The Greatest Clues

“Maybe it's all utterly meaningless. Maybe it's all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we're in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us. Any fiction that helps us pay attention to that is religious fiction. The unexpected sound of your name on somebody's lips. The good dream. The strange coincidence. The moment that brings tears to your eyes. The person who brings life to your life. Even the smallest events hold the greatest clues.” ― Frederick Buechner 

“I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.” ― Boris Pasternak, "Doctor Zhivago" 

************************

Dear Kate,

I'm afraid so far I have not heard anything from the church that speaks about--and, more importantly, from--the most obvious, on which great theology is built and the most beautiful stories told and courageous lives lived, which in Buechner's prophetic words is a call for us, human beings, to "pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we're in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us."

I am afraid.  I fear.

I singled out the church, but really I haven't heard anything truly meaningful from anyone, which is expected, which is also why I singled out the church.  I believe, I hope, the church is still cultivating and passing on a language God has gifted, entrusted us with, one--the only one I believe--that can resist the life-zapping reductionistic language of this secularized age with its graphs and road maps and bandages that, as "an explanation of the world...has just the quality of the madman's argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out."

Stay home.  Practice "social distancing."  Let those who know how to fix it fix it quick. The most useful advice that speaks about the monster with a capital C in its name and a number on its head, but nothing else.  The problem was singled out, context ignored, and thus the "solution" piecemeal.

Maybe this is what we need now, to stay focused on the problem on hand (or, to use the same materialist language, the problem that is our hands).  But will we ever take a step back and consider the bigger picture around us and in us?  And when, and how, and for what, in our life individual and collective?  The financial crisis only a handful of years ago didn't do anything to change us; I am afraid neither would this monster that, in hindsight we will say, is not that scary after all.

If I singled out the church I did it not to isolate her as a problem, not even as a problematic solution, but to call her out on failing to live into what God calls her to be: "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that [she] may proclaim the praises of Him who called [her] out of darkness into His marvelous light."

I am deeply suspicious of anyone who almost always has a cheerful disposition, someone who in times of trouble would and could only at the most offer platitude and shibboleth, to "treat the wound of [God's] people carelessly," and to hide his/her own fear and tears too.  I find it hard to trust anyone who can't cry, a distrust I need to overcome constantly.  I am afraid if Jesus doesn't cry I wouldn't trust in him either.  (In fact I think my lifelong vocation as a contrarian is to fight against a tearless tyranny, but that is another topic.)

Yet it serves us right and wise to also suspect cynics who have only doom and gloom to offer and spread, like they are thriving on crisis and virus, like God couldn't have spoken if He has not spoken thunderously through their little self-pity, with their unauthorized licence to preach and poison.  Life as a troll, hacker of the soul, beware of their holding your hope hostage.

"The unexpected sound of your name on somebody's lips. The good dream. The strange coincidence. The moment that brings tears to your eyes. The person who brings life to your life. Even the smallest events hold the greatest clues."  Do we need, how do we make use of such sentimentality now?  We want cure.  We need ventilators and vaccines and an end to this vengeance from a faceless and careless god.  We want to move on, be done with it, forget about lessons we didn't and will never learn anyway.

What is our virtue?  If it is lifeless and of little value, then life hasn't revealed its beauty to us.  No, not yet.

Yours, Alex