By rights I should have a lovely scintillating podcast and a whole lot of links for you today. Being here wide awake in Nairobi, however, and Matt asleep in Binghamton makes the podcast an impossibility. And the fact that I haven’t read anything at all for weeks means there are no links. Well, that’s not true, I’ve read Something New (that’s a PG Wodehouse) straight through.
The thing I like most about being here, besides the overpowering head-cold that supersedes all other head-colds of all time, is not really knowing what’s going on in America. I have only had time to glance at the headlines here and there, rushing into the house for a minute of WiFi in between eatings and outings. It is most restful. A needed rest to be able to cope with careening down the road, dodging oncoming traffic and people who got behind the wheel before bothering to learn the rudimentary customs of vehicular traffic.
My working thesis, as I’ve gone back and forth between Africa and various corners of fading western culture, is that the suffering of the body—including the burdens of walking a long way for water, having to pound your millet into flour by hand, constantly facing death every time you cross the road—externalizes the ubiquitous and inescapable suffering of every human soul.
The property of the human is to suffer. There will be suffering of the heart, mind, and body. But no human wants to accept that reality. Happiness should be the property of the person. Comfort for the body and the soul should be the thing that we each get to have, now. The expectation of comfort and happiness means that the ordinary human person is always disappointed.
Bodily suffering, though, potentially gives the soul a break. The more comfortable you are physically, the more you have time to stare into your own heart of darkness, and that can’t possibly end well. That’s my working theory. The West, so comfortable and rich, has nothing to do but dwell without rest on the suffering at the center of the heart.
I could be wrong about this, of course. I am only trying to explain for myself the deep cultural and spiritual anxiety that I’m running into not only in myself, but in every corner of the internet and in the faces of every person I pass by on the road.
Fortunately for me, I am suffering mightily in my flesh at this very moment. I can’t breathe and death is probably just around the corner. As a result I am feeling pretty cheerful. The effort of breathing is taking up all my emotional energy.
Another point of cheer is that God’s property is always to have mercy. And mercy is the best thing for the suffering person, whether in the body or in the soul. So thank heaven for that.
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