A & Q: Connected in the Muck & Magma

Q: First off, I have to ask, what is it with the Sarah Jessica Parker worship? What is it that fascinates?

A: You’re asking the wrong girl. I don’t get it. She’s moderately attractive, sometimes wears interesting things…I don’t know why week after week after week she is everywhere I look, and has been for several years, now. But then, I’ve never seen that show, Sex and the City. I don’t know who any of those women are. And I’m sure they’re all broken up about it, too.

Q: Yesterday we wondered if all the bad news, earthquakes, natural disasters (now there is a threat to wheat) volcanos going swoosh and boom were reminding anyone of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Now this idiot is threatening Israel again…doesn’t it all seem like scary end-times stuff, to you?

A: No, but I can understand why it is rattling some of us. Obviously something is going on below us that has plates shifting and magma moving (at least it can’t be blamed on “manmade global warming” or “climate change” although all that ash shooting skyward may help make it a milder summer) but as I said yesterday, none of this means that the “end times” are upon us. Those days will be signaled, I’m sure, by Al Gore getting back into the White House. Yes, I’m joking, but we should be praying everyday, anyway, because it’s good for us! The rest of it, the rumbling from China to Minnesota, the volcanos, while certainly frightening and tragic…it’s all actually a humbling reminder to us about everything we don’t know, and how at our very depths all things are so mysteriously connected, even humanity.

Q: Humanity has never seemed more at odds, how can you say we’re connected?

A: Well, we are; our synapses fire, our consciousness awakes and we blip along with each other almost the way information blips along on the internets. Fer instance, below I linked to this great find by Rick at Brutally Honest. In the comments section, someone discoursed on internal and external knowledge and then reinforced his point by linking to a prime example via another blogger. Which reminded me that once upon a time, I had actually offered to mother the inarticulato being roasted.

Q: So, like, Anchoress, are you saying, like, you know…bloggers are smarter than other people?

A: No, I’m saying there is a whole subterranean world of thoughts, arguments, theses, expositions and manifestos that we never begin to glean, because the internets are so vast, our time is limited and – most importantly – we spend a lot of time online just clicking away and admiring genius. Or at least I do. But we connect in small ways, all day long.

Q: So blogging is about finding genius elsewhere?

A: Well, not always, but in my case, yes. I’m always awestruck by what others can do, and how their minds trip from one issue to another. Here is Sissy Willis, jumping off of one of my pieces but then adding her own twist to it, and – in doing so – throwing into all of our paths this piece by Maggie’s Farm in which they discuss John Leo’s exposition of Robert D. Putnam’s fascinating study on immigration and ethnic diversity, and how Putnam moved to suppress his own study, rather than deal with it’s un-PC results. Fascinating. And the links just keep on coming.

Q: They move on to trust cues and tribalism?

A: Like I said, we’re all connected. And so is the whole world. Below us the plates are shifting, hot magma is flowing, moving, looking for release. Within humanity, things are shifting, politically things are shifting, spiritually things are shifting. Maybe it is as random as it seems, but maybe it’s not. It’s like I always say; nothing is static, things turn on a dime, and everything we think we know today can be wiped off the table tomorrow and there is a new reality and we’re all in it.

Q: Oh, brother, that’s reassuring.

A: Yes, in a way it is. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” The internets are wonderous, but they’re also full of fuss and botheration and it is easy to get all caught up in things. That’s where prayer is handy. Prayer helps you to take the long view of things and not get caught up in a moment – it reminds us that the moments are fleeting – but that there is One Eternity. Nothing teaches us that like the psalms, btw, which in prayer reveals the entire human condition and also the way of the Christ.

Q: So, you’re so holy and you pray everyday?

A: I’m not so holy, but yes I do pray everyday; if I did not, I would barely manage to be human – I would be some sort of feral creature rolling about in the teeming muck. All I can tell you is that prayer is a force; it has real power to transform, beginning with oneself, and then externally. Whether praying liturgically or devotionally, scripturally or privately, it moves and shifts our own psychological and spiritual plate tectonics. Deep below our consciousness, it turns our muck into magma and drives us toward constant change, constant growth and even renewal, even if things don’t always look hopeful or promising as it does so.

So, don’t fear the earthquakes or the volcanos, either external or internal. Yes, they’re destructive, yes, they’re alarmingly powerful and they change everything in their path. But they are mere moments in eternity, and after they rattle and scorch, things get quiet, and then life begins again – new growth, new structure, new maps.

Without the great, seemingly catastrophic events, the earth would stagnate, and so would we.

And then we’d have nothing but Sarah Jessica Parker movies in our lives.