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Welcome Tim. (List view). Click here to filter results immediately. Show me my recent searches. Show me the WorldPerks. Switch off the personal devices. 1-L, 1-R. It’s already time for the crosschecking of doors.
Twelve minutes spent quietly bonding with my fellow patrons over a mild sense of anticipatory restlessness. Cellular conversations occur, some affectionate, some curt. When the logjam starts moving, when it is my turn to shuffle out into the aisle, I will be courteous yet assertive. We will see if I am able to quickly spot and gracefully free my carry-on from the overhead bin.
A brief rush of cold air and a narrow glimpse of the night, it’s a blast of dry warmth that greets me. Two otherwise unaffected faces with matching pairs of collared white shirts, short sleeve burgundy v-necks and navy blue dickies are rendered enigmatic, draped in long shadows by overhead lighting installed just a foot or two above. These two are standing out of the way, hands idly wrapped around the vertical, perpetually oily stainless bar of respective horizontally collapsed wheelchairs. The dress code has apparently placed one’s choice of shoes at liberty (within the inevitable confines of appropriateness): Loafers here; there, two permanently creased mesh, leather and dingy, flamboyantly sculpted foam chariots resting flatly, patiently on the unforgiving dense spring of worn blue-gray industrial carpet.
No windows in this dim tunnel, just shadowy accordion walls on the side, those lights overhead, and an unhurried jean and fleece-clad (cat enthusiast?) steady walker immediately in front. Stepping into a bright cavernous echo chamber of white noise and indoor public place white smell, stepping between streams of light evening foot traffic, I have just now received my final sincere service smile of the day, supplemented perhaps with the uplift of a shift about to end.
At the rubber-bounded conclusion of carpeting, I am re-introduced to the solid squeak of linoleum laid over cement. Left or right? There is no need to consult internationally legible signage when the business casual advance team has already begun to confidently stride towards the promise of baggage. I catch a pungent buttery whiff of Auntie Anne’s.
No discount to be found when paying the ultimate price
VALLEY STREAM, NY—Until now, late November's violence and upheaval had been confined to south and southeast Asia. This morning the terror touches down on American soil, as horrific eyewitness accounts begin to trickle in from the idyllically-named Long Island suburb:
"They took the doors off the hinges..."
"He was trampled and killed in front of me."
"They're savages..."
"They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."
"There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."
"They took the doors off the hinges..."
"He was trampled and killed in front of me."
"They're savages..."
"They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."
"There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."
“ ”
Werner Herzog says:
"People thought films could cause revolutions or whatever. And it does not. But films might change our perspective of things and ultimately in the long term it may be something valuable. But there is a lot of absurdity involved as well. As you see, it makes me into a clown. And that happens to everyone. Just look at Orson Welles or look at even people like Truffat: They have become clowns... It's because what we do as filmmakers is immaterial. It's only a projection of light. And doing that all your life makes you just a clown. And it's an almost inevitable process... It's illusionist's work and it's just embarrassing to be a filmmaker. To sit here like this... I mean, thank heaven's I don't sit here for my own films. I am sitting here for a film that was made by a friend of mine."
"People thought films could cause revolutions or whatever. And it does not. But films might change our perspective of things and ultimately in the long term it may be something valuable. But there is a lot of absurdity involved as well. As you see, it makes me into a clown. And that happens to everyone. Just look at Orson Welles or look at even people like Truffat: They have become clowns... It's because what we do as filmmakers is immaterial. It's only a projection of light. And doing that all your life makes you just a clown. And it's an almost inevitable process... It's illusionist's work and it's just embarrassing to be a filmmaker. To sit here like this... I mean, thank heaven's I don't sit here for my own films. I am sitting here for a film that was made by a friend of mine."
A smoking gun or a mushroom cloud
Bill Moyers has provided some thoughtful and sobering reflections on the six year anniversary of our nation's ramp up to the invasion of Iraq.
Historical Philadelphia
Can't seem to get enough of this online database of historical Philadelphia photos, which is searchable by address, date and neighborhood.
History being what it has been, reality being what it is
This morning I woke up to a pointed exchange between Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and NPR correspondent Steve Inskeep. I would recommend reading the whole thing.
Ahmadinejad is a sharp interviewee and he successfully reframes Steve Inskeep's gently-attempted gotcha questions into a very important, much larger conversation about national sovereignty, the history of U.S. interests in Iran and the Middle East, and who gets to be the Grand Inquisitor in the Court of Global Affairs.
