Terrific, thank you! My teens and I have been ruminating on similar things in this time of 'social movements' and 'social justice' - St. Theophan writes about how you always know what to be doing - being Christ everywhere you are - that each one that comes before you is where it happens - that generalized groups are made up of souls needing our love. Blessings to you
So glad it hits home for you all! I'd be interested the name of the book/source where I could read St. Theophan's words you mention? Right on the mark.
If we slow and quieten down enough the inner Christ can be witnessed in the most unexpected places .
In a moment where time felt like it stood still my attention was drawn to my 16 year old autistic son (who can most often feel hard to reach and connect with emotionally) stooping down to pick up a snail who was sauntering across our driveway and was positioned right behind the wheel of our car . I was getting ready to leave (in the car and witnessed this through the window. He knew I’d have driven in reverse over the snail (not seeing it) so he moved the snail off the drive and into the grass. He did not know he was being watched and there was no mention of it.
I didn’t expect that he would even see never mind consider the fate of the snail . How very wrong I was . I believe in an inherent goodness in us all and we are quite often misperceiving each other.
I’ve felt for a long time time that the most important thing to do when someone asks me for help / money / whatever, is not just to give them what they’re asking for, if I can, but to look them in the eye, to make a human connection. And it’s surprising how challenging that can sometimes be.
A writer (whose posts on X are protected, so I can’t share link) wrote the following today:
“In my local McDonald’s an older woman appeared here about a week ago, who clearly was living in the corner of parking lot in a car overflowing with bags of junk.
For that week she became part of the dining room - with the corner table loaded with her stuff, the electronics and power strip snaking off to the outlet, the stench.
I didn’t speak to her, since she seemed to want to be alone, but some of the floor employees here did, one who’s also a mechanic, and this morning her car is gone because an employee had taken it to his friends shop (on his own dime) to fix it up — new battery, tires, filter, etc — get it running again, and then they pitched together to get her enough gas/food money to make it back to where she claimed she was going before she ran out of money and the car died
They didn’t make a big deal about this, and I only know because I asked what happened to her car. Instead they saw it as just one of those things you of course do.”
Brilliant read Meg. Your central message is so vitally important.
It struck me a while back that at so many university graduation ceremonies students hear the message "go and save/change the world!" Never does one hear "go and change your neighbourhood". But I strongly believe the world would be a much better place if the majority of us forgot about trying to save the world and instead just focused on being a positive influence in our local areas.
I recently listened to the talk that Jon Askonis gave at Luke Burgis’s NOVITĀTE conference, celebrating the work of René Girard. It was entitled, “The Eschatological Problem of Technology.” I was struck by many things in the talk and follow-up Q & A, but what really hit home was when Jon said that is was imperative that we stop trying to “save the world.”
I think that organizations and associations which stay grounded in the interpersonal (adhering to the principle of subsidiarity, properly understood) can still provide a context for that one-on-one relationship based in love: had it not been for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization, for example, I’d not have met the then-young girl I was matched with who so blessed my life, and truly became a member of our family. So, both/and?
"But I strongly believe the world would be a much better place if the majority of us forgot about trying to save the world and instead just focused on being a positive influence in our local areas." So good. Thanks for your writing as well, Hadden!
You might want to write about my son. He’s a young man (early 30’s) who is not part of a non-profit although he does teach at a private school. Email me suzannedicker@gmail.com if you are interested in learning more about him.
The title, opening painting and quote immediately made me think of the movie A Hidden Life and the scene where they pray as the church bell tolls....just sublime. The movie itself is slow and intimate, much like the message being advocated above. Thanks again for driving this point home.
Of course the title and quote are directly related to that movie, which had a profound impact on me. I'd completely forgotten about them praying as the church bell tolls, as it's been several years since I watched it. Malick is a master iconographer and so intentional about the images he creates. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd had Millet's Angelus in mind when he created that scene.
Thank you for writing this! I just finished my Master's in journalism this May and I totally relate to knowing that writing isn't enough. We have to live differently.
Add to that the slide in journalism over the last several years to being nearly one hundred percent advocacy all the time (very little holding power to account) and the profession has lost a lot of its allure for many. However, that means there's room for something new. Congrats on your degree!
Hello Meg, and welcome back. And this story really lands well with me, I have been listening to and reading the work of Ivan Illich, and your story echoes his themes. He says that the Church went wrong when it tried to reify love, that taking the spontaneous and emotional response between human beings and putting that into institutions like hospitals and schools was the start of where the modern world went wrong. He even calls the Church the first NGO and the genesis of the modern state which replaces our God given impulse to care for each other with a dessicated set of virtues which requires obdience rather than love.
