Well, the political conventions have ended, and the "real" campaign begins.  What will it hold?  Though it's hard to say, specifically, we can be confident that it will undoubtedly involve hyperbole, invective, lies, and slander, all of which will be aimed at the other side.  Unfortunately, I fear that the bulk of such things will emanate from the party that claims (or at least wants to convince people that it does) to have God on its side.

     Why?  Power is a dangerous thing.  As I was noting last week, power needs religion much more than religion needs power.  When religion employs power in the pursuit of its goals, it stumbles badly, very badly.  Similarly, when power employs religion in the service of its worldly objectives, it misses the point, usually deliberately.

     The frequently cited evidence that Pope Pius XII systematically ignored or failed to respond to the Holocaust during World War II is a case in point.  Preserving the Church's power, it seemed, was more important than saving Jewish lives.  In our present day, the equation has not changed.  Is theological preservation more important than personal integrity?

     Ah, August.  As this most glorious month winds to its conclusion, I think occasionally of some words of writer Patricia Hampl.  In talking about her younger years, she asked, "Is this a happy childhood--the unfettered experience of the strangeness of existence, the pleasure of being caught up in the arms of creation?"

     In many ways, August evinces the "strangeness" of existence.  Its effusiveness of life belies its silent and underlying prelude to and anticipation of the coming autumnal "death."  But existence cannot be any other way.  Even Eden had days and nights.  We love the shimmering glow of August even as we may cower before what follows it.

     Yet August's demise is hardly cause for alarm.  It is rather a call to rejoice.  To rejoice in the incredible rhythms of a simultaneously strange and wondrous creation.  To rejoice in a creation which could only have been set into motion by an equally befuddling and wondrous God.

     That's the glory, that's the mystery.  And that's the vexation.  But would we really want it any other way?

      Most historians of religion know that, the world over, most cultures have entertained the legitimacy of a story that seeks to explain why human beings, amazing and magnificent as they are, persist in doing harm to themselves, each other, and the world.  The most well known is likely Christianity's account of the Fall, the moment in time when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

     In reflecting on this story many centuries after it was written down, the American writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that, "It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made that we exist.  That discovery is called the Fall of Man."  In his own way, Emerson has reworked a line from seventeenth century British writer John Milton who, talking about the aftermath of the Fall in his Paradise Lost, notes that Adam and Eve now "possess a paradise" within themselves for the life ahead.  In other words, yes, Adam and Eve have discovered their "dark side."  On the other hand, in so doing, per Milton, they have come into and engendered a more profound knowledge of who they are.

     Each and every day we moderns wrestle with who we are.  We daily balance the light of our created glory with darkness of our folly.  We learn much about ourselves, only to discover that we do not always like what we see.  But we keep trying to learn more.  It's like Pandora's box:  we continue to unleash the terrors of existence, but we also continue to render ourselves ever more capable of learning from them.

     Like it or not, in the story of Adam and Eve we see the path for us to find out, guided and undergirded in natural and supernatural ways, who we most are. 

     In a speech he gave at Dordt College in January of 2016, Donald Trump told his audience, nearly all of whom were evangelical Christians, that, if they elected him as president, Christianity "will have power."

     But what's true power?  It's not to dominate, socially, culturally, politically, or even religiously.  It's not to engage in aggrandizement.  And it's not to win or finish first.

     Besides, what does finishing "first" really mean?  As Zeno, the Greek Stoic, observed in one of his famous paradoxes many millennia ago, even if the hare finishes first, he really does not:  the infinitude of the division of the space between start and finish guarantees it.  The tortoise will still prevail.

     True power is to serve.  At the height of a physical affliction from which he was suffering, the apostle Paul received a message from God.  It said that God's favor, God's grace was sufficient for him, that "power is perfected in weakness."  It is when we humble ourselves to serve others, when we recognize and acknowledge our faults and limitations, when we set aside our own needs and ambitions to ensure the same for others:  it is at this point that we are most powerful.  In weakness is strength.

