What we accept as Inevitable

With a personal observation at the end

Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter, 1993 by Jane Kenyon

On the domed ceiling God

is thinking:

I made them my joy,

and everything else I created

I made to bless them.

But see what they do!

I know their hearts

and arguments:

“We’re descended from

Cain. Evil is nothing new,

so what does it matter now

if we shell the infirmary,

and the well where the fearful

and rash alike must

come for water?”

God thinks Mary into being.

Suspended at the apogee

of the golden dome,

she curls in a brown pod,

and inside her mind

of Christ, cloaked in blood,

lodges and begins to grow.

Bad theology makes for bad decisions. So does bad philosophy, bad reasoning, and bad education. They distort and malform our practices and ultimately all of our affections, allegiances and affiliations are corrupted. Through these frameworks filter all of our ecstasies and traumas, loves and losses, all the experiences that make up our lives.

“We’re descended from Cain. Evil is nothing new, so what does it matter now if we shell the infirmary, and the well where the fearful and rash alike must come for water?” The poet shows us this in these devastating lines. There’s always been evil, they say, we’re born and bred on it and in it. Sure it’s unfortunate, we might pause and think before pulling the trigger, but it’s inevitable…what’s a person to do? It’s inevitable…

Indeed, what are we to do?

Well I’m not naive or arrogant enough to offer some simple solution. Arguments over theodicy have a whole life of their own and to my knowledge no one has successfully wrestled that bear and won. While there are plenty of intersections and agreements between religions, philosophies and cultural wisdoms, we’re all probably more familiar with where they diverge. In the end each of us, collectively and individually, are faced with choices. I suppose we could learn much of what we need to know about what we really believe, what we really love, value and respect from just taking an honest inventory of what we’ve chosen. I say “could” because very few of us ever slow down enough to take a deep look at those things.

We avoid these examinations in myriad ways, but one of the most common is by focusing on our “aspirational” beliefs, loves, and values. We give ourselves high marks for how we want to act, wish we acted, assume we will act in the future, while making all kinds of excuses for how we actually act now.

It takes some serious guts to lay the two side by side.

However this is an unavoidable discipline if we’re to really understand the shape of our desires and do the hard and necessary work of helping form that shape into something that leads to a life that flourishes, that has integrity, that refuses to be blindly and complacently formed by all that is thrown at us. It helps us refuse to accept as inevitable the violence and deception that threatens to mis-shape us. Kenyon’s poem is a cold slap of a wake up call, a confrontation with our reality. What does it say to you?

Please pause before reading the following observation. I don’t want the below to distract from the above. My observation is offered as a glimpse into what such self reflection is revealing in my own life at this time. It is not offered as political or social critique as such, but simply a response I am experiencing by applying the above. I will gladly engage in dialogue around the process but will shut down any attempts to make this about partisan posturing. Lord knows we don’t need no more of that.

An observation: I write this the day after crossing over the border into Mexico at San Ysidro, driving along the calamity of border fortification scarring the landscape and contributing to untold death and misery on both sides. Physical borders take shape from the very necessary relational boundaries all of us, individually and collectively, need for healthy interdependence. However when our needs for relational boundaries become corrupted and twisted, the resulting physical manifestations become malignant, terrifying, oppressive things and take ever increasing levels of histrionic, dehumanizing justification to maintain. Y’all, we have a choice. We either call things as they are and let our hearts be broken and search for a better way, or continue to pull the trigger ignoring or justifying the body count.

Grace and peace y’all

PS I wanted to post an image at the top of this as per usual, but I just couldn’t find one that adequately reflects what I’m trying to lay down. If you think of one, I’m open.