there's some hope in an increasing number of people reaching this point of acceptance beyond despair... some of my favorite thinkers (Kingsnorth, Hine, Eisenstein, etc.) have all being echoing similar sentiments recently. God willing, there is enough momentum to take us past the point of terror and into something—if not happier—at least more determined.
it might be too late to patch the hole in the hull; maybe there's still time to launch the lifeboats effectively, if we keep our wits about us.
R.G.-I think you are right. There does seem to be something emerging, like you say. Perhaps a deeper response to our disordered time converging from different directions. For that to happen it necessarily will take place online, which is obviously a contradiction considering what we are up against. But if our response is deep enough the hope is that when the time comes (soon?) what needs to be done locally will be far more clear.
This piece resonates, Jack. It's a relief when someone just admits how bad/scary/intractable the problems are. And yes, most of the time I can tell that people don't want to -- or aren't able to-- hear that and so must act more optimistically to be socially tolerable.
It feels like a sort of stretching. This learning to love more deeply and more patiently. I still think that getting out to some farm land makes sense in a very practical way for our family but it seems no doors have opened yet. The one that appeared perfect was snatched up by a full price bid. We have also been needed here by extended family. I feel a sense like you describe that it doesn't matter if we never actualize this idea of a getaway. Maybe the hour is too late for any such efforts. The real tragedy would be if I failed in my opportunities for loving. I have failed in these many times, in fact. This is the project.
Thanks to Girard I realized how much I have allowed myself resentment for the extremely wealthy who are moving into my town and gentrifying it. I see that I must love them. This is a huge change. love them while refusing to join in their lifestyle and their culture. No dark corners where resentment is allowed. No scapegoating.
Clara- It is the project. I know I have tended to want to get things "settled" before I could do x, y, or z. But then, lo and behold, things don't usually get "settled". We are inevitably thrown into the mix of things. But what we should be pointing ourselves towards is clear, and I am thankful for Girard for making it even clearer for me. My ability to not see the obvious is fairly impressive. Jesus is asking us to do something very difficult, and yet it is clear what he is asking us. I know I will fail at it, but that is irrelevant to the fact that this is what I am being asked to do.
I hope that farm land becomes reality for you and your family. My sense also is that this is a good thing. I wonder if there is an increase in people wanting to "get out" of the thick of things and this is making it more difficult to buy something. Is that your sense?
Either way as all of this chaos unfolds I think more and more will be asked of us. This is our task.
Thank you for your comment. I hope all is well. -Jack
I think that there are more people looking to find a nice little farm to get away. The real estate statistics don't reflect this level of detail. I'm sure we can find 'something'. But it takes a lot of work to find out about an area and there is nothing that feels like a good match for us in the place we were excited about. We went up to look at a farm nearer to the coast recently and were totally turned off by the NY licence plates and posh restaurants... too much like the Cape Cod we are trying to leave. Spring will be a better time for this to unfold, hopefully. I'm pretty sure that it will fall into place. Thanks for your prayers and encouragement.
Oh, and by the way, I read about Dame Julian perhaps 10 years ago in a little book about 4 different mystics. I have always thought of that saying of hers as the perfect summation of my experience of God's presence. I know it's true. I also think lately of the scripture, "I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is staid on Me."
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
Thank you so much for bringing up (and reminding) me of Julian of Norwich's conclusio to it all.
Yes, it's all wrong, it's all horribly wrong, and seems to be a caleidoscope of whirling pieces of misery, each in its own shape and form - and yet, behind this relentless dance and whirl there stands the "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." It's THERE, I can feel it although I can't give it a name.
And it seems to me that if Julian of Norwich, who as a denizen of a less developed and affluent era has seen so many more of the caleidoscopic pieces, says that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well - she MEANS it, and it must be true, and my own conviction that it's there must be based on solid ground, too.
"At the turn of the fourteenth century there was a spectacular continent-wide decline in temperature (which has come to be called "The Little Ice Age"). In 1315-17 extremely heavy rains caused flooding across Norfolk that inundated harvests, vineyards, and seeds in the ground with terrible consequences. In the second half of the century, England experienced wetter than usual summers for thirty years, but the black plague of 1348-49 because so crushing a disaster that it actually pushed the deaths from famine into the background.
When Julian was 20 years old, "the worst storms in the memory of man" occurred. Storm surges of thirty feet above ordinary level were reported." (from the Complete Julian of Norwich by Fr. John-Julian)
I could go on and on about the floods, plagues and famines of Julian's time. And yet she said, or reports Jesus saying to her, "All shall be well". So this is obviously something other than simple optimism. Just as you say, it is something far deeper and far more relevant to us than that. I am still in the midst of trying understand what she is saying, but my intuition is that she is one of the necessary theologians and saints of our time.
I think about T.S. Eliot's poetic trajectory from the despair of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and the Waste Land but which ends with the Four Quartets. The ending of the Four Quartets itself quotes Julian of Norwich and all shall be well. I think that is a central insight of our age. She has a lot to teach us.
I hope to be able to dig into her though more deeply.
I read somewhere that if she had children she almost certainly experienced the death of one of her children, given the infant mortality of the times...this seems to me even more tragic than the storms and floods and riots and plagues - imagine giving birth to a child, seeing her grow, feeling their warmth when they crawl into your bed at night, watching as he grows and outgrows one peril or accident after another - only for him or her to die of one of the many other calamities or diseases that were around at the time. And still, there she is at the end of her life, saying "all shall be well".
Thanks for bringing up Eliot, he knew as well - think of the last lines of The Waste Land. After all the horrible confusion, the death and destruction:
It is a very reasonable conclusion to make that she knew suffering at close range, personal and otherwise. Her theology becomes all the more meaningful because of that. I hope to keep exploring her life and thought.
As for Eliot, I think he knew it deeply in his own way, as a different kind of suffering which has manifested itself in modernity. I have been really struck lately about the whole trajectory of his poetic work from start to finish. It gives deeper meaning to the individual poems, though he obviously didn't know at the time where his work and life was headed. There is a moment in his Preludes, which is mostly about the squalor of the city, where something else briefly emerges (in Part IV, if you are interested). It arrives unbidden and then is quickly dismissed. A hope that hints at things to come, perhaps? Which makes one ask: a "prelude" to what, exactly? Maybe even Eliot didn't know...
