Knowing Even As We Are Known

It may be, once again, my own monotonously one-track mind at work. Yet there is a kind of plea - if not an outright complaint - that I find echoed again and again throughout Scripture. And from where I'm sitting, it goes something like this:

Turn again, O God of Hosts! Look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted, and for the son whom you made strong for yourself. They have burned it with fire; they have cut it down; may they perish at the rebuke of your face! But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong to yourself! THEN [emphasis mine] we shall not turn back from you; give us life, and we will call upon your name!                                                       

                                                                                     Psalm 80: 17-18 (ESV) 

In sum - as I read it - if only we could know the RIGHT person: the right priest or king (or queen), the right prophet, deliverer or savior, and then be around him or her often enough, to the point where their holiness, godliness, etc, could just rub off on us. 

Not an unreasonable wish, too, when you consider the actual way that Salvation unfolds, or works itself out, in the course of both Scripture and post-Scriptural history. In any situation, if not every story, there's nearly always someone - even if it be a "mere" Moses or David or Isaiah - whom we must first get to know, accept, even trust, before we can proceed further. 

Except, of course, that in mere human terms - far from anyone else rubbing off on us - we can barely even rub off on ourselves. Much less get inside of ourselves. Indeed, it's as if we were locked out - as if our most consciously volitional, eager, earnestly purposeful Self were powerless to get at precisely that core of us - that Soul in us - which is most God-needing, God-docile, God-pliant. 

In short, most of the time, even our most morally earnest and resolute Self is pretty useless at grasping the needs of our Soul. Much less meeting those needs. So that even the "best" that we are, even the very best we're capable of, is something we can only work ON ourselves, from the outside in. And even then we can only go so far, so deep. 

The point, of course, being that there's only One who can get really inside us, into our very depths, into the unselfconscious core of our innocence, so to speak - so as to transform us from the inside out. And that is because, being the Maker of ALL things, He is already there. In fact - blessedly for us - He has even gone the entire length of making Himself a Son of Man. And thereby a new, and flawless, Adam. Which means He's even closer.

(Edited.) 

Why I Keep Harping on Prayer

So why do I keep insisting on prayer? As if it were the one necessary groundwork for any solution to - or even remediation of - each and every human problem, no matter how earthly, technical or practical? (Which of course it is.)

Because there's nothing we busy, commanding humans do that works so personally, intimately, knowingly, as does prayer. There is nothing else we do, however proactive and decisive and sure, that is half as penetrating as prayer. Nothing that ushers us so confidently into, not some remembrance or image or abstraction, but the Real Presence - and not just of God, but of anything: any person, place or thing. So that at last we may discern its real nature, and true need. Now granted, since our expulsion from Eden this human world has become a pretty competitive, mutually-isolating and -uncomprehending place. But if there yet remains, in any living thing, some residue as it were of Eden - of openness or unguardedness, of innocence or trust - it is prayer that will most surely help you find it. 

Of course there are all sorts of creatures we may meet - usually human or demonic - who refuse to be known. Or more precisely, who insist on being known only as they know or imagine or present themselves. Indeed, such is the degree of their self-enclosure, that they'd sooner be known in a way that provokes us to fear, anger or even violence, rather than let us know them as they are. I.e., in the Way that most helps us to love them. In a word - and without their being the least bit masochistic - they're the sort of creatures who'd much rather be hit than hugged. Out of sheer cussedness, or pridefulness, if you will.

Now in the case of demons, of course our anger achieves nothing, and we have no hope of loving them in any way they might receive (much less approve of). But in the case of humans, it is only prayer that seeps in through the wall, past any merely human self-image or pretense or armor. And the miracle of prayer is that it does so with the least merely human intrusion or "interference" in their lives.

In short, it is the one influence that accomplishes the most while "doing" the least. Prayer is, in fact, precisely what you "do" when you wish to ensure the fullest possible scope for the fullness of God's work inside that poor creature. Even as you yourself - out of respect for the self-enclosed person's independence and "freedom" - would seem, indeed, not to be working at all.

Random Passiontide Thoughts

If only, just once, we could see for who she is this window, and doorway, that is Mary the mother of Jesus. Because in our Blessed Mother, as in no other saint, we have a uniquely blessed human reminder. Like no other saint or even angel, she reminds that, whatever else the World pretends to be - however comforting, delighting, solacing, enticing - it is at bottom a harsh, bleak, unforgiving desert, second in its sheer poverty only to Hell. After all, look what it did to her Son. 

