City Of God 23

We all have our fictions. These are ways of seeing the world, of living and coping with others, that aren't necessarily factually representative, but work well enough, if only to help get us through the night. This isn't necessarily putting a positive spin on things, as I have known plenty of wailers and whiners who insist that the end of the world will occur one minute after midnight tonight. (those are the glass-is-half-full pessimists. The glass-is-half-empty pessimists say it's going to happen at one minute before midnight) Which is, of course, another fiction, just a negative fiction. But negative people insist that they are realists, and there is a general tendency in our population to accept as real the negative, and as a pleasant fabrication anything that has a positive spin. Except for one little detail...sometimes it is positive. I have heard and read this argument before. Stephen Pinker, psychologist and author, has famously written about this in his book "The Better Angels of Our Natures" that there has never been a better era for humanity than these last one hundred years: proportionately speaking, we have less hunger, less premature death and infant mortality, better food, better health, longer lifespans, better health care, human rights, less war, more knowledge and information, and the list goes on. Like most Pollyannas he neglects any salient details that could ruin his precious formula. Such as that our economies and our governments are in the grips of venal, selfish and greedy international corporations and banks, and that we are teetering on the precipice of planet destruction through catastrophic climate change, and this is of our own making. Yes, we know this, and we have to know it. But if it's a beautiful day, if you are surrounded by people you love, or at least feel a sense of love for the strangers you are with, if you have a love of the natural world of which you are a part, if there is a strain of music from your listening device, or the old-fashioned way, coming from your own sweet, pretty little head, and you want to sing it (but please don't whistle it!), is it wrong to feel the bliss, to feel the joy? to enjoy the joy? What I am saying is, we have no way of knowing exactly what is going to happen, or the way it is going to happen, but there is a reasonable and scientifically-founded certainty that things not only could but are going to get worse. Why be happy? And I say, why not. I was thinking the other day, while seated alone in a coffee shop (a nice, elegant French bakery, actually, run by a nice elegant Parisian woman), of how little we know people. There was a youngish hipster-ish couple at the next table. They seemed nice, artsy-creative, sensitive types. Then I heard their voices which betrayed, to my ears anyway, a couple of ambitious, selfish little hard-asses. Now they could actually be authentically nice people. Or essentially nasty. Or maybe, like almost everyone else, a rather inconvenient and alarming mixture of both and everything else. I am one of those people. And so, Gentle Reader, are you. So here we are, teetering on the abyss. What do we do? Our very best, I hope. Everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint and to live as greenly as possible. And if no one else is doing this? We keep doing it. We keep hoping. We keep smiling. We keep laughing. In short, we keep loving. I remember as a fifteen year old young Jesus freak when I bought a poster at the Canadian Bible Society (I think) with the words, "Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God," ascribed to French monk, Teilhard de Chardin (look him up. He's amazing!). This isn't the same as putting on a happy face (and it don't mean sitting on a happy face either, there, I said it first), it doesn't mean there won't be sadness and weeping. Remember Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, and it was his love for his God and his people that led him to write some very awful and bleak prophetic messages. I only hope he also had his moments of joy and hope, and they are indicted in isolated passages of his book. There are some very sad and upset people out there. Some have good reason to be upset. Some are simply miserable about a bad Facebook post, or not enough likes, or maybe a bad nail job. We generally are miserable when reality collides with and intrudes on our beautiful illusions. But joy is something more than an illusion. It is more than a fiction. It is the very essence of the air of the City of God. I told a friend recently who was wondering why I could be so happy. My reply? Throughout my life, almost every possible conceivable bad thing has happened to me. At my very worst, when I was homeless, absolutely poor and traumatized, God visited me with a gift of joy, and this joy has never left me. My life has been given back to me, which I receive as a gift, and cherish and nurture as a gift, and in gratitude, this life returned to me I have consecrated anew to the God who has given me back my life and who makes all things new. I do not know how we are going to get through this mess coming our way, but get through it we must, and get through it we shall, because this might just be what it's going to take to transform us into the better humans we were made to be, those of us who are going to survive. Not necessarily stronger or more advanced. But more compassionate, caring, dedicated and responsible!