Out in the Open: A Christmas Reflection

We forget what an almost insanely daring, revealing revelation the Divine babe in the manger is. We forget that it is not just an event, however pivotal to our salvation, but a sacrament: one no less, in a sense, than Baptism or Holy Communion, because it is at once the ground and soil and fount of both. In other words, the Christ-child is not a wall behind which God hides before coming out into the open, but rather a point of entry - even for us! - into the Heart of His Divine Life. Which is to say, not a disguise but an unveiling; not a pretense, but a portal; not a transient phase or passage - or scaffolding to be discarded - but rather a window, into the inmost room, the inmost self, if you will, of the God who does not merely know or command or judge, but creates, and so loves us. And how better to love us most intimately, and most knowingly, than Himself to become created?

Which is, let's admit, hardly the way that perhaps most of us tend to look at God's human infancy. Indeed, the very notion - of that same infancy as integral to our understanding of who God is - may be especially hard to swallow nowadays. But in particular, I think, in a hypersophisticated Age like ours, in which the acme of human progress - or even perfection? - is measured by values and ideals rather different from those embodied in our Lord's Nativity. Measured, in short, not by some mysterious childlikeness of God, but by the increasingly smart, "cool", awesome and wholly rational (if not "big and bad") unchildlikeness of Man. 

But might it be, I wonder, hardest of all to digest in today's Neojeffersonian, messianic, "exceptionalist" America? A country in which nothing seems less important than our human origins, than where - and Whom - we came from: in which the future is constantly being reinvented, the past perpetually overturned and made obsolete, and where Everything Is Possible. Everything except, perhaps, a childlike humility, and wonder. Because, after all, who needs those - especially if you are this limitless god-in-the-making, who is constantly leaving behind, forgetting, discarding your origins?

In fact (one might argue), if the whole point of our earthly human sojourn is to explore, test and transcend the limits of our own divinity, shouldn't we be having rather less and less need for either wonder or humility? I mean, really: if we humans can't become the sort of gods who are surprised and awed by nothing - who can literally know and do it all (at least eventually?) - what on earth are we here for? And why on earth were we made in His image?

Indeed I wonder if not a few of us - mostly by default - think of God, too, as a creator rather like that. In short, as a maker rather like us. Or like what we would be, if only we had or could acquire the awesome power to create, and command, and destroy, as He does. We may find ourselves instinctively imagining God as one who, so far from creating everything from nothing, actually Himself came up from nothing. And who gradually, by working His way up, through much ambition, toil and travail, finally forged within Himself the high-handed power, the insensitivity, the callousness and ruthlessness not only to create, but more importantly to command and control - and thus terrorize? - all things. So that for, say, you or me to be most like Him would be to identify with precisely that pride, confidence, arrogance, ferocity, etc, by which He has succeeded in wrestling all things into the most abject submission. 

But suppose God is nothing like that. Suppose that the way to the Heart of God - yes, even the very heart of His power - is not to imitate that power by which He (supposedly) wrests, and wrenches, and bends and molds and sculpts all things from the outside, as it were. What if the one Way to know Him most intimately is to enter into, to trust, to feed upon, that Lowliness - that Sonship, if you will - by which He knows, loves and grows every created thing not externally, but from within its very self. Or as some have written, nearer to it than its own self. That same Sonship indeed which, precisely because of its littleness and lowliness, alone can enter the soul of, alone can guide, feed and nurse the proper growth of every creature, however lowly or "insignificant." But most essentially, and dependently, every human creature? Even to its utmost progress, and perfection?

And what if this is the very "trait" of God which, however hidden, draws us most finally and utterly to Him?

Anyhow, something tells me, if for once we could see our Maker for the sort of god He is, practically everything else would be different. Could we see Him in the full and rich distinctness of His Godhead, I more than suspect, we'd have all we could do to stop thinking about Him. If we could but see and know Him, in all that makes Him God with a difference - in all that reveals His divinity in its most proper and accurate contrast, say, to Almighty Us, and to the sort of gods and lords we're all too prone to become over our earthly spheres?* - we'd barely be able to take our eyes off Him. 