All the layers of "the Iran Problem" remind me that editing is one of the most crucial, dangerous and unavoidable steps in the process of understanding truth about any person, place or thing. At least until we human beings are able to achieve omnipresence.
Update: Required reading on the infamous comment regarding the wiping of Israel
Ahmadinejad is a sharp interviewee and he successfully reframes Steve Inskeep's gently-attempted gotcha questions into a very important, much larger conversation about national sovereignty, the history of U.S. interests in Iran and the Middle East, and who gets to be the Grand Inquisitor in the Court of Global Affairs.
All the layers of "the Iran Problem" remind me that editing is one of the most crucial, dangerous and unavoidable steps in the process of understanding truth about any person, place or thing. At least until we human beings are able to achieve omnipresence.
Update: Required reading on the infamous comment regarding the wiping of Israel
Trip-Tych-Bo
I came across a book written by a new age sage calling himself Bo Lozoff. The pages seemed saturated with the dissolute ramblings of a rather cheap mysticism. Fortunately, Lozoff had apparently retained a great deal of his wit and sense of absurdity, as evidenced by the many pen and ink illustrations peppering the pages of his book. Here are three of my favorites, which I have now brought to you with the help of a scanner.
Conspiracy to incite free assembly
Apologies for another rant, but the current rash of overzealous law enforcement is really getting my goat.
Apparently it is neither out of the ordinary nor newsworthy for a cocktail of Federal and local law enforcement agents to raid some innocuous little house of political/cultural dissidents without having any sort of legal justification.
Well, this month it's more of the same Fourth Amendment mockery in Minneapolis (Again, credit to Glen Greenwald for his ongoing, blow-by-blow analysis): Several houses in the region of the Minnesota Republican National Convention meeting were raided by police and FBI. Computers, planners, notebooks, propaganda, etc. were seized with, again, only building code violations produced and various tantalizing instruments of potential crime. But wait, there's a surprise plot twist in this case: Unlike in Philadelphia, the police and FBI had actually gone to the trouble of acquiring a warrant this time around. So while nothing illegal had taken place and no actual evidence of wrongdoing has yet come to light the police had invoked a previously unused Minnesota statute to search these houses and take stuff in order to pre-empt a "conspiracy to incite a riot."
So were these angry youngsters planning a state coup? A terrorist bombing of the convention center? A riot? Perhaps they were. After all, these days any group of people assembling in public without first acquiring the permission of the state authorities (or outside of the designated "free-speech zone") is technically "rioting".
But if past experiences are any indication, we can deduce the probable outcome of these groups' alleged conspiracies: A lot of people making their voice heard, a few of them willing to break the law. Over the passing of hours, a medium size march dwindling down to a minority of angry kids with bandanas on their faces, who decide not to disperse in the face of repeated threats of arrest for disturbing the evening commute (that most sacred of events) and perhaps even going so far as to break a window of a nearby department store. Eventually the kids are backed into a corner, surrounded by 5-10 times as many riot-gear-clad police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas and efficiently, anti-climatically loaded onto a series of paddy wagons.
The icing on the cake here is that no one really cares at all. Why? Because a certain pseudo-militant-cynical-smelly-activist-Debbie-Downer archetype called to mind by any act of public protest has long since been alienated from the empathy of "average Americans". Conservatives feel deeply resentful of this ungrateful prick (holding up a sign and shouting about politics being several notches above 'not wearing a flag pin' on the Anti-American-O-Meter) and registered Democrats keep an embarrassed distance.
However, while we're all free to pass judgment on the questionable tactics or dubious morals of certain protesters, it's crucially important to provide the opportunity to exercise free speech and free assembly to everyone and then only those who actually break the law should have to expect arrest. I guess I am in favor of that old, out-dated system where you couldn't get arrested until you actually did something wrong.
Apparently it is neither out of the ordinary nor newsworthy for a cocktail of Federal and local law enforcement agents to raid some innocuous little house of political/cultural dissidents without having any sort of legal justification.
Well, this month it's more of the same Fourth Amendment mockery in Minneapolis (Again, credit to Glen Greenwald for his ongoing, blow-by-blow analysis): Several houses in the region of the Minnesota Republican National Convention meeting were raided by police and FBI. Computers, planners, notebooks, propaganda, etc. were seized with, again, only building code violations produced and various tantalizing instruments of potential crime. But wait, there's a surprise plot twist in this case: Unlike in Philadelphia, the police and FBI had actually gone to the trouble of acquiring a warrant this time around. So while nothing illegal had taken place and no actual evidence of wrongdoing has yet come to light the police had invoked a previously unused Minnesota statute to search these houses and take stuff in order to pre-empt a "conspiracy to incite a riot."
