even a kind of compassion.

So why, some have asked, hasn't he chosen better words for the job? If these are the things he cares most about - indeed is most viscerally passionate for - why can't he convey their urgency in words that are more visceral and vital: that go, so to speak, to the very roots of our being? Which is to say, those roots that suggest we humans might even have a life beyond this present one?

Not, of course, that he's by any means impervious to the religious dimension of human progress. Poole himself admits: "Indeed, the book climaxes with a rather lovely plea for everyone to work together in a 'new cultural renaissance' that apparently will depend on some kind of cosmic spirituality. The fourth industrial revolution might lead to a dehumanising dystopia, Schwab allows soberly. On the other hand, we could use it 'to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny'." 

My question is, Do all these possible outcomes - even the happiest - have to depend solely on our unaided human efforts? And in the unsettling event that they don't, could he not be more specific, or at least suggestive, about some of the possible alternatives? And in particular, on What - or Whom - else we might be depending? Suppose, let's say, that there really is an intelligent pre-established End as well as Beginning to the history of this vast universe. A blessedly unmovable Omega as well as Alpha, such as even we ever-dynamic human can't alter or derail. Or deter. And yet One who also has a kind of plan or goal or consummation, even for us. Could not he - Mr Schwab - then, have tried to give us a more vivid and compelling sense of our human place and mission within that spiritual journey, and that promise of fulfilment? And if not, what is it that prevents him? Is it primarily the limitations of the man himself at work here? Or more those of the time and intellectual climate he lives in? (Allowing, let's not forget, that Mr Schwab may have played as large a role in the shaping and sculpting of our Age - at least of its distinctness and peculiarities - as any single human being living.)

III   

But before I go on, an apology. My point is not to hold up poor Mr Schwab for either excessive admiration or undue belittlement. Whatever else, he is above all a man of his time - an Age which some would argue has never been more verbally limited, if not downright impoverished or straitjacketed. Certainly, whatever else this glorious Era may excel in, it is no Golden Age of Poetry. Or at least no poetry that's readily accessible, or encouraging  - or even approachable? - to the moderately literate reader. I mean, after all, there's only so much verbal challenge/stridency/cacophany/agony even a modernistic ear can tolerate, much less the rest of us. And granted, we all may still on occasion experience the need for lilt, flow, grace in our written and other words. But unless we are gluttons for disappointment, we don't as a general rule go hunting for it in the jungles of today's verse. 

And so, lacking pleasurable - or even intelligible - alternatives, it's no wonder we Global Moderns have made a kind of god-of-all-work of the prosaic. Or of the Wisely Practical, as some might prefer to call it. I.e., of all the busy things we think, do and use, in short, which are best accessed by types of language that are - what? 

Most practical, to be sure. And workaday. And relevant (that sacred modern word). But anything else - in effect, if not intention?

I don't know - most clunky? flat-footed? ham-fisted? Or else, at the other extreme, most rigidly "fashionable," and present-normative? Or even Present-worshiping - and by implication past-despising? And so, in a word, least like poetry, whose own memory, and uses for memory, are far, far different things from any present-bound speech. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if a good poem can ever garner enough memory: can ever reach back far enough into the Past: can ever be more than restless until it rests, as it were, in that Presence which is the beginning of all things, and all words. Or so, I think, do our most resonantly-timed and -measured words - whether of verse or prose - lead and draw us on inexorably, even to our own farthest origins, if you will. And that regardless of our own religious beliefs or non-beliefs.

So what do I mean by Modern Prose? I mean all those realms of language whose sheer ironclad utility demands that they be almost the express opposite of any good poem: i.e., least dependent on music, and memory, and resonance, on loss and exile, on imagination and yearning. Modern prose is precisely that speech most required by the surface frictions of our lives, and by the Selves in each of us most occasioned by those surface conflicts and tensions. Those Selves, that is, which tell us that we humans really haven't got much of  - well, anything to remember. And really nothing much to hope for. Whether of Alpha or Omega. But somehow, everything to do. And that done yesterday, if not last week, or last month. Modern prose belongs most to those selves we "have to be" - or need to become - in order to thrive and prosper in, and progress beyond, the stresses of this mad world we mutually create. As distinct from those other Selves for which we (secretly) yearn, and which our restoration, and the creatures of its Garden, most eagerly awaits. 

Now of the two, our prosaic self is of course the most outward, and so easiest to recognize, in both ourselves and others; and thus we see and collide, confront and compete with it all the time. The other is most inward, and so we see most seldom if at all; indeed the great majority of us would hardly know what to do with it if we did see it. Our first reaction would be to dismiss it as utterly useless. Or worse, as irredeemably primitive: something our human evolution in its wisdom should have canceled ages ago. 

And so I suspect we largely do, most of the time. Except, of course, in the measure that our modern language - even our most desertified everyday, workaday speech - still thirsts for some forgotten rivulet of verbal music from old Adam's oldest wellsprings. But that's just it: even if we did so thirst, and all the time, how would we know it? And especially Today, of all practical ages? The most tin-eared, leadenly-unmusical prose is so much simpler and ready-for-use, for everything we do (except of course for those moments when, in its often brutal zeal to over-simplify, it complicates everything). 

But even allowing for its occasional mis-steps and barbarities, where would we be without our Modern Prose? It explains, it functionalizes, it creates whole agendas and projects for the almighty frictions and future-drivenness of our lives. So what if it doesn't understand the periodic need of those same lives for peace, and recollection? We've gotten along just fine, using it as our maid-(if not god-)of-all-work these past 50-odd years, thank you very much. Yes, even as our "poetry" has grown more ponderously esoteric and dark, violent and dissonant. Which makes sense too, I suppose, when you (merely) think about it. I mean, what's the use of any modern poetry that can't compete point for point - or even tooth and nail? - with our best Modern Prose? Hence, again, our Global Modern intoxication with the utility and power of the prosaic, and our incapacity to find any use, or even beauty, in anything remotely poetic, whether in prose or verse. 

Right. And this is the sturdy "practical" language with which we're supposed to find the tender, exquisitely compassionate words to encompass every conceivable human condition and confusion, and (gender-)reconfiguration. We don't even care to know how, or why, this or that soul has been made the way it is. Or even if it has a maker. And we're the ones who are going to pontificate - wisely - on how its body both needs to, and must, be remade?

Meanwhile, pray - and fast - for the peace and sanity of Kyiv. And the return to sanity of Moscow (and the rest of us).

God heal and deliver America.