     American Christianity will never browbeat or politically overwhelm anyone into agreeing with it.  That's a fool's errand.  Jesus didn't beat people over the head with his message.  He served them.

     Religious power is a misguided delusion.  In the end, final purpose eludes us all.

     As some readers know, last week and this week have/will feature the quadrennial political conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties in the U.S.  From these gatherings (which, due to Covid restrictions, are largely virtual) the parties' presidential nominees will emerge.  And the election campaign will commence in earnest.

     I suspect that readers, at home and abroad, have a wide range of opinion regarding which candidate will be the most suitable president.  That's fine:  we're all different.  And we all have varying convictions, wants, and desires.  

After all, we're only human.  

     That's the point.  We're only humans, humans who are living in a world suspended between forces, natural and supernatural, well beyond our control.  We delude ourselves if we think we know, always and absolutely, who the "right" candidate is.  For what is "right" is often no more than the product of our individual confirmation biases.  Although some of us claim to have a transcendent standard of morality, we interpret that standard in immanence:  we are not clairvoyant.

     When Israel's God chose David to be the nation's next king, he didn't look at exterior success or appearance.  He looked at the heart.

     Faith is hard.  Perhaps you've heard of the recent passing of Marvin Creamer, who died earlier this week at the age of 104.  A long time professor of geography at Glassboro State College in New York, Creamer is most famous for making a circumnavigation of the globe without map or compass.  How did he do it?  Equipped with an immense and highly precise knowledge of patterns and colors in water and waves, the feel and flow of the wind, and the activity of ocean currents, Creamer was able to use subtleties in such things to detect, at all times, exactly where he was and, trusting in his knowledge, keep going.

     That was the key:  trust.  Creamer trusted in what he knew to see him through. And return safely.  Not that he used religious faith; perhaps he did, but I have no idea.  In his own way, however, Creamer is a picture of faith:  he trusted in what he knew to make his way through what he couldn't fully see.

     Whether one has faith in herself, her family, her abilities, her wealth, or even, gasp, God, faith is faith:  believing and trusting in the fact of goodness when we cannot see.

     It's the hardest thing, yes, but in a capricious and unpredictable world, it's the only thing.  Especially if there is a God.

     For if there is not, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

      Over the last few days, a couple of anniversaries happened.  One was remembered by the world, the other remembered in America.  As any student of world history knows, August 15 marked the 75th anniversary of "V-J Day," the day in 1945 on which Japan surrendered to the Allies, thereby ending World War II.  Even though this surrender was undoubtedly accelerated by the horror of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the entire planet nonetheless rejoiced.  War, at least for a moment, was over.

     In America, August 18 marked the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Although most of us know that, unfortunately, it was to be many more decades before all women were actually able to physically vote, the amendment's passage was nonetheless a signal achievement.  It recognized that, surprise, surprise, women were equal to men and entirely capable of voting in a rational way.

     Theologically speaking, whether the amendment's proponents knew it or not, they were affirming the fact of all humanity's creation in the image of God.  Why?  They were arguing that each person has fundamental worth, a worth exceeding what anyone else might decide it is.  Similarly, in ending World War II (although we can debate almost ad infinitum the ethics of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan), those involved agreed, again, whether they knew it or not, that humanity had worth exceeding what anyone might assign to it.  Why?  Once more:  people are made in the image of God.

     Remove God and we have only ourselves to measure our worth.  And as World War II amply demonstrates, this rarely ends well.  Likewise, absent God, we really have no reason to give women the vote other than our own biases and predilections.  That's in part in why the men of America took so long to agree otherwise.

      "Writing about the musician Bob Dylan a number of years ago, critic Richard Meltzer observed that Dylan's intention in writing his music was "to free man by rescuing him from meaning, rather than free man through meaning."  If Meltzer is correct, or even if he is not, his observation says volumes about how many people view the concept of meaning.