*And in particular the persecuting, harrowing effect our own human "deity" has on earth's other visible creatures.

And if we could know His deepest, yearningest power - in contrast to the barbarous noise, pride and frank ugliness of our own hollow might, and utterly conditional earthly dominion - if we could know the exquisite humility, tenderness and quiet of real power, of omnipotence and love wholly without conditions: if we could  but see that - why, I should think we'd find our God almost wholly irresistible.

Unkinder and Ungentler: A Not-Too-Cynical Meditation on our Global(ist) Modern Compassion

I

A wise librarian once described Walter de la Mare - a poet considered by some to be the greatest children's writer in English of the twentieth century - as distinguished by something I find rather remarkable. Maybe even quite rare: even among poets and children's writers. Something she called a "passionate concern for all unhappiness [emphasis mine]." Including the miseries of not a few animals - such as turn up in his stories, for instance - who fall under the care of often zealously well-meaning, but not always the most wisely considerate, human owners.

Now I can't claim to have read Eileen Colwell (1904-2002)* anywhere near the extent to which I've explored Walter de la Mare. But what I think she meant was (among his many other gifts) a kind of revulsion - or revolt - from all that oppresses the nature, the real fulfilment, of any thing, or any one. A loathing, mind you, not necessarily of what's most apt to provoke that creature's wilfulness, or petulance, or rebellion. But rather, and above all, a horror of whatever would stifle and persecute its underlying peace, its deeper joy, its spirit, if you will. What I think she discovered in him was a kind of delicate concern - gentleness in its most basic mode, as it were - not for what makes any creature most instantly dissatisfied or frustrated or angry, but for what makes for its largest unhappiness: its most oppressive unfulfilment over periods of time, and under many different circumstances. And it is precisely this patient, exacting compassion of his, not with what we want to be right now, but with what we may deeply regret having become, say, five or ten years from now, that made de la Mare in his day, I believe, a most poignant depicter of the miseries of animals and children. Including not a few sufferings that might seem, to us anyways, to be largely self-inflicted. This same compassion, then, may also be the hardest thing about him for many of us moderns to understand and accept, much less approve of. For instance, how many of us who read de la Mare today, I wonder, would be much more inclined to say of one of his characters, whether fictional or real: "Well now, so far as she's made this choice of her own free will - why should we care if she's unhappy with the consequences, or that they prove to be irreversible? As the saying goes, she made her bed," etc.

*Though to be fair, "librarian" hardly begins to describe her. Rather, she seems to have been of that type of educator whose passion, not just for books, but for the happiness and well-being of children was by no means uncommon in the mid-20th century. Whereas in our time it has become, I believe, all but extinct.

It's not that we have no use for gentleness as a principle. And especially when confined to its proper place, which it must know and adhere to at all times. Nowadays we Global Moderns are - or strive to be - the very soul of gentleness in certain select departments of human life. We seek to be tenderness and accommodation itself to people's latest up-to-the minute whims, or fancies, or fashions. But in particular we defer, I notice, to those wholesale self-refashionings - those eager, impatiently novel images and reconstructions people often make of themselves - that go most against the grain of what other people, who know and love them, would recognize as their natures, talents and temperaments. In short, we are paragons of gentleness towards all those dreams, projects, obsessions, etc, that tend to make people (in effect, if not in intention) least merciful to, and so hardest on, themselves. Maybe not on themselves as they may be next week or next month, or even next year. But almost certainly farther down the road? 

The reason, I suspect, is that nowadays we're tempted to be suspicious of any compassion that extends beyond Right Now. We tend to distrust anything that makes us strive to understand and appreciate, not just what people think they want - or want to become - but what they might actually be "in themselves." Much less what they might actually need. We may regard concerns like these as just so much condescension, or pity. Or lack of respect for their basic freedom, and adult self-agency. In sum, as a kind of demeaning pseudo-compassion we not only have no use for, but that's NO part of who we are today, in this Best of All Humanly Possible Worlds So Far. 