So were these angry youngsters planning a state coup? A terrorist bombing of the convention center? A riot? Perhaps they were. After all, these days any group of people assembling in public without first acquiring the permission of the state authorities (or outside of the designated "free-speech zone") is technically "rioting".
But if past experiences are any indication, we can deduce the probable outcome of these groups' alleged conspiracies: A lot of people making their voice heard, a few of them willing to break the law. Over the passing of hours, a medium size march dwindling down to a minority of angry kids with bandanas on their faces, who decide not to disperse in the face of repeated threats of arrest for disturbing the evening commute (that most sacred of events) and perhaps even going so far as to break a window of a nearby department store. Eventually the kids are backed into a corner, surrounded by 5-10 times as many riot-gear-clad police armed with rubber bullets and tear gas and efficiently, anti-climatically loaded onto a series of paddy wagons.
The icing on the cake here is that no one really cares at all. Why? Because a certain pseudo-militant-cynical-smelly-activist-Debbie-Downer archetype called to mind by any act of public protest has long since been alienated from the empathy of "average Americans". Conservatives feel deeply resentful of this ungrateful prick (holding up a sign and shouting about politics being several notches above 'not wearing a flag pin' on the Anti-American-O-Meter) and registered Democrats keep an embarrassed distance.
However, while we're all free to pass judgment on the questionable tactics or dubious morals of certain protesters, it's crucially important to provide the opportunity to exercise free speech and free assembly to everyone and then only those who actually break the law should have to expect arrest. I guess I am in favor of that old, out-dated system where you couldn't get arrested until you actually did something wrong.
The One
This just in: Biblical scholars in Colorado Springs argue that presidential candidate John McCain exhibits telltale characteristics of the Antichrist. Read more here.
This is next
--
Oh, you Axis!
You dark prince!
Wielding your scimitar, bloodthirsty.
Castle of Pure Evil:
Shimmering, oriental palace;
Standing in sharp, foreboding profile on the horizon of the American public discourse.
--
This article presents a fairly well-documented genealogy of a key brick in the ideological bridge that would link Saddam Hussein with "Al Qaeda" in 2001.
Both capitalism and democracy are premised upon the "well-informed consumer," who will make the best self-interested decision based on that knowledge. But in our information-based economy, hidden-fee cell phone pricing plans and insidiously suggestive but unfounded front page news stories both seriously threaten the integrity of each system, respectively.
What satisfies me about this article is the same thing that satisfies me about reading Noam Chomsky and Paul Farmer re-trace American foreign policy Haiti: It is the incomparable pleasure of The Instant Replay. The semi-processed "data" that shapes public opinion is incredibly fluid--it zips by at a hundred miles per hour in a constant fluctuating feed of small information parcels. The Feed is not physical but spiritual, never complete but always coming into being (constantly reshaped based on its reception and consequences). Who among us mortals can possibly keep track of what was said, who said it, what happened as a result, much less whether or not it was true?
Thus, as an information consumer, I am always surprised by and grateful to anyone who has the resources and tenacity to exhume, reassemble and re-present an "information play" in slow motion, that it might be processed in a way that can yield understanding.
Independence day
I.
This dramatic, distinctly concise epitaph could be the launch pad for a thousand reveries, depending on the nature of your mental trade winds. On this day (our nation-state's glorious birthday), I would like to leave you, dear reader, with just a few reflections. The first three fall into the category of "The Impossibly Ironic (But Inevitable?) Oxymorons of Institutional Aging":
1. That a state conceived by anti-imperial revolutionary fervor could in such a short period of time grow into the largest and most complete global empire the world has ever known, thus becoming the de facto arch nemesis of any contemporary sons of any revolution opposed to the current, global capitalist order (in which 86% of the world's goods are consumed by 20% of the world's population).
2. That a state birthed by an intensely politically engaged populace (e.g. ready to shoot, ready to die, ready to identify themselves primarily with the life or death of their local community) could in 200 years so completely become transformed into a disaffected, disengaged crowd of virtual spectators (e.g. ready to watch the TV, ready to make fun of the President, simultaneously ready to benefit from the perpetuation of the current order).
