Personally speaking, when I used to focus on the “news” I noticed it was far worse than a distraction. It was a turning away from God in that I could not be focused on both God and worldly distractions. I could not flip from this piece of news to that on the internet or with an tv and maintain the tension needed for a prayerful life. Almost always, when I put the iPad down and went to pray the iPad things of the day rushed into the prayer. I started asking myself, “if I can’t focus on God here, what am I focusing on?” The answer to that is explained in almost all of the Church Fathers. I have a friend who is very much involved in the church, yet every conversation is about the news of the day. I asked him once why he was so focused on what the devil was doing while God was waiting for him. I’m certainly not suggesting I’ve succeeded in completely turning it off, but the more these kinds of questions come to me, the easier it becomes to continue on the “no mas” trajectory. This is a big question for me lately: At the end of the day we’re struggling for salvation. What do we think that will consist of? News, fancy cars, careers, fat 401k balances, steak dinners out? No, likely not. Then why do we spend so much time on these things now instead of spending all of our time here trying to achieve a small piece of what heaven will truly be if we truly want to spend eternity doing that? God is here every second of our lives waiting for us to make the turn…
Tim- The news is poison. Even if it is undertaken under the guise of "being informed". And it can be addicting. Like seeing a car wreck at the side of the road. I have tried over my time in semi-solitude to find a balance between silence and information. I give far more emphasis to silence. But even a little bit of "information" can be an added toxin that then needs to be purged.
This story grabbed me in a different way, as a symbol of the toxic train wreck unfolding before us. Maybe that's just me. Of course it is more importantly far more than a symbol, as the well-being of many people, animals, ecosystems are at stake.
It is a very real question for me as to how further the way of life you are speaking of, how to live it in a society that seems to be coming undone. Very few of us are going to become monks. Paul Kingsnorth's Wild Christianity is very evocative and resonant to me. But is it really an option? If so, how?
Jack, thank you for your reply. Please forgive me if I sounded judgmental. It wasn’t that, more musing on a topic that has been front and center of my mind lately.
I believe that where Paul is heading (and it’s been fascinating watching his journey the past couple years as I’m on that same trajectory), is the only real way. Perhaps not every one physically live in an actual cave, but metaphorically speaking to make a cave out of our lives. How? It’s radical, folks will think you’re nuts, the world will stomp on you as a result, but quit the will to power and seek utter humility (even humiliation from the world). Quit the will that worship of money is important (we don’t need as many of those little green pieces of paper with icons on the front and pictures of various temples on the back as American culture says we do). Quit the will to lust.
That’s the beginning. The three biggies that evil always finds the easiest wheels to grease. And what is there that Christ didn’t point out? Christ’s call is incredibly radical really, not easy or comfortable in the least.
How does that look for me personally? I walked away from corporate America, top salesman at a multi billion dollar company. Even the subdeacon at my church was aghast: “you just walked up to a cliff and jumped.” We have a small home in rural Montana and I grow Microgreens for restaurants now. I’m constructing an 8x10 prayer cell that is reminiscent of a cave church. I get up at 3 or 4 in the morning and pray the Jesus Prayer for an hour. Then some spiritual reading, then work on the Microgreens (while trying to say the Jesus prayer), then around noon the day’s psalms, then more more work, then rest, then two hours of the Jesus prayer at night and then bed.
We have nothing in the eyes of American culture, I’m its epitome of a failure. No savings, lots of debt, no career. What I’m trying to have instead is a life centered around God. Making a cave out of my life, making my home into a (secular) hermitage.
Is it easy, materially? I don’t think about it much, but sometimes the devil tries to crush me with the thought and I succumb for a short time.
Our life is in God’s hands in that my time is focused mostly on Him. If I want to spend eternity in the presence of God, and I do, what better time to start than right now? Just because we our Americans, or have families, does not mean (to me) that a rejection of an ascetical way of living is ok. Neither Christ or the Church Fathers offer an “I’m not a monk opt out” so I’m certainly not going to make an excuse that I’m special and deserve one.
Tim- I didn't take it as judgmental at all. I think your response--your story-- gets to the heart of the matter. I too think that what Paul is saying is radical. I have been working on a response in an attempt to tease out just how radical it is. I think that more of us will find it necessary to make the kind of choices you have made. Necessary for a number of reasons. But not everyone so inclined is ready to make the leap just yet so I think there is work to be done explicating it more fully. Both as a kind of mythos, a larger story of why and how and in practical matters, prayer, how to survive etc. I find it an exciting prospect. It is worth digging into, and a conversation worth having.
It would be fantastic if you two dug into the topic and then folks discussed it openly and considered it spiritually. I look forward to your response to Paul!
Here is a famous John Henry Newman quote that has stuck with me for many years and worked its way deeper and deeper down. It’s quite devastating the more you consider what he’s saying.
“Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.
This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.
He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."
A George Harrison quote comes to mind—-they’ve forgotten all about God, He’s the only reason we exist—-so the fact that it gets worse and worse means to me that a turning is coming and people will, in their desperation, turn back. The Lord is awaiting on you all. Harrison again! People need to feel the reality of God’ s existence first so just how they get there to want that connection, I’m not sure.
