Clouds of dew and shade nurturing the tender plant before
the full heat of the sun…
Mountains, unbending standard bearers, dividing fertile plains of loam,
sand, and clay…
Seas, whose age old tidal boundaries, swarming coral
reefs, green feeding billows, and black silent depths beckon and guard stories of
gain and loss…
The natural world is full of spiritual dialectical hues. The
question is what spirituality lens is used? A pantheist’s pantheon? A deist’s
dream? A humanist’s mirror? A theist’s day in court?
I am reading some
books these days. Techgnosis, by Erik Davis. Can technology unleash the age
old energies of spirit and searching? Is this for progressive San Francisco yin/yang
doctors only? Do Christian conservatives also have an age old connection to technologically
driven spirituality in this same old—new age? Whose words or tweets or
newsfeeds crackle through the techniverse with Ultimate Power? Is the Book in
LED luminescence as relevant as it is on parchment?
I am reading the
news these days. Is 2014 the apex of progressive promise? The poster
children of dialectical crush, the disciples of Saul Alinsky, Antonio Gramsci,
Karl Marx, grasping the levers of power in government, media, education,
business, food production, natural resources, find themselves unable to shake
the people in the street of the fear of God. Ebola, ISIS, Benghazi, food
stamps, immigration amnesties for foreign street gangs… is this the brave new
world order?
I am working in
homes these days. The swelling tide of governmental regulation reaches to
the neck, the chin, the nose, the eyes. In the daylight, community organizers proclaim
the waters of government micro management to be warm and nutrient rich,
spawning all kinds of socialist goodness.
In the dark, the burdens of debt, the volatility of markets
whose time worn steering wheels are laden with grease and wildly spinning, and
the loneliness of a technocracy that divorces the visions of youth from the
wisdom of their parents—these whisper fear and loathing.
Where is hope?
For millions caught in the last world war, a dim memory
to youth today, hope did not lie in football and turkey, or in a glittering
tree, spiced eggnog and lavishly wrapped treasures.
Hope did not lie in cycling viewsheds, in the return of
wolves and cougars and wood rats, in vast tracts of wilderness relieved by
reduced carbon emissions and erasure of humankind.
Hope did not lie in proposed Whatcom County tidal salmon
spawning marshes,
- $260 millionprice tag to remove levees, raise bridges
- one of 11 Puget Sound shoreline projects
- a late, quietly advertised hearing by Washington Fish and Wildlife
- managed by the Army Corp of Engineers
- funded through unknown LIO’s (and NGO’s ??),
- caring little for raised upriver water tables through unstudied flood drainage,
- a crescent of flooded farmland showcased around the Lummi casino.
Hope did not lie in aborting children to secure a fading quality
of life lived in cloned, high urban density neighborhoods filled with faux,
ever morphing relationships that bruise community and innocence.
Hope for those millions lay down a bloody road, a 20th
century cross, finding the blue skies of freedom through sacrificial death and
tear laden life. Orphans and widows found meaning and renewal. Our parents and
grandparents, they struggled to give us a future. Their prosperity after war,
however, fueled a generation of bitter rebels. The most hardened and focused of
those offspring now rule, thumbing their nose at both wisdom and folly. Tyranny
is no longer a foreign reality.
This is the countdown week to the 2014 American election.
Life trajectories pass quickly. Loyalties, graven in the heart in childhood,
fuel lifelong conflicts over worldviews. In the end, the old people sit,
panting on rocking chairs, still arguing over ideas.
Where is wisdom in this? Why vote? Why struggle to define
and build community?
If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. If you are a
fool, you alone will suffer. Prosperity is relative. Happiness is both a crust
of bread in famine, and chicken cordon bleu in prosperity.
Discontent also knows no class boundaries. Enough is
never enough. Percieved success and failure, a cup half empty or half full, can
co-exist in the same house.
So, why vote? Why care? True, unshakeable, quiet
contentment comes in deliberately choosing to share, to bear a communal cross, to
feed one’s neighbor before the mocking foe. Contentment lies in the hope of
life after death, in the promise of the just Creator that the dialectic will then
be over. And, hope lies in his quiet hand of provision during days of turmoil.
Until then, there will be many hues.
Stars of mercy guiding the mariner on the night seas…
Clouds of dew and shade nurturing the tender plant before
the full heat of the sun…
Mountains, unbending standard bearers, dividing fertile plains of loam,
sand, and clay…
Seas, whose age old tidal boundaries, swarming coral
reefs, green feeding billows, and black silent depths beckon and guard stories
of gain and loss…
Just go vote!
JK