I'm not altogether sure why this may be so. But to me, it's as if there is assumed to have been a sudden cosmic change - a kind of simultaneous mass self-realization in everyone - like nothing ever before in recorded history. Almost as if we were expecting, any day now, everyone in this enlightened century to proclaim to the whole Creation: "Behold - whatever I may have been before - I am now as strong and self-malleable as I think I am. I can make myself whatever I want to be. As for my pre-existing so-called nature, or native temperament, or 'inherent constitution' - these are just so much material, so many building blocks, so much wiring and circuitry that I configure according to my own best (or even latest) self-definition. And of course I can hardly expect others to be more respectful to, or considerate of, that about myself - say, my 'original' gender - which I despise, and reconfigure as I please." 

In other words, you may be only as gentle and compassionate with me as I have first given permission, and above all as I  - and not you, or God, or the Bible or history or mankind - have chosen to define gentleness and compassion.

II

Thus far our Global Modern Compassion, as I understand it. Meanwhile, let's see if we cannot further investigate our other, and possibly much older, definition. GENTLENESS - as in: respect (or even concern or regard?) for not just the fragility of a creature's ego - of the walls and masks, the costumes, armor and weapons it has built around itself - but for the intricacy and complexity of its nature: of what it was before it was able to build or defend anything. A tenderness for all those things about it that remain, when every striving, grasping attempt at self-definition, or self-transformation, or self-perfection has either fallen away or collapsed in a heap of disgust and disillusionment: e.g., its intrinsic beauty and grace (or whatever is left of them); its deeper life and need; its real satisfaction and joy. Of any particular living thing, human or non-human - but most especially of that kind whose practical virtue and strength, whose material utility and power are by no means readily evident to the casual observer. Or to the hasty, or the over-utilitarian observer. Which nowadays, let's face it, tends to be most of us, in one busy high-pressure situation or other. 

I'll grant you, gentleness as defined above hardly suggests our Global Modern attitude of extreme deference to what you and I have made of ourselves - and re-made, and unmade - times past counting. What I am unable to see, though, is how the above-mentioned definition isn't the very soul of  understanding, of consideration, of solace and encouragement for what you and I have been made. Not to mention all those things our Maker may long to re-make in us - all those lingering fragments and shards and tossing, whispering shades and echoes of Eden. Gifts which can never be recovered - much less redeemed, it seems to me - so long as we continue to believe in a God who almost never chooses (or else nearly always refuses) to get things right the first time. But who instead, more often than not, leaves the Major Corrections up to us.

Now I may sound very naive, or very unmodern or unprogressive - perhaps even very unsaintly? - in what I am about to suggest. But I consider this kind of gentleness to be not just a mode of charity, but an extremely valuable and useful one. Granted, among all the various loves that may be classified as unselfish, it may not be the most strenuous kind, or the most sacrificial. Much less sublime or heroic. But I'd like to know, Is there any mode of sacrificial love that wouldn't be so much the poorer without it? And among all the ways in which we love, is there any better insurance against the tendency of Today's busy, vehement sacrificial loves to become too pushy, too presumptuous, too forceful?

Indeed my concern is that, the farther our Modern Charitable Loves stray from this, if I may say, "Delamarian" definition of gentleness, the deeper they're liable to drift into mostly unintended, unanticipated realms of violence. Because as I've touched on elsewhere, I find this to be an Age that (wonder of wonders) admires and celebrates impatience, abruptness, surliness, insolence - and even violence. If not always a violence of direct physical action, surely almost always one of thoughts and words and gestures, of demeanors and expressions, of plans and projects and "initiatives." Sometimes even with those we profess to love and care the most about. But in particular, it seems to me, with those (people, places, regions, countries, etc) that we Westerners understand the least. And perhaps least care to understand.