Wow, I need to read more Eliot - so very beautiful.
It's interesting to compare the two - it seems obvious both deeply wanted and needed more than the everyday world around them (with its immense tragedies and its annoying small inconveniences), but it must have been much easier for Julian to access the deeper reality behind it (I'll call it the "all-shall-be-well plane") because she had a language and a culture to clothe her ideas about it much more than Eliot had (or we have - we're utterly lost in comparison). Eliot is clearly looking for it and he glimpses it, but then it's gone again in a flash. For Julian, at the end of her life, it's THERE.
I wonder what's going to happen in the near future when most people will have lost any cultural knowledge about the "all shall be well plane" and how to get there. To my daughter's and my son's generation, religion is entirely optional and has no relevance at all. How will her generation get closer?
Thanks Jack, you strike a chord, however desperate that feels. I hope things are not quite so dire for us all! During lockdown I decided to learn some psalms off by heart. Psalm 46 was one of those I did and it is one I love and repeat often to myself. I think my favourite lines are: The Nations rage, the kingdoms' totter, He utters His voice, the earth melts'. It is such a proclamation of His absolure power.
Rick- I also hope things aren't so dire. Suffice to say that I am hardly one to make predictions. Though I share the sense of unease that is churning just below the surface these days. I thought it might be helpful to bring it out in the light a bit and acknowledge it and see what it might mean for us now. What I find so compelling about Psalm 46 is that though the earth is shaken and the mountains crumble, the kingdoms totter, etc., (which does sound like a good description of the world at the moment) it ends with, "Be still, and know that I am God." It is in this stillness, I think, that we will find a deeper response to our many crises. Something that we probably won't be able to predict.
I hope you are well. And may God bless you, as well. -Jack
This was a difficult but important read. I too fall into the trap of reading and reading in the hope that truly understanding our predicament would be a way to transform it.
And when I imagine how I could help repair things, making art/writing leap first to mind.
But what I think would really help, even infinitesimally, would be to grow food and build community locally. This could involve some writing; it would involve a lot of doing.
Xtal- I agree entirely with your intuition that art/writing is the deeper response to the chaos. If we don't get our poetry right (in the sense that it is tending toward the depths) then all our rational philosophy won't matter much because it will float on the surface. Perhaps these times will begin to call forth something deeper in us, the "deep calls to the deep" (Psalm 42). We have been splashing in the shallows and on the surfaces for far too long. But this will, as I like to quote T.S. Eliot, cost no less than everything. Will we heed this call to the depths? Shallow is far easier. I hope we can. Then come what may.
And yes, we need to build all this locally. If our poetry is local, so will our heart be local. We may be surprised how this all changes. That is my hope. -Jack
Julian of Norwich! So deep and so difficult. I have read only the short text, though I've pulled the long text from the shelf it's been lurking for a few years at your reminder. Glancing near the start, I see 'and I longed to suffer with him'. What a line. It reminds me of that other great mystic, Weil, and how incomprehensible and extreme even the philosophers who argue she is significant seem to find her.
Her cry makes sense to me, yet my own longing to suffer is a muted shadowy thing. Am I better or worse than the philosophers? I have no idea.
Br. F- I am still making my way through the long text and am trying to see how it all holds together. It will surely take more than one reading to do so. But like Weil (admittedly I only know the very basics of her thought) is a thinker and even saint for our time and not always easy to understand or rather to integrate into our standard view of things. What is becoming unavoidably clear is that we don't live in standard times, and haven't for quite some time.
My intuition tells me that Julian is someone who still has many things great and small to say to us. How to suffer well not least among those.
Surely the point of a Saint in a sense is that their thought or vision cannot be integrated? The ‘standard view of things’ is what they undo. “Blessed are the poor”. . . Pardon??
Blessed freedom indeed. Thank you for this reflection and reminder to turn away from all the noise and clamor and attend to what truly matters. There are two things I keep coming back to that help pull me from the temptation to despair or to lose myself in abstraction. The first is a quote from St. John Chrysostom in a letter written to a spiritual child of his, St. Olympia:
"Therefore, do not be cast down, I beseech you. For there is only one thing, Olympia, to fear, only one real temptation, and that is sin. This is the refrain that I keep chanting to you ceaselessly. For everything else is ultimately a fable – whether you speak of plots, or enmities, or deceptions, or slanders, or abuses, or accusations, or confiscations, or banishments, or sharpened swords, or high seas, or war engulfing the entire world. Whichever of these you point to, they are transitory and perishable, and they only affect mortal bodies; they cannot in any way injure the watchful soul. This is why, wishing to express the paltriness of both the good and the bad things of this present life, the blessed Paul stated the matter in one phrase, saying, 'For the things that are seen are transient' (2 Cor. 4:18).”
And the other is this lovely blog post from Orthodox priest, Fr. Stephen Freeman, "Doing the Good You Can Do":
F_S- Thank you for the St. John Chrysostom quote. It cuts to the heart of the matter. I know it is far too easy for me to get caught up in the drama of the world. I have wasted so much time jockeying for position. Yes, there are very real benefits to being on top, but alas, those "benefits" won't even bring us happiness, let alone salvation.
I will check out the Fr. Freeman post. Thank you for that.
Or is there? As you say, maybe this just simply brings the folly of the last couple of centuries, give or take, into clearer focus.
You say "I can even love that I was born and came of age in an upside-down time such as this. " Speaking personally I doubt I'd be where I am now, newly liberated by my recently uncovered faith, had this not been the case (I say uncovered, you could say revealed. It's always been there, but it's been a long subconscious battle to stop turning away from it).
The current state of humanity just makes it easier to accept that those voices, those doubts, they were right all along.
No one knows how it will all unfold, but unfold it must. What's on the other side and whether any of us will experience it, I have no idea.
But accepting this, as another great mystery or journey, and going with the flow, has to better than stressing over the unfixable.
