"In the Presence of Mine Enemies"
A new essay, and a little bit more for you.
Dear friend,
The Rose Fire is a project whose dispatches, imperfect and wobbly as they are, are intended to encourage “the defense of the soul by means of beauty.” The three operative ideas there, defense, soul, and beauty, are all words that hold specific and valuable meanings for me personally, and do not exactly map onto how the terms are commonly used.
By defense, I do not mean the excercise of violence to oppose violence, but rather something more holistic, similar to the operation of a strong immune system, or a charitable, potent argument.
By soul I do not mean something floaty or immaterial, but rather the union of body and spirit into that Imago Dei of which the human person is uniquely capable, and which each of us as individuals uniquely embody, in all of history.
And by beauty, I do not mean superficial attractiveness or some quality of being photogenic, but rather the radiant fullness of things well-formed, good, and true to themselves, which according to their nature draw us in yearning toward the great Center of all creation.
I am, gradually, trying to quietly reflect on each of these over the course of this project. If any of that appeals to you, then I likely do not have to explain the need for this defense. But there are certain times in the lifespan of a living thing that a crisis comes upon it. This crisis will always be a turning point. It will divide a life—of person, of place, of nation, of culture—into “before” and “after.” It may be delayed for a little while, but cannot, in the end, be denied. If met well, and with the right sort of strength, the crisis tends toward the clarifying of the life, and will be, in the end, remembered as a gift, even if harrowing. It will become more than it has been, and carry in itself some measure of immortality. If met poorly, or with the wrong sort of weakness, the crisis will act toward the clouding of the life. It will become less than it should have been, and begin to carry in itself its own ever-present decay.
A crisis is a showing of the self, but it is also a choosing of the self. What are we made of? Let us see, now! Let us decide! This is a wonderful, fearful thing.
Our culture has become saturated with the political and cultural language of crisis for decades. Religious and political leaders of every imaginable disposition have used the language of emergency and disaster with terrible carelessness. This is a real problem, because, like the proverbial boy crying wolf, every misuse of certain ideas dilutes their strength. Then when, eventually, they are needed, they might not work quite right anymore. People will be exhausted. They will be bored. They will have heard it all before. If someone in the building is always yanking the fire alarm, eventually we all stop running outside.
With that said, our time is, right now, being revealed as one of spiritual crisis. What is good, worthy, lovely, free, and human is in danger. The roots of this crisis are spiritual, and very deep—beyond culture, politics, or social behaviors. The branches of this crisis are taking the form of corrupted technology (tech that de-humanizes the human), infected ideas (viral concepts and anti-words that degrade the ability to think or speak with clarity or common meaning), and degraded politics (which monstrously and inexorably attempt to elevate the profile of government to a position that is monstrous, degrading and possibly idolatrous for the common person). The fruit of this crisis, so far, appears to be discord between neighbors, confusion at every level of the self, hatred toward strangers, disdain for what is not well understood, mockery of gentleness, and a general disturbing of the peace at every level of common life.
It must be stressed that this crisis is not, in its foundation, political. To blame politics would be like blaming a puppet for the action of the hand inside it. The crisis is one of Who am I? and Who are we? and I do not believe that a healthy answer to that question is to be found in politics at all.
I will be writing more on this, but for now, I would like to share with you an essay that I wrote quite early last year on several of these points. It is called “In the Presence of Mine Enemies,” and it encapsulates my thoughts in an attempt at encouragement.
From the piece:
I will venture that I know something about you. Perhaps things are going very well for you, or perhaps they are going very poorly, but in either case, I expect that you may be “losing heart.” What a cliché that phrase can be in the wrong mouth! But I mean it in the deepest sense of the term—you are becoming discouraged. The cœur (French for “heart”) of your courage draining away.
Perhaps, in spite of your belief, in spite of your best efforts, there is a sense of meaninglessness washing at your roots like the waves lap at a tree beside a swamp. It comes from everywhere and from nowhere, it seems. There is a wrongness in the world, difficult to name, and it is growing.
Only you know where the contours of this discouragement fall in your own life, but are they not there? It is in the fabric of our times. It drifts down to us with the changing of the years. You think it is politics, but politics are only the skin of the thing. So it is with culture, watching people on every side of you make fools of themselves because of fear, or ignorance, or one of the fashionable follies of our day. You would even chalk it to “human nature,” but it feels neither natural nor human. Perhaps, remembering some old preacher, you might blame it on a “fallen world,” but it does not feel that it is quite in the world at all.
Whatever it is, you feel it nosing itself against your heart.
As I have said before, the game is human attention. ALL human attention is a form of love. It is the core of all worship. Yes, even negative attention. It is the most valuable stuff in the world. The defense of the soul begins to be mounted when we begin, somewhat in the manner of a good monk, to become terribly doubtful that we are seeing the important bits of the real world, and begin to redirect our attention closer to the roots of things.
There’s much more in the essay, which I hope will speak to you.
If you would like to read it here on Substack, it is available in two parts at Ecstatic, the newsletter of Ekstasis magazine, which I serve in a contributing editorial capacity. (On that point, do check out the poetry and essays there if you’re looking for more to read in the general spirit here.)
Please take the time to go read this. While it’s for a Christian publication and uses religious language necessarily, I hope that it has something to say in this time regardless of your beliefs (or lack thereof). Please share as you’re able, if it speaks to you, and please, more than anything, heed the simple invitation that I place at the end.
And take heart.
Below (for after you read the full essay) a few more brief notes follow on this for my (very kind!) paid subscribers.
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