Going out with the dog this morning in the new quiet of the covide-lockdown, I was reminded of a few phrases from one of my favorite pessimists, T.S. Eliot: “Into the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michael Angelo” and “My life is measured out in coffee spoons.” These are from, I think, The Wasteland, describing a man of culture’s empty life, of how it passes in worthless conversations confirming intellectual status, and genteel but shallow meetings around tea. Tick toc, tick toc, it tells us, not really speaking of Michael Angelo, but of the pointless life of the idle rich of the early 20th century.
Now these same people would be sunbathing on a beach in Thailand, talking not of Michael Angelo but of the new Botox treatment, but we get the idea. What a waste of time.
I know the feeling well, but from a very different environment. I spent two years living in the forests and savannas of the Venezuelan Amazon with autonomous Indians, and it felt very much the same: chop wood, wash, cook, hunt, dig for a little information while trying to avoid the language and cultural and historical barriers, and then go to sleep, all on and on under the same milky-blue sky and tropical heat. The life there was a-historic, moving not towards a goal or a climax, but spinning round and round in the circle of life. To have felt this way, even just occasionally, makes me feel very superficial, but that was sometimes the way it was. It was then that I realized that we of our time and culture need a point and a goal in our lives. Without it, we fade into meaningless ennui like the idle rich.
We all, I think, are getting to know that feeling now. The quiet time of shutdown is no longer unique, a fun vacation from our normal lives. Rather, it has become a suspension of our plans which is beginning to look like the final end of many of our plans. Work may disappear, meat is disappearing, Scott single-ply toilet paper that does not clog has disappeared, and so have our vacation plans and much of our money. We are sinking into personal a-history, and a dark stagnation is setting in. Suicide is on the rise, along with drinking and drugs and, for many, waist size. Welcome to the life of the idle rich but without the money.
Eliot bemoaned his privileged fate of pointless ritual and financial security, but the Indians I lived with did not look upon their lives as bleak and meaningless vacuums. As with all of the traditional cultures, meaning was put into their world by myth. When the moon moved, it was the first woman moving towards a father sun to rejuvenate the world, or something of that sort. When they hunted, the animals told stories in their movements that mirrored the actions of their kind in myth. Travels along the rivers showed spots where ancestors fought spirit demons, and where real battles were fought with foes of mythological evil. Life might not have had an historical point, but it had a personal point. All was alive, telling stories far more meaningful than idle chat around a spot of tea.
I knew that about the Indians even as I sank into a loose kind of personal despair, as if my life were being measured out in shotgun shells. I did not and could not share this vision of their lives and territory. But now, we don’t have to have this same despair, even as our government, wisely or otherwise, keeps us locked up on the sidelines along with all our former plans and dreams. Rather, we can come to see that what we are now experiencing is not only an altered life, but one that is far more interesting than our former lives. We can, that is, come to understand that what we are living through is exposing something far greater than the reality we left behind.
This just might prove to be a new era of myth. It is already happening, sprouting out in conspiracy theories concerning one-world government or communist plots or a Chinese world-wide coup. The weirdness of what we are living through makes it possible that one, or more than one of these theories is essentially correct. That is how weirdness works; it opens our eyes to far greater possibilities, possibilities that were often already there but were not perceived because our normal lives covered them like a face mask over our minds. Now the world has become fresh again, even magical, even though it never stopped being so. Now we are being allowed to peer beneath the curtain, and what we find is myth; what we find is a reality so strange that only tall tales can approximate what it means to say.
What is your myth? Why do you think this world-wide phenomena of “lock down” is occurring? It is not in response to anything like the Bubonic Plague or small pox or even cholera, but rather to a somewhat strong flu-like illness that is killing less than other strong flues such as the Hong Kong flu of the late 60’s – when we did nothing about it at all. Its symptoms and even way of death are familiar to us all, and are not particularly gruesome. So why? True, in part it is due to the world-wide web, certainly, but there is something more to it, isn’t there?
Yes, we are all developing our own myths. Here is mine.
In 1917, a vision of a woman who Catholics believe to be the Virgin Mary, came to some children in a field in Fatima, Portugal, and told them that the world had a chance to avoid a catastrophe even larger than the Great War (known now as WW1). People were to repent their sins, and the Church was to consecrate Russia to the Virgin. Neither was done and WW11 became a horrible reality. However, the prophesy did answer Scrooge’s painfully unanswered question to the Ghost of Christmas to Come: “Spirit, is this what WILL be or what MIGHT be?” From the Fatima vision, we see that it was the latter; that the fictional Ebenezer had a choice, just as we were given a choice one hundred- plus years ago at Fatima. We can change what seems to be inevitable, we were told; the vision was not a certainty, but a warning.
A few years ago, my wife and I went with a group to Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where several people have been having visions of Mary since the early ‘80’s. We have kept in touch, and recently heard that Our Lady told one of the visionaries that the world would soon be sent a trial as a warning. We would get over it, but we were told that if we didn’t shape up, a punishment far worse would follow. This is what I (and many in our group) believe is happening today. However, as usual in these things, the prophesy holds more subtleties than we usually might think or even could know. For instance, in the spring of 1917 when the Fatima warning occurred, Russia was still Tsarist and Christian. Just a few months later, the Tsar would be overthrown and Russia would begin its horrible fall into aggressive atheism and religious persecution. Russia had needed spiritual help far more than the world could then have known.
What is happening today? Certainly the disease is a warning to us all that we ultimately are not in charge of our life and death. That alone should be enough to bring us back to a more spiritual path. But there is something else going on. The Free World, which includes the traditional democracies of the world, has given over much of its freedom to its leaders for the sake of safety. This is supposed to be temporary, but this group of nations has conceded its liberties so easily and for so long that it is disconcerting. Even today, two thirds of America wishes to be ‘sheltered in place’ to further protect itself from a disease that, compared to other epidemics, is only of marginal intensity. Further, the disease came from China, the new powerful and aggressively- atheistic kid on the block, and we are wearing face masks and having lock-downs just as the Chinese have done. The disease, that is, has not only come from the greatest enemy of religion today, but most of the world democracies are adopting its tactics as well. This is not only because of power-hungry politicians. A majority of the people are not only willing, but insistent on allowing the suspension of their rights. Could this, then, be the newer twist on the old warning of pestilence and disease?
I believe it is. I believe we are not only being reminded of our dependence on the will of God, but are being shown just how easy it would be for us to fall into an authoritative dictatorship. Such dictatorships not only stifle our all-important free will, but also almost inevitably forbid serious spirituality and worship, as these take power from the state. This is the new wrinkle in the warning.
Or so I believe. True or not, however, I, along with a growing number of people, are filling in the grind of our shut-down with greater meaning by arranging new myths. These may or may not point to a genuine greater reality behind the scenes, but they do point to a greater reality in general. Perhaps that will be its greatest benefit. Just as the Indians could face the drudgery of the eternal cycle through a deeper vision of that life, perhaps we are being steered towards a greater reflection on the reality of the spiritual in our lives. That is a good thing –as long as we avoid its shadow side, which begins with the need to preserve life at all costs, and ends ironically and inevitably with the cheapening of all lives in dictatorship.