To begin this, I must admit to something shameful. No, it has nothing to do with stealing that candy bar when I was eight, or with sex, although I suppose I could dwell on that as well (I won’t). No; it is that I am a war-watcher. Like everything, this atrocious habit had a beginning, and for me, it began with the first Iraq war under the supervision of Bush #I.
Whether he likes it or not, I will drag one of my brothers into it (if he ever reads this blog he will be surprised!). We were both well-prepped by the media for it, as we had seen the threats and the fist shaking first, and then the “Mother of All Wars” battle cry from Saddam, and then the self-burning of the oil fields. And then…Scud Stud! For the first time, we were able to see war in almost-live action, as tiny cameras on scud missiles showed us just how cool technology was. At the time, the PC was entering our homes at an ever-increasing rate, but the internet was then in its infancy, and we didn’t have all those marvelous websites to cure our need for entertainment. Besides, what are words and stupid pictures compared to bombs? Technology usually is boring, but not when it is tipped with a camera and high explosives.
So when we started seeing those missiles actually enter through the windows of buildings, we were enthralled. We got on the phone and talked for hours as we watched the bombs go off. It was the coolest thing since, I don’t know, the landing on the moon. Maybe, perversely, even better.
It didn’t stop with that, either. Ten years later, we were on the phone right after the first jet flew into one of the Trade towers in NYC. We were actually on the phone – if I remember correctly – as the second one slammed into another tower, that moment when we all understood that this was no accident. We were at war – again. And it was thrilling.
We did not see bloody limbs in Iraq, but we did hear the thump of bodies as they hit the pavement in NYC. Those things are not nice, but the cameras focused on the massive destruction, on buildings collapsing and dust rising – and on the dangers for other, unknown people as well. Little gore, no real risk to us, and lots of excitement and noise. I have to admit, these events put any Super Bowl to shame.
And in between, from war to war? The same old. Worry; disappointment; minor pleasures, and boredom.
Boredom. Imagine that. In Peter Kreeft’s revelatory book Jesus Shock, he confronts boredom straight on, naming war, as well as promiscuous sex and other vices, as our pallid and fleeting antidotes to boredom. Yes, the book is about the shock of God on Earth, but one doesn’t have to believe in Jesus to get the message. Here we are in this marvelous contradiction of existence, both animal and angel, both limited and infinite, and we are bored. We are bored because we are waiting for fulfillment, the where and how of which we do not know. Those many who are more thoughtful seek this fulfillment in the right direction – towards some uplifting sight, some high mountain, some depth of desert filled with silence and night stars, but these, too, are fleeting.
Kreeft reminds us that we have had the where and how all along. He quotes Annie Dillard (from An Expedition to the Pole): “Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?...Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of Power we so blandly invoke?...The churches are children playing on the floor with chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hat and velvet hats to church; we should be wearing crash helmets … For the sleeping god may wake some day [and] draw us out to where we can never return.”
Jesus, as usual is right: “We know not what we do.” We know not what we do because it is our essential nature to not know, just as it is in our essential nature to know. We are a paradox, just like the universe. Just like the mad scientist in Kurt Vonnegut’s book, we mix up a batch of water that could turn the whole world into ice – “Ice Nine” – just for the hell of it, but also because we need to grasp it, to control it, to know it all. And, oops, down the faucet it goes. In boredom we play as gods with life, as only gods should do, because that is almost our calling – not to become gods, but to be with God. It is only then when we will no longer be bored; only then when we will no longer play with Scuds and mindlessly tinker with dangerous chemistry sets.
What we seek is not only hidden right before us as I write, but as Annie Dillard says, is explicitly portrayed to millions at church every day or week. This is a different kind of chemistry set, but capable of making an explosive more powerful than TNT. We play with it at church because we enter bored and leave relieved of boredom – for the moment. But it is there. For Catholics, the power is stupendously, even outrageously conjured in the bread and wine that actually, really becomes the body and blood of the Christ – and then we eat it, and are part of it almost unknowingly, for we do not understand the power.
But Annie is right – it, the power that humans evoke in their mysteries of the spirit, might explode at any time, and will forever change those in its blast radius, striking at our hearts and raising our souls, each and every one there, like a precision Scud missile. It is scary, it is terrifying, but it is what we want; and it sure as hell beats cleaning up the streets of NYC for years and years as we await the next big, fake expression of the gods in the next explosion, in the next war.