I am also thinking of the work of Ian McGilchrist and his observation of the left/right hemisphere, the right is the one that sees us in relationship with the other and holds the other in a loving gaze, and the left is the one which places the other at a distance and has an instrumental approach to others. So what I think is that Illich's observations is that the Anti Christ is when we shift our attentional focus from communion with the other, to treating others as objects of pity/concern. And that is what is so dangerous and difficult, detecting that power shift within ourselves, going from feeling with someone, to feeling for someone. I hope this makes sense.
Absolutely it does. Thanks for adding light from both of these authors. The idea of being self-aware and detecting the power shift within ourselves is very helpful. In both of these examples, I wonder if one could call the "shift" that happens the moment when pride comes in. To love the one in front of you, simply and at cost to self, is an act of humility. To think we can be "above" and help via a system seems a subtle shift that feels like a whisper of pride.
Illich also makes a distinction between tools and systems, tools are something which we have, systems are something that we are in. It is an abduction of love to devolve to a system what we should be freely giving from our hearts, so there’s almost laziness there as well.
But pride is definitely a problem our ‘saviour’ complex, I will help you because it makes me feel better about myself. The Good Samaritan these days would ring 911 and then go in the evening news talking about how much he had helped this poor guy he saw at the side of the road....
Hi Meg, just had a couple of thoughts that I would like to run by you.
Firstly, our Enlightment mentality privileged sight above all the other senses. Thus, other aspects of our embodied nature like smell and touch have been completely ignored in Christianity from this time.
It's an interesting thought. Did Enlightenment mentality privilege sight over the other senses? Likely, though I'd like to read some other thinkers on that. Smell, touch, hearing and taste would therefore be ignored, following your proposed line of thought.
However, I'd suggest that depends on what stream of the faith you're speaking of. Both Catholocism and Orthodoxy still make effective use of smell (incense, anointing oil), sound (bells, song, spoken word), touch (kissing icons, greeting each other, the sign of the cross), and even taste (the Eucharist). Of course, many other these things happen in other streams as well.
Interestingly, the charismatic stream also emphasizes the senses, making use of anointing oil, laying on hands for healing prayer, things like sounding the ram's horn, dance, etc. And many of the senses come into play in "hearing" from the Lord as well, something that again is common across the streams, but which is perhaps better taught in renewal stream circles.
Thanks for an interesting comment. Curious how you see this tying into the piece above -- or was it not necessarily intended to?
I must admit, it doesn’t necessarily tie into your piece, other than your piece sparked curiosity on the benefits of ‘slow senses’. I came across this piece in the Havard magazine onhttps://www.harvardmagazine.com/2013/10/the-power-of-patience
Jesus talks about his message being only accessible to those with ‘eyes to see, and ears to hear’ and I wonder if this is what he was trying to get at. You cannot access the Kingdom of God if you don’t pay sustained deep attention to your senses, all of them.
I think the line in that piece that was a light bulb moment was when she said that we think looking is the same as seeing.
‘just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness.’
And what I think has happened over the last 300 years is that our sensual perception has both narrowed and sped up. We are children of the Enlightment, our eyes flick over the surface of reality, we look, but we don’t see anymore. And the pace of life has sped up (interesting that this is also the time that caffeine became a key part of Western lifestyles)
So our big mistake is that the world is immediately accessible to our visual senses.
Apologies if this is off track but I found this so exciting I couldn’t wait to share!
And of course I take your point about Orthodoxy and Catholicism still retaining a connection to the other senses ‘smells and bells’ is how my other half describes Catholicism.
The Bible and Quran are very explicit about not making images of God.
Perhaps this stemmed from an awareness that the visual sense more than any other is deceptive.
God comes in a still small voice...
But sorry if this is all a bit distracting, from your original essay. I just have a feeling that this is some how important...
No worries at all, these comment sections are for conversation, so I welcome it. I was only trying to understand the link you might be making to the above piece.
I'll soon open a chat section for subscribers to bring up topics like this that are on their minds. Not sure if it will devolve into people advertising their owns subs, but anyway we'll give it a try!
I'm intrigued to read the Harvard piece. Thanks for sharing it. Yeah, we're used to shallow attending to and receiving of the world around us, I'd agree.
Yet to be fully human means to be fully embodied. Many people who come to faith as adults find that their world suddenly becomes more alive, more real. My dad certainly had that experience. He told me that when he woke up the next day after dedicating his life to follow Christ, the colours of the world looked more vibrant, the air seemed fresher and invigorating, and everything felt more alive to him.