I wrote the following tract over 20 years ago, and is a bit long to qualify as a comment; forgive me. I post it because it occurs to me that it may point to the problem. Not the particular catastrophe that you address in this essay, but the more basic one that is its cause, and that you speak of in your other work. It also suggests the only ‘solution’ that in my 75 yrs I have found that makes any sense. It is certainly not new, let alone ‘original;’ it has been around since the Desert: The only way ‘Out’ is the way ‘In.’ May we all find it…in a hurry…I’m afraid time is not on our side.
Love in XC,
Dcn Dionysi
St. Benedict Orthodox Church (Western Rite)
Wichita Falls, Texas
A Case of Mistaken Identity… or,
We don’t know who we really are…
“… ascetics found that metanoia represented not the loss of ... freedom, but the exploitation of its highest promise. Far from repression of the personality, remembrance of God precipitated its transcendent refinement, as freedom from fear replaced subservience to sin.”
What is the precise relationship between fear and sin? Fear is the natural state of the self/I, understood as the autonomous self. I is a wanting thing; it wants forever because it is forever insufficient. This insufficiency is held for the most part, unconsciously, so is not often recognized as the crippling deficit it is. It does, however, carry with it an explicit experience: a species of fear – a general disposition of unease and discontentment…experienced along a continuum from vague to acute - for it intuitively recognizes that it is not up to the task of satisfying the want that echoes within.
It fears because it is essentially empty. In that sense it could be said to be vain, the root meaning of vanity being emptiness; it can generate nothing from within itself. It necessarily must direct its attention outward, to the world around it…an attention consciously experienced as want…to yield the outcome it desires. In the sense that it must take what it needs from something external to itself, it is parasitic. The fear that is already a fundamental aspect of the autonomous self is exacerbated by the uncertainty of the world upon which it must place its demand: “Will it come through?” “Can I find what I need?” “Do I have what it takes to get it?” Such considerations constantly plague the insufficient self and fuel the intensity of the search.
To say that the autonomous self is empty, while true enough, does not do justice to the perniciousness of the condition. Empty implies the possibility of being filled. Self cannot be filled because it is ultimately not anything that has a limit that can be reached. It cannot even properly be called it, for the word itself implies an eventual boundary. The emptiness of self is infinite, its anti-existence total, which is why it is experienced as insatiable by the one trying to fill it by the wants it demands. It is the emptiness of a lie and has no more reality. The autonomous self is, in fact, THE LIE (Genesis 3:4-5…’…ye shall not surly die…ye shall be as gods…’) that gives birth to all other lies; therein is its direct relationship to evil.
Of all the words associated or synonymous with Empty (vain; futile; worthless; vacant; valueless, etc.) all of which shed some light on it, perhaps the most powerful description is more colloquial in nature, as when we say empty to mean hungry. In such a sense, it then becomes more of what the actual experience of it suggests: that it is beyond simply a neutral, passive emptiness waiting to be filled. Experienced as hunger, it takes on an organic and active quality, parasitic and bestial in nature, that demands vitality from its host. Unless it is interrupted…the case of mistaken identity uncovered and cast off, and true identity recovered … it will lead to eventual and inevitable spiritual death. A recurring line from the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete speaks to it:
“… may I not become the food and possession of the enemy.” (Song 4: 23,25,26,27)
We have forgotten who we are which means we don't know why we are here. So we cast about getting ourselves in a world of trouble. The latest disaster is an apt symbol of this--a toxic train wreck that no one takes responsibility for--and of where we end up when we don't know where we are going.
I am working on a response to Paul's Wild Christianity, and it is entirely consonant with what you are saying. Thank you for your comment. It is very helpful. And you are right, time is surely *not* our side. But it is never too late to begin! I think more people are becoming ready to hear.
I hope all is well with you in Wichita Falls. -Jack
Once everything has become lies, it leaves nowhere to go but an axis flip for a desperate humanity seeking where truth might be found. That’s where hope is. Darkest before a dawn and all that. If truth exists, we will have to dig. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Dennis- I couldn't agree more. I can't fully justify my sense of this. I certainly have not been a true believer, to say the least, in the current state of things. Something in me shifted with the situation in Ohio. The lie is such a clear and present danger and in a way that is nearly impossible to finesse. Though if they can't finesse it, they will push it out of sight. How many more of these incidents will it take? How bad will it need to get? -Jack
I have lived just over an hour away from East Palestine for a year now. I do not know the place myself but a longtime friend’s parents live in the county. They were told to evacuate like everyone else and did for about 5 days before returning home. They are blue collar people like most around that area from what I have been told. And the fear of longterm harm is just not something concerning to them at their age. Wendell Berry would call them “Stickers”.
