A Modern Capitalist's (anti-)Pentecost?

Funny. Had there been room, I just might have subtitled it: Prayer of a Well-Meaning but Confused Efficiency Expert. Anyhow, here goes:

"By all means freely consult His blueprints and guidelines - that's what they're THERE for! But please, in the name of everything holy, DO NOT bring God down into the nitty-gritty of this operation - He will only complicate things and multiply difficulties! Remember that God is Love - and love is nothing if not difficult. But if love = difficulty = hardship = complexity, then it's just about the last thing we need to simplify,  streamline and expedite this BIG GLOBE-SPANNING OPERATION. Besides, doesn't He want us to figure things out for ourselves? To stop clinging to His apron-strings and finally STAND ON OUR OWN TWO FEET?"

But who's he praying to, if not God? you ask. Why, who else but Man Almighty?

THE Choice: and our choices

Have you ever met anyone who was, let us say, extremely conscious of the power and freedom of their own choices? So much so, in fact, they simply couldn't see how anyone else may have had impact on the shaping of their decisions? Much less influence, or even guidance?

But especially of their good and wise decisions?

Then again, maybe you've met lots of folks like that. More than you could ever count, much less remember. Plus you've been loving every minute of it.

Now I think I may know why some of you believe that's a good thing. And that there may be more people like that nowadays than ever before. And why that, too, is a good thing. 

It's because - surely? - we are more encouraging of people to be themselves than ever before. It's because we are - or at least the more progressive/enlightened souls among us are? - today more brimming-over-with-compassion-and-understanding than ever before. In human history. More painfully, agonizingly aware and supportive and consoling of EVERY ever-so-minutely unique individual situation and predicament - and choice - out there. Along with, of course, the various (often stridently) political grievances / positions / entrenchments / resentments that inevitably accompany these multiple life-challenges and -choices. Once and for all, whatever it is: We GET it. And we support you.

Again, we Moderns are: More eagerly listening. And understanding. And supportive. And COMPASSIONATE. Of EVERY life-story and -circumstance. Than ever before.

Right. No doubt that's why our 150 flavors of American political hatred and contempt are more mellow and benign (and nonviolent?) than they've been in 150 years. And why even our sharpest differences of political and social opinion have never been more free of impatience, rancor and misunderstanding.

So what do you suppose is really going on here? How is it that our present American context is, if anything, more or less the direct opposite of the near-utopia described in the preceding paragraph? Why is it that the more our present America commends itself for being so unprecedentedly, lovingly affirmative and supportive of every human condition, the less we seem able to get along, or work together, or maintain the most basic sense of common citizenship? or common humanity? 

And not just at the most opposite religious and political poles either. Sometimes even within the same (orthodox) church faction. Or the same church household. Let's say, for instance, that you and I are comparably traditionalist Catholics who attend the same Latin Mass. And are stalwart members of the same Rosary group. Granted, then, we both share more or less the same religious and political beliefs. At the same time, be pleased to remember: I'm much farther along the Right Road than you are. Alright then. So how else am I supposed to secure and consolidate my own progress, and minimize risk of contamination - or worst of all, regression? - than by inserting gradually wider and wider degrees of spiritual separation between us?

So how did we get here? How did we Americans become almost overnight, as it were, so "universally loving," and at the same time so full of . . . well, ideologically-driven fear, distrust, contempt, even hate?

My own hunch, anyway, is that today we are living in one of the Great Ages of American Self-Creation. Nowadays (since c. - very roughly - 1995) we individualistic Americans have become pretty thoroughly constituted - i.e., consumed - by the sovereign and omnicompetent choices we've made. And not just the ones we've made for ourselves, but - increasingly, I notice - the choices we've made of ourselves. So much so, that it's getting harder and harder for us to see any other choice, whether of man or God, that may also have gone into making us who we are. Almost as if we were all finally admitting (contrary to the admonition of a recent president): "You know, as a matter of fact I DID build that. And, best I can tell, with little or no significant (i.e., unpaid) help, or even input, from anyone else."

Now you can plead all you want about how sentiments like these often conduce to greater self-worth, accomplishment, productivity, etc. All the same: if the above "attitude" is not, at very least, a challenge to the exercise of a reasonable, practical, modest humility - as distinct from the more self-martyring kind - honestly, I can't imagine what is. 

Then again, one might argue that whatever social factors make humility more challenging are all to the good. That an "anti-humble" society is in fact the best crucible of virtue - because the humility thereby achieved has by far the greater merit. Exactly: any humility I've achieved in the teeth of great obstacles is one I'm sure to be that much less proud of. And that much less conceited and overconfident regarding my own hard-won wisdom. And so, of course, that much more open to the possibly different wisdom and insights of my co-worshipers and colleagues. Brilliant.

