A Remnant of Peace and Reason

The world has been abnormal for so long that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes.”

Madeleine L’Engle

This is my grandfather working on a restoration of the U.S. Capitol. He was a builder in more ways than one. Regardless of political views, race, status, religion— whether you were a Senator, homeless person, an employee, or his grandchild— he treated you with kindness and respect. He’d stand up for the wronged and do right by those in need, even if it cost him his business.

But while he not only saw the humanness of those who needed help, he never stopped seeing the ones he disagreed with as humans too. The ones who were wrong. And that’s really hard.

He passed this on to my own dad. Growing up, I watched him address every checkout clerk or service worker by name, always be employing or bringing home someone who needed to get back on their feet, then turn around and show forgiveness and decency to someone who had greatly wronged him or had literally stolen from him. He’s never been a pushover, never wavered in his beliefs, yet he’s never stopped being willing to look someone in the face he utterly disagrees with and see them as a person.

Because once we lose the ability to see the humanness of one, we will eventually lose it for all. Whether quickly or slowly, individuals will become lost in a sea of “others” (defined merely by their affiliation with things we don’t agree with). We will have become what we were fighting against.

We can fight for rightness, yet forgive. We can be heartbroken, yet humble. We can defend, yet love. We can speak truth, yet listen and ask questions. Pursuing peace can be the strongest, most effective thing we do.

This isn’t any sort of veiled political support or rejection of anything. Thankfully, I don’t think I know anyone who saw the events of this week as anything other than egregious and disgraceful (clearly, not everyone also had a Sicilian Grandmother, and let me tell you, it shows😉).

This is simply a call and personal resolve to pursue peace and reason. Consistently, and at all costs, because of what it’ll cost us if we don’t. To build up, not tear down. Thankful today for those who have modeled that for me…

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The Regression of Progress

“Now we are no longer primitive. Now the whole world seems not holy… We as a people have moved from pantheism to pan-atheism… It is difficult to undo our own damage and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it. We are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.

Did the wind used to cry and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of the earth, and living things say very little to very few.

And yet it could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water, and wherever there is stillness there is a small, still voice, God’s speaking from the whirlwind, nature’s old song and dance, the show we drove from town…

What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn’t us?” (Annie Dillard, “Teaching a Stone to Talk).

I’ve been pondering lately, these reasonable and rational times we find ourselves in. On one hand we have learned much. So many great advancements in science and medicine and philosophy, a plethora of neat little theological boxes to choose from… I can’t help but feel at times though, that the more we think we know about this world, the smaller we make it.

I have no desire to harken back the Dark Ages, yet there are moments when all this knowledge feels anything but illuminating.

What are we losing in our race to prove and rationalize and exegete? What are we quenching in our striving to explain and define it all?

In the words of C.S. Lewis, “They err who say ‘the world is turning pagan again.’ Would that it were! The truth is that we are falling into a much worse state. ‘Post-Christian man’ is not the same as ‘pre-Christian man.’ He is as far removed as virgin is from widow.” And that was 1953.

The pagan world had the mystery and wonder and excitement that preceded the Incarnation. The modern, post-Christian world is bleak and dark in comparison. I rejoice the truth that can be attained, though I can’t help but lament the wonder that was lost.

I didn’t used to care about wonder, but the days have felt colder and shorter and louder lately.  Life can be hard and tiring, and while I often collapse into bed with a mind full of facts and reality, I can’t help but pray that I awake to a morning of hope that defies reason and miracles rather than answers.

I want to be proven wrong.

I want my lens of rationality to stop blinding me from the inexplicable works and beauty of God.

I’ve been handed truth undeserved, for which I am eternally grateful, but the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. The more I know God, the more I realize how incomprehensible he is. And the more I long for my deafened ears to hear him in the wind and my skeptical eyes to see the mountains praise him.

“He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth upon nothing. He wraps up the waters in His clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their own weight. He covers the face of the full moon, spreading His cloud over it. He has inscribed a horizon on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness. The foundations of heaven quake, astounded at His rebuke. By His power He stilled the sea, and by His understanding He shattered Rahab. By His breath the skies were cleared; His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. Indeed, these are but the fringes of His ways; how faint is the whisper we hear of Him!

Who then can understand the thunder of His power?” (Job 26:7-14).

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