Now, for the record, by these latter, non-Western cultures I don't mean primarily Saudi Arabians, or Turks, or Pakistanis, or even Salafi/Wahhabi Muslims generally. And least of all do I mean the mainland Chinese. From where I stand, these folks get - or have been getting until pretty recently? - all the handwringing tenderness and compassion of which Western globalists are capable. But clearly not everyone else has. Rather, it's as if we were saying to - say - your average "unglobalized" Afghan, or Yemeni, or Tibetan, or Russian or Hungarian or Iranian: "You know, I really don't care to know what you're feeling, or what you have 'always' needed, or what you're most afraid of; indeed, I don't even care to know who and what you are. Because frankly, I don't need to know any of those things to know what you most urgently need, and NEED TO DO, right now. And what you need right now is a clean, sharp, bold break." 

My question is, Really? Are we really sure that what most people need today is a love that is blithely, callously, cuttingly ungentle? As if the one thing that really counts, about anyone, is what they can be made to see, or do, or become - whether by themselves or by other people? Regardless of how different it is from what they are by nature or by habit? Or by history? As if nothing of what they are in themselves - or indeed, ultimately, of what you and I are in ourselves - matters in the least? 

III

But enough of my pet peeves for the moment. Because right now, I suspect, might be a good time to hear a word from our Globalist sponsors: 

"WHAT? Would it be an impertinence at this point to ask just WHAT ON EARTH you're talking about? You indict the Age you're living in for a lack of - or certainly a lack of respect for - gentleness. Perhaps you'd care to explain how there's never been a greater striving than right now to understand and identify and commiserate with EVERY permutation of  gender/transgender/multigender euphoria / dysphoria / dystopia / dyspepsia presently known to our turbo-changing globe? That's right - dare you deny it? - with what these poor individuals ARE! 

"But if you prefer the geopolitical arena: What else, may I ask, would you call our tender, coaxing patience with human sinkholes like Afghanistan these past twenty years? What else but a gentle regard for all those (few or many) CREATIVE individuals yearning for the freedom of self-definition - or even self-transformation? - who remain trapped within that patriarchal prison/death camp? 

"And since you brought it up, what else would you call it but an infinite patience, not just with what they are - or think they are - but with the slow pace of freedom and democratization, in important places you so casually dismiss, like China and Saudi Arabia? What else but gentleness - and with the VERY HARDEST OF HEART? 

"And if you're going to indict us for failure on both counts, can you in the same breath blame us for trying?"

Well, I'm not sure exactly how I would answer any of those questions. Nor do I imagine my objectors being in the least apt to use that sort of over-the-top language in asking them. (Except that sometimes more is more? - more revealing of what we actually think, but also more unmasking of how we feel about, and try to justify, our thoughts.) 

But I will tell you what is my greatest wonder in all this:

In this present Great Global World of slow-motion train-wrecks like, yes, Afghanistan and Yemen, and Libya, and Syria (maybe even Iran and Ukraine?) - not to mention our pre-Trump, no-daylight, thick-as-thieves collusion with the mainland Chinese - in such a Progress-Infatuated Globe (PIG), where all our most hands-on attempts at spreading humanity, compassion, democracy, diversity, etc, seem capable of begetting only more violence or threat of violence, more chaos or threat of chaos, my real amazement is that such a question can be asked at all. And especially when you consider the sort of progressive humanitarianism most fashionable in the West today. A kind that may indeed have a "passionate concern" for certain very modern, and possibly transient, forms of unhappiness, among extremely select categories of human beings. And yet note: it's also one that, for some reason, seems at least as intent on - if not obsessed with - the profit, power and influence of certain rather more artificial and collective human entities. Like, say, global corporations, NGOs, etc. Even as it ignores, glosses over - or even aggravates?- the deeper unhappiness of those natural human entities we call individuals, and families. And by no means just in backwater places like Afghanistan and Yemen. Or even Hungary, or Poland. Or Russia. Maybe most of all - who knows? - right here, in our Globally Enlightened West.