I've been listening to Justin Brierley's podcast The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, and interviewee after interviewee says something similar. So that's why I can't accept that true Christian faith is Enlightenment-dulled. But are our churches often Enlightenment-dulled? Absolutely.
https://justinbrierley.com/surprisingrebirth/ Here's that link if anyone is interested. I highly recommend this podcast. Well-researched, erudite without being esoteric, humble, warm and welcoming. Paul and Martin Shaw are interviewees, along with many other names which will be familiar to readers. Scroll down to "Episodes and Show Notes" to see what I mean.
Having read the Harvard piece, I think I see the connection you're making. Whether attending deeply to art, a person, creation, etc. we only "see" them when we give them the deep attention of love.
"What this exercise shows students is that just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness. Or, in slightly more general terms: access is not synonymous with learning. What turns access into learning is time and strategic patience.
"The art historian David Joselit has described paintings as deep reservoirs of temporal experience—“time batteries”—“exorbitant stockpiles” of experience and information. I would suggest that the same holds true for anything a student might want to study at Harvard University—a star, a sonnet, a chromosome. There are infinite depths of information at any point in the students’ education. They just need to take the time to unlock that wealth."
Perhaps my friend in the above story "saw" the man under the overpass more deeply because she attended to him. Then she attended to her dream which showed her how the Lord saw the man.
Exactly Meg, that is precisely what I intuited from your piece (and in my rush to comment, I hadn't worked this through fully, sorry)
Love is sustained deep attention, as one of my favourite quotes 'Jesus looked at him and loved him'.
And thanks for the film suggestion, the Hidden Life is now on my must see list. The painting of the Angelus is also an example of what I would describe as kaironic time https://www.umcyoungpeople.org/lead/what-is-kairos-time
a disruption in the temporal cycle to allow space for God. It is interesting that the national Irish broadcaster RTE, still broadcasts the Angelus bell every day at 6 o clock.
Terrific, thank you! My teens and I have been ruminating on similar things in this time of 'social movements' and 'social justice' - St. Theophan writes about how you always know what to be doing - being Christ everywhere you are - that each one that comes before you is where it happens - that generalized groups are made up of souls needing our love. Blessings to you
So glad it hits home for you all! I'd be interested the name of the book/source where I could read St. Theophan's words you mention? Right on the mark.
The Spiritual Life & How to be Attuned to it - https://svspress.com/the-spiritual-life-and-how-to-be-attuned-to-it-new-edition/ full of riches :)
Thank you!
Hi Meg.
If we slow and quieten down enough the inner Christ can be witnessed in the most unexpected places .
In a moment where time felt like it stood still my attention was drawn to my 16 year old autistic son (who can most often feel hard to reach and connect with emotionally) stooping down to pick up a snail who was sauntering across our driveway and was positioned right behind the wheel of our car . I was getting ready to leave (in the car and witnessed this through the window. He knew I’d have driven in reverse over the snail (not seeing it) so he moved the snail off the drive and into the grass. He did not know he was being watched and there was no mention of it.
I didn’t expect that he would even see never mind consider the fate of the snail . How very wrong I was . I believe in an inherent goodness in us all and we are quite often misperceiving each other.
We are quite often misperceiving each other, I agree. It's a lovely story of care. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for this.
<3
I’ve felt for a long time time that the most important thing to do when someone asks me for help / money / whatever, is not just to give them what they’re asking for, if I can, but to look them in the eye, to make a human connection. And it’s surprising how challenging that can sometimes be.
Isn't it? (The more we stare at our screens, I think the harder it becomes, too.) To be fully human is something precious.
A writer (whose posts on X are protected, so I can’t share link) wrote the following today:
“In my local McDonald’s an older woman appeared here about a week ago, who clearly was living in the corner of parking lot in a car overflowing with bags of junk.
For that week she became part of the dining room - with the corner table loaded with her stuff, the electronics and power strip snaking off to the outlet, the stench.
I didn’t speak to her, since she seemed to want to be alone, but some of the floor employees here did, one who’s also a mechanic, and this morning her car is gone because an employee had taken it to his friends shop (on his own dime) to fix it up — new battery, tires, filter, etc — get it running again, and then they pitched together to get her enough gas/food money to make it back to where she claimed she was going before she ran out of money and the car died
They didn’t make a big deal about this, and I only know because I asked what happened to her car. Instead they saw it as just one of those things you of course do.”
The Substack algo just brought this up for me! Apparently the writer is also here on Substack. Thanks, Linda!
Brilliant read Meg. Your central message is so vitally important.
It struck me a while back that at so many university graduation ceremonies students hear the message "go and save/change the world!" Never does one hear "go and change your neighbourhood". But I strongly believe the world would be a much better place if the majority of us forgot about trying to save the world and instead just focused on being a positive influence in our local areas.
