The World Is Flat

Dear Kate,

The world is flat.

Teachers read from the text books told me otherwise but I don't believe them: I can't, because I've been told the other way, daily, by people around me, news surrounding me, walls closing in about me, adamantly flattening my horizon and, they are saying, for my good too.

I can accept what the textbooks say about gravity and zenith position etc, why people on the "bottom" of the Earth do not walk upside-down, but, as far as I can see (which is not very far), things and people and circumstances just kinda drop off at where my imagination ends.  Good that people have found themselves a good explanation to not drop dead.  I don't even live in the southern hemisphere.

In a flat world things stay flat.  You're expected to keep things that way.  If you laugh you'll need to give an account of your glee, see to it that it fits in the mirth of the nation.  If you cry...well, please try not to do that at all, not where people need to get involved in your embarrassment.  Go to the next superhero movie or ball game and speak about anything within the theatre, the arena of expected and acceptable emotions.  Otherwise, be the southern hemispherian to a world that is always looking up and seeing elsewhere.

In the preface to the first edition of his "iconic" introduction to the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann beseeches: "I hope that this effort on my part will enhance the world-making, imaginative work of church interpretation, precisely because the flat, thin world of our dominant culture is by itself not an adequate venue for the abundant life given by the God of the gospel."

In a flat world we don't see much possibility, no new thing, every spring springs the same way, pollens in the air and generally still too cold for anything legit. Our window of opportunity is our window of tolerance, which, in the current real estate market of our heart, is becoming ever smaller.  Our health, physical and mental and more, is in a perfect storm of growing demand for and ever-lowering supply of generosity, sincerity, devotion, or even mere presence to each other.

"The flat, thin world of our dominant culture is by itself not an adequate venue for the abundant life given by the God of the gospel."  I wonder if you know what's really at stake if we are not in the habit of seeking God's face together, to hear His words and wrestle with them, to re-create the world as He re-creates in us a new heart, carrying on the normative tradition of the Church, playfully imagining, "retraditioning" an ever-generative vision for our own time and space?

In a round world you can admit, must accept, there are things not within your reach or even comprehension.  There is a centering force that holds everything together.  In a flat world, what you see is what you get, and, naturally, you would grab whatever you can see to stay grounded, because, rumor has it, the world is not flat after all.

Yours, Alex