(Edited.)

A Brief Rejoinder to "Words of Encouragement"

Well, anyhow - as I'd hoped I'd succeeded in putting into the mouths of our fearless Western leaders - I find this to be a boldly adventurous Age. 

In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd say it was almost recklessly, heedlessly adventurous. (Not that that should matter either way, right? I mean, so what if we Westerners often end up leaving things an even bigger mess than we found them - so long as we make them more interesting, and challenging?)

But if there's one notion more than another that, for me, embodies the Spirit of this adventurous Age, it is the notion of Knowledge as Work. And Love as Work. And Reality as Work. 

It is as if we Global Moderns have made, not so much Man as created by God, but rather Work as created by (workaholic) Man, the measure of all things. Meaning, to get to the heart, the essence of anything, you've got to WORK at it. To the point, indeed, where work itself may seem to become all-but-indistinguishable from one or another mode of productive violence. Or sometimes even destructive violence. Again, no creation without destruction.

(Meanwhile, certain rather ancient traits and exercises that we used to call virtues: patience, vigilance, forbearance, humility, awe, rapture, contemplation, even prayer itself - well,  these once may have been useful enough for creating amusing or distracting fictions about reality. But they're utterly useless for getting at the core, the inner workings and outward effects, of any truly real thing. Any truly real thing - including God, assuming there is a god.) 

The whole point of Modern Work, thus defined, being that you must seek out whatever there is in anything - and ultimately anyone - that is "workable," i.e., reducible to something else. And then you change it, or reconfigure it, or otherwise put it to some good use or pleasure by making it wholly unrecognizable. Much like turning a tree into paper. Meanwhile, whatever there is that seemingly can't - yet - be reduced, you either ignore, or find some way of overcoming, or breaking through its wall, so to speak. In short, there is only way to be truly objective about anything, and that is to objectify it.

But now imagine something else. Suppose that the only unshifting, abiding objectivity we can ever attain - concerning any one or any thing - is to see that creature, not for what we can make of it, but for what it is. And that the only way to see it fully for what it is is to see not just its "objectness", but also that in it which is (so to speak) subjective. That in it which is, as it were, irreducibly its Self - such that we can only make into something else, by either killing it or taking it apart.

But now let's go a step further. Suppose we can only fully, sympathetically understand this Self - we can only get into the heart of this or any living creature - so far as we let its Maker get into the heart of us? I.e., not merely to command us, or exhort, or threaten, or coach, or exemplarize or didacticize us: but get into our very soul, and bone and marrow and sinews (and all those other things that only the soul knows best). And all for the purpose of so loving us, in fact, as to make us One - not merely by knowledge or by will, but by nature - with Himself? Even as He is One with His Father and His Spirit?

And now for something really unbelievable: What if this one small further step is, in fact, both the key to, and the heart of, all our truly good work?

Words of Encouragement; or, How Our Leaders Might Exhort Us (if they could first be honest with themselves)

"Let not your hearts be troubled; neither be afraid. 

"I.e., don't let yourselves be discouraged even for a second by Afghanistan and other so-called reversals, withdrawals, etc. Always make it a point to look at the practical side of the larger picture. Nobody can control everything: not YET anyway. In the meantime, why not focus on what we humans - and most of all we indomitable Yanks - can and have controlled? 

"Just think what a God-like generation we've become in our proper domain, insulated and buffered by this Americanized/Sinicized/Amazonized global corporatopia we've fashioned. 'Oh, but it's still a FORTRESS!' you say? Well, and what of it? And where do you suppose the God would be, without the fortification and protection of His Heaven?

" 'And just what [you ask] are the earmarks of our self-created divinity?' 

"Well, first off, consider what are the defining characteristics of so-called Deity Itself, as catalogued in our far-from-perfect (but nonetheless foundational) Scriptures. And then think how far we've already built and advanced upon them. 

