IF YOU WANT TO FEEL GOOD, MAYBE DON’T READ THIS
I want to find grace everywhere. So I work pretty hard to put on my rose-colored glasses and to feel inspired each day. But, as Blind Willie Johnson said, I just can’t keep from cryin’ sometimes. So just to allow a little room for pessimism alongside all these writings and links to inspiration and grace, here are some more negative reflections, for balance sake.
I was thinking about Paul Klee’s painting, Angelus Novus and the frightening words about the “new angel” of history by Walter Benjamin in section IX of his “Theses of the Philosophy of History.”
“A storm that we call progress…has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him in to the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.”
Here is the link to the whole essay: (https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html .
To put a nauseating spin on things of course, there’s always Franz Kafka ready to cast a pall, saying “There is infinite hope, but not for us.”
Miguel Unamuno’s Tragic Sense of Life is something I dip into when I have the patience to explore an underbelly of philosophy and human being.
And then there’s that unrepentant Marxist writer, Berthold Brecht, who said, “He who laughs has not yet heard the terrible tidings.” in his fateful poem “To Posterity” https://allpoetry.com/To-Posterity
Hannah Arendt wrote a book unfortunately relevant to the present time which is dark for so many and may be so in the future. How do we persevere? - Men in Dark Times. We need models, guides, even heroes for these times. Each one of us plays a pivotal role; each one of us brings saving grace , sometimes large or sometimes small, into this world.
Our love in this time may be unrequited. But that’s not a reason to give up. I’m reminded of both the beauty and difficulty of life by Little Feat’s - Love is a Perfect Imperfection….perhaps we can Find a River reminding us of the healing flow of life. And the wondrous Sandy Denny sings to us about all the changes maybe we’ll see By the Time It Gets Dark.
That some people will find ways to honor and embody “eternal values,” while the rest of the world goes to hell, is a hope that lives on. Every shadow exists because some light surrounds it.
The Catholic priest, Romano Guardini, in his “The End of the Modern World”, predicts,
“The world to come will be filled with animosity and danger, but it will be a world open and clean….Loneliness in faith will be terrible. Love will disappear from the face of the public world (Matthew xxiii, 12), but more precious will that love be which flows from one lonely person to another, involving a courage of the heart born from the immediacy of the love of God as it was made known in Christ.”
Similarly Martin Buber at the end of his masterful essay, “The Education of Character” says.
“Today, indeed, in the hour of upheaval, the eternal is sifted from the pseudo-eternal. That which flashed into the primal radiance and blurred the primal sound will be extinguished and silenced, for it has failed before the horror of the new confusion and the questioning soul has unmasked its futility. Nothing remains but what rises above the abyss of today’s monstrous problems, as above every abyss of every time: the wing-beat of the spirit and the creative world. But he who can see and hear out of unity will also behold and discern again what can be beheld and discerned eternally. The educator who helps to bring man back to his own unity will help to put him again face to face with God.”
Angelus Novus - Paul Klee