Things Fall apart

 

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

‘Things Fall Apart’

I feel that I’ve traveled back in time to eight years ago when Donald Trump was first elected president. The president, playing the role of the agent of chaos, has created the same tension filled atmosphere as before. Each day we awake to some new and increasingly outrageous ideas flowing from the White House. We seem to be watching January 6 all over again, but this time the violence and destruction is coming from within the executive branch of our government while still being directed at our governmental institutions and at our public servants. The difference this time is that the destruction in not being carried out by the ad hoc groups of citizens who were motivated to overthrow an election. This time it is being methodically carried out by presidential appointees and their cohorts who are systematically taking control of multiple departments of our government. I suspect they would argue that the goal is for agents connected to the tech industries to ‘streamline’ government and to implement AI for the efficient running of things, thus creating a smaller, less expensive and more efficient government. 

A government driven by AI would certainly be efficient, but it is based on the false assumption that governing in a democratic republic such as ours is merely a mechanical process, a zero sum game with winners and losers. A democratic republic is about so much more than efficiency or being the winner and others the losers. To work for the greatest number of people, governing must be a give and take, a constant search for common ground, for compromise. The resulting policies, and even the process itself  keep us working together. It requires collective effort on the part of individuals who know each other, understand each other, and trust each other. This keeps participants from going to extremes at which point little positive can happen to address common concerns, and we evolve into chaos or are tempted to fall for strongman rule. A working democratic republic requires understanding, participation, and trust. This is core, the center. Without it our common cause falls apart. As Yeats put it, when things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Have we allowed ourselves to evolve into an age in which we cannot hear or see each other, trust each other? Have we descended to the point at which we don’t even desire to work for a common ground? Have we created our own kind of rough beast about which Yeats warns in his poem?

Responding to a Call to Change

Responding to a Call to Change 

Thoughts on the assigned reading, 2 Corinthians 7:2-12 (1/28/25)

When I read a text, I always struggle to apply it to myself, personally. I struggle because it is much easier to apply it to someone else. I’m guessing that has happened to others as well. I’m okay with good news in a text, but sometimes it hits a little too close to home; taking criticism is hard for me. Oh, I’m getting better at it, but if we are honest, few of us like being told that we are wrong or that we could do better. My ego gets right in there and begins to rationalize why or how I am right, that I had no other choice, so I can’t be blamed. My self image, my self importance my desire are challenged and I don’t like it.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul quite pointedly addressed a variety of issues that I’m sure the people of that time didn’t really appreciate, issues that reflected how they were (or weren’t) living out their lives as people of God. In this text, Paul is addressing that ‘dressing down’ he gave them, and he commends them that they took his chastisement to heart, repented, and were transformed; but this could have gone a very different way. I am particularly struck by verse 10 in which Paul describes two reactions to being confronted with our sin. (law) 

‘…Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death’ (10)

Godly grief: being upset by my sin, by my inability to live in God’s way of loving God and loving others.

Worldly grief: being upset about being corrected, challenged, being insulted or caught in a wrong act, at being told I was wrong.

Godly grief leads to: repentance, restoration, transformation, peace.

Worldly grief leads to: anger, ill will, revenge, division, tension.

When I think about my own experiences, these patterns play out over and over. Like I said, I’m learning, but I have a long way to go. As I thought about this, though, I couldn’t help but see this in action in recent days in a very public way. Pardon me if this upsets you, but I think that it has to be said. In her recent homily at the National Cathedral, Bishop Budde very gently but pointedly alerted President Trump to the fact that people were afraid and possibly harmed by some of his proposed policies and called on him to be merciful as he designed and carried them out. Considering that loving others, being merciful are primary concerns through out scripture, this is an appropriate theme. We, as I write this, are seeing the reaction to this played out publicly; a ‘worldly grief’ as a response to this call for mercy has resulted in anger, ill will, and tension. Prophetic voices in cultures and in scripture have been rarely commended but often condemned, and that appears to be the, at least public, response in this case. But, this is a good word for all of us to hear. We are all participants in a culture that needs to be called to act in mercy. The difference is an environment of peace, being transformed to loving God and loving others, or an environment of tension doubling down on our right to be right and to protect our self image and self-interests.