I recently listened to the talk that Jon Askonis gave at Luke Burgis’s NOVITĀTE conference, celebrating the work of René Girard. It was entitled, “The Eschatological Problem of Technology.” I was struck by many things in the talk and follow-up Q & A, but what really hit home was when Jon said that is was imperative that we stop trying to “save the world.”
I think that organizations and associations which stay grounded in the interpersonal (adhering to the principle of subsidiarity, properly understood) can still provide a context for that one-on-one relationship based in love: had it not been for the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization, for example, I’d not have met the then-young girl I was matched with who so blessed my life, and truly became a member of our family. So, both/and?
"But I strongly believe the world would be a much better place if the majority of us forgot about trying to save the world and instead just focused on being a positive influence in our local areas." So good. Thanks for your writing as well, Hadden!
So wise and encouraging! Just what I needed today!
Such a beautiful reminder to help those in your path, right in front of you. Just what I needed today. Thank you.
Wow. Thank you for this.
You might want to write about my son. He’s a young man (early 30’s) who is not part of a non-profit although he does teach at a private school. Email me suzannedicker@gmail.com if you are interested in learning more about him.
I’ll do that, thank you!
Thank you, this was a wonderful reminder of the important things we can do every day.
The title, opening painting and quote immediately made me think of the movie A Hidden Life and the scene where they pray as the church bell tolls....just sublime. The movie itself is slow and intimate, much like the message being advocated above. Thanks again for driving this point home.
Of course the title and quote are directly related to that movie, which had a profound impact on me. I'd completely forgotten about them praying as the church bell tolls, as it's been several years since I watched it. Malick is a master iconographer and so intentional about the images he creates. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd had Millet's Angelus in mind when he created that scene.
Fantastic. It had a similar effect on me and still lingers in my subconscious as time goes on. Truly iconic.
Thank you for writing this! I just finished my Master's in journalism this May and I totally relate to knowing that writing isn't enough. We have to live differently.
Add to that the slide in journalism over the last several years to being nearly one hundred percent advocacy all the time (very little holding power to account) and the profession has lost a lot of its allure for many. However, that means there's room for something new. Congrats on your degree!
Thanks!
Hello Meg, and welcome back. And this story really lands well with me, I have been listening to and reading the work of Ivan Illich, and your story echoes his themes. He says that the Church went wrong when it tried to reify love, that taking the spontaneous and emotional response between human beings and putting that into institutions like hospitals and schools was the start of where the modern world went wrong. He even calls the Church the first NGO and the genesis of the modern state which replaces our God given impulse to care for each other with a dessicated set of virtues which requires obdience rather than love.
I am also thinking of the work of Ian McGilchrist and his observation of the left/right hemisphere, the right is the one that sees us in relationship with the other and holds the other in a loving gaze, and the left is the one which places the other at a distance and has an instrumental approach to others. So what I think is that Illich's observations is that the Anti Christ is when we shift our attentional focus from communion with the other, to treating others as objects of pity/concern. And that is what is so dangerous and difficult, detecting that power shift within ourselves, going from feeling with someone, to feeling for someone. I hope this makes sense.
Absolutely it does. Thanks for adding light from both of these authors. The idea of being self-aware and detecting the power shift within ourselves is very helpful. In both of these examples, I wonder if one could call the "shift" that happens the moment when pride comes in. To love the one in front of you, simply and at cost to self, is an act of humility. To think we can be "above" and help via a system seems a subtle shift that feels like a whisper of pride.
I agree.
Illich also makes a distinction between tools and systems, tools are something which we have, systems are something that we are in. It is an abduction of love to devolve to a system what we should be freely giving from our hearts, so there’s almost laziness there as well.
But pride is definitely a problem our ‘saviour’ complex, I will help you because it makes me feel better about myself. The Good Samaritan these days would ring 911 and then go in the evening news talking about how much he had helped this poor guy he saw at the side of the road....
Sorry about spelling errors!
Hi Meg, just had a couple of thoughts that I would like to run by you.
Firstly, our Enlightment mentality privileged sight above all the other senses. Thus, other aspects of our embodied nature like smell and touch have been completely ignored in Christianity from this time.
It's an interesting thought. Did Enlightenment mentality privilege sight over the other senses? Likely, though I'd like to read some other thinkers on that. Smell, touch, hearing and taste would therefore be ignored, following your proposed line of thought.
However, I'd suggest that depends on what stream of the faith you're speaking of. Both Catholocism and Orthodoxy still make effective use of smell (incense, anointing oil), sound (bells, song, spoken word), touch (kissing icons, greeting each other, the sign of the cross), and even taste (the Eucharist). Of course, many other these things happen in other streams as well.