Truth be told I didn’t really know much about the disaster for almost a week. I only started reading up on it after my friend told me about her parents. I don’t have any social media so the news I was getting came from the old staples. But, a few days ago I started getting texts and phone calls from friends down South asking if it was true people were dying in the streets. And everyone one of them said the same thing “I saw on Facebook”. “I read on Facebook”
And it hit me. We’ve outsourced ourselves. We’ve diminished the presence of our bodies, of our towns, the capacity of our minds, and replaced their value with what’s National, International, and Virtual. It’s never been this way historically till this last half century. Never this dominant. And maybe that’s one of the causes of our anxiety and distrust. We are not evolved spiritually, mentally, or physically to contain the dramas of the world. It’s is skull crushing. It is suicidal.
We have an entire generation or more that have grown up or are growing up in a world where the Local v National hierarchy has been flipped.
I think what I’m trying to lean towards is we have to regain ground at home with real people. We have to humble the expectations of our existence. We are so small. And that’s a blessing. The meek shall inherit the earth.
When I first saw the story about this train wreck I was in the middle of reading a book called 'The Independent Farmstead' by a couple who have made a beautiful homestead in Eastern Ohio. I wondered how near to their place this event may be. As I read about how they took a piece of rocky, steep, bramble filled land and made it over years and with their children into a place of abundant good health and food production, it felt all the more horrific that some unforeseeable industrial blunder could just poison such a precious piece of land. I have also read extensively about the PFAS and PFOS ("forever chemical") pollution on Maine farmland. That was the first time I had that gut-wrenching realization that in spite of all the rhetoric and research, no one has any idea what to do about this and there is no way it will be resolved or that farmers will ever be compensated. And like you say, it is only one of many, many, intractable problems that are emerging. Yes, for sure the authorities, regulators, and those who report to us are putting up a front of competence.
The work of this couple in Ohio is really inspiring. It is helping me to imagine how my family might make a stab at something similar. They are catholic and farm in partnership with a nearby monastery -- which made me think of you Jack. Their blog is called The One Cow Revolution, a spoof from Fukuoka. I loved this post describing how they made it work: https://onecowrevolution.wordpress.com/2023/02/09/5563/
Reading the linked post it has made explicit for me something I have thought about for a while. That maybe in this small voice we hear to leave is calling us to the marginal. Like the Catholic family and their farmstead on hilly, less than perfect land. Doesn't Wendell Berry have a similar type of farm. Even though I am looking for a ready-made situation, perhaps we are being called to task to build it, or rather, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain". This will be a lot of hard work. But what an adventure! Besides we are told directly to not worry about it and seek first the Kingdom, trusting all else will be added. And I think that is the second part. We can't just seek a way out to save our skins. Like the homestead family really built a life of prayer, and one of goodness and thanksgiving, of radical trust in Providence.
I think I am mainly giving a pep talk to myself here, being a type 5 perpetual data gatherer. At what point does that become a way of deferring making the leap into the unknown? Hard to say, at least for certain. But we know that there are those who have made the leap, and not only survived it, but thrived in a whole new way. No guarantees, of course.
I wonder what monastery they are associated with? I know of a Byzantine Catholic Women's monastery in Northeastern Ohio. I wonder if that is the one?
Hi again, In trying to find the location of their farm and the nearby monastery I started listening to an interview with these, my gurus of the moment. I know you will love it. About 3/4 of the way through they talk about the analogy between homesteading and eating a meal... both might keep you alive but if you undertake it merely to be kept alive you are missing the point. I love the discussion about community and independence also.
I am fully ready to make this leap, come what may. My husband and kids are in varying stages of readiness -- and it is going to happen. We are coming to the realization that we are going to need to get a place with some problems and fix it (again! we are on year 7 of the current fixer upper) in order to afford the whole change. We are among the wealthy to even be able to make this happen at all.
So, the Dougherty family are in or near Toronto Ohio, which is not near the monastery you mention as far as I can tell. The property they raised their kids on is 27 acres, and they currently use a 90 acre piece that was unused but owned by the Sisters down the road. I can't find the name of that monastery, though.
We decided it was ok to live by some lies. It was ok to allow public health lies. It was ok to live by BLM lies. It was ok to live by DEI lies. It was ok to live by gov't and corp censorship lies. We let the truth die. We were warned. https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies
Keith- We have been warned for a long time. I think of how much effort it has taken--and still takes--to undo the lies I have lived and to speak the truth. The truth will increasingly cost us. Particularly if we don't start speaking it while we still can. -Jack
I guess it's only a matter of time before people cop on that they reliving in a fantasy political world called democracy. Then the game is up. Run for the hills.
I have come to the conclusion that we no longer live in democracies. I see no political agenda which addresses the needs of people, no matter whether there be a toxic spill or people just dying homeless in the streets. The so-called government no longer rules. It does what it is told, by the real purveyors of power. The impossibly wealthy and powerful corporates who pick the leaders that will run for election. They are all of a type. Greedy, corrupt, psychopathic narcissists. They do their masters' bidding while lying through their teeth about everything, to us - the hapless vast unwashed. We live in a new feudal system where the lie continues about democracy.
Just watch how nothing is done. For example the president that encouraged insurrection where lives were lost. All there is, is a prolonged 'investigation'. Did he break the law or not?