    It is a view with roots in the late nineteenth century.  When philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche noted that society had, by ignoring God, killed him, he added that, on balance, this was a positive development in humanity's journey.  As God once provided a fulcrum by which we might measure meaning, his absence, Nietzsche suggested, offers people a new way to view such things.  We no longer need "meaning," he noted; we are better served to jettison it altogether.  It restricts our progress, it limits our ken.  It is really not important.

     Better then, per Meltzer on Dylan, to move away from focusing on meaning to instead focus on living in spite of it.

     Fair enough.  However, the notion that we can ignore meaning indicates that we cannot, in truth, live without it.

     Writing about the French Impressionist recently, an art critic remarked that Cezanne drew his "religion from his art."  In other words, as this critic saw it, in contrast to some people who formulate their art on the basis of their religion, Cezanne reversed the equation and instead formulated his religion on the basis of his art.  It's rather akin to a person who draws her religious inspiration from walking through a forest:  on the basis of her experience in the forest, she develops her religious perspective.  Yet Cezanne's art is something that, unlike a forest, he himself created.  Hence, as I am to understand the critic's argument, it is in the doing of his art, in the work of his creation, that Cezanne finds his religious moment.

     I find this idea particularly compelling when I consider the work of some artist with whom I am currently collaborating on an art/writing project.  As they do their art, these artists find themselves and, usually, a new facet of their spirituality.  It's not too far from existentialism's creed that what we do makes us who we are.  On the other hand, although I find various levels of validity in this perspective, I also note that, in the end, it makes us the end and beginning of our spirituality.  Yes, as human beings, we are inherently spiritual.  As I see it, however, it is our movements toward the spiritual that underscores that we are not alone in this vast cosmos.  If we are spiritual, there must be spiritual presence.  A presence that we did not make.

     Otherwise, we're just spinning our wheels.

      It's been nearly a week since the world remembered the day, seventy-five years ago, that a nuclear bomb was detonated on living human beings.  Hundreds of thousands of people in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki perished, most of them incinerated instantly, gone before they had a chance to know what was happening, and many others from the aftereffects of the radiation that the bombs unleashed.  It was a disaster of catastrophic proportion, a tragedy beyond sense and imagination.

          Although we can debate, perhaps endlessly, about whether the U.S. should have dropped the bombs, this misses the point.  On the one hand, the bombs demonstrate, albeit in deeply chilling fashion, the remarkable inventive capacity of the human being.  On the other hand, however, the bombs present, in horrific form, the full picture of human depravity, the human being's frightening ability to turn on its own, to dismiss the infinite value of its very self.  To forget who it is.

     The bombs underscore that, absent a transcendent moral anchor, humanity will forever struggle to find its way.  To wit, without a God, is anything really moral?

    

     Hieronymus Bosch, the late Renaissance Dutch painter, left us a curious legacy.  On the one hand, his art seems to reflect a wish for the traditional, the staid and religiously structured medieval past that the Renaissance left behind.  On the other hand, it evinces a desire for a breakage from tradition, a severing of ties to what had long been considered to be morally valid.  His "The Garden of Earthly Delights" is a prime example.

     In a way, we're all like Bosch.  Most of us appreciate tradition, most of us value the tried and true, and few of us entertain a wish to overthrow the existing order completely.  Conversely, however, not too many of us wish to maintain things exactly as they have always been.  We wouldn't be fully human if we did.

     Consider religion.  Repeatedly, the many religions which have emerged in the course of human history have advocated a new way, a fresh way of looking at the world.  That's their appeal:  a richer perspective on existence.  We may agree or disagree with any or all of the world's religions, but we cannot deny how they have opened new and, usually positive, avenues of thinking for billions and billions of people.

    It's tricky, this humanness of ours is.  We constantly balance a compelling desire for stability with an equally compelling desire to undo it, to undo it for a greater day.  As we should.  God didn't make us to stand still.

     Testifying to the U. S. Senate Committee on Women's Suffrage in 1898, Elizabeth Cady Stanton observed, "There is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea:  the solitude of self . . . to it only omniscience is permitted to enter.  Such is individual life."