Andrew- I have to say, for one thing, that might slow acceptance of the reality of our times has definitely improved my sleep. Not a small thing. You are right that in accepting it as a great mystery frees us up to respond in a more effective way than becoming anxious. One of my long favorite poems is The Waking by Theodore Roethke, the refrain of which is, "I learn by going where to go". Granted, this has gotten me into trouble at times, at least in the short term, but I stand by it, especially now. I think the true and deep response to our disordered time will not be part of some 37 point plan, or whatever, but from some place deeper in us than we are used to dealing with. Which won't often make sense to us at the time. Learning to trust that radical unknowing is a real practice. But our truisms and cliches will hardly suffice.
A phrase I used recently was something along the lines of what comes out of the other side may be a way of existing that is new, never before considered. In effect beyond our current comprehension. Necessity may well be the mother of invention, we just have no idea at this stage, especially so if the collapse is primarily climate driven. The possibilities are almost infinite. I must say almost as we could of course, theoretically, all be under water and that's going to be pretty finite!
In a slightly strange way it's hard not to be excited by the prospect. In as much as we could be in the process of going through something truly momentous, a once in tens of thousands of years event, when we are around for such a tiny fraction of that time. What are the odds?
There's no reversing it, despite what the capitalists say, we just have to traverse it with as much calmness, dignity and wonder as we can. The only way out is through, as they say.
It is indeed as if many and various strands of historical cycles are all converging on the same time. We both need to prepare ourselves and realize there probably isn't any way to really prepare for this. All our predictions will fall short...
A friend whose husband had just died asked what happens after we die. I said “We are received.” She said “What about all the work we’ve done on ourselves?” I said “All of who we are is welcome.” This is where I’m at.
This is a good place to be. Have you read Julian of Norwich? I am in the midst of her Revelations of Divine Love and I am finding it beautiful. Well worth the read if you are so inclined. She says many profound things about what you are saying here.
Thank you so much, Jack. I come to this sideways from a Jewish/Buddhist perspective but living and dying belong to all of us and we all struggle to understand.
Just a quick comment on the opening paragraph, but what immediately leapt to mind was a LH stroke. I increasingly look out and see the same. It began with cars. For me it’s not ‘it is wrong’, but ‘it doesn’t make sense’. We destroy creation in and through which God Is, and make these machines which tear at the fabric of all that really matters, relationships and community and reduce our bodies even further towards utterly useless and meaningless appendages.
What comes to mind are three words from Paul in Ephesians; “having lost all sensitivity” . . . to what is. The LH isn’t involved in coherence or sense making and crucially has no concept of Livingness.
As we also face a ‘meaning crisis’ this is the other side of the coin. The fabric is that in which meaning coinheres. If everything is simply things there is no meaning.
We only truly know through contemplation and prayer. One of McGilchrist’s lacunae I humbly submit is reducing truth seeking to Science, Reason and Intuition. He overemphasises Science, which is very LH dominant.
Eric- I have noticed this same paradox in McGilchrist. As broad and deep as his work and efforts have been. This is where contemplatives and poets and novelists come in, I think, to fill the gap. Because if what he is saying is right, then it is the poetic response, broadly conceived, that is the deeper and truer one. Because beauty will save the world, it is the poets and contemplatives who are called on to respond. Dare I say that this is the challenge of our time. It has got me thinking about what that might mean.
All is well here in the little monastic canyon. I think it is supposed to warm up a bit today. A pleasant change. I hope you are well. -Jack
Just returned home to for us very warm weather. We holidayed with family in the Southern Alps, and looking at the crevasses high up on Aoraki / Mt Cook, The End was apparent. Your post was well timed!
Yes and Amen to your point re poets and contemplatives! It echoes remarks by Philip Sherrard (Orthodox writer) which form part of the most succinct account of why we are where we are, in which he highlights the way in which our forebears understood that Truth could only be known if Prayer and Contemplation were foundational.
(In this regard I offer my critique of Lectio Divina, that it begins in the wrong place!)
Also it has come to me as forcefully and repetitively as the waves of the Southern Ocean hereabouts that Plato’s Cave is soooo contemporary. One begins to see it everywhere and communicating this reality leads often to blind incomprehension.
I really appreciate what you’ve been writing and thanks for the Girard quote.
Trust some of our warmth soon penetrates cold bones North of the Equator!
Essentially “Yes”. Everything is coming from God, and will be gathered up. True Life, action etc. must therefore follow this arc. From implicit, out into The World, and then return Home. Or, RH, LH, R in McGilchrist’s terms (as he follows in the final chapter of TMWT on The Sense of The Sacred)
If you or I were king of the world, would things be so much better? In some ways, yes. I believe so. If I thought my thoughts were wrong, I wouldn’t think them. But we must never forget how complex the world is. We must never forget just how much unintentional suffering I would cause should my vision be realized.
For I; at my best, am limited. Are we truly superior to those that got us here? Or is criticism in hindsight simply easier than perfection of foresight? Didn’t decades of hard work by those, not too inferior to us, lead us here?
Am I not also tempted to believe in a utopia that only exists in my head?
I agree that the days are evil. But now, just like always, we must do what we would always have had to do: give the world our best; and ask God for his mercy.
Zach- I have no doubt that if I ran the world it would be far worse off. Though the intention to run the world is part of the problem itself. Technology has made that intention basically unavoidable. We are increasingly omnipresent to one another and the more we seek the same things, the more trouble it will cause us in that we will come into conflict.
Somebody is going to try and run the show, and we are seeing the larger conflict emerge on who that is going to be. I don't see how it is avoided. Maybe it can be. There is something almost mathematical about it, as if one could diagram it all out using game theory. But it also has a lot to with humans being less a rational animal than a spirited social animal seeking prestige and dominance.
Are humans capable of letting that need to control go? I hope so, but I have serious doubts that we can, at least at scale. Yet, as you say, we do need to give the world our best. It matters what we conceive that "best" to be. I tend to believe what that is will likely surprise us as all this moves forward. That thought, however vague, gives me hope.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
Thank you for writing this. I come from a Quaker / buddhist background and I’ve been interested In Christian and Jewish mysticism for quite some time. Finding threads of writing like this helps give me hope and stillness, knowing that other people are perceiving in this the same way. It serves as a reminder to myself that equanimity is paramount at times like these. I had a dream recently about the apocalypse occurring and I let go and felt that everything would turn out alright. I’ve been trying to keep this in my mind with meditation and prayer, even while trying to find a way to sustain myself materially.