Or the Prime minister who lied about Brexit being the best thing for the British people getting their sovereignty back. The prosperity that would be generated. All they did was cut taxes for the rich and gave carte blanche to rampant capitalism. People now can either eat or warm their homes, if they have one. They are advised to ride around in a bus all day, wearing a beanie. Seriously?
Just look at the wealth being sucked up by the corporates. The Energy Industry's profits up 50%. And more people than ever going to food banks. And they are working. But nothing is said. There is no outrage. The media stays mum. What will happen when the labouring poor is replaced by AI robots ? It is a nightmare on the horizon. Who will have work? But no discussion. Progress, all of it is good, if it increases the profits of the Western Oligarchs who use their large pockets to buy policy and run politicians . And countries.
Gayle- This is increasingly the sense of it. I don't think we live in democracies, either. Not fundamentally. There is enough of a show to keep us hoping for change. Even that is slipping away.
How long can things last like this? Maybe a while. None of it bodes well.
I'm of the view that a "natural" disaster will probably have to happen first to tip us over the edge. The majority in the UK are too concerned about maintaining their current way of life to actually rebel against such a flagrantly corrupt system as we currently have.
We've lived under the illusion of democracy for some time. In the UK we're back to being able to have a red tied neoliberal or a blue tied neoliberal. Neither have any solutions other than to make the rich richer and impoverish everyone else.
Everything that emerges is a manifestation of what underlies everything. So the metaphorical ecological train wreck must manifest itself at the literal limit case of the metaphor, or what’s a meta-for? (With apologies :) )
The devil is as we always have known in the detail. The devil has always been a liar and increased complexity leads to more hiding places, more lies. The move to computerisation, tools few of us know how to work, and far fewer know how they work is fairly obviously the cause. We hammer the humans making bad judgements but we have given reality over to the computers. The human element is essential to our Existence, it is of the Essence of Creation. But people are expensive. Creating complex systems which no one really understands is cheap and easy. People are costly and difficult because we’re less virtual.
To take a perhaps odd example but much simpler, my brother published a study showing that in his field, dairy cattle, more employees improved overall productivity, yield, milk quality. Why? His suggestion was that more eyes meant more care of the livestock.
Computers neither care nor can be taught to. Our concerns about AI are in a sense concerns for a horse out of the stable and way off in the next county.
Eric- Apparently the train companies were trying to reduce the crews to a single person. To save money of course. Of course, I have no idea how to solve any of this, or even if it could be solved. Maybe the desire to reduce the world to a set of problems to be solves IS the problem. It works. That is until the solutions we have come up with start to create even bigger problems. Onward to more solutions! Is it wrong to think that this will never work but only created bigger problems to point where we are all out of solutions? I am not smart enough to say definitively, but that's my intuition.
But if I really believe all of that, than I just have to let go, and simplify my life and trust that all shall be well, regardless of how many things start to blow up--literally or figuratively--around me.
It is very windy in the monastic canyon at the moment, but it is relatively warm. I think I will go outside for a stroll.
It's strange how a society which in many ways is based on Occam's razor becomes irreducibly complex . . .
Windows computers systems, and increasingly the fruit based alternative, just put patch upon patch upon patch. And we all know that its 'an improvement'. Better to seek 'the peace of wild things'
I've pretty much abandoned all news. Some say, "but how will you stay informed?!". For me at least, it became increasingly clear that whatever was gained simply didn't outweigh the downsides (anger, fear, anxiety, deeper division, temptation to judge/hate etc.) The news creates this artificial reality wherein we are made aware of every crisis, every tragedy, every act of human depravity, war, abuse and scandal on a 24 hour cycle. I just can't believe we were created with the capacity to take all of this in, to carry the weight of it all. It creates this illusion that we have to care about it all, have opinions on it all. No thank you.
F_S- This really is the only sane solution--abandon all news. The news has been weaponized against us because it works to do that. It gets our attention whether we want it to or not . Even if I didn't think it was a manipulation at the same time. Correlation isn't causation, of course, but the more "news" we absorbed the crazier we all get. It's not hard to see where it is all going as we pour more in more into our brains. Instead of figuring out what's going on, we do the opposite. -Jack
Personally speaking, when I used to focus on the “news” I noticed it was far worse than a distraction. It was a turning away from God in that I could not be focused on both God and worldly distractions. I could not flip from this piece of news to that on the internet or with an tv and maintain the tension needed for a prayerful life. Almost always, when I put the iPad down and went to pray the iPad things of the day rushed into the prayer. I started asking myself, “if I can’t focus on God here, what am I focusing on?” The answer to that is explained in almost all of the Church Fathers. I have a friend who is very much involved in the church, yet every conversation is about the news of the day. I asked him once why he was so focused on what the devil was doing while God was waiting for him. I’m certainly not suggesting I’ve succeeded in completely turning it off, but the more these kinds of questions come to me, the easier it becomes to continue on the “no mas” trajectory. This is a big question for me lately: At the end of the day we’re struggling for salvation. What do we think that will consist of? News, fancy cars, careers, fat 401k balances, steak dinners out? No, likely not. Then why do we spend so much time on these things now instead of spending all of our time here trying to achieve a small piece of what heaven will truly be if we truly want to spend eternity doing that? God is here every second of our lives waiting for us to make the turn…
Tim- The news is poison. Even if it is undertaken under the guise of "being informed". And it can be addicting. Like seeing a car wreck at the side of the road. I have tried over my time in semi-solitude to find a balance between silence and information. I give far more emphasis to silence. But even a little bit of "information" can be an added toxin that then needs to be purged.
