How Far Can We Go?

She really captures the spirit of the book well in her review.

Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of three (so far) and husband of one.

I have not heard the whole album yet (it came to my attention too late for me to ask Santa for a copy), but one song has gotten some airplay here”  My Heart Is Broken:

Here are the lyrics:

I will wander ’til the end of time, torn away from you.

I pulled away to face the pain.
I close my eyes and drift away.
Over the fear that I will never find
A way to heal my soul.
And I will wander ’til the end of time
Torn away from you.

My heart is broken
Sweet sleep, my dark angel
Deliver us from sorrow’s hold
(Over my heart).

I can’t go on living this way
But I can’t go back the way I came
Chained to this fear that I will never find
A way to heal my soul
And I will wander ’til the end of time
Half alive without you

My heart is broken
Sweet sleep, my dark angel
Deliver us

Change – open your eyes to the light
I denied it all so long, oh so long
Say goodbye, goodbye

My heart is broken
Release me, I can’t hold on
Deliver us
My heart is broken
Sweet sleep, my dark angel
Deliver us
My heart is broken
Sweet sleep, my dark angel
Deliver us from sorrow’s hold

In listening to this song I was reminded of St. John of the Cross and his poem The Dark Night of the Soul, especially the first few verses:

1. One dark night,
fired with love’s urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! –
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! –
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

While John is concerned with the Dark Night, he wants to lead his reader to the far side:  the bright sweet dawn of union with God.  In this song, however, I hear the voice of someone who is in the middle of the Dark Night:  not sure how to go forward:  “I will wander ’til the end end of time.“   On one level unwilling to give up the quest– “I can’t go back the way I came“–but at the same time trapped in despair and looking desperately for a way out:  “I can’t go on living this way.”

The repeated refrain “My heart is broken/ Sweet sleep, my dark angel/ Deliver us from sorrow’s hold” suggests that despair is dominating.  There are overtones of self-destruction, calling sleep “my dark angel.“     But the last verse, Change – open your eyes to the light/ I denied it all so long, oh so long/
Say goodbye, goodbye,” despite the following refrain, suggests that some hope still abides.

This seems to me to be the essence of the Dark Night of the soul: to know, intellectually, that you are loved, but to feel no love at all.   To feel broken, incomplete, but knowing only the painful emptiness and finding nothing that can fill it.    To continue onward when, as Dorothy Day said, only the will remains.  Such a trial, but what a reward.  The temptation to turn back must be incredible; the fear of starting down this road is almost insurmountable.

Palestinian police are called to the Church of Nativity after rival groups of clergymen clash in a dispute over jurisdiction inside the basilica. Up to 100 Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic priests and monks, armed with brooms, came to blows while cleaning the West Bank church in preparation for Orthodox Christmas celebrations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/embed

While we may be inclined to indulge in a bit of schadenfreude, watching our Armenian and Orthodox brethren brawling.  But Catholics have been equally guilty in the past.  I have been told that the Franciscans  (the Franciscans!) who control the Catholic portion of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem are adept at using their organ to drown out rival services being held at the same time as the Catholic mass.  The problem is so severe that the keys to the main doors of the Church are controlled by a Muslim family.

Since yesterday was the feast of St. John the Evangelist, in reading this news item I recalled the injunction of Jesus recorded in the first letter of St. John:

For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: we should love one another, unlike Cain who belonged to the evil one and slaughtered his brother. Why did he slaughter him? Because his own works were evil, and those of his brother righteous.  Do not be amazed, [then,] brothers, if the world hates you.  We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Whoever does not love remains in death.   Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.  The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him?  Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth (1 John 3:11-18)

Now the Churches in the Holy Land are very far away, and I certainly have no control over them, nor really any deep understanding of the tangled cultural/political/religious history that has brought us to this state.  So it is perhaps cheap advice for me to say that one solution is for the Catholics, at least, to walk away:  to drop all claims to ownership and control of these Churches, and to reduce ourselves to beggars in the midst of our brethren.

“If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.  “It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell.”  Mark 9:47

If we seek access to these Churches, not as owners but as beggars, asking it not as a right but as an unearned gift, we may be spurned by our brethren.  Our pilgrims may be turned away, forced to go elsewhere to receive the sacraments.   Or we may be welcomed with love.  Or both may occur simultaneously.   But if we could face this with equanimity (which would be very hard:  I don’t like going with hat in hand, and I am sure most of us don’t either) then, as St. Francis said to Brother Leo:  “there would be true joy in this and true virtue and the salvation of the soul.” (St. Francis of Assisi, True and Perfect Joy)

Perhaps the more pressing question I should be asking myself, rather than solving someone else’s problems,  is this:  to what do I cling to in my own heart, what do I seek to own and control that is not really mine?   What am I ready to fight over with my brothers and sisters, rather than yielding in order to be a witness to the love of God?  This needs to be understood not in terms of lofty principles, but in terms of very mundane and ordinary things (like a church building).   We cling to and defend very paltry things.   As an academic I am comfortably ensconced in the upper middle class, and it is very easy to confuse the perks of my position (good salary and benefits, a high degree of professional autonomy—including the personal use of my work computer to type this post) with my rights.    The temptation is to say that I “deserve” these things, that they are a natural reward for my hard work and advanced education.  Maybe.   But I am probably just lying to myself when I say this.  As Ursula Le Guin trenchantly observed:

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? (The Dispossessed, p. 358)

Or to put it in another way:  the rule of the Secular Franciscan Order calls on me