This was going to be a cautionary tale about how many things can go wrong or be wrong and continue to make more things wrong, and that’s just the way it is. Often, that IS just the way it is. In this time of panic over viruses, we might recall not only the Spanish Influenza of 1918, but what spawned it: WWI. From there we can go on and on, to WWII, the Cold War, Vietnam, and our current contentious political climate that is so bad, I sometimes feel that we should just divide the country and be done with it.
It is this, this contentiousness, which prompted this essay. One of my worst vices is listening to political debate and then spouting my own views off to others. These views have changed considerably with the years, but I am just as certain that I am right now as I was then. But since my circle of argumentative friends is short, I usually spout off to my wife, who winces at every declamation and quickly tries to change the subject.
It was at such a time last week when I stopped myself and tried my best to be generous and reasonable. “Jeez, you know I really want to know your opinion. Why won’t you tell me? I promise I’ll listen.” After a long pause and a look of weary defeat, she sighed and finally replied:
“In this nation of 300 million with so much talent and skill, we have decided to elect idiots for office. I cannot listen seriously to any of them or vote for them. It’s so depressing that I just don’t want to talk about it.”
Well then. I don’t agree with her totally, but I do agree with the general premise. Our politicians are made with feet of clay and are thrown into an arena where special interests absolutely must be listened to if one is to win any seat of prominence. Thus ‘the best for the most’ often goes unheard. It is not even the politician’s fault so much as the institution. Although I might cheer myself up by remembering Churchill’s dictum, “Democracy is a terrible system, but it is the best we have,” I have to concede that what our politicians do sometimes seems incredibly stupid. Such actions often lead to bad results – see WWI above – and can make one very depressed. It all seems so inevitable and so inevitably bad.
It was in this frame of mind, then, that I had to think of my poor left eye. Over the last few months I have had two cataract surgeries. The one for the right eye was necessary, and everyone assured me that the operation was painless and almost hassle free. The first for the right eye was not painless and hassle-free but it did result in perfect distance vision. On the other hand, the one for the left eye was not needed at the moment, as the cataract was still in an early stage, but the ophthalmologist strongly recommended that I get it over with once and for all. With lingering doubts, I assented. As the one before had been somewhat painful, I told the anesthesiologist to crank on the drugs as I was just fine with them. I don’t know, but that might have sent a red flag of “drug addict” to the doctor, because that operation was gruesomely painful, with every slice of the eye not only felt but heard. For weeks afterward, the recovery was somewhat painful and painfully slow. Then at just under six weeks after, the vision in that eye took a nose dive. A visit to my regular eye doctor told me that the fluid around the retina had built up and that I might be somewhat blind in that eye for life, unless the fluid really builds up, in which case the retina would detach and I would be totally blind for life.
So the upshot to this essay was supposed to be depressing. Sometimes, things go wrong and stay wrong, and maybe make other things go wrong, and on and on, from wars to politicians to eyes. Sometimes, I was going to say, life just sucks and will continue to suck. That’s when, as the old 60’s group Hot Tuna once sang, “…you need that true religion, hallelu.” Sometimes you get a prognosis of cancer or war or pandemic and it’s just going to play out to the bitter end. Such is this fallen world.
But then a funny thing happened. A few days ago I got an e-mail from my older brother who edits medical journals concerning the Corona Virus. He went on to say reasonable things, but of course there is nothing good about it and its affects are going well beyond the disease itself, bolstering my idea that some things just continue to make things worse. I returned with an e-mail about my own health issues, focusing, so to speak, on my left eye. Bad will continue to be bad and will make other things bad – such was my message. I gave it a cursory once-over and sent it, satisfied and feeling a little better somehow now that I had declared my own sad plight, then went downstairs. It was then that I noticed that funny thing. Looking at the digital clock on the oven, I realized that suddenly I could see a whole lot better.
The improvement continued, until by evening the left eye was almost as good as the right. Those prayers to St Lucie, I thought, had been noticed against all but my most naïve expectations. This was a win-win, for not only had my sight increased but so had my faith. As Jesus well knew, to those who are blind in faith, miracles matter. For me, then, who was partly blind in both faith and sight, a part- miracle was in order. It was not only in order but apparently got delivered.
That made me think: did WWI have long-term GOOD repercussions? Although it took some time, it spawned WWII, which spawned the nuclear bomb, which spawned an era of the small war, meaning no more big war. Sure, Mao killed off a few tens of millions and Pol Pot a third of Cambodia, but those things happen. We have not had a world war since 1945, which is now an incredible 75 years ago. Maybe it is, then, that if we have faith, bad things will lead to bad to bad and so on until it ends, and out comes the good. It is the way it used to go in the movies, so why not in real life?
