The Anchoress
I come back to see that not much has changed…that the NY Times, which several weeks ago seemed to be calling for either a coup or impeachment seems to have become so frustrated that neither has yet happened that yesterday’s entire paper seemed like one long gutteral scream of rage. The NY Sun responds to Frank Rich’s hopeless weekend piece.
According to the press, the war is still going badly, although Mary Laney begs to differ. Actually, according to the press nearly everything is bad and the badness will continue for as long as George W. Bush remains in the White House…so, the good economic news is bad. The weather is good and that is bad, because there was never a warm winter before George W. Bush got into the White House, just as there was never terrorism before him, nor homeless folk.
Oh, btw, in Iraq, an election will be held next month that should be the final nail in the terror-coffin over there, but that’s not important. What is important is that George W. Bush is still president, and until that changes, there will be no good news reported. Period. Full Stop.
Nothing has changed out there, in the world, nothing has changed in the people who run it, both directly and indirectly, behind the scenes and before them. The world is spinning. The people who belong to the world – both left and right – are spinning themselves into sickness. Simple centrifugal force has cast them far from sense and centrality and stuck them onto walls of extremism from which they cannot peel themselves free. I don’t believe they all like it there, against the walls, but this is what their willful spin hath wrought, and movement has been rendered impossible, and so they twirl and twirl and twirl away.
As for me – I just spent nearly two weeks away from the spinning, and now I realize what a dreadful thing is overinvolvement with the “things and matters of the world” – and how difficult it is to remove oneself from a spinning capsule once one has strapped oneself inside. In my case, my body threw a switch and ejected me from the roundy-round, but – quite astonishingly – it took almost a week after hitting the ground for me to begin to see more clearly.
All that spinning jumbles the brains. Once I had shaken off the effects I was able to hear the sweet voice again, and I realized how far I had drifted from love.
The internet is a powerful vehicle for information, and in an age where information is being “framed” and truth is increasingly a sometime thing, it is so easy to slip into the 17 inch borders of a monitor and become seduced by the lure of unlimited news, infinite opinion, like-minded thought. It is a seduction, and it does have an insideous side.
On the internet you can take an idea, or a hobby, or perhaps even a private madness, no matter how singular and unusual you may believe it to be, and suddenly encounter hundreds, even thousands, who nurse the same idea, engage in the same hobby, embrace the same madness, and suddenly your smallness becomes enlarged. You are no longer unusual, but part of a “community” of people who think the same way you do…and if you spend enough time with those people, in their various forums, you might even come to believe that your numbers are larger than you first believed, that your ideas are more widespead than you could have known, that your hobby is fascinating to all and sundry, that your madness is just sanity in enhancement.
Or in enchantment.
Enlarged and enhanced within your 17 inch boundaries – enchanted – you don’t realize that your entire world is shrinking – your view is narrowing, as are your interests, until they may be illumined by the smallest of spotlights. You don’t realize it, though, because you are smack in the middle of an illusion. You believe you are looking at “the world,” but in truth, you are looking far, far away. The “world” to which you have devoted all of your attention is – after all – just another illusion, another idol, a thing which gets in between you and your immediate reality, between you and eternity.
A spotlight, or a telescope, or a square-shaped monitor – they disturb your focus. They encourage you to take your eyes off of what is all around, in favor of what is somewhere else. They help you to take your eyes off of love, both in the world and beyond it, for the created and the Creator. And that is never a good thing.
While in the clutches of an idol we cannot see beyond it. Once free we understand that while it is a good and wise thing to keep an eye on the world and all it’s spinning, and to pray for those who spin and are spun, we must not allow ourselves to get caught up in any of it. In this way we remain free, not trapped by an unwieldly force, nor entranced by a flickering light. And in that freedom is contemplation, and in contemplation – detatched, formless and full of wonder – we can tap into what is real and lasting.
In this season of Advent – this wonderful season of preparation and expectation – having been thrust from the spinning capsule, I have decided to remain outside of it. Decided, too, to take my eyes off of “the world,” to shut down the spotlight and close the telescope – to consider not whether the Associated press predicts a gloomy shopping season or the Bloomberg press sees something sunnier but that all of the commercial madness is simply a sidestory to the real story that is love. The women crashing carts at Wal-mart may be obnoxious and selfish, but their bad behavior is rooted in love – the love they feel for their family and their children.
Maybe if we can get back in touch with that truth, the truth about Love and how it was expressed – as never before – in the Incarnation, then the boorish behavior will abate and the grasping greed that has overcome Christmas will recede, and we’ll consider that all of our meaningless human trawling and spending is simply a substitution for all of that which we cannot easily express. Emmanu-el. God-with-us. A concept that deserves so much more than a song and spree.
And perhaps, if we manage to get in touch with all of that…the rest of the chattering noise of the world will also fade into background, and what is real – what is true – will emerge. Emmanu-el. God-with-us. Illusion cannot overcome it.
We are in Advent. Wait. A season of purple – of calling and response, of stars and sojourns. I invite you to step off the road and come wait with me a while, and watch from a distance. Facades are falling? No. But masks are coming off. The purple grows. Expectation. There is a fullness, a ripeness unto bursting that is just ahead. Incarnation. Emmanu-el. If you are too near, too much in the thick of things, you will miss it. If you stand apart, off to the side, you will see Bethlehem in all its humble glory, and you will see something utterly new in an old, old world.
Come away with me, then, to the desert, and let us watch and wait. To all of you – so many – who have been so kind in your prayers for me and my family, who have dropped me such thoughtful emails, I thank you heartfully and pat the ground beside me in invitation. Let us wait, together, in hope, even as we remember our friends who are in mourning, that they too will once again know joy.
A Child of the Snows
There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.
Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.
And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.
The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.
~ G.K. Chesterton
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