This story grabbed me in a different way, as a symbol of the toxic train wreck unfolding before us. Maybe that's just me. Of course it is more importantly far more than a symbol, as the well-being of many people, animals, ecosystems are at stake.
It is a very real question for me as to how further the way of life you are speaking of, how to live it in a society that seems to be coming undone. Very few of us are going to become monks. Paul Kingsnorth's Wild Christianity is very evocative and resonant to me. But is it really an option? If so, how?
Thank you for your comment. -Jack
Jack, thank you for your reply. Please forgive me if I sounded judgmental. It wasn’t that, more musing on a topic that has been front and center of my mind lately.
I believe that where Paul is heading (and it’s been fascinating watching his journey the past couple years as I’m on that same trajectory), is the only real way. Perhaps not every one physically live in an actual cave, but metaphorically speaking to make a cave out of our lives. How? It’s radical, folks will think you’re nuts, the world will stomp on you as a result, but quit the will to power and seek utter humility (even humiliation from the world). Quit the will that worship of money is important (we don’t need as many of those little green pieces of paper with icons on the front and pictures of various temples on the back as American culture says we do). Quit the will to lust.
That’s the beginning. The three biggies that evil always finds the easiest wheels to grease. And what is there that Christ didn’t point out? Christ’s call is incredibly radical really, not easy or comfortable in the least.
How does that look for me personally? I walked away from corporate America, top salesman at a multi billion dollar company. Even the subdeacon at my church was aghast: “you just walked up to a cliff and jumped.” We have a small home in rural Montana and I grow Microgreens for restaurants now. I’m constructing an 8x10 prayer cell that is reminiscent of a cave church. I get up at 3 or 4 in the morning and pray the Jesus Prayer for an hour. Then some spiritual reading, then work on the Microgreens (while trying to say the Jesus prayer), then around noon the day’s psalms, then more more work, then rest, then two hours of the Jesus prayer at night and then bed.
We have nothing in the eyes of American culture, I’m its epitome of a failure. No savings, lots of debt, no career. What I’m trying to have instead is a life centered around God. Making a cave out of my life, making my home into a (secular) hermitage.
Is it easy, materially? I don’t think about it much, but sometimes the devil tries to crush me with the thought and I succumb for a short time.
Our life is in God’s hands in that my time is focused mostly on Him. If I want to spend eternity in the presence of God, and I do, what better time to start than right now? Just because we our Americans, or have families, does not mean (to me) that a rejection of an ascetical way of living is ok. Neither Christ or the Church Fathers offer an “I’m not a monk opt out” so I’m certainly not going to make an excuse that I’m special and deserve one.
Tim- I didn't take it as judgmental at all. I think your response--your story-- gets to the heart of the matter. I too think that what Paul is saying is radical. I have been working on a response in an attempt to tease out just how radical it is. I think that more of us will find it necessary to make the kind of choices you have made. Necessary for a number of reasons. But not everyone so inclined is ready to make the leap just yet so I think there is work to be done explicating it more fully. Both as a kind of mythos, a larger story of why and how and in practical matters, prayer, how to survive etc. I find it an exciting prospect. It is worth digging into, and a conversation worth having.
I hope all is well in Montana. -Jack
It would be fantastic if you two dug into the topic and then folks discussed it openly and considered it spiritually. I look forward to your response to Paul!
Here is a famous John Henry Newman quote that has stuck with me for many years and worked its way deeper and deeper down. It’s quite devastating the more you consider what he’s saying.
“Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth? No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.
This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind. He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.
He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."
A George Harrison quote comes to mind—-they’ve forgotten all about God, He’s the only reason we exist—-so the fact that it gets worse and worse means to me that a turning is coming and people will, in their desperation, turn back. The Lord is awaiting on you all. Harrison again! People need to feel the reality of God’ s existence first so just how they get there to want that connection, I’m not sure.
Dear, in Christ, Jack…and others:
I wrote the following tract over 20 years ago, and is a bit long to qualify as a comment; forgive me. I post it because it occurs to me that it may point to the problem. Not the particular catastrophe that you address in this essay, but the more basic one that is its cause, and that you speak of in your other work. It also suggests the only ‘solution’ that in my 75 yrs I have found that makes any sense. It is certainly not new, let alone ‘original;’ it has been around since the Desert: The only way ‘Out’ is the way ‘In.’ May we all find it…in a hurry…I’m afraid time is not on our side.