So much for the self-martyring, self-advertising kind of humility. That still leaves us the earlier-mentioned, humbler sort. Without which, frankly, I can't for the life of me see what hope you and I have of understanding any thing, much less anyone. Certainly not with any degree of practical accuracy. For instance, I may see you simply the way I choose to see you - and be the whole time surrendering to my own pride. Or I can strive to see you in exactly the way you choose to see yourself - and be all the while surrendering to your pride. Or we can both strive to see each other through the prism of the political/ideological group - or company, or church, or charity - to which we belong. And find ourselves both submitting to a still uglier, more conglomerate pride. 

Surely, I can't help thinking, there's got to be another Perspective. And it is, I fear, precisely this other Perspective that has been receding more and more in the rearview mirror, the farther we go down our present road of Radical (Angry) Compassion.

In short, it's becoming all but impossible to see ourselves through the one truthful lens: the infinitely, exquisitely variegated prism of the One Sovereign Choice - that of our creation. A Choice that has quite literally made each one of us, long before you and I had the power to make any choices at all. Neither did it simply stop there, for it has gone on making us, to whatever degree we have ever done, or been, anything good. A Divine Choice that in fact continues to make us - to whatever degree we are good at all - right up to the present moment. And not just in our unity and commonality as human beings, but (and here's the weird, rather unbelievable part) in all our rich variety, our distinctness, our inexhaustible eccentricity as human individuals. At least, to the extent that we let it.

In a nutshell: God - by our leave, and making use of our trustful prayer - continues to make us all the best we can be. Somehow, He continues to render us far more interesting, more colorful, more individual, more unrepeatably distinct and fascinating creatures than we could ever make ourselves, armed with all our most high-flown dramas of ego, self-worth and self-martyrdom, or with all our most cutting-edge political narratives and agendas.

Which suggests to me one overriding theme: The more we see, and live, this vision of the utter dependence of all our goodness and giftedness on God, the better the chance of our discerning our various individual goods and gifts more clearly, and less defensively. Gifts and virtues which may prove "wondrous, passing strange" in their differences from one individual to another: thus driving home to each of us not just our common need for God, but our common - and inescapable - dependence on each other. My point is that we have vastly better odds of perceiving clearly what God has given to us to the extent that we see it as coming from God, and not from ourselves. On the other hand, suppose I were to regard my special "gifts" as in essence the product of my own arduous labor: after all, who could know better what's mine, and how I did it, than I do? It all seems reasonable enough in principle, right? Until, perhaps, such a time as I find myself, despite all my (of course) arduously heroic efforts at humility, somehow more and more tempted to a not unreasonable pride in what - please remember - I myself have created or achieved. I mean, after all, I'm only human, and as the venerable saying goes: "If you can DO it, it ain't braggin'." 

In any case, I'll leave to my readers the judgment of what is, or is not, the most likely train of consequences to this line of reasoning. I mean, we all know, right? how clear and unsparing a light a not unreasonable pride can shed on what, again, belongs to me, being the product of my essentially unaided effort (/sarc). So what do you think? Given my undisputed "gifts," and the not unreasonable pride I'm allowed to take in them: In the event of a fierce difference of opinion over, say, the future direction of worship in our church, am I that much less, or that much more, likely to:

(1) be insecure and defensive about these hard-won gifts - and resultant opinions - of mine? 

(2) feel threatened by, and competitive with, the similar gifts and possibly differing opinions of colleagues and co-workers? 

Besides which - let's face it - even the most energizing and vigorously opinionated friction can be quite tiring. Perhaps even debilitatingly so. Or so I've often gathered. So maybe - do you think, if we all just got tired enough? - we could finally step out from behind all our masks and guises of pseudo-pious modesty. ("Think of it: I basically did it ALL by myself - yet here I am, ascribing ALL the glory to God! Well if that's not humility, I'd like to know what is?") We could at last begin to understand our various gifts as coming to us - not just rhetorically but essentially - from God (however often refracted through the prayers, mercy and kindness of others). We could understand ourselves as being every bit as prayerfully dependent on God for the direction and cultivation of those gifts as we are for their origin and content. Who knows? we might even start to see more clearly the rich interrelatedness and interdependence of our various talents. Which pooling of strengths can often mean greater clarity in identifying the common dangers that surround us. And stronger possibilities of agreement on at least the bare outlines of whatever immediate challenges we face. But agreement in particular, it seems to me, on challenges of a wider and more urgent public importance. Like, say, a suddenly fast-approaching wildfire. Or again (my own special favorite), global pandemic.

Meanwhile we continue with our vehement, adamant projects of self-creation. And we wonder how it is that - for all Today's strident love of diversity, individuality and uniqueness - we, on both Left and Right (and maybe most of all Globally Enlightened Center?), seem more monotonously arrogant and oppressive than ever before. Or, if nothing else, more keenly sensitive to the arrogance and oppression - and monotony - of our opponents?

(Edited.)

What the World Doesn't Need Now

Imagine it: You're sitting by yourself in the outdoor patio of a local brewery, reading with the appropriate beverage. Remember (try and suspend disbelief for a moment), you're one of the place's nerdier, less fashionable customers.