Whether he likes it or not, I will drag one of my brothers into it (if he ever reads this blog he will be surprised!). We were both well-prepped by the media for it, as we had seen the threats and the fist shaking first, and then the “Mother of All Wars” battle cry from Saddam, and then the self-burning of the oil fields. And then…Scud Stud! For the first time, we were able to see war in almost-live action, as tiny cameras on scud missiles showed us just how cool technology was. At the time, the PC was entering our homes at an ever-increasing rate, but the internet was then in its infancy, and we didn’t have all those marvelous websites to cure our need for entertainment. Besides, what are words and stupid pictures compared to bombs? Technology usually is boring, but not when it is tipped with a camera and high explosives.
So when we started seeing those missiles actually enter through the windows of buildings, we were enthralled. We got on the phone and talked for hours as we watched the bombs go off. It was the coolest thing since, I don’t know, the landing on the moon. Maybe, perversely, even better.
It didn’t stop with that, either. Ten years later, we were on the phone right after the first jet flew into one of the Trade towers in NYC. We were actually on the phone – if I remember correctly – as the second one slammed into another tower, that moment when we all understood that this was no accident. We were at war – again. And it was thrilling.
We did not see bloody limbs in Iraq, but we did hear the thump of bodies as they hit the pavement in NYC. Those things are not nice, but the cameras focused on the massive destruction, on buildings collapsing and dust rising – and on the dangers for other, unknown people as well. Little gore, no real risk to us, and lots of excitement and noise. I have to admit, these events put any Super Bowl to shame.
And in between, from war to war? The same old. Worry; disappointment; minor pleasures, and boredom.
Boredom. Imagine that. In Peter Kreeft’s revelatory book Jesus Shock, he confronts boredom straight on, naming war, as well as promiscuous sex and other vices, as our pallid and fleeting antidotes to boredom. Yes, the book is about the shock of God on Earth, but one doesn’t have to believe in Jesus to get the message. Here we are in this marvelous contradiction of existence, both animal and angel, both limited and infinite, and we are bored. We are bored because we are waiting for fulfillment, the where and how of which we do not know. Those many who are more thoughtful seek this fulfillment in the right direction – towards some uplifting sight, some high mountain, some depth of desert filled with silence and night stars, but these, too, are fleeting.
Kreeft reminds us that we have had the where and how all along. He quotes Annie Dillard (from An Expedition to the Pole): “Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?...Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of Power we so blandly invoke?...The churches are children playing on the floor with chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hat and velvet hats to church; we should be wearing crash helmets … For the sleeping god may wake some day [and] draw us out to where we can never return.”
Jesus, as usual is right: “We know not what we do.” We know not what we do because it is our essential nature to not know, just as it is in our essential nature to know. We are a paradox, just like the universe. Just like the mad scientist in Kurt Vonnegut’s book, we mix up a batch of water that could turn the whole world into ice – “Ice Nine” – just for the hell of it, but also because we need to grasp it, to control it, to know it all. And, oops, down the faucet it goes. In boredom we play as gods with life, as only gods should do, because that is almost our calling – not to become gods, but to be with God. It is only then when we will no longer be bored; only then when we will no longer play with Scuds and mindlessly tinker with dangerous chemistry sets.
What we seek is not only hidden right before us as I write, but as Annie Dillard says, is explicitly portrayed to millions at church every day or week. This is a different kind of chemistry set, but capable of making an explosive more powerful than TNT. We play with it at church because we enter bored and leave relieved of boredom – for the moment. But it is there. For Catholics, the power is stupendously, even outrageously conjured in the bread and wine that actually, really becomes the body and blood of the Christ – and then we eat it, and are part of it almost unknowingly, for we do not understand the power.
But Annie is right – it, the power that humans evoke in their mysteries of the spirit, might explode at any time, and will forever change those in its blast radius, striking at our hearts and raising our souls, each and every one there, like a precision Scud missile. It is scary, it is terrifying, but it is what we want; and it sure as hell beats cleaning up the streets of NYC for years and years as we await the next big, fake expression of the gods in the next explosion, in the next war.
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