We can also, if we grasp her life and her trust, see what the Church for all its failings has sometimes been, and in its soul always seeks to be: not just an oasis in our Modern deserts, but the one truly green and refreshing and fortifying hospice in all the universe. Or so at least it is, when her Son the Lamb is rightly perceived, trusted, embraced, rested in. Indeed, if she, of all human creatures, didn't know the very essence of what it is to trust - and rest - in her Son, would anyone else? Would St Peter or St Paul have known, during their lifetimes, necessarily any better? Or might this have been what Paul was ultimately referring to, when he spoke of being himself "in labor till Christ be formed in you?" To know Him, even as His own mother did. 

Again, what the Church has been, and please God can yet be, even in this all-consuming desert of the 21st century.

The Roots of Our Problem?

Likely more of my usual paranoia, but:

Something tells me we Americans need to reverse our entire paradigm of how we got Here. "Here" being - among myriad other blessings - Covidiotic paralysis, a bipolar nation at the heart of a supposedly unipolar world, an increasingly post-human global surveillance capitalism, and all the other exciting milestones of our unfolding Pinkerian Utopia.

My central question is, What if we trusting Yanks didn't just sleep-walk, in our usual touchingly naive fashion, into the vast utopian maze of trying to liberalize - or even democratize - Red China? What if the crux of the matter wasn't nearly so much something we had meant to teach the mainland Chinese - about capitalism, human rights, the Open Society, etc - but rather Something Else, that we were determined to make ourselves learn? Or - and rather more likely, I should think - something our wise Beijing-worshiping global elites had already pre-determined to pound into the otherwise stupidly nationalistic heads of us unwashed masses. Whether by hook or by crook.* A certain Something about Who Really Counts in any business, trade or technology transaction. And in case there's anyone still unsure of just who I mean by Really Counts, may I submit what I hope is a decisive clue: It ain't the end user.

* Then again, why not get our best wisdom direct from the Source - again, our true Masters in All Things Productive and Profitable, those beneficent human gods of Beijing?

Something tells me, the better we understand this missing piece, the better we shall grasp the really distinctive and defining traits of our Twentyfirst-Century American Capitalism (TFCAC). And so the better our chances of getting ourselves out of its present rut. In short, we need to understand what truly drives and motivates TFCAC: not just the tangible and quantifiable rewards of profit, but even more so the intangible, immeasurable rewards of a sense of power, superiority and advantage. And in particular the advantage of being on the designing, building and selling side of the counter. As opposed to the unworthy inferior schmucks waiting on the customer's side.

Neither do I think our much-vaunted traditions of American customer service need stand in the way of  this "new" vendor-centered mindset. I mean, wasn't it we bold trailblazing Yanks who pioneered use of the word store (however small or modest) in place of shop? And more recently, cellular instead of simply mobile phone? Because that's the standpoint that really counts, right? - that of the needs and demands of those mighty John Galts we all depend on, be they inventors or designers, producers or distributors. Honestly, what could be more vital to the appreciation of any new product, innovation, system, paradigm, etc, than sensitivity to the requirements of those who most truly make them happen? As opposed to the hopelessly muddled, useless perspective of any mere end user.

Call me a spoilsport, amidst all this rational, producer- and creator-centered exuberance. But something tells me, the sooner we "get" this - the sooner we understand that the great undoing of our modern, (more or less) Beijing-ized, "communistified" capitalism is not just profit-mania, but mania for POWER and advantage - the sooner we shall get to the heart of our current economic (i.e., our socio-economic) difficulties.

And perhaps even get out of them?

A Weird Thought

It's been said that nothing is harder to predict than the future. Indeed, I suspect there may be only one thing we hypermoderns do, in trying to understand the times we live in, that is more hazardous than our feeble attempts at prophecy. It is when we - often very smugly and comfortably - project the tendencies of the present onto the past, and "read back into" our recent history more or less the exact outlines of our current situation. To borrow from Orwell: Is Oceania currently at war with Eastasia? Why, then we've always been at war with Eastasia.

Case in point: It may seem, in keeping with the general fallout from Covid-19, that the most glaring feature of current Sino-American relations is our two countries' mutual, mounting animosity and distrust. At the same time, we know that that hardly explains all recent events Chinese-American, right? It doesn't, for instance, begin to explain our rather advanced degree of trust, collaboration - dare one even say cohabitation? - during the pre-Trump previous 25 years. 