Mia- I think what we are now beginning to go through will change us in ways that we cannot predict and will find surprising. Something is shifting, however slight it might appear. It is easy to misread, but slowly our eyes will adjust and begin to see. I think your dream is a good one. All shall be well. We must hold on to that. Dame Julian is one source for trying to understand what that means, but there are many others.
After our age of individualism--a delusion in the end--the fact that we all need each other will be the biggest lesson. Or second biggest. That we need God being the first.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
“In this sense, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me not to see our current civilization as anything other than a lie, and a sociopathic one at that.”
And many of our citizens will have sociopathic and/or narcissistic tendencies, cultivated from the earliest age: a self-adoring attitude (despite the inner sense of hollowness); a sense of right/wrong that is superficial and merely externalized (e.g., something is wrong only if the surveillance cameras catch us); an eroded inner conscience (so we can unleash our inner appetites without remorse); a view of life and humanity as a material thing (to be manipulated for pleasure or profit).
All this might last a generation; it will crumble; children are destiny, and a society that cannot raise children – one that increasingly does not want to be burdened with self-sacrificing long-term relationships – will not transmit much to the future, except perhaps a dim memory of its despair.
The loss of the desire for children seems both the cause and the symptom of our catastrophe. I have been thinking a lot about the Waste Land, Eliot's, Cormac Mccarthy's in The Road (I wish I knew more about the Grail Myth). All of it is related to the loss of fertility, both human, spiritual and ecological. It is the myth of our time.
The decline in birth rates and shrinking families is most prominent in the West; and, despite the generalized population decline elsewhere in the world as well, there are exceptions, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa and among certain religious groups (sub-groups of Christian, Jewish, Islamic, etc.), where numbers are growing (I wrote about this previously in my “Cab Crusaders” post a few months ago).
The upshot is that the future may not be what we expect; neither a Machine-dominated world, nor one that is utterly chaotic (if Machine society collapses), but which includes major pockets of robust religious/spiritual groups, and probably some rigid fundamentalism. I think the future will be more complicated than we can currently imagine.
I think those mythic themes will not altogether vanish, but become only latent or perhaps distorted, and then re-emerge in various ways. Whether we live long enough to see it is, well, another matter.
This comfort you speak of, throughout this piece, is important. Important, because of the perniciously distorting effects it creates. I truly believe, the kind of comfort we see in the world is a form of isolation. It is the comfort of isolation. Which means, it creates the 'set and setting' for delusion, of every kind, to rise and take hold. Take, for example, money. The comfort provided by hardly ever needing to think about money. What that amount of money 'isolates' one from. Entire philosophies are spun out of the delusion of such comfort. In other words, such comfort has a disembodying effect. It removes you from the movement of life, isolating you in a world of your own making, choosing. So few people today seem capable of challenging their own status, their own comfort, their own routine. Everyone immediately sets up a marketplace within the isolation their own form of comfort provides, and attempts to sell their 'wares' to anyone passing near. Like cattle, people shuffle from the isolating comfort of their family, to the isolating comfort of their schooling, to the isolating comfort of a career, a family of their own, a mortgage, old age, having never tested themselves. Having never stepped outside of their self-inflicted isolation. Never stepping far enough beyond their self-centring comfort to feel the tug of the tether around their neck. To hell, in the isolating comfort of one's own handbasket.
Steve- I think of how sophisticated "climate control" can be. It can be very comfortable. I have experienced it to some degree at the homes of friends. But it seems the ability to create a very narrow range of perfect comfort inevitably creates a much wider range of discomfort. It weakens us. It becomes a prison of sorts, exactly as you say here. We need friction, discomfort, and even a certain push into chaos in order to find and integrate a deeper order. Everything else is entropy.
You are right about our comforts making us weak and sick and dependent on medical workers. And that's just the physiological aspect. I met a young father once with three little "stair step" boys. Wanting to help them overcome weakness, and willing to join them in it, he insisted they all take COLD SHOWERS on a regular basis. This was in the Rocky Mountains and their water was really very cold! I'Ve not been able to do this myself... even my efforts at self denial -- a Christian essential -- are wimpy.
Patrice- I started taking cold showers about a year and a half ago. Yet every morning I must psych myself up to doing it again. Even though I feel so much better when I am done. The first 10 secs are uncomfortable to say the least, but it gets easier after that. I have been thinking about it in terms of a positive asceticism, rather than as some kind of punishment.
The path of contemplation is, in part, I think, something that one has to train for. I think about times when I have stuffed myself full of food. The last thing I am capable of at that point is to go pray or sit in silence. Yet silent prayer does seem to become more natural when I am not "full" or satisfied. I need to be emptied and that may be more physical than I first would have thought. Of course, one needs to find the balance with all this, but the benefits now are plain to me. I resisted it for years.
Taoism is always chuckling about its own demise or reversals of fortune. In a few passages in the Classics practitioners are reminded in easy times to serve the people in government, and in difficult or chaotic times to hide out as hermits in the hills. and practice quietly, somewhat as you are doing... The Warring States period when Taoist writing flourished must have felt like this: constant war, displacement, famines, uncertainty. I think it's why I often find it so apt.
That does explain well why once introduced to the Daodejing that many of us are drawn to it. It is clear from the very beginning that it isn't idle advice but rather, as you say, the author is speaking out well beyond all the chaos. It is inexhaustible and as much as I have engaged with it I hardly feel like I've even scratched the surface. Our civilization, should it want to survive, needs to absorb its lessons well.
And maybe our chaotic times will encourage more to hide out in the hills. I hope so!
there's some hope in an increasing number of people reaching this point of acceptance beyond despair... some of my favorite thinkers (Kingsnorth, Hine, Eisenstein, etc.) have all being echoing similar sentiments recently. God willing, there is enough momentum to take us past the point of terror and into something—if not happier—at least more determined.
it might be too late to patch the hole in the hull; maybe there's still time to launch the lifeboats effectively, if we keep our wits about us.
R.G.-I think you are right. There does seem to be something emerging, like you say. Perhaps a deeper response to our disordered time converging from different directions. For that to happen it necessarily will take place online, which is obviously a contradiction considering what we are up against. But if our response is deep enough the hope is that when the time comes (soon?) what needs to be done locally will be far more clear.