    Ms. Stanton makes a telling point about the nature of the human being.  As she notes, ultimately, all people are individuals.  That is, although humans are made to be in fellowship with other human beings, they remain individual entities, entities in which there is a place that, in ways no one or nothing else can, defines them:  the very deepest part of their soul.

     And it in this depth of being that we find what most matters to who we are as human beings:  the presence of transcendence, the fact of omniscience, the order which undergirds the cosmos.  We find our connection to the seminal principle of existence.

     Without this point of depth, as Ms. Stanton suggests, we are beacons of inner solitude, grand bastions of individuality without any larger point.

     Do you wear a mask?  Do you believe that freedom is being able to do exactly what you always want to do?  That you're free to do what you wish so long as you do not harm others?

     Fair enough.  However, the challenge making this assertion is that you become the arbiter of what constitutes harm to others, people most of whom you do not know.

     In writing, many centuries ago, about the right to liberty, John Stuart Mill observed that, absent a government rooted in popular consent, liberty is futile.  We might even go a step further and suggest that, absent a measure of transcendence, liberty is meaningless:  how can we insist that we are free if the world has no point?

     When many decades ago the rock band the Who sang that freedom tastes of reality, whether they knew it or not, they were onto something.  When we make freedom the path to reality, we must also affirm that we live in the shadow of a larger presence.

     Even avowed atheist Jean Paul Sartre acknowledged that if there is no God, freedom is no more than useless passion.  It goes neither forward or back:  it just sits in its own miasma.

     All this is to say:  wear a mask!

      They called it "Stalin's Famine."  In an effort to modernize Russia, dictator Josef Stalin, in the 1930s, systematically forced millions of Ukrainian peasants off their family farm into massive agricultural collectives.  And the wheat they grew, he did't leave for them.  He shipped it overseas to fund his modernizing efforts.

     And millions and millions of people died.  Until an Englishman named Gareth Jones, whose work has been recently immortalized in a film entitled "Mr. Jones," sneaked into Ukraine and reported on what he found, the rest of the world had no idea.

     Then it did.  Sadly, however, the pragmatics of international relations demanded that America and Britain, the leaders of the Western war effort against Adolf Hitler, establish good relations with Stalin to win the war.  They had to overlook the famine to achieve what they considered to be a greater good.  It was utilitarianism at its finest.

        This notwithstanding, Jones did the planet a favor:  he exposed the perfidy of a philosophy that, although its founder intended for it to liberate, will, if mismanaged, do exactly the opposite.  It's a perplexing irony of who we are that we often build liberation on the back of oppression.

      To wit, it's hard to be free in metaphysical chains.

     Perhaps you've heard of German musician Richard Wagner.  He's most famous for two things.  One, his "Ring" cycle opera (the most well known part of which is probably "Gotterdammerung" ("The End or the Twilight of the Gods").  Two, the influence that his music exercised, and not in a positive way, on Adolf Hitler.

     Wagner's "Ring" is a very long opera.  Only those who really like it are wiling to sit through its seventeen hour length.  The plot is involved and complicated.  And rich with Norse mythology.  It's a singularly powerful work.

     In thinking about the "Ring" as I read a study of it recently, I was reminded that, at its core, the "Ring" is about the point of life.  It says this, however, in a deliberately exasperating way.  As this study put, the "Ring" argues that although love is beautiful, it is worth nothing.

     In other words, although we should love and treasure love and life, we should also know that when they end, everything else does, too.  It's not difficult to see how this thought undergirded Naziism:  if there's no afterlife, there's no meaning.  Therefore, as British occultist Aleister Crowley once observed, whatever is met:  do whatever you wish.  You're going to die anyway.

     For some, this is simply accepting the brave futility of existence.  For others, however, if mythology is to mean anything, anything at all, existence must have a deeper underpinning.  Otherwise, why even dream of it?