Love in XC,
Dcn Dionysi
St. Benedict Orthodox Church (Western Rite)
Wichita Falls, Texas
A Case of Mistaken Identity… or,
We don’t know who we really are…
“… ascetics found that metanoia represented not the loss of ... freedom, but the exploitation of its highest promise. Far from repression of the personality, remembrance of God precipitated its transcendent refinement, as freedom from fear replaced subservience to sin.”
What is the precise relationship between fear and sin? Fear is the natural state of the self/I, understood as the autonomous self. I is a wanting thing; it wants forever because it is forever insufficient. This insufficiency is held for the most part, unconsciously, so is not often recognized as the crippling deficit it is. It does, however, carry with it an explicit experience: a species of fear – a general disposition of unease and discontentment…experienced along a continuum from vague to acute - for it intuitively recognizes that it is not up to the task of satisfying the want that echoes within.
It fears because it is essentially empty. In that sense it could be said to be vain, the root meaning of vanity being emptiness; it can generate nothing from within itself. It necessarily must direct its attention outward, to the world around it…an attention consciously experienced as want…to yield the outcome it desires. In the sense that it must take what it needs from something external to itself, it is parasitic. The fear that is already a fundamental aspect of the autonomous self is exacerbated by the uncertainty of the world upon which it must place its demand: “Will it come through?” “Can I find what I need?” “Do I have what it takes to get it?” Such considerations constantly plague the insufficient self and fuel the intensity of the search.
To say that the autonomous self is empty, while true enough, does not do justice to the perniciousness of the condition. Empty implies the possibility of being filled. Self cannot be filled because it is ultimately not anything that has a limit that can be reached. It cannot even properly be called it, for the word itself implies an eventual boundary. The emptiness of self is infinite, its anti-existence total, which is why it is experienced as insatiable by the one trying to fill it by the wants it demands. It is the emptiness of a lie and has no more reality. The autonomous self is, in fact, THE LIE (Genesis 3:4-5…’…ye shall not surly die…ye shall be as gods…’) that gives birth to all other lies; therein is its direct relationship to evil.
Of all the words associated or synonymous with Empty (vain; futile; worthless; vacant; valueless, etc.) all of which shed some light on it, perhaps the most powerful description is more colloquial in nature, as when we say empty to mean hungry. In such a sense, it then becomes more of what the actual experience of it suggests: that it is beyond simply a neutral, passive emptiness waiting to be filled. Experienced as hunger, it takes on an organic and active quality, parasitic and bestial in nature, that demands vitality from its host. Unless it is interrupted…the case of mistaken identity uncovered and cast off, and true identity recovered … it will lead to eventual and inevitable spiritual death. A recurring line from the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete speaks to it:
“… may I not become the food and possession of the enemy.” (Song 4: 23,25,26,27)
Dcn Dionysi-
We have forgotten who we are which means we don't know why we are here. So we cast about getting ourselves in a world of trouble. The latest disaster is an apt symbol of this--a toxic train wreck that no one takes responsibility for--and of where we end up when we don't know where we are going.
I am working on a response to Paul's Wild Christianity, and it is entirely consonant with what you are saying. Thank you for your comment. It is very helpful. And you are right, time is surely *not* our side. But it is never too late to begin! I think more people are becoming ready to hear.
I hope all is well with you in Wichita Falls. -Jack
Once everything has become lies, it leaves nowhere to go but an axis flip for a desperate humanity seeking where truth might be found. That’s where hope is. Darkest before a dawn and all that. If truth exists, we will have to dig. Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Dennis- I couldn't agree more. I can't fully justify my sense of this. I certainly have not been a true believer, to say the least, in the current state of things. Something in me shifted with the situation in Ohio. The lie is such a clear and present danger and in a way that is nearly impossible to finesse. Though if they can't finesse it, they will push it out of sight. How many more of these incidents will it take? How bad will it need to get? -Jack
I have lived just over an hour away from East Palestine for a year now. I do not know the place myself but a longtime friend’s parents live in the county. They were told to evacuate like everyone else and did for about 5 days before returning home. They are blue collar people like most around that area from what I have been told. And the fear of longterm harm is just not something concerning to them at their age. Wendell Berry would call them “Stickers”.
Truth be told I didn’t really know much about the disaster for almost a week. I only started reading up on it after my friend told me about her parents. I don’t have any social media so the news I was getting came from the old staples. But, a few days ago I started getting texts and phone calls from friends down South asking if it was true people were dying in the streets. And everyone one of them said the same thing “I saw on Facebook”. “I read on Facebook”
And it hit me. We’ve outsourced ourselves. We’ve diminished the presence of our bodies, of our towns, the capacity of our minds, and replaced their value with what’s National, International, and Virtual. It’s never been this way historically till this last half century. Never this dominant. And maybe that’s one of the causes of our anxiety and distrust. We are not evolved spiritually, mentally, or physically to contain the dramas of the world. It’s is skull crushing. It is suicidal.
We have an entire generation or more that have grown up or are growing up in a world where the Local v National hierarchy has been flipped.
