I was talking to a friend the other day, and he brought up the late April snow we had just had that stuck to leafing branches and greening lawns. “I always think of my mother with these spring snows. She said it was good for growing…It feels as if she were with me only yesterday.”
This made me think of my mother. She had once pointed out to me the song of the phoebe, a bird that usually starts singing somewhere towards the end of winter and then into spring. It is a wistful sound, not melancholy like that of the mourning dove, but a humble, muted call that speaks gently of small things that remind one of time gone by. I replied by telling this, ending with “…and this makes me feel utterly alone.”
It is the sadness of aging people’s longing for our mothers. Our lives and their presence once seemed endless and immortal. The sadness is palpable and seemingly just as endless as those days of fullness in the past.
The reminiscence was not to end there. The following day I sat before the west-facing window where I practice guitar. There is a birdbath just outside as well as a feeder, and often I see or hear the newcomers of spring, or the passers-by, or those hardy birds that always remain. The phoebe is one that remains, but I had not heard one since at least the year before. I had even forgotten many of its simple, nostalgic notes. Then, through the sound of my strings, came its song, as strong and distinct as could be. It continued and continued, so loudly that is was unavoidable. It nearly brought me to tears. It was calling me, wasn’t it? I stepped outside to find the bird itself, and saw it briefly but clearly in the boughs of a nearby spruce. Then it flew off. How else could I feel but that this was Mom, reminding me that she was still nearby, somehow?
I know of people who have lost those close to them in tragic and unexpected ways. They look for pennies with the dates of birth on them, or for little messages on the TV or on billboards that remind them of the lost ones, or through any number of coincidences. Sometimes such prompts are dismissed by those very same people, “realists” who convince themselves that it is only wishful thinking. Others are convinced that these things are real, and often the oddness of the encounters seems to verify this.
I am not sure that the song of the phoebe had been a call from my mother – the bird does live in this area – but I know that it could have been. I know because I believe that God exists in this world just as he had in the days of the burning bush and the parting of the sea. I know that He can act at any time and in any way that He chooses. If you have even a general notion of the biblical God, you would have to agree. He can be restrained by no force but His own.
A day or two latter I heard of a movie called “Nefarious” that some said was a must -see. It happened to be playing in the city nearest us and we happened to be free, so we went that very afternoon. It is not a formula film meant for a box office bonanza, but something more like a stage production that takes place almost entirely in a bleak prison room. The plot is this: a serial killer has been sentenced to death, with no question about his having done the crime. After 11 years of lawyering, his date for execution has been set for the same night the action takes place. With only hours to go, one last hurdle to his death has to be leapt: the final determination by a psychiatrist that the convicted is sane enough to be blamed for his crimes. The former psychiatrist who had interviewed the criminal had just committed suicide. A young hotshot is brought in to replace him.
The handsome, somewhat arrogant physiatrist takes a seat before the condemned and is immediately hit by the man’s insistence that the one who speaks is a demon in total control of the convict named Edward. The psychiatrist tells “Edward” that he doesn’t believe in such things, as he is an atheist. Edward is delighted. “The greatest trick we can pull off,” the demon tells us, “is to convince people that we don’t exist.” (My paraphrase) Of course, in the movie he does exist. He tells us, among other things, that he and his “legions” are very active in the world, so much so that they have moved society to accept euthanasia, abortion, child genital mutilation, gender fluidity and the subsequent destruction of the family.
Religious folks such as I need little convincing of any of this. Besides it being a very powerful and frightening work, it tells people who share my views what we believe – that Satan is very active in the world.
And yet…That very day, just before watching the movie in fact, I had gotten into a discussion about a certain political party with a friend who is a self-admitted Christian. I stated that I believed that this party was being influenced by Satanic Marxism. He derided this opinion as something no more worthy than the rantings of a wild-eyed street preacher.
Well, yes, I am fully aware of how such statements are viewed. I am so deeply trained as a social scientist that my first thoughts always run to more practical, earthly explanations. The movie character Edward, for instance, could easily be a schizophrenic and in most cases in real life, would be. As a social scientist, I have also studied Marxism in great depth. Usually, it is paired as a counter to Hegel’s dialectic, the 19th century philosopher who believed that all material things were first initiated by spiritual forces. Marx posited that there was no ‘spiritual,’ so that all things had to depend on material reality alone.
This simplistic view is what I always took for granted until reading Pope Leo X111’s well-written late 19th century treatise on Marxism. Here, I became convinced that Marxism was a product of satanic influence. As Leo points out, it is exactly the mirror image of Christianity. Not only does Marxism deny the spiritual, but also claims that humans will someday inevitably create paradise on earth. This is supposed to be as certain and irrefutable as any purely material action and reaction. Not only will religion have no part in this, but it will be annihilated as a reactionary institution(s) created by the oppressing classes. As such, it will be the first institute to be destroyed when the ‘revolt of the masses’ occurs. And so it has been ever since: in Marxist regimes, religion is the first to be destroyed, along with the traditional family structure which is anchored by as well as anchors religion.
So it was that on that day, many ideas came together to form a greater totality. First, we find that nearly everyone with spiritual leanings believes that a soul or spiritual force might speak to us through a spring snowfall, a penny, or the song of a bird. We also find that nearly every spiritual person believes that demonic or evil forces might also come to affect us. Given these two widespread beliefs, why, then, should it be ludicrous that evil might speak to us and influence us through a particular man or people in a particular political party? Who amongst even the vaguely spiritual would deny the possibility that Hitler and his party might have been demonically influenced? Or that Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao might have been influenced by demonically-inspired elements of Marxism?
What it comes down to is the depth of belief. We might hold that something personal has been spiritually touched. We might even believe that some historical figures and their movements might have been tainted by demonic influence. But often we find that we cannot step out of our standard social rationalizations so that we might see that good and evil forces are working through our leaders, political parties, and institutions as we speak. In the same vein, we often cannot believe that the miraculous forces spoken of in the past can exist now. To do so would make people think that we are crazy. But there is an irrational dichotomy here. If we are not crazy for believing in spiritual influences in our own lives, why would we be crazy to believe that such forces could also influence things and events outside our personal sphere?
We know that some crazy people are just crazy; we also know that some actions taken by governments that result in disaster are due to nothing more than incompetence. But some coincidences are so connected and intertwined that it would be more logical to believe they were caused by spiritual forces. These would include elements of political and/or historical movements that are so consistent with traditional evil that only willful ignorance would deny the possibility that they, too, have their spiritual origins in the demonic.
The final question is: how consistent are our beliefs? Do we or do we not believe that God exists and is active in this world? Do we or do we not believe that evil is active in this world as well? And if we say “yes” to both, are we then willing to extend the possibilities of those influences to the things of our collective world, right here and in- the- now? For if we are not, aren’t we denying our own beliefs? Aren’t we making the Edwards - the ‘legion of demons in our world’ - cackle with glee?