I hope you are well. -jack
This piece resonates, Jack. It's a relief when someone just admits how bad/scary/intractable the problems are. And yes, most of the time I can tell that people don't want to -- or aren't able to-- hear that and so must act more optimistically to be socially tolerable.
It feels like a sort of stretching. This learning to love more deeply and more patiently. I still think that getting out to some farm land makes sense in a very practical way for our family but it seems no doors have opened yet. The one that appeared perfect was snatched up by a full price bid. We have also been needed here by extended family. I feel a sense like you describe that it doesn't matter if we never actualize this idea of a getaway. Maybe the hour is too late for any such efforts. The real tragedy would be if I failed in my opportunities for loving. I have failed in these many times, in fact. This is the project.
Thanks to Girard I realized how much I have allowed myself resentment for the extremely wealthy who are moving into my town and gentrifying it. I see that I must love them. This is a huge change. love them while refusing to join in their lifestyle and their culture. No dark corners where resentment is allowed. No scapegoating.
Clara
Clara- It is the project. I know I have tended to want to get things "settled" before I could do x, y, or z. But then, lo and behold, things don't usually get "settled". We are inevitably thrown into the mix of things. But what we should be pointing ourselves towards is clear, and I am thankful for Girard for making it even clearer for me. My ability to not see the obvious is fairly impressive. Jesus is asking us to do something very difficult, and yet it is clear what he is asking us. I know I will fail at it, but that is irrelevant to the fact that this is what I am being asked to do.
I hope that farm land becomes reality for you and your family. My sense also is that this is a good thing. I wonder if there is an increase in people wanting to "get out" of the thick of things and this is making it more difficult to buy something. Is that your sense?
Either way as all of this chaos unfolds I think more and more will be asked of us. This is our task.
Thank you for your comment. I hope all is well. -Jack
I think that there are more people looking to find a nice little farm to get away. The real estate statistics don't reflect this level of detail. I'm sure we can find 'something'. But it takes a lot of work to find out about an area and there is nothing that feels like a good match for us in the place we were excited about. We went up to look at a farm nearer to the coast recently and were totally turned off by the NY licence plates and posh restaurants... too much like the Cape Cod we are trying to leave. Spring will be a better time for this to unfold, hopefully. I'm pretty sure that it will fall into place. Thanks for your prayers and encouragement.
Your post made me weep Clara, I feel you !
Oh, and by the way, I read about Dame Julian perhaps 10 years ago in a little book about 4 different mystics. I have always thought of that saying of hers as the perfect summation of my experience of God's presence. I know it's true. I also think lately of the scripture, "I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is staid on Me."
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
Thank you so much for bringing up (and reminding) me of Julian of Norwich's conclusio to it all.
Yes, it's all wrong, it's all horribly wrong, and seems to be a caleidoscope of whirling pieces of misery, each in its own shape and form - and yet, behind this relentless dance and whirl there stands the "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." It's THERE, I can feel it although I can't give it a name.
And it seems to me that if Julian of Norwich, who as a denizen of a less developed and affluent era has seen so many more of the caleidoscopic pieces, says that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well - she MEANS it, and it must be true, and my own conviction that it's there must be based on solid ground, too.
Quakeress- And I quote:
"At the turn of the fourteenth century there was a spectacular continent-wide decline in temperature (which has come to be called "The Little Ice Age"). In 1315-17 extremely heavy rains caused flooding across Norfolk that inundated harvests, vineyards, and seeds in the ground with terrible consequences. In the second half of the century, England experienced wetter than usual summers for thirty years, but the black plague of 1348-49 because so crushing a disaster that it actually pushed the deaths from famine into the background.
When Julian was 20 years old, "the worst storms in the memory of man" occurred. Storm surges of thirty feet above ordinary level were reported." (from the Complete Julian of Norwich by Fr. John-Julian)
I could go on and on about the floods, plagues and famines of Julian's time. And yet she said, or reports Jesus saying to her, "All shall be well". So this is obviously something other than simple optimism. Just as you say, it is something far deeper and far more relevant to us than that. I am still in the midst of trying understand what she is saying, but my intuition is that she is one of the necessary theologians and saints of our time.
I think about T.S. Eliot's poetic trajectory from the despair of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and the Waste Land but which ends with the Four Quartets. The ending of the Four Quartets itself quotes Julian of Norwich and all shall be well. I think that is a central insight of our age. She has a lot to teach us.
I hope to be able to dig into her though more deeply.
Thank you for your comment. Be well. -Jack
I read somewhere that if she had children she almost certainly experienced the death of one of her children, given the infant mortality of the times...this seems to me even more tragic than the storms and floods and riots and plagues - imagine giving birth to a child, seeing her grow, feeling their warmth when they crawl into your bed at night, watching as he grows and outgrows one peril or accident after another - only for him or her to die of one of the many other calamities or diseases that were around at the time. And still, there she is at the end of her life, saying "all shall be well".
Thanks for bringing up Eliot, he knew as well - think of the last lines of The Waste Land. After all the horrible confusion, the death and destruction:
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
He knew as well, didn't he?
It is a very reasonable conclusion to make that she knew suffering at close range, personal and otherwise. Her theology becomes all the more meaningful because of that. I hope to keep exploring her life and thought.
As for Eliot, I think he knew it deeply in his own way, as a different kind of suffering which has manifested itself in modernity. I have been really struck lately about the whole trajectory of his poetic work from start to finish. It gives deeper meaning to the individual poems, though he obviously didn't know at the time where his work and life was headed. There is a moment in his Preludes, which is mostly about the squalor of the city, where something else briefly emerges (in Part IV, if you are interested). It arrives unbidden and then is quickly dismissed. A hope that hints at things to come, perhaps? Which makes one ask: a "prelude" to what, exactly? Maybe even Eliot didn't know...
Wow, I need to read more Eliot - so very beautiful.
It's interesting to compare the two - it seems obvious both deeply wanted and needed more than the everyday world around them (with its immense tragedies and its annoying small inconveniences), but it must have been much easier for Julian to access the deeper reality behind it (I'll call it the "all-shall-be-well plane") because she had a language and a culture to clothe her ideas about it much more than Eliot had (or we have - we're utterly lost in comparison). Eliot is clearly looking for it and he glimpses it, but then it's gone again in a flash. For Julian, at the end of her life, it's THERE.
