Global climate catastrophe is the most forceful example of the basic danger of having nothing but Nature, and human ability to manipulate Nature, to rely on, even in matters of this life. Unrestrained human appetites are bringing the house down around our ears. The builders & sellers of technology were going to raise human beings above all the sufferings of even our recent ancestors: collectively, we've knocked holes the very tent which has protected & sustained life, through runaway material progress.
But instead of equating damaged physical nature with our damaged human nature, to show the former inevitably follows the latter, many who purport to hold normative Christian teaching concerning man's place in Nature & the effects of transgressing divine wisdom deny the very existence of the phenomenon that gives these teachings new force. Instead, the evidence that shows what damage has been done, and what further catastrophes are coming, are dismissed as delusions of a Nature-cult, of an alleged (and sometimes real) contemporary worship of planetary ecology. The climate-catastrophe deniers are devout believers in the very technological demi-paradise which they ought to hold in derision. To love God above all things ought to clarify how limited even the universe is: even the resources of all the galaxies combined are finite, not infinitely exploitable.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Monday, November 16, 2009
world, flesh & devil
Jesus warns us that he comes to bring a sword -- not the sword of war, but the sword which divides us from our false selves. By declaring that members of families would be against each other, he idnicates how far he is from something called 'family values': such values are actually the enemy of those who desire to follow Christ. When a cleric or pastor or preacher declares himself in favor of 'family values,' he shows how little he grasps the gospel. The entire Old Testament demonstrates the division of father against son, brother against brother: the Church is to be God's family, one of self-denial rather than of self-advancement, of renunciation rather than of exercise of force, of the Holy One who does not baptize nations but holds those from all nations in a baptism which repels all local regencies & powers.
While the hierarchy has always been fond of Crusades of various types, the centrifuge of history distills the power lust from the desire to undo the works of the flesh in one's self, regardless of what the surrounding society may or may not sanction. The attempt to coerce the state back into conformity to decrees of the Church is an attempt to mix what the Spirit has separated: human beings no longer trust the state as such, which is a sign of how deeply Christ & his crucifixion at the hands of the state & clerical authority have been ingrained in the global society; but we still long, not to share in his suffering & crucifixion, but to treat earth as if it were already, or potentially, Heaven. But the apocapyptic insanity that afflicts many of those who profess Christ currently -- "Armageddon, huzzah!" -- is equally alien to the gospel & the vision of the world's consummation given to St. John. Our Lord was sorrowful unto death -- he didn't want to drink the chalice, but accepted it because it was the Father's will, and therefore his own true will. Whenever the chalice comes to us to drink, we must drink it as well, if it's the Father's will -- but the frenzy of labelling Antichrists, especially the folly & brutal ignorance of the white-rightwing's slanders, transgresses the commandment & is a form of idolatry, implying that the reverse political figure represents Christ's Kingdom. Apocalyptism is thinly disguised love of the world, not joy at the prospect of Christ's second coming.
The world, flesh & devil are ingrained in our most common thoughts & desires: the flesh lusts against the spirit & the spirit (or Spirit) against the flesh, and we should be wary of any service to the flesh, as a temptation away from sharing in the Cross & being with Christ. If we do this joylessly, we demonstrate that we don't do it from love. When we fast, we must not do it as the hypocrites do, making a show of it: if we pray on street corners, or on television, or any place to demonstrate how faithful we are, we prove that we are faithless & loveless: we believe ourselves to be some sort of prophets or saints or exemplars, when we need to imitate the tax-gatherer beating his breast & asking for mercy.