3. That a state birthed from not only from a radical political revolution but from a very violent political revolution could evolve into a state of people generally in denial about the violence of the world, distant from even the possibility of either killing or dying for their beliefs, taught to instinctively disregard any person or social movement that uses violence to achieve its ends (other than America, of course) as shocking and inherently illegitimate. (To me, this doctrine seems to be an echo of nonviolent strategy, twisted out of shape, co-opted and bent back onto itself to reinforce a detached passivity.)
4. The truly shocking, pervasive association of any disturbance (creative or not, violent or not, just or not, in line with the constitution or not) with the recently invented monolithic meme known as "Terror" (e.g. “Domestic terrorism”--esp. “Eco-Terror”, Human rights activists as terrorists, Peaceable assembly as terrorism; also, see China tear a page out of the American propaganda rule book, referring to the Dalai Lama as a terrorist).
II.
The Organizational Kid is good at finding practical, productive ways to integrate all his energies into the existing order. But he is not very good at getting any larger perspective on the good-ness or evil-ness of the existing order.
Granted, the American kid of my generation is working with some pretty mixed messages. Namely:
“Rebel! Conformists are boring and un-sexy.”
“Conform! Get real. Cynicism and resistance are downers (and futile, to boot).”
The most obvious way to synthesize this contradiction—especially when the second claim holds more ultimate, authoritative weight in society—is to conform with the substance of one's life while preserving one or two symbolic holdouts of cultural rebellion, perhaps in the realm of accessorization or media consumption.
These days I am also learning about another, equally comforting way to resolve such cognitive dissonance: To oscillate back and forth, to weigh endlessly, to “not take a stance." The social pressure to withhold judgment, masquerading as a value for intellectual humility, is in fact a very effective way for cultural conformity to insinuate itself. For example, to harbor a vague sense of disapproval about the Iraq war (“What a messy conflict. I wouldn’t want to hold one of those big guns. Women and children are dying. Plus, I don’t like dusty places.” Or “What are we even over there for?”—the confused question, not the rhetorical one) without real or actual commitment to that disapproval, while enjoying the benefits of imperial dominance every day, is one such remarkable feat of incoherent resolution.
Beyond this, there is of course the social pressure to not act on a defined position even once it has been reached (“Don’t be one of those extremists.”). A moderately acceptable path might perhaps be to teach about your radical position from within the academy. Or blog about it.
But to quote Howard Zinn: You can’t stay neutral on a moving train.
I wish that I could be extricated quicker, more completely, with more objectivity, from the numbing, paralyzing body cast of illusory neutrality.
Obama, Race, The Birthplace of Freedom
I'm about a week and a half behind the election game here, listening to Barack Obama's "race speech" just now on youtube. As a hardline reactionist, I would generally be disposed to dislike any media item so hyped. (More than one ecstatic commentator immediately dubbed it "one of the best speeches in American history"). However, it would not be fair to judge the man exclusively by the imbecility of his groupies--I found the speech itself to be remarkably good, particularly in the calm, even-handedness that marked both content and delivery. Here is the first speech by anyone remotely near the White House in recent memory who didn't appear to be talking down to his audience, who appears to actually be attempting to elevate rather than either denigrate or do damage control on "the national conversation." All things considered, "A More Perfect Union" was an extremely decent speech. All of which is to say that for once a politician is talking in a way that resembles the baseline standard of what a politician should be expected to talk like.
Obama's creation was a "classy" one; effectively and effortlessly transforming his campaign's latest PR hurdle into a balance beam on which might bounce and twirl Great American Themes such as Love, Freedom, Opportunity, and Life. It was ever so graceful at every turn, making concessions to everyone and everything, getting us to put our guards down. I confess, against my better judgment I felt assured and reassured as I listened--it was almost as if the tall, thin, quiet, obscurely effeminate dad that I never had was stroking my hair as I drifted back into a pleasant slumber, having awoken to a terrible nightmare on a stormy night.
Grace and charisma, of course, have their limits of usefulness. Sweet sentiments and boundary-blurring reassurances which mesmerize us on stage may quickly sour when exposed to the harder, clearer light found just outside the convention center: Sure, talk to us about the integrity of the American Dream, with an allusion or two to the need for CHANGE. That "More Perfect Union" sounds pretty nice. And yes, of course we believe in the "Decency And Generosity Of The American People." And what would we do without "Hope In The Next Generation"? Sure, Mr. Obama, lead us onward in that "March For A More Just, More Equal, More Free, More Caring, More Prosperous America."
But let's not get too carried away. We shouldn't make the mistake of completely uprooting this speech from all context, forgetting its pretext and stimulus: the "incendiary" and "divisive" views of one Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama's former pastor), views that according to Barack "have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but [also to] denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike."