The fact is that neither of us got to this point of bitter separation/divorce merely - as some married couples do - by hating, suspecting and accusing each other, and otherwise maintaining a healthy social distance. Nor did our previous Mutual Infatuation Society - one that may yet be with us in some circles, but that surely climaxed in the two decades on either side of AD 2000 - exactly come out of nowhere either. Rather, its striking degree of pre-Trump progress appears to be a quite rich and complex phenomenon: indeed, one that may have been some long time coming, through many delays, detours, hopes and frustrations (c.1860-2000). Along with, arguably, a shared persistence in overcoming divers obstacles across well over two centuries.

My own overwhelming sense is that what climaxed c. 2005 was partly the fruition of a shared dream of both countries. A dream, at least on the American side - and going as far back as Franklin and Jefferson - of a young, vigorous post-Western civilization seeking validation, guidance and commercial opportunity from what was, after all, not just any old Asian country, but in fact the oldest pre-Western civilization in the world.

But now suppose that what the Jeffersonian American Project longed for was both a brother-civilization, if you will, and an ally. If so, then two further points seem brutally obvious to me: our hunger for Chinese affirmation was not on account of 

1) any Yankee inferiority complex with respect to either Europe or Asia, or
2) any lack of confidence in the wisdom of our own conceits.

To the contrary, my repeated impression of Jeffersonian-Painean America (c. 1800-1820) suggests a country more than confident of both its right and its capacity, maybe not to rule, but surely to "overtake" and enfold? the better part of the globe. Or at all events, those parts of it that weren't firmly within the orbit of Imperial China. My question is, might not both of us - young American and ancient Chinese empires - also have been seeking common cause against a common enemy? Against, say, a Concert of European powers that viewed us both as either already, or in process of getting, way too big for our breeches? A Concert of Europe that had every intention of taking us both down at least a peg or two? My point is not to cast doubt on, much less excuse the pettiness and jealousy of European resentments. At the same time, considering that the worst European "snobbery" may have nothing* on good old Chinese and American "we-are-the-Future" smugness, self-entitlement and proudly imperial "mission," are we sure we can entirely blame them?

*At least from pretty much everything I've seen, read and heard.

Which brings us down to the present day. And with it the question of whether not just Europe, but the rest of the globe hasn't got still more reason to be leery of even the most dynamically visionary USA and PRC - either together or separately. In any case, and whatever the current ledger may show of dynamism and vision on both our sides, there seems to be no loss of smugness, or sense of Imperial mission. May I suggest, then, that what we "Chimericans" share most especially and enthusiastically is no mere contempt for "the West" (to say nothing of that lame, despicable Russia). Rather is it a mounting sense of the non-American West's superfluity and obsolescence, and increasing irrelevance to the world's future. Albeit, I'll admit, for two initially quite different reasons in each case. 

In the case of today's Neoimperial China, this contempt seems largely due to its confidence that its own culture not only vastly predates the West, but can expect a vibrant future well beyond the latter's decline and demise. Whereas our Imperial American disdain seems driven by something different but not unrelated: an ingrained habit - one I find useful to call Neojeffersonian - of seeing ourselves as not just Europe's rightful and much superior legatee and successor, but as having successfully outgrown and transcended the better part of the entire West's traditions, its limitations, perhaps even its very definition and character.* 

* In particular Paragraph 10, and also the section under the subheading "Role of Caleb Cushing."

In short, our joint "Chimerican" disdain and impatience of the West can hardly be described as a common sentiment, proceeding as it does from hugely different origins and histories. At the same time, that doesn't mean our two coinciding futures have not at various times (like, eg., c. 1996-2016) foreshadowed a kind of convergence of attitudes, or even a common conviction - at least as regards the (rest of the) West. The issue, then, is not why both an ancient China and an infant America may have looked down on Europe over 200 years ago. Rather it is what has made us both, in c. the past 30 years, so blithely confident of our vast superiority - whether together or in competition - to the rest of the world. So blithely confident that we had most if not all the answers to the world's dilemmas: hence the inevitability - an irreverent wag might argue? - that we both should be so very differently, yet no less miserably, caught off-balance by the explosion of COVID-19.

(to be continued)

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?