While the hierarchy has always been fond of Crusades of various types, the centrifuge of history distills the power lust from the desire to undo the works of the flesh in one's self, regardless of what the surrounding society may or may not sanction. The attempt to coerce the state back into conformity to decrees of the Church is an attempt to mix what the Spirit has separated: human beings no longer trust the state as such, which is a sign of how deeply Christ & his crucifixion at the hands of the state & clerical authority have been ingrained in the global society; but we still long, not to share in his suffering & crucifixion, but to treat earth as if it were already, or potentially, Heaven. But the apocapyptic insanity that afflicts many of those who profess Christ currently -- "Armageddon, huzzah!" -- is equally alien to the gospel & the vision of the world's consummation given to St. John. Our Lord was sorrowful unto death -- he didn't want to drink the chalice, but accepted it because it was the Father's will, and therefore his own true will. Whenever the chalice comes to us to drink, we must drink it as well, if it's the Father's will -- but the frenzy of labelling Antichrists, especially the folly & brutal ignorance of the white-rightwing's slanders, transgresses the commandment & is a form of idolatry, implying that the reverse political figure represents Christ's Kingdom. Apocalyptism is thinly disguised love of the world, not joy at the prospect of Christ's second coming.
The world, flesh & devil are ingrained in our most common thoughts & desires: the flesh lusts against the spirit & the spirit (or Spirit) against the flesh, and we should be wary of any service to the flesh, as a temptation away from sharing in the Cross & being with Christ. If we do this joylessly, we demonstrate that we don't do it from love. When we fast, we must not do it as the hypocrites do, making a show of it: if we pray on street corners, or on television, or any place to demonstrate how faithful we are, we prove that we are faithless & loveless: we believe ourselves to be some sort of prophets or saints or exemplars, when we need to imitate the tax-gatherer beating his breast & asking for mercy.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Little Flower
Today -- well, yesterday now -- is the traditional date of the celebration of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Carmelite nun born Thérèse Martin & who died unknown outside her community at the age 24, but knew before she died that she was going to be known across the globe.
She embodies what's invisible, ungraspable outside the gambit of faith or the willingness to accept the gambit: that the real relations in the world are not at all what we can begin to calculate, even with the aid of all the nanocircuits across the globe and over it. A saint is someone who takes the Church & the world equally by surprise, as Sister Thérèse Martin did following her death. No clerics or prelates were asking for or pushing her as a saint; if anything, the theological & canonical experts could, at first, found what she wrote mundane and even a bit sentimental, put off by initial appearances.
All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost,
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached from the frost --
She embodies what's invisible, ungraspable outside the gambit of faith or the willingness to accept the gambit: that the real relations in the world are not at all what we can begin to calculate, even with the aid of all the nanocircuits across the globe and over it. A saint is someone who takes the Church & the world equally by surprise, as Sister Thérèse Martin did following her death. No clerics or prelates were asking for or pushing her as a saint; if anything, the theological & canonical experts could, at first, found what she wrote mundane and even a bit sentimental, put off by initial appearances.
All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost,
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached from the frost --
a la recherche du temps perdu
The value of time is unrealized until you realize that you've lost too much of it.
What useless objects I spent so much of my time thinking about, the phantoms of history, both history to come & history adumbrated in our texts & pages. Power is squandered by seeking to influence the powerful, who are alien to my heart & to the things that I've loved. The one insight buried in the banality of George Lucas' 'Revenge of the Sith' is the transformation of Anakin from the idealist who so painfully wants to protect what he loves that he regards all who love him as a threat & becomes a destroyer.
It's to be hoped one wakes up before losing three limbs & most of one's skin.
What useless objects I spent so much of my time thinking about, the phantoms of history, both history to come & history adumbrated in our texts & pages. Power is squandered by seeking to influence the powerful, who are alien to my heart & to the things that I've loved. The one insight buried in the banality of George Lucas' 'Revenge of the Sith' is the transformation of Anakin from the idealist who so painfully wants to protect what he loves that he regards all who love him as a threat & becomes a destroyer.
It's to be hoped one wakes up before losing three limbs & most of one's skin.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Ken Burns' at his best again in 'The National Parks'
The kids in elementary school who were ardent campers never seemed to be very pleasant. Early in life, we moved from a small suburb into a more heavily wooded area (now scarcely wooded at all, I understand) & we always had to travel by the deep waters of a reservoir. Decades later, "The Blair Witch Project" would capture my feeling about the woods of my home state, and about Nature (capital N) in general: I always feel like a stranger & intruder, not kindred at all, amazed & overwhelmed by beauty, but also sensing a huge antagonism from the life in these spaces.