I wonder what's going to happen in the near future when most people will have lost any cultural knowledge about the "all shall be well plane" and how to get there. To my daughter's and my son's generation, religion is entirely optional and has no relevance at all. How will her generation get closer?
Thanks Jack, you strike a chord, however desperate that feels. I hope things are not quite so dire for us all! During lockdown I decided to learn some psalms off by heart. Psalm 46 was one of those I did and it is one I love and repeat often to myself. I think my favourite lines are: The Nations rage, the kingdoms' totter, He utters His voice, the earth melts'. It is such a proclamation of His absolure power.
God bless you Jack
Rick- I also hope things aren't so dire. Suffice to say that I am hardly one to make predictions. Though I share the sense of unease that is churning just below the surface these days. I thought it might be helpful to bring it out in the light a bit and acknowledge it and see what it might mean for us now. What I find so compelling about Psalm 46 is that though the earth is shaken and the mountains crumble, the kingdoms totter, etc., (which does sound like a good description of the world at the moment) it ends with, "Be still, and know that I am God." It is in this stillness, I think, that we will find a deeper response to our many crises. Something that we probably won't be able to predict.
I hope you are well. And may God bless you, as well. -Jack
This was a difficult but important read. I too fall into the trap of reading and reading in the hope that truly understanding our predicament would be a way to transform it.
And when I imagine how I could help repair things, making art/writing leap first to mind.
But what I think would really help, even infinitesimally, would be to grow food and build community locally. This could involve some writing; it would involve a lot of doing.
Xtal- I agree entirely with your intuition that art/writing is the deeper response to the chaos. If we don't get our poetry right (in the sense that it is tending toward the depths) then all our rational philosophy won't matter much because it will float on the surface. Perhaps these times will begin to call forth something deeper in us, the "deep calls to the deep" (Psalm 42). We have been splashing in the shallows and on the surfaces for far too long. But this will, as I like to quote T.S. Eliot, cost no less than everything. Will we heed this call to the depths? Shallow is far easier. I hope we can. Then come what may.
And yes, we need to build all this locally. If our poetry is local, so will our heart be local. We may be surprised how this all changes. That is my hope. -Jack
Julian of Norwich! So deep and so difficult. I have read only the short text, though I've pulled the long text from the shelf it's been lurking for a few years at your reminder. Glancing near the start, I see 'and I longed to suffer with him'. What a line. It reminds me of that other great mystic, Weil, and how incomprehensible and extreme even the philosophers who argue she is significant seem to find her.
Her cry makes sense to me, yet my own longing to suffer is a muted shadowy thing. Am I better or worse than the philosophers? I have no idea.
Br. F- I am still making my way through the long text and am trying to see how it all holds together. It will surely take more than one reading to do so. But like Weil (admittedly I only know the very basics of her thought) is a thinker and even saint for our time and not always easy to understand or rather to integrate into our standard view of things. What is becoming unavoidably clear is that we don't live in standard times, and haven't for quite some time.
My intuition tells me that Julian is someone who still has many things great and small to say to us. How to suffer well not least among those.
I hope all is well with you. -Jack
Surely the point of a Saint in a sense is that their thought or vision cannot be integrated? The ‘standard view of things’ is what they undo. “Blessed are the poor”. . . Pardon??
Excellent point.
Blessed freedom indeed. Thank you for this reflection and reminder to turn away from all the noise and clamor and attend to what truly matters. There are two things I keep coming back to that help pull me from the temptation to despair or to lose myself in abstraction. The first is a quote from St. John Chrysostom in a letter written to a spiritual child of his, St. Olympia:
"Therefore, do not be cast down, I beseech you. For there is only one thing, Olympia, to fear, only one real temptation, and that is sin. This is the refrain that I keep chanting to you ceaselessly. For everything else is ultimately a fable – whether you speak of plots, or enmities, or deceptions, or slanders, or abuses, or accusations, or confiscations, or banishments, or sharpened swords, or high seas, or war engulfing the entire world. Whichever of these you point to, they are transitory and perishable, and they only affect mortal bodies; they cannot in any way injure the watchful soul. This is why, wishing to express the paltriness of both the good and the bad things of this present life, the blessed Paul stated the matter in one phrase, saying, 'For the things that are seen are transient' (2 Cor. 4:18).”
And the other is this lovely blog post from Orthodox priest, Fr. Stephen Freeman, "Doing the Good You Can Do":
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2021/01/20/doing-the-good-you-can-do-2/
F_S- Thank you for the St. John Chrysostom quote. It cuts to the heart of the matter. I know it is far too easy for me to get caught up in the drama of the world. I have wasted so much time jockeying for position. Yes, there are very real benefits to being on top, but alas, those "benefits" won't even bring us happiness, let alone salvation.
I will check out the Fr. Freeman post. Thank you for that.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Fr Freeman is well worth attention
Lovely piece Jack and much to ponder.
Or is there? As you say, maybe this just simply brings the folly of the last couple of centuries, give or take, into clearer focus.
You say "I can even love that I was born and came of age in an upside-down time such as this. " Speaking personally I doubt I'd be where I am now, newly liberated by my recently uncovered faith, had this not been the case (I say uncovered, you could say revealed. It's always been there, but it's been a long subconscious battle to stop turning away from it).
The current state of humanity just makes it easier to accept that those voices, those doubts, they were right all along.
No one knows how it will all unfold, but unfold it must. What's on the other side and whether any of us will experience it, I have no idea.
But accepting this, as another great mystery or journey, and going with the flow, has to better than stressing over the unfixable.
Andrew- I have to say, for one thing, that might slow acceptance of the reality of our times has definitely improved my sleep. Not a small thing. You are right that in accepting it as a great mystery frees us up to respond in a more effective way than becoming anxious. One of my long favorite poems is The Waking by Theodore Roethke, the refrain of which is, "I learn by going where to go". Granted, this has gotten me into trouble at times, at least in the short term, but I stand by it, especially now. I think the true and deep response to our disordered time will not be part of some 37 point plan, or whatever, but from some place deeper in us than we are used to dealing with. Which won't often make sense to us at the time. Learning to trust that radical unknowing is a real practice. But our truisms and cliches will hardly suffice.