I think what I’m trying to lean towards is we have to regain ground at home with real people. We have to humble the expectations of our existence. We are so small. And that’s a blessing. The meek shall inherit the earth.
JP- This is beautifully said. I couldn't agree more. -Jack
When I first saw the story about this train wreck I was in the middle of reading a book called 'The Independent Farmstead' by a couple who have made a beautiful homestead in Eastern Ohio. I wondered how near to their place this event may be. As I read about how they took a piece of rocky, steep, bramble filled land and made it over years and with their children into a place of abundant good health and food production, it felt all the more horrific that some unforeseeable industrial blunder could just poison such a precious piece of land. I have also read extensively about the PFAS and PFOS ("forever chemical") pollution on Maine farmland. That was the first time I had that gut-wrenching realization that in spite of all the rhetoric and research, no one has any idea what to do about this and there is no way it will be resolved or that farmers will ever be compensated. And like you say, it is only one of many, many, intractable problems that are emerging. Yes, for sure the authorities, regulators, and those who report to us are putting up a front of competence.
The work of this couple in Ohio is really inspiring. It is helping me to imagine how my family might make a stab at something similar. They are catholic and farm in partnership with a nearby monastery -- which made me think of you Jack. Their blog is called The One Cow Revolution, a spoof from Fukuoka. I loved this post describing how they made it work: https://onecowrevolution.wordpress.com/2023/02/09/5563/
Clara
Clara-
Reading the linked post it has made explicit for me something I have thought about for a while. That maybe in this small voice we hear to leave is calling us to the marginal. Like the Catholic family and their farmstead on hilly, less than perfect land. Doesn't Wendell Berry have a similar type of farm. Even though I am looking for a ready-made situation, perhaps we are being called to task to build it, or rather, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain". This will be a lot of hard work. But what an adventure! Besides we are told directly to not worry about it and seek first the Kingdom, trusting all else will be added. And I think that is the second part. We can't just seek a way out to save our skins. Like the homestead family really built a life of prayer, and one of goodness and thanksgiving, of radical trust in Providence.
I think I am mainly giving a pep talk to myself here, being a type 5 perpetual data gatherer. At what point does that become a way of deferring making the leap into the unknown? Hard to say, at least for certain. But we know that there are those who have made the leap, and not only survived it, but thrived in a whole new way. No guarantees, of course.
I wonder what monastery they are associated with? I know of a Byzantine Catholic Women's monastery in Northeastern Ohio. I wonder if that is the one?
-Jack
Hi again, In trying to find the location of their farm and the nearby monastery I started listening to an interview with these, my gurus of the moment. I know you will love it. About 3/4 of the way through they talk about the analogy between homesteading and eating a meal... both might keep you alive but if you undertake it merely to be kept alive you are missing the point. I love the discussion about community and independence also.
I am fully ready to make this leap, come what may. My husband and kids are in varying stages of readiness -- and it is going to happen. We are coming to the realization that we are going to need to get a place with some problems and fix it (again! we are on year 7 of the current fixer upper) in order to afford the whole change. We are among the wealthy to even be able to make this happen at all.
So, the Dougherty family are in or near Toronto Ohio, which is not near the monastery you mention as far as I can tell. The property they raised their kids on is 27 acres, and they currently use a 90 acre piece that was unused but owned by the Sisters down the road. I can't find the name of that monastery, though.
Clara
https://newpolity.com/podcasts-hub/no-collapse-in-the-garden-of-eden
This is good. You were right that I would like it. Makes me wish I knew something about farming.
I think the time is ripe for some bold moves. -Jack
I'm not sure if you picked up on it but there are 4 interviews in that series with the Dougherty family. I'm planning on watching the second tonight.
how do you find them? I saw 2 on the newpolity page.
More common sense in the first 35 minutes, than most folk these days could possibly handle. I only say 35 minutes as that's where I'm up to.
Thanks for posting Clara.
We decided it was ok to live by some lies. It was ok to allow public health lies. It was ok to live by BLM lies. It was ok to live by DEI lies. It was ok to live by gov't and corp censorship lies. We let the truth die. We were warned. https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies
Keith- We have been warned for a long time. I think of how much effort it has taken--and still takes--to undo the lies I have lived and to speak the truth. The truth will increasingly cost us. Particularly if we don't start speaking it while we still can. -Jack
I guess it's only a matter of time before people cop on that they reliving in a fantasy political world called democracy. Then the game is up. Run for the hills.
I have come to the conclusion that we no longer live in democracies. I see no political agenda which addresses the needs of people, no matter whether there be a toxic spill or people just dying homeless in the streets. The so-called government no longer rules. It does what it is told, by the real purveyors of power. The impossibly wealthy and powerful corporates who pick the leaders that will run for election. They are all of a type. Greedy, corrupt, psychopathic narcissists. They do their masters' bidding while lying through their teeth about everything, to us - the hapless vast unwashed. We live in a new feudal system where the lie continues about democracy.
Just watch how nothing is done. For example the president that encouraged insurrection where lives were lost. All there is, is a prolonged 'investigation'. Did he break the law or not?