The new series by Ken Burns on PBS has built a bridge to the natural world for me, by showing me the activity of those who, a century & more ago, saw the threat unchecked exploitation of resources posed to the immense & rare natural landscape of the country, and out of a love for it & for future generations, set out to do what they could to preserve it from being ravaged even further. The words of John Muir, of John Burroughs, of Theodore Roosevelt supply something that isn't in my temperament. For me, the awe has always been accompanied by a terror; partly, probably, from my feeling that mountains & rivers & forests are things without human language, apart from the human story. Through the narrative, written by Clayton Duncan, linked to these images, Ken Burns supplies the story that I haven't wished to discover on my own.
The new series by Ken Burns on PBS has built a bridge to the natural world for me, by showing me the activity of those who, a century & more ago, saw the threat unchecked exploitation of resources posed to the immense & rare natural landscape of the country, and out of a love for it & for future generations, set out to do what they could to preserve it from being ravaged even further. The words of John Muir, of John Burroughs, of Theodore Roosevelt supply something that isn't in my temperament. For me, the awe has always been accompanied by a terror; partly, probably, from my feeling that mountains & rivers & forests are things without human language, apart from the human story. Through the narrative, written by Clayton Duncan, linked to these images, Ken Burns supplies the story that I haven't wished to discover on my own.
Creation
Divine-Watchmaker sorts of arguments, in any guise, for God's existence leave me cold. What seems far more persuasive to me is the feeling that comes from the sense that comes to everyone at some point in their lives that the beauty we see, the intimacy we enjoy, the sudden overwhelming senes of what an astonishing thing it is simply To Be, makes us experience the world & creation as a gift, that a Giver specifically has handed it to us, and that this outweighs all other doubts & experiences & arguments. Just as Christ comes in a backwater stable & goes around with a dozen ill-equipped men teaching among a people under a foreign power, our clues to God come humbly, mounted on a donkey.
Monday, September 21, 2009
'Heart speaks to heart'
'Because of the increase of evildoing, the love of many will grow cold,' Jesus warns, as St. Matthew's gospel reports. It's part of a general warning that, because of persecution, many will be led into sin, will hate & betray each other, and false prophets will come & deceive many -- as a result, love, divine charity, will grow cold in the faithful.
St. Paul tells us what charity is in the famous passage in 1st Corinthians -- and this is the love that's to be practiced especially with regard to those who don't share our own faith. Even if people are up to their eyeballs in dreadful things, divine love prompts us to believe that whatever their sins or errors, they're seeking God & looking for truth. The opposite attitude is pride, the belief that we can never be "like that": but St. Paul warns us that we can fall, can be cut off from Christ, through the failure of love and its corollary, humility. Love is transient when it isn't joined to humility, to the recognition that we're fallible & changeable & wholly subject to our own passions & bigotries, without the help & mercy of God.
There is a mercilessness in the air in the U.S. and elsewhere, a madness that resembles something out of Dante's inferno. We can't drive it out: but we can make certain that it doesn't drive us. Heart needs to speak to heart, in hope & in humility, or the fiery gales will be fed by our own worst impulses.
St. Paul tells us what charity is in the famous passage in 1st Corinthians -- and this is the love that's to be practiced especially with regard to those who don't share our own faith. Even if people are up to their eyeballs in dreadful things, divine love prompts us to believe that whatever their sins or errors, they're seeking God & looking for truth. The opposite attitude is pride, the belief that we can never be "like that": but St. Paul warns us that we can fall, can be cut off from Christ, through the failure of love and its corollary, humility. Love is transient when it isn't joined to humility, to the recognition that we're fallible & changeable & wholly subject to our own passions & bigotries, without the help & mercy of God.
There is a mercilessness in the air in the U.S. and elsewhere, a madness that resembles something out of Dante's inferno. We can't drive it out: but we can make certain that it doesn't drive us. Heart needs to speak to heart, in hope & in humility, or the fiery gales will be fed by our own worst impulses.
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