One of the worst punishments of my youth was Catechism, a two hour (or was it 50?) mandate every Saturday morning to be terrified by the nuns - who in those good old days were truly terrifying (and have probably led to more people from my generation leaving the Church than anything else). But some of the lessons taught went deep. One compared sins to nails in a board - forgiveness took away the nails, but the holes - oh yes, God could still see the holes! Another, and the one relevant to this discussion, was the adoration of the martyrs. No holds were barred as the nuns went into ecstasy describing the tortures of those who had willingly died for their faith. In that context, we were often asked how we would react if the communists took over and forced us to renounce our faith. Would we die, boldly looking towards heaven as the atheists did unspeakable things to us, or would we take the coward's way out? In class I recall that most, if not all, of us remained silent, but it gave us a great topic for discussion after class. We loved describing the tortures and making up some of our own - literally child's play compared to the great sadists of our world - but everyone as far as I recall admitted that he would not die for his faith. Why, we would say, why not go along with the idiots and go back to your normal life afterwards!
Of course, real suppression is not like that - it is relentless and pursued on many levels to eradicate what the government does not want - but the point remains: would you suffer the horrors of the body for pie in the sky, a spirit that you cannot even see, much less feel?
I try to read as little about the Holocaust as I can for obvious reasons - such inhumanity - but it is impossible to ignore over many years, and in that time I remember something special and, in a way, more tragic than anything else: the guilt among the survivors. There is always survivors guilt, or so I have read, but in the death camps it was compounded, as it was meant to be. Entire families were put together and starved and worked to death slowly but inevitably under a rule of complete contempt. Frozen with fear and wracked with the pain of starvation, most did many selfish things to survive, even at the expense of those they were supposed to protect. There lies the real guilt, an awful thing to contemplate. Yet, if it is any consolation, with the same honesty I had as a child, I must admit that I would become selfish for survival myself. It is a rare person, after all, who does not struggle against drowning, pulling others down with him, and the conditions of the camp were like slow-motion drowning. We are, most of us, strong for this world and weak of spirit.
In the military, the troops are drilled over and over again so that they will react instinctively under conditions in which the normal person would panic. They admit to feeling fear, too, but in fear we naturally go to a programmed response (and thus the different nature of military society). Without training, it is to scream and run; with training, it is to scream and shoot. But we are all afraid.
In the North Korean death camps, one of the rare escapees told of a time when the authorities were testing poison gas on the subjects - whole families, as is the gentle custom of the Kim regime. The aggressors were shocked when the parents of little children abandoned their own welfare to try to keep the children from breathing in the lethal air. It was futile, of course, but the officials were stunned that such "non persons" as they were designated had such human qualities.
I would hope that I would react as the Korean parents did, and I think that I might - but I cannot be sure, and hope to never find out. But in such cases, "pie in the sky" moves on to something more tangible. Even though the parents probably knew that their efforts were futile -and that maybe death was better than a short, brutal life in the camps - they had to try. They had to - and that necessity, too, is spirit, for what else could it be? No longer a thing of children in Catechism, but of spirit moving in this world.
And that is the essence of spirit - the ability to deny the most elemental of life forces, life itself, not for sport but because - because it is right. I could name dozens more instances of trying times - from the Russian gulag to the deck of the Titanic - and in most I'm afraid that I would fail. Such is the power of gravity, even though many of us clearly understand that life is only a temporary condition. Yet it is our fate - the way it has been made - that life clings to itself for no other reason than to continue. Spirit can raise us above that - such is its power - and the martyrs, as grim as the nuns made them, are not caricatures but rather testimonies to the power of the human spirit. It is why they say it can move mountains - and certainly can topple the fiercest regime.
But it is so hard to stand apart from the pull of life - including in how we conduct our everyday lives. Still, spirit is real, and faith gives us that reality, whether it is faith in a military unit, a family or a religion. Yet, how could it exist in a world based on survival of the fittest? Sociobiology has tried to answer this, but it could never supply the answer for the martyrdom of the saints. And if spirit is stronger than the pull of life itself, what can deny it? FK
Of course, real suppression is not like that - it is relentless and pursued on many levels to eradicate what the government does not want - but the point remains: would you suffer the horrors of the body for pie in the sky, a spirit that you cannot even see, much less feel?
I try to read as little about the Holocaust as I can for obvious reasons - such inhumanity - but it is impossible to ignore over many years, and in that time I remember something special and, in a way, more tragic than anything else: the guilt among the survivors. There is always survivors guilt, or so I have read, but in the death camps it was compounded, as it was meant to be. Entire families were put together and starved and worked to death slowly but inevitably under a rule of complete contempt. Frozen with fear and wracked with the pain of starvation, most did many selfish things to survive, even at the expense of those they were supposed to protect. There lies the real guilt, an awful thing to contemplate. Yet, if it is any consolation, with the same honesty I had as a child, I must admit that I would become selfish for survival myself. It is a rare person, after all, who does not struggle against drowning, pulling others down with him, and the conditions of the camp were like slow-motion drowning. We are, most of us, strong for this world and weak of spirit.
In the military, the troops are drilled over and over again so that they will react instinctively under conditions in which the normal person would panic. They admit to feeling fear, too, but in fear we naturally go to a programmed response (and thus the different nature of military society). Without training, it is to scream and run; with training, it is to scream and shoot. But we are all afraid.
In the North Korean death camps, one of the rare escapees told of a time when the authorities were testing poison gas on the subjects - whole families, as is the gentle custom of the Kim regime. The aggressors were shocked when the parents of little children abandoned their own welfare to try to keep the children from breathing in the lethal air. It was futile, of course, but the officials were stunned that such "non persons" as they were designated had such human qualities.
I would hope that I would react as the Korean parents did, and I think that I might - but I cannot be sure, and hope to never find out. But in such cases, "pie in the sky" moves on to something more tangible. Even though the parents probably knew that their efforts were futile -and that maybe death was better than a short, brutal life in the camps - they had to try. They had to - and that necessity, too, is spirit, for what else could it be? No longer a thing of children in Catechism, but of spirit moving in this world.
And that is the essence of spirit - the ability to deny the most elemental of life forces, life itself, not for sport but because - because it is right. I could name dozens more instances of trying times - from the Russian gulag to the deck of the Titanic - and in most I'm afraid that I would fail. Such is the power of gravity, even though many of us clearly understand that life is only a temporary condition. Yet it is our fate - the way it has been made - that life clings to itself for no other reason than to continue. Spirit can raise us above that - such is its power - and the martyrs, as grim as the nuns made them, are not caricatures but rather testimonies to the power of the human spirit. It is why they say it can move mountains - and certainly can topple the fiercest regime.
But it is so hard to stand apart from the pull of life - including in how we conduct our everyday lives. Still, spirit is real, and faith gives us that reality, whether it is faith in a military unit, a family or a religion. Yet, how could it exist in a world based on survival of the fittest? Sociobiology has tried to answer this, but it could never supply the answer for the martyrdom of the saints. And if spirit is stronger than the pull of life itself, what can deny it? FK
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