Interestingly, the charismatic stream also emphasizes the senses, making use of anointing oil, laying on hands for healing prayer, things like sounding the ram's horn, dance, etc. And many of the senses come into play in "hearing" from the Lord as well, something that again is common across the streams, but which is perhaps better taught in renewal stream circles.
Thanks for an interesting comment. Curious how you see this tying into the piece above -- or was it not necessarily intended to?
I must admit, it doesn’t necessarily tie into your piece, other than your piece sparked curiosity on the benefits of ‘slow senses’. I came across this piece in the Havard magazine onhttps://www.harvardmagazine.com/2013/10/the-power-of-patience
Jesus talks about his message being only accessible to those with ‘eyes to see, and ears to hear’ and I wonder if this is what he was trying to get at. You cannot access the Kingdom of God if you don’t pay sustained deep attention to your senses, all of them.
I think the line in that piece that was a light bulb moment was when she said that we think looking is the same as seeing.
‘just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness.’
And what I think has happened over the last 300 years is that our sensual perception has both narrowed and sped up. We are children of the Enlightment, our eyes flick over the surface of reality, we look, but we don’t see anymore. And the pace of life has sped up (interesting that this is also the time that caffeine became a key part of Western lifestyles)
So our big mistake is that the world is immediately accessible to our visual senses.
Apologies if this is off track but I found this so exciting I couldn’t wait to share!
And of course I take your point about Orthodoxy and Catholicism still retaining a connection to the other senses ‘smells and bells’ is how my other half describes Catholicism.
The Bible and Quran are very explicit about not making images of God.
Perhaps this stemmed from an awareness that the visual sense more than any other is deceptive.
God comes in a still small voice...
But sorry if this is all a bit distracting, from your original essay. I just have a feeling that this is some how important...
I think it might have been better to post this under a separate thread, but I can't figure out how!
No worries at all, these comment sections are for conversation, so I welcome it. I was only trying to understand the link you might be making to the above piece.
I'll soon open a chat section for subscribers to bring up topics like this that are on their minds. Not sure if it will devolve into people advertising their owns subs, but anyway we'll give it a try!
I'm intrigued to read the Harvard piece. Thanks for sharing it. Yeah, we're used to shallow attending to and receiving of the world around us, I'd agree.
Yet to be fully human means to be fully embodied. Many people who come to faith as adults find that their world suddenly becomes more alive, more real. My dad certainly had that experience. He told me that when he woke up the next day after dedicating his life to follow Christ, the colours of the world looked more vibrant, the air seemed fresher and invigorating, and everything felt more alive to him.
I've been listening to Justin Brierley's podcast The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, and interviewee after interviewee says something similar. So that's why I can't accept that true Christian faith is Enlightenment-dulled. But are our churches often Enlightenment-dulled? Absolutely.
https://justinbrierley.com/surprisingrebirth/ Here's that link if anyone is interested. I highly recommend this podcast. Well-researched, erudite without being esoteric, humble, warm and welcoming. Paul and Martin Shaw are interviewees, along with many other names which will be familiar to readers. Scroll down to "Episodes and Show Notes" to see what I mean.
Having read the Harvard piece, I think I see the connection you're making. Whether attending deeply to art, a person, creation, etc. we only "see" them when we give them the deep attention of love.
This quote from the article touches this:
"What this exercise shows students is that just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness. Or, in slightly more general terms: access is not synonymous with learning. What turns access into learning is time and strategic patience.
"The art historian David Joselit has described paintings as deep reservoirs of temporal experience—“time batteries”—“exorbitant stockpiles” of experience and information. I would suggest that the same holds true for anything a student might want to study at Harvard University—a star, a sonnet, a chromosome. There are infinite depths of information at any point in the students’ education. They just need to take the time to unlock that wealth."
Perhaps my friend in the above story "saw" the man under the overpass more deeply because she attended to him. Then she attended to her dream which showed her how the Lord saw the man.
Exactly Meg, that is precisely what I intuited from your piece (and in my rush to comment, I hadn't worked this through fully, sorry)
Love is sustained deep attention, as one of my favourite quotes 'Jesus looked at him and loved him'.
And thanks for the film suggestion, the Hidden Life is now on my must see list. The painting of the Angelus is also an example of what I would describe as kaironic time https://www.umcyoungpeople.org/lead/what-is-kairos-time
a disruption in the temporal cycle to allow space for God. It is interesting that the national Irish broadcaster RTE, still broadcasts the Angelus bell every day at 6 o clock.