I took the liberty of reading up on the Reverend's views. Here's a nice summation, nabbed from (his Wikipedia entry):
"Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change... And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains, the government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton field, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness... The government gives them drugs built bigger prisons, passes a three strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America. No, no, no, not God bless America, God damn America, that's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America, as long as she pretends to act like she is God, and she is supreme."
And here:
If only Reverend Wright was running for office...
I understand the political pressures that require Obama to be a mediator and an ameliorator, to please everyone and thus distance himself from any voices anchored in objectivity or prophetic witness. To many, Barack Obama may be the best available presidential issue-resolution package. But sophistication and even-handedness don't lend themselves to "change" and Wright is the only one coming out of this whole media spectacle with anything resembling audacity.
As long as "political realities" necessitate that any vestiges of an ideal must be softened up and bent into the time-tested mold of vain optimism in order to survive in our nation's capitol, it will be impossible for me to really get excited about Obama's candidacy. Vapid whispers of progress, sweet political nothings, the sickly thin veneer of state religion--is it cynicism to hope for something more?
Obama's creation was a "classy" one; effectively and effortlessly transforming his campaign's latest PR hurdle into a balance beam on which might bounce and twirl Great American Themes such as Love, Freedom, Opportunity, and Life. It was ever so graceful at every turn, making concessions to everyone and everything, getting us to put our guards down. I confess, against my better judgment I felt assured and reassured as I listened--it was almost as if the tall, thin, quiet, obscurely effeminate dad that I never had was stroking my hair as I drifted back into a pleasant slumber, having awoken to a terrible nightmare on a stormy night.
Grace and charisma, of course, have their limits of usefulness. Sweet sentiments and boundary-blurring reassurances which mesmerize us on stage may quickly sour when exposed to the harder, clearer light found just outside the convention center: Sure, talk to us about the integrity of the American Dream, with an allusion or two to the need for CHANGE. That "More Perfect Union" sounds pretty nice. And yes, of course we believe in the "Decency And Generosity Of The American People." And what would we do without "Hope In The Next Generation"? Sure, Mr. Obama, lead us onward in that "March For A More Just, More Equal, More Free, More Caring, More Prosperous America."
But let's not get too carried away. We shouldn't make the mistake of completely uprooting this speech from all context, forgetting its pretext and stimulus: the "incendiary" and "divisive" views of one Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama's former pastor), views that according to Barack "have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but [also to] denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike."
I took the liberty of reading up on the Reverend's views. Here's a nice summation, nabbed from (his Wikipedia entry):
"Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change... And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains, the government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton field, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness... The government gives them drugs built bigger prisons, passes a three strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America. No, no, no, not God bless America, God damn America, that's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America, for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America, as long as she pretends to act like she is God, and she is supreme."
And here:
If only Reverend Wright was running for office...
I understand the political pressures that require Obama to be a mediator and an ameliorator, to please everyone and thus distance himself from any voices anchored in objectivity or prophetic witness. To many, Barack Obama may be the best available presidential issue-resolution package. But sophistication and even-handedness don't lend themselves to "change" and Wright is the only one coming out of this whole media spectacle with anything resembling audacity.
As long as "political realities" necessitate that any vestiges of an ideal must be softened up and bent into the time-tested mold of vain optimism in order to survive in our nation's capitol, it will be impossible for me to really get excited about Obama's candidacy. Vapid whispers of progress, sweet political nothings, the sickly thin veneer of state religion--is it cynicism to hope for something more?
Letter from Thomas Merton to James Forest
I like this blog the most when I think of it as a little clearing house for noteworthy items gleaned from the internet and from the physical world--I feel especially useful when I type up something not readily available on the internet, as in the case of the following letter. It is a letter from Thomas Merton to James Forest, the latter of whom is a Catholic activist and founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship:
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.
...[T]he big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.
The great thing after all is to live, not to pour our your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ's truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments...
The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand...
Enough of this...it is at least a gesture...I will keep you in my prayers.
All the best in Christ,
Tom
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.
...[T]he big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.
The great thing after all is to live, not to pour our your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ's truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments...
The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand...
Enough of this...it is at least a gesture...I will keep you in my prayers.
All the best in Christ,
Tom
Pebbles flung
I recommend to you this article, entitled "Corporate Priests and Moron Jokes". It was written by a man named Robert Shetterly. In addition to being a writer, Shetterly is a painter. His ongoing portrait series called "Americans Who Tell the Truth" is also worth looking at.
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