Often Not More Meaningful

With liberation - or, better, “liberalization” - of politics, learning, sexuality, culture, a new enslavement has emerged in the form of pressure to consume. With increasing productive achievement has come integration into a gigantic apparatus. The multiplicity of commodities offered for sale has led to the maximizing of individual demands for consumer goods and the manipulation of these demands by the people who plan our requirements and by anonymous seducers in the advertising world. The greater rapidity of traffic plunges man into greater turmoil. With improved medicine we are faced with more psychic ailments and the prospect of longer but often not more meaningful life. Increasing prosperity brings in its train more depreciation and wastage. Man’s dominion over nature has meant the destruction of nature.

Hans Küng, “On Being A Christian”

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Dear Alex,

Words change lives if hearts stay soft.

For the past year, I have shifted from mostly fast-food take-out to homecooked dinners for most of my working weekdays. I credit my lifestyle changes to Eugene Peterson’s memoir, “The Pastor”, the first of his chapters I have read and the first book you gifted me last Spring. This year, I suspect my assumptions would be further crushed by the soul-searching pages of Hans Küng.

On most nights I do not want to read Küng. His every printed line chokes you and worsens your sinus congestion. I am regurgitating a short passage from his introduction above. Demands, seducers, greater turmoil, depreciation - these are apocalyptic curses of a super villain!

In contrast, our modern mentors and superheroes urge us to think of me-too, me-can self-realizing statements to swap dream into destination. The realm of “open conflict, hidden God” - the contradictions and the Cross - is too much of a “final irritant" for our high-resolution screens and high-mindedness. Whatever Küng wrote in 1974 seems more irritating and hyperbolic to eyes gazing from lounges at palm trees and bikinis. We are so overworked and overweight, under-appreciated and malnourished relationally, that it sounds almost entertaining to demand of us any rapidity in self and collective re-examinations. I have too much stuff and not much time.

But a baking incident last night reinforced my mindlessness beyond measure.

You see, I felt quite smart yesterday with a productive weekend schedule. I prioritized as usual: house chores and meal preps first; then the treadmill before supper and evening office work to “procrastinate early” before next week’s presentations. No stark ambiguity or contradiction.

My agenda turned out to be more efficient than expected: I even managed to bake chocolate chip buns in the evening, something I had not pre-planned. I watched the bread flour inflate over time as the result of the instant high-performing yeast. Then I kneaded my dough in confidence to ensure precise tackiness and baked at the precise settings, alternating 2 trays twice on tiered racks for even heat distribution. And the outcomes would be tailored to my vision and aim. I could not have been more impressed with science and technology, progress and problems pre-anticipated and pre-resolved.

When my golden goods were pulled out of the oven, I floated on a wave of deep pride billowing past my roof under the late night skies. I drifted in cloud, "drinking in" this poetic moment as exquisitely penned by Cohen in "Alexandra Leaving”. I hovered inches above the buns to examine the fluffiness and inhaled the aroma of prosperity.

But something looked odd - a flash of metal peeked through the edge of a bun. How daring of this disruptive speck! I froze and stared. The metallic slit glared back at me. I snatched a silicone knife to extract this discreet intruder embedded in crust.

My ring it was! Its flash of discovery - or recovery - attested to its faithfulness through the baking process in form and photo above. It must have slipped off my finger while I was kneading the flour.

And what if...? Who knows but of this I am certain: to the train wreck fast and furiously I will head if I do not heed the generous words of Küng about the wits and wisdom of man in turmoil without “open conflict, hidden God”.

Yours, Kate

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Dear Kate,

How often when we pray for our troubles to go away it was for troubles we've asked for ourselves?

This is not to trivialize suffering: actually quite the contrary.

When we suffer for good reason, for deep meaning, yes, we do ask Why the bitter cup and How and When it shall be removed.  But the meaning keeps us attentive to its Giver and wondering if the Reason means such a season in our life for our good, for the world's good, for His name's good, nothing we can see now but in faith we're growing to trust.  Strange enough though the cup goes down bitter what comes out of us is not.

It's different when we suffer for our own death-seeking way.  We pray but feel ashamed to.  We ask for a removal of trouble, not a restoration of our soul; a change of circumstance, not a cultivation of character.  Deep down we feel silly why anyone should care about our little drama, which is the very definition of self-pity.  We wake up thinking everyone owes us something, though feeling to no one we are worth anything.

"You call out to God for help and he helps—he’s a good Father that way. But don’t forget, he’s also a responsible Father, and won’t let you get by with sloppy living."

Yours, Alex