Now - again - imagine it, if you can: Conviviality, liveliness, laughter, from some nearby table of strangers, that spills over into yours, and yet that somehow makes you feel - not self-conscious, or awkward, but at ease. That gives you reason to feel not questioned, or inadequate, but accepted. Maybe even embraced? (Not to get too weird) 

I'm not saying that that never or seldom happens. But even if there are places - clubs, restaurants, parks, etc - where it happens several times a week, or even every day: surely, that's got to be one of the great miracles of Love in any place, and in any Age? So why do I feel, maybe especially in our own Age?

But let me proceed by making a disclaimer.

Far be it from me to downplay the importance, or even the dire necessity, of charitable love in today's world. Indeed, it may well be something the world needs now more desperately than ever. But I can tell you, in very short order, the kind of "unselfish" love that the world does not need more of, because it's already got enough and to spare. 

It is the kind that's pretty much the direct opposite of the hospitable love I described just now, unfolding at the local brewery. It is the kind of love that seeks to improve us in such a way, and with such words, as in almost any other context - say, a US Marine boot-camp drill - might be deemed unduly callous, or harsh. Or even cruel.

Not, mind you, that I have anything against Love That Improves. All love is sentimental and useless except as it seeks the betterment of the loved one. Any love worth its name - any love whose ultimate roots are in Love Himself - will always take us where we are. But it will never leave us there. And that holds true regardless of whether you and I, the immediate lovers - God's tools, if you will - haven't got the faintest clue as to (1) where the improvement is most needed, or (2) how one most needs to go about it. 

Right now, though, I'm recalling a very distinct and yet, it may be, very Modern kind of improving charity. One of which I've written about elsewhere, at least in certain other of its aspects. A kind that seems to assume the beloved can only be improved by means of a certain, often very subtle, gradual, by-a-thousand-cuts kind of embarrassment. Or even humiliation. I'm thinking of the sort of love in whose company - which may in fact be my company - you find it extremely hard not to feel more and more uncomfortable, self-conscious, awkward, stupid, ridiculous, and ultimately useless. That's right, even when you're walking down the street minding your own business, and all of a sudden this Great Love of Mine drives up and very insistently offers you a ride. Yes, even when extending this kind gesture, it somehow manages to reinforce in your mind all the things about you that are either wrong, or ridiculous, or inadvertently amusing. Or else, at very least, those things that urgently require work, revision or radical change. Such that, even when this Great Love most generously takes on itself the burden of loving you "anyways", there seems hardly a corner of the earth that won't very soon learn how a difficult a task it was. 

That, in my humble estimation is - more or less exactly - the kind of love the world doesn't need now. But therein lies also the difficulty: Just how I am to love you in a way that's truly unselfish, and that genuinely seeks your improvement, and yet - somehow - doesn't make you feel more and more uncomfortable, inadequate and, in the final count, useless. Even, mind you, as you're supposed to be making yourself more and more useful, all the time: if nothing else, in order to prove your worthiness and fitness to go on living in this Great Globalizing World, in which God forbid there should be anything remotely resembling dead weight. (Meanwhile, my great outpouring of love and concern seems more than ever designed to convince you of, once again, your massive inutility.)

Which brings me to, I think, a closely related point. For one thing, I notice this rather obsessively utilitarian Great Global World is also very fond of hardness and harshness. And that as a method, not just of solving and remediating problems, but of talking about them. Even as America places most of whatever remaining religious faith it has in violence, arrogance, abruptness and severity. And again, as those same qualities are applied, not just to action, but to speech, exhortation, encouragement. Almost as if to suggest one's language can never be UN-tender enough. Even with those you love. And maybe especially with those you love the most? Remember, Improvement Is Everything. (Perhaps more accurately known nowadays as "fixing," as I suggested some time ago in another place). And if not your own improvement, then surely - even better - somebody else's?

In short, this present Age may often carry a big stick. But unlike Teddy Roosevelt it has never had less use for speaking softly. The apparent point being that, even if your message is simply that you care for someone, wherever possible make sure that you hit them between the eyes with that fact. And preferably in such a way as demonstrates your own great effort, and their own still greater unworthiness. That is the problem with hard words: like hard water, they corrode, and corrupt, everything - even the things they wash and clean.

Meanwhile - and whatever my degree of verbal abrasiveness - don't you DARE tell me I'm not (at least) trying to love you charitably, to the best of my ability.

"Well, you can call it whatever you like," you understandably retort. "BUT I DON'T CALL THAT LOVE AT ALL!"

Fair enough. But in that case, maybe someone can tell me what other "productive" energy, what other "love" it is, that's been making this Great Global World go round and round, ever faster and faster. And with hardly so much as a pause for self-reflection, Covid-wise or otherwise? Much less remorse, or repentance?

(Edited.)

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?