Today, March 12 as I write, things have not gotten better. Our presidential candidates have not improved, the panic of Corona has double once again, the stock market is dragging us towards recession or worse, and my eye has returned to seeing as if it were smeared in Vaseline. Bummer all around. Once again, the intent of this essay seems to have been pushed back towards disillusionment and chaos.
But hey, not so fast; I know now that my vison CAN improve and just might. We also know that the virus will not only run its course in a month or two, but that the media will tire of its current subject of torment and find something else to make us cry. There is an end in sight and the promise of improvement, even as bad is following bad is following bad. It will pass, all of it. Awful will turn to nice again, and even though nice will be followed by awful, so what. There is always hope, as there should be. We are not as in-charge as we think we are and that is a good thing; what runs the universe could kill us in a second, or make it as though we never existed at all, but it hasn’t. We are that helpless, and that protected, too, so much so that our soft and vulnerable bodies do very well for 60 or 70 years amidst the harshness of a dark vacuum washed by deadly rays.
We were, that is, meant to survive. Further, we were meant to hope, because there is always hope, even when we find that there is no doctor to heal, not this time, and no miracle to perform. Hope is found in our last calls to mother, or to God or Jesus, because hope has built the universe and is what keeps it going, the whole impossible thing. Our cries are not prayers of desperation, but of revelation: we hope because we realize right to the end that there has always been hope. It is the fundamental law of creation, and will continue to be so long after whatever has been created falls away into something else. It is the very urge to life itself, and it tells us all we need to know: that even when there is no hope for this, there is always hope for that, for all eternity and for all of us. It is promised in the turning of the seasons and in the birth of everything good. It is the eternal promise that lies at the root of all being.
The eye is no longer improved, and some day death by virus for many of us might look like a blessing. We should not be, as St Augustine wrote, “…like every man whose soul is tethered by the love of things that cannot last and is agonized to lose them.” But the temporal gives us a map for the eternal. We should not confuse one for the other, for the temporal is only temporary, but we can take from it that the hope that lies in our hearts is not in vain. That, too, reflects eternal truth. All temporal things, even the evil, end, leaving in the ashes the hope that proves to us by its perennial persistence that hope is not in vain.
This was going to be a cautionary tale about how many things can go wrong or be wrong and continue to make more things wrong, and that’s just the way it is. Often, that IS just the way it is. In this time of panic over viruses, we might recall not only the Spanish Influenza of 1918, but what spawned it: WWI. From there we can go on and on, to WWII, the Cold War, Vietnam, and our current contentious political climate that is so bad, I sometimes feel that we should just divide the country and be done with it.
It is this, this contentiousness, which prompted this essay. One of my worst vices is listening to political debate and then spouting my own views off to others. These views have changed considerably with the years, but I am just as certain that I am right now as I was then. But since my circle of argumentative friends is short, I usually spout off to my wife, who winces at every declamation and quickly tries to change the subject.
It was at such a time last week when I stopped myself and tried my best to be generous and reasonable. “Jeez, you know I really want to know your opinion. Why won’t you tell me? I promise I’ll listen.” After a long pause and a look of weary defeat, she sighed and finally replied:
“In this nation of 300 million with so much talent and skill, we have decided to elect idiots for office. I cannot listen seriously to any of them or vote for them. It’s so depressing that I just don’t want to talk about it.”
Well then. I don’t agree with her totally, but I do agree with the general premise. Our politicians are made with feet of clay and are thrown into an arena where special interests absolutely must be listened to if one is to win any seat of prominence. Thus ‘the best for the most’ often goes unheard. It is not even the politician’s fault so much as the institution. Although I might cheer myself up by remembering Churchill’s dictum, “Democracy is a terrible system, but it is the best we have,” I have to concede that what our politicians do sometimes seems incredibly stupid. Such actions often lead to bad results – see WWI above – and can make one very depressed. It all seems so inevitable and so inevitably bad.
It was in this frame of mind, then, that I had to think of my poor left eye. Over the last few months I have had two cataract surgeries. The one for the right eye was necessary, and everyone assured me that the operation was painless and almost hassle free. The first for the right eye was not painless and hassle-free but it did result in perfect distance vision. On the other hand, the one for the left eye was not needed at the moment, as the cataract was still in an early stage, but the ophthalmologist strongly recommended that I get it over with once and for all. With lingering doubts, I assented. As the one before had been somewhat painful, I told the anesthesiologist to crank on the drugs as I was just fine with them. I don’t know, but that might have sent a red flag of “drug addict” to the doctor, because that operation was gruesomely painful, with every slice of the eye not only felt but heard. For weeks afterward, the recovery was somewhat painful and painfully slow. Then at just under six weeks after, the vision in that eye took a nose dive. A visit to my regular eye doctor told me that the fluid around the retina had built up and that I might be somewhat blind in that eye for life, unless the fluid really builds up, in which case the retina would detach and I would be totally blind for life.