"Consider the God of both Scriptures (Hebrew and Greek), with His strange, eccentric, self-effacing - even humble - perfection: one that's inseparable from a sort of modest, discretionary wisdom that actually respects the nature of the things He's made. Almost as if they had made themselves - or at very least had created their worlds? - and He was somehow reluctant to intrude. 

"Consider His love, that prizes above all the kind of grace - graciousness? - we call patience and kindness. As if these silly virtues were somehow capable of overcoming evil, or redeeming anything - much less anyone - from the corruptions of time, chance and 'sin'!

"Consider, finally, this so-called power of His, that finds it necessary to abdicate - nay, evacuate - itself, to the insane point of dying an agonizing death of a piece of wood! And His enemies are supposed to be impressed? Is that what it's going to take to over-awe REAL sin, real rebellion? On the other hand, if you and I are to be rescued and saved - well then, who are we wiser to depend on: the prince who relinquishes power, or the peon who seizes power and is not ashamed to wield it with a vengeance?

"And now picture, if you can, a very different - if not opposite - sort of perfection. One that's far too productively busy to fret over, say, just how a creature has been made . . . or what is its proper mode and manner of life . . . or even what makes for its happiness. Picture rather a - why not? - wisdomless, mechanistic, and, yes, LIFELESS perfection. One that has less and less to do with any facet of what we call Creation, precisely because it is already making itself sovereign in those areas of human life that really count: the realms of REAL Power - of procedure, technique and organization. And, of course, technology. 

"Imagine a graceless, commanding, heavy- and HIGH-handed love, that no longer needs to listen or be attentive because it it always knows best already . . . or in any case knows a helluva lot more than you or I do . . . and even when it doesn't, why, surely we're all better off for having learned from our experts' legitimate mistakes??? 

"Finally, picture not a poised, serene, satisfied power - such as one might find, say, in Heaven? - but rather one that, being 'of the earth earthy,' is unabashedly eager, hungry, insatiable. Such that it never met a corner of the universe it didn't want to conquer, and dissect, and find some really good use for.  Such that, in fact, it's not just utterly void of either sensitivity or subtlety, but hasn't got the least bit of time, respect or regard for any such antiquated constraints.

"In short, consider - and admire - a Perfection, Love and Power that can't be bothered really to understand any created thing, precisely because the time is so short, and there's not a moment to lose in the urgent business of learning, and mastering, how that creature is to be best utilized. Remember, we humans are gods with a difference. We're not in the business of creating a universe; we're simply trying to control, manipulate, reconstruct, and finally put to some good use, the one we've got."

(Edited.)

The Anti-Father; or, The Prayer We've Been Living (sort of a post-Father's Day special)

What? you didn't actually think I'd launch this thing on Father's Day, did you?

There are days, of course, when the lip-service pieties must be observed and respected. And then there are other days, when you see what mincemeat we Moderns have made of the Reality behind the pious mutterings. And so you attempt to devise a prayer - if that is the right word - more in keeping with the general disillusionment. Or the greater wisdom, or wiser sophistication, or more sophisticated Global Bastardliness or whatever. And since the emphasis is on the word attempt, here's mine:

Our fathers on earth . . . 

May they be thoroughly useless and undependable

so that their names may be vile and execrated.

(As for the rest of us)

Man's Kingdom come, 

Man's Will be done 

in heaven even as it is on earth.

Let each one of us earn our daily bread by the sweat of our brow

with no help from anyone else.

That being accomplished, 

may we DEMAND to be understood, forgiven and loved (after all we've earned it, right?) - 

Even as we carefully ration and withhold love and forgiveness and understanding from others (who may not have earned much of anything).

But ABOVE ALL, deliver us not from evil:

Rather leave us to confront and conquer it boldly by our own strength:

So that the Kingdom

and the Power 

and the Glory

at last may be ours

now and forever. 

Amen.

(Edited.)

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.)