I hope you are well. -Jack
A phrase I used recently was something along the lines of what comes out of the other side may be a way of existing that is new, never before considered. In effect beyond our current comprehension. Necessity may well be the mother of invention, we just have no idea at this stage, especially so if the collapse is primarily climate driven. The possibilities are almost infinite. I must say almost as we could of course, theoretically, all be under water and that's going to be pretty finite!
In a slightly strange way it's hard not to be excited by the prospect. In as much as we could be in the process of going through something truly momentous, a once in tens of thousands of years event, when we are around for such a tiny fraction of that time. What are the odds?
There's no reversing it, despite what the capitalists say, we just have to traverse it with as much calmness, dignity and wonder as we can. The only way out is through, as they say.
It is indeed as if many and various strands of historical cycles are all converging on the same time. We both need to prepare ourselves and realize there probably isn't any way to really prepare for this. All our predictions will fall short...
A friend whose husband had just died asked what happens after we die. I said “We are received.” She said “What about all the work we’ve done on ourselves?” I said “All of who we are is welcome.” This is where I’m at.
Susie-
This is a good place to be. Have you read Julian of Norwich? I am in the midst of her Revelations of Divine Love and I am finding it beautiful. Well worth the read if you are so inclined. She says many profound things about what you are saying here.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Thank you so much, Jack. I come to this sideways from a Jewish/Buddhist perspective but living and dying belong to all of us and we all struggle to understand.
Amen to that. I will go out on a limb and say that Julian is not incompatible with a Jewish/Buddhist perspective. But I will leave it at that!
Just a quick comment on the opening paragraph, but what immediately leapt to mind was a LH stroke. I increasingly look out and see the same. It began with cars. For me it’s not ‘it is wrong’, but ‘it doesn’t make sense’. We destroy creation in and through which God Is, and make these machines which tear at the fabric of all that really matters, relationships and community and reduce our bodies even further towards utterly useless and meaningless appendages.
What comes to mind are three words from Paul in Ephesians; “having lost all sensitivity” . . . to what is. The LH isn’t involved in coherence or sense making and crucially has no concept of Livingness.
As we also face a ‘meaning crisis’ this is the other side of the coin. The fabric is that in which meaning coinheres. If everything is simply things there is no meaning.
We only truly know through contemplation and prayer. One of McGilchrist’s lacunae I humbly submit is reducing truth seeking to Science, Reason and Intuition. He overemphasises Science, which is very LH dominant.
Apologies for rambling :)
I hope you are well!
Eric- I have noticed this same paradox in McGilchrist. As broad and deep as his work and efforts have been. This is where contemplatives and poets and novelists come in, I think, to fill the gap. Because if what he is saying is right, then it is the poetic response, broadly conceived, that is the deeper and truer one. Because beauty will save the world, it is the poets and contemplatives who are called on to respond. Dare I say that this is the challenge of our time. It has got me thinking about what that might mean.
All is well here in the little monastic canyon. I think it is supposed to warm up a bit today. A pleasant change. I hope you are well. -Jack
Hi Jack, yes we are well
Just returned home to for us very warm weather. We holidayed with family in the Southern Alps, and looking at the crevasses high up on Aoraki / Mt Cook, The End was apparent. Your post was well timed!
Yes and Amen to your point re poets and contemplatives! It echoes remarks by Philip Sherrard (Orthodox writer) which form part of the most succinct account of why we are where we are, in which he highlights the way in which our forebears understood that Truth could only be known if Prayer and Contemplation were foundational.
(In this regard I offer my critique of Lectio Divina, that it begins in the wrong place!)
Also it has come to me as forcefully and repetitively as the waves of the Southern Ocean hereabouts that Plato’s Cave is soooo contemporary. One begins to see it everywhere and communicating this reality leads often to blind incomprehension.
I really appreciate what you’ve been writing and thanks for the Girard quote.
Trust some of our warmth soon penetrates cold bones North of the Equator!
Blessings
Eric
Is it that Lectio Divina begins with reading and ends with contemplatio? Rather than the other way around?
Essentially “Yes”. Everything is coming from God, and will be gathered up. True Life, action etc. must therefore follow this arc. From implicit, out into The World, and then return Home. Or, RH, LH, R in McGilchrist’s terms (as he follows in the final chapter of TMWT on The Sense of The Sacred)
If you or I were king of the world, would things be so much better? In some ways, yes. I believe so. If I thought my thoughts were wrong, I wouldn’t think them. But we must never forget how complex the world is. We must never forget just how much unintentional suffering I would cause should my vision be realized.
For I; at my best, am limited. Are we truly superior to those that got us here? Or is criticism in hindsight simply easier than perfection of foresight? Didn’t decades of hard work by those, not too inferior to us, lead us here?
Am I not also tempted to believe in a utopia that only exists in my head?
I agree that the days are evil. But now, just like always, we must do what we would always have had to do: give the world our best; and ask God for his mercy.

Zach- I have no doubt that if I ran the world it would be far worse off. Though the intention to run the world is part of the problem itself. Technology has made that intention basically unavoidable. We are increasingly omnipresent to one another and the more we seek the same things, the more trouble it will cause us in that we will come into conflict.
Somebody is going to try and run the show, and we are seeing the larger conflict emerge on who that is going to be. I don't see how it is avoided. Maybe it can be. There is something almost mathematical about it, as if one could diagram it all out using game theory. But it also has a lot to with humans being less a rational animal than a spirited social animal seeking prestige and dominance.
Are humans capable of letting that need to control go? I hope so, but I have serious doubts that we can, at least at scale. Yet, as you say, we do need to give the world our best. It matters what we conceive that "best" to be. I tend to believe what that is will likely surprise us as all this moves forward. That thought, however vague, gives me hope.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
Thank you for your thoughtful response! I am always blessed by your work
Thank you for writing this. I come from a Quaker / buddhist background and I’ve been interested In Christian and Jewish mysticism for quite some time. Finding threads of writing like this helps give me hope and stillness, knowing that other people are perceiving in this the same way. It serves as a reminder to myself that equanimity is paramount at times like these. I had a dream recently about the apocalypse occurring and I let go and felt that everything would turn out alright. I’ve been trying to keep this in my mind with meditation and prayer, even while trying to find a way to sustain myself materially.
