A NEW Age? Or More of the Same Old (violence, arrogance, etc)?

 All I can say is: Welcome to our madder-by-the-minute America.

The Real Tragedy of Hell

"Hmmm . . . God as a newborn babe . . . so beastly hard to imagine, much less grasp . . . coming to us (if that's at all the right phrase) clothed in this absurdly quiet, simple, unassuming familiarity that's so easy to despise . . . or at least overlook? So easy to pat and patronize and condescend to, to 'awww' and coo over. Or just roll our eyes over. But apart from that, no ferment, no drama. Certainly nothing on the order of 'shock and awe.'

"In other words, pretty much the same way He is with most of us - at least most of the time? - year round, day in and day out. Only not as a newborn in a manger (thank God). I mean, for crying out loud, once and for all can't He stop pussyfooting around and just show Himself for WHAT HE IS? And in a way that's utterly unmistakable, convincing, overwhelming?"

How sad, that when our Maker finally does manifest Himself in the way that I think we hypermoderns, in particular, presumably would most "like" and respect . . . or surely at least find cool beyond words? . . . when He finally does come to us big and bad, awesome and full-spectrum-dominance, kickass and sweeping and global and heavy-duty industrial ENOUGH (picture the insides of a steel mill from - well, you know) . . . by that time, for many of us it may be too late.

Of course, ALL things are possible with God. Provided, that is, we don't despise and delay That which He makes possible. Divine Mercy is always an urgent grace, to be pursued, grasped, clung to. But always within a very definite, very circumscribed Present - "seek the Lord WHILE he may be found," "behold, NOW is the day of salvation" - not as an optional gift to be presumed on and postponed for an indefinite, unbounded future.

But if we can't accept a helpless, homeless infant as sign and token of mercy - but all the more so One who is Mercy Incarnate - then who else is left?

Profiting through Intimidation; or, The Fear Factor Revisited

To an Age that thinks all good work - indeed, all genuine efficiency - can be extracted from purposive agents by means of fear: 

Maybe it's just me being overly humane, or "sensitive?" But I keep finding it remarkable - yes, even in this Progressive Century - how seldom do we get the best results from anyone, except by first putting them at ease. 

And not just animals, but people.

I know, I know: "Tell that to Beijing." (To say nothing of Washington, and Wall Street.)

Making Love the Easier Thing

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:

1) the way we love charitably, both within organizations and outside them; 

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. 

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.)
  

An Honest Sermon from Our Times (for a change)

For whatever it may be worth, I promise to write something seriously Christmas-related. Eventually. (Assuming anyone cares, of course.) But for now, this little morsel from the Spirit of - what shall we call it? Antichristmas? - will have to do:

"My dear beloved sisters, and brothers, and everyone in between,

"When are you going to stop being dismayed - or worst of all, JUDGMENTAL - at the seemingly irresponsible behavior of your public figures?

"Remember, Life is nothing if not grand-scale and demanding. It was never meant to be easy. So inevitably it will always be those with the largest, most capacious sense of Self* who rise to the top. Think about it. Who else could handle, what other GROWNUPS could be entrusted with the awesome responsibility of ruling, governing, managing, motivating, manipulating, etc, the rest of us otherwise unproductive children? 

* The losers prefer to call it narcissism, and capacious egos. Which is why they're - well, you know. 

"Which brings me to my main point. When are you going to understand that the whole purpose of Government, Business, Wealth, Prosperity and Power has never - even remotely - been to make life simpler, or easier, or more straightforward? Much less to help it become more 'colorful,' beautiful, engaging or satisfying. Indeed these institutions' real purpose, strictly speaking, is not even to make life BETTER - unless by 'better' you mean more perplexing, tempting, challenging, adversarial, and, yes, competitive.

"But the reason? Why, that should be obvious to any but the most hopelessly incompetent fools. The heart of human life and growth has always been controversy, argument, contention and confrontation, because those are the only ways we get at the Truth. Most importantly, they are our surest ways of making Love truthful - which is to say, hard, strict, uncompromising, DEMANDING. As opposed to merely sentimental and indulgent. I mean, how else do you suppose we're ever going to vindicate the right and competent, the commanding and organized? Even as we humiliate and punish the wrong and stupid and servile and disorganized?

"How else, in sum, are we ever going to sift and cultivate and raise up a REAL aristocracy - to say nothing of maintaining the one we've got - from among you otherwise worthless, workless helots?"


"Oh come OFF it," you yawn. "Why the h--- don't you just admit that it's all about profit???"

To which I can only humbly reply (after all that I'd better try to be humble):

"Since when have the motives of any human leader - even the most successful - been JUST about profit? Much less the rest of us losers?"

On Beijing and Other Behemoths

One point is pretty clear to me:

The deeper our world gets mired in Covidity, the more absolutely vital it is that we Yanks, in particular, do not either worship or despise - much less demonize - this admittedly vile thing we call mainland China. AKA the One Indispensable Ingredient, without which our Global Pandemic Stew could hardly have come to a boil, much less boiled over.

Neither worship, nor despise, nor demonize. Honestly, is that so terribly hard? Is it asking so much that we do our best NOT to make the Red Chinese an even more vindictive, arrogant, self-righteous enemy - or medical savior - than they already are? By now we know that worshiping them, as we did at the height (c. 2005-2010) of our infatuation with All Things Beijing, can mean only the (further) economic, political and social degradation of America. And that, despite all our most grandiose/grotesque fantasies of permanent unipolarity. Even as despising the Imperial Chinese, as did the 19th-century British with their flippant, heartless pursuit of the opium trade, once meant only the moral and spiritual degradation not just of China, but even more so of Britain. While, lastly, demonizing them can only lead to the One Thing that we wretched Americans seem to "excel" at these days: more war, whether cold or hot or whatever lies in between.

My own advice at this point? Just respect Today's Neoimperial China - and above all be sure, from hereon in, always to cultivate a firm, respectful and guarded distance. Political no less than social.

As for that other favorite obsession of ours - our ongoing, through-thick-and-thin loathing, scorn and simultaneous demonization/belittling of Moscow? Something tells me the sooner we swear off that vicious habit, the vastly better our chances of discerning whatever residual goodness/usefulness DOES lie, even now, in the (still) beating heart of Russia. And, who knows? - maybe even bringing that goodness to the surface?

Remember, the world's not exactly becoming a safer place, or simpler, or easier to manage. Not even by us omniconfident Yanks. Nor are our most serious and formidable rivals exactly getting nicer either. Especially as we come ever more face-to-face with competitors like the (Anti-)People's Republic, which - although hardly deserving of our contempt or demonization (much less our worship, or continued codependency/partnership) - for sheer nastiness has few rivals anywhere. All the more reason, it seems to me, that we smart Yanks should try to conciliate all the (semi-)competent, well-resourced, NON-Communist, NON-Wahhabi friends we can get. Including, yes, Russia. Even if they wind up being just neutral bystanders.

 
Oh yes (to my American readers) - and wherever possible, vote American Solidarity Party.

(Edited.)

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.)