Or the Prime minister who lied about Brexit being the best thing for the British people getting their sovereignty back. The prosperity that would be generated. All they did was cut taxes for the rich and gave carte blanche to rampant capitalism. People now can either eat or warm their homes, if they have one. They are advised to ride around in a bus all day, wearing a beanie. Seriously?
Just look at the wealth being sucked up by the corporates. The Energy Industry's profits up 50%. And more people than ever going to food banks. And they are working. But nothing is said. There is no outrage. The media stays mum. What will happen when the labouring poor is replaced by AI robots ? It is a nightmare on the horizon. Who will have work? But no discussion. Progress, all of it is good, if it increases the profits of the Western Oligarchs who use their large pockets to buy policy and run politicians . And countries.
Gayle- This is increasingly the sense of it. I don't think we live in democracies, either. Not fundamentally. There is enough of a show to keep us hoping for change. Even that is slipping away.
How long can things last like this? Maybe a while. None of it bodes well.
-Jack
I'm of the view that a "natural" disaster will probably have to happen first to tip us over the edge. The majority in the UK are too concerned about maintaining their current way of life to actually rebel against such a flagrantly corrupt system as we currently have.
We've lived under the illusion of democracy for some time. In the UK we're back to being able to have a red tied neoliberal or a blue tied neoliberal. Neither have any solutions other than to make the rich richer and impoverish everyone else.
The same here in America.
Everything that emerges is a manifestation of what underlies everything. So the metaphorical ecological train wreck must manifest itself at the literal limit case of the metaphor, or what’s a meta-for? (With apologies :) )
The devil is as we always have known in the detail. The devil has always been a liar and increased complexity leads to more hiding places, more lies. The move to computerisation, tools few of us know how to work, and far fewer know how they work is fairly obviously the cause. We hammer the humans making bad judgements but we have given reality over to the computers. The human element is essential to our Existence, it is of the Essence of Creation. But people are expensive. Creating complex systems which no one really understands is cheap and easy. People are costly and difficult because we’re less virtual.
To take a perhaps odd example but much simpler, my brother published a study showing that in his field, dairy cattle, more employees improved overall productivity, yield, milk quality. Why? His suggestion was that more eyes meant more care of the livestock.
Computers neither care nor can be taught to. Our concerns about AI are in a sense concerns for a horse out of the stable and way off in the next county.
Eric- Apparently the train companies were trying to reduce the crews to a single person. To save money of course. Of course, I have no idea how to solve any of this, or even if it could be solved. Maybe the desire to reduce the world to a set of problems to be solves IS the problem. It works. That is until the solutions we have come up with start to create even bigger problems. Onward to more solutions! Is it wrong to think that this will never work but only created bigger problems to point where we are all out of solutions? I am not smart enough to say definitively, but that's my intuition.
But if I really believe all of that, than I just have to let go, and simplify my life and trust that all shall be well, regardless of how many things start to blow up--literally or figuratively--around me.
It is very windy in the monastic canyon at the moment, but it is relatively warm. I think I will go outside for a stroll.
-Jack
Amen to all of that :-)
It's strange how a society which in many ways is based on Occam's razor becomes irreducibly complex . . .
Windows computers systems, and increasingly the fruit based alternative, just put patch upon patch upon patch. And we all know that its 'an improvement'. Better to seek 'the peace of wild things'
Enjoy the wind/breath/spirit!
-Eric
“It’s difficult to discern in an environment such as this where blunt incompetence ends and deliberately malevolent indifference begins.”
Well said. Beyond the shock of the decision, one is left bewildered at what people were thinking.
I have nothing to contribute but this part of a poem which I believe beautifully expresses our task:
"So, flee the burning city, bid
Creusas's soul to sleep
Thyself of every anchor rid
Which holds thee from the reef
Beyond which shines
The brimming wine
Spilt from a dripping Sun
Back to its vine
For which souls pine
With fevered eye and tongue
-----------
Thine anchors shed!
Thy sail be spread
Cleave not to land or wife
Nor turn thy head
To mourn the dead
And lose my Paradise."
Carl Hildebrand
Beautiful.
I've pretty much abandoned all news. Some say, "but how will you stay informed?!". For me at least, it became increasingly clear that whatever was gained simply didn't outweigh the downsides (anger, fear, anxiety, deeper division, temptation to judge/hate etc.) The news creates this artificial reality wherein we are made aware of every crisis, every tragedy, every act of human depravity, war, abuse and scandal on a 24 hour cycle. I just can't believe we were created with the capacity to take all of this in, to carry the weight of it all. It creates this illusion that we have to care about it all, have opinions on it all. No thank you.
F_S- This really is the only sane solution--abandon all news. The news has been weaponized against us because it works to do that. It gets our attention whether we want it to or not . Even if I didn't think it was a manipulation at the same time. Correlation isn't causation, of course, but the more "news" we absorbed the crazier we all get. It's not hard to see where it is all going as we pour more in more into our brains. Instead of figuring out what's going on, we do the opposite. -Jack