So the upshot to this essay was supposed to be depressing. Sometimes, things go wrong and stay wrong, and maybe make other things go wrong, and on and on, from wars to politicians to eyes. Sometimes, I was going to say, life just sucks and will continue to suck. That’s when, as the old 60’s group Hot Tuna once sang, “…you need that true religion, hallelu.” Sometimes you get a prognosis of cancer or war or pandemic and it’s just going to play out to the bitter end. Such is this fallen world.
But then a funny thing happened. A few days ago I got an e-mail from my older brother who edits medical journals concerning the Corona Virus. He went on to say reasonable things, but of course there is nothing good about it and its affects are going well beyond the disease itself, bolstering my idea that some things just continue to make things worse. I returned with an e-mail about my own health issues, focusing, so to speak, on my left eye. Bad will continue to be bad and will make other things bad – such was my message. I gave it a cursory once-over and sent it, satisfied and feeling a little better somehow now that I had declared my own sad plight, then went downstairs. It was then that I noticed that funny thing. Looking at the digital clock on the oven, I realized that suddenly I could see a whole lot better.
The improvement continued, until by evening the left eye was almost as good as the right. Those prayers to St Lucie, I thought, had been noticed against all but my most naïve expectations. This was a win-win, for not only had my sight increased but so had my faith. As Jesus well knew, to those who are blind in faith, miracles matter. For me, then, who was partly blind in both faith and sight, a part- miracle was in order. It was not only in order but apparently got delivered.
That made me think: did WWI have long-term GOOD repercussions? Although it took some time, it spawned WWII, which spawned the nuclear bomb, which spawned an era of the small war, meaning no more big war. Sure, Mao killed off a few tens of millions and Pol Pot a third of Cambodia, but those things happen. We have not had a world war since 1945, which is now an incredible 75 years ago. Maybe it is, then, that if we have faith, bad things will lead to bad to bad and so on until it ends, and out comes the good. It is the way it used to go in the movies, so why not in real life?
Today, March 12 as I write, things have not gotten better. Our presidential candidates have not improved, the panic of Corona has double once again, the stock market is dragging us towards recession or worse, and my eye has returned to seeing as if it were smeared in Vaseline. Bummer all around. Once again, the intent of this essay seems to have been pushed back towards disillusionment and chaos.
But hey, not so fast; I know now that my vison CAN improve and just might. We also know that the virus will not only run its course in a month or two, but that the media will tire of its current subject of torment and find something else to make us cry. There is an end in sight and the promise of improvement, even as bad is following bad is following bad. It will pass, all of it. Awful will turn to nice again, and even though nice will be followed by awful, so what. There is always hope, as there should be. We are not as in-charge as we think we are and that is a good thing; what runs the universe could kill us in a second, or make it as though we never existed at all, but it hasn’t. We are that helpless, and that protected, too, so much so that our soft and vulnerable bodies do very well for 60 or 70 years amidst the harshness of a dark vacuum washed by deadly rays.
We were, that is, meant to survive. Further, we were meant to hope, because there is always hope, even when we find that there is no doctor to heal, not this time, and no miracle to perform. Hope is found in our last calls to mother, or to God or Jesus, because hope has built the universe and is what keeps it going, the whole impossible thing. Our cries are not prayers of desperation, but of revelation: we hope because we realize right to the end that there has always been hope. It is the fundamental law of creation, and will continue to be so long after whatever has been created falls away into something else. It is the very urge to life itself, and it tells us all we need to know: that even when there is no hope for this, there is always hope for that, for all eternity and for all of us. It is promised in the turning of the seasons and in the birth of everything good. It is the eternal promise that lies at the root of all being.
The eye is no longer improved, and some day death by virus for many of us might look like a blessing. We should not be, as St Augustine wrote, “…like every man whose soul is tethered by the love of things that cannot last and is agonized to lose them.” But the temporal gives us a map for the eternal. We should not confuse one for the other, for the temporal is only temporary, but we can take from it that the hope that lies in our hearts is not in vain. That, too, reflects eternal truth. All temporal things, even the evil, end, leaving in the ashes the hope that proves to us by its perennial persistence that hope is not in vain.
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