Mia- I think what we are now beginning to go through will change us in ways that we cannot predict and will find surprising. Something is shifting, however slight it might appear. It is easy to misread, but slowly our eyes will adjust and begin to see. I think your dream is a good one. All shall be well. We must hold on to that. Dame Julian is one source for trying to understand what that means, but there are many others.
After our age of individualism--a delusion in the end--the fact that we all need each other will be the biggest lesson. Or second biggest. That we need God being the first.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
Thank you Jack!!! Also I just found a copy of Christ the Eternal Tao online for only $20 surprisingly, can’t wait to read it :)
Beautiful. I hope it is exactly the book you are looking for!
“In this sense, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me not to see our current civilization as anything other than a lie, and a sociopathic one at that.”
And many of our citizens will have sociopathic and/or narcissistic tendencies, cultivated from the earliest age: a self-adoring attitude (despite the inner sense of hollowness); a sense of right/wrong that is superficial and merely externalized (e.g., something is wrong only if the surveillance cameras catch us); an eroded inner conscience (so we can unleash our inner appetites without remorse); a view of life and humanity as a material thing (to be manipulated for pleasure or profit).
All this might last a generation; it will crumble; children are destiny, and a society that cannot raise children – one that increasingly does not want to be burdened with self-sacrificing long-term relationships – will not transmit much to the future, except perhaps a dim memory of its despair.
The loss of the desire for children seems both the cause and the symptom of our catastrophe. I have been thinking a lot about the Waste Land, Eliot's, Cormac Mccarthy's in The Road (I wish I knew more about the Grail Myth). All of it is related to the loss of fertility, both human, spiritual and ecological. It is the myth of our time.
The decline in birth rates and shrinking families is most prominent in the West; and, despite the generalized population decline elsewhere in the world as well, there are exceptions, most notably in sub-Saharan Africa and among certain religious groups (sub-groups of Christian, Jewish, Islamic, etc.), where numbers are growing (I wrote about this previously in my “Cab Crusaders” post a few months ago).
The upshot is that the future may not be what we expect; neither a Machine-dominated world, nor one that is utterly chaotic (if Machine society collapses), but which includes major pockets of robust religious/spiritual groups, and probably some rigid fundamentalism. I think the future will be more complicated than we can currently imagine.
I think those mythic themes will not altogether vanish, but become only latent or perhaps distorted, and then re-emerge in various ways. Whether we live long enough to see it is, well, another matter.
This comfort you speak of, throughout this piece, is important. Important, because of the perniciously distorting effects it creates. I truly believe, the kind of comfort we see in the world is a form of isolation. It is the comfort of isolation. Which means, it creates the 'set and setting' for delusion, of every kind, to rise and take hold. Take, for example, money. The comfort provided by hardly ever needing to think about money. What that amount of money 'isolates' one from. Entire philosophies are spun out of the delusion of such comfort. In other words, such comfort has a disembodying effect. It removes you from the movement of life, isolating you in a world of your own making, choosing. So few people today seem capable of challenging their own status, their own comfort, their own routine. Everyone immediately sets up a marketplace within the isolation their own form of comfort provides, and attempts to sell their 'wares' to anyone passing near. Like cattle, people shuffle from the isolating comfort of their family, to the isolating comfort of their schooling, to the isolating comfort of a career, a family of their own, a mortgage, old age, having never tested themselves. Having never stepped outside of their self-inflicted isolation. Never stepping far enough beyond their self-centring comfort to feel the tug of the tether around their neck. To hell, in the isolating comfort of one's own handbasket.
Steve- I think of how sophisticated "climate control" can be. It can be very comfortable. I have experienced it to some degree at the homes of friends. But it seems the ability to create a very narrow range of perfect comfort inevitably creates a much wider range of discomfort. It weakens us. It becomes a prison of sorts, exactly as you say here. We need friction, discomfort, and even a certain push into chaos in order to find and integrate a deeper order. Everything else is entropy.
Thank you for this comment it is spot on.
I hope you are well. -Jack
You are right about our comforts making us weak and sick and dependent on medical workers. And that's just the physiological aspect. I met a young father once with three little "stair step" boys. Wanting to help them overcome weakness, and willing to join them in it, he insisted they all take COLD SHOWERS on a regular basis. This was in the Rocky Mountains and their water was really very cold! I'Ve not been able to do this myself... even my efforts at self denial -- a Christian essential -- are wimpy.
Patrice- I started taking cold showers about a year and a half ago. Yet every morning I must psych myself up to doing it again. Even though I feel so much better when I am done. The first 10 secs are uncomfortable to say the least, but it gets easier after that. I have been thinking about it in terms of a positive asceticism, rather than as some kind of punishment.
The path of contemplation is, in part, I think, something that one has to train for. I think about times when I have stuffed myself full of food. The last thing I am capable of at that point is to go pray or sit in silence. Yet silent prayer does seem to become more natural when I am not "full" or satisfied. I need to be emptied and that may be more physical than I first would have thought. Of course, one needs to find the balance with all this, but the benefits now are plain to me. I resisted it for years.
I hope you are well. -Jack
In my very short time of regular prayer I have already developed the simplest of mindsets:
Prayer comes first. Food (or work, or other mundane distractions) come a distant 2nd.
It seems at this early stage to very much be the most effective way.
This is the true hierarchy. I have heard it said that we need to pray even more than we breathe.
Taoism is always chuckling about its own demise or reversals of fortune. In a few passages in the Classics practitioners are reminded in easy times to serve the people in government, and in difficult or chaotic times to hide out as hermits in the hills. and practice quietly, somewhat as you are doing... The Warring States period when Taoist writing flourished must have felt like this: constant war, displacement, famines, uncertainty. I think it's why I often find it so apt.
Caroline-
That does explain well why once introduced to the Daodejing that many of us are drawn to it. It is clear from the very beginning that it isn't idle advice but rather, as you say, the author is speaking out well beyond all the chaos. It is inexhaustible and as much as I have engaged with it I hardly feel like I've even scratched the surface. Our civilization, should it want to survive, needs to absorb its lessons well.
And maybe our chaotic times will encourage more to hide out in the hills. I hope so!
-Jack
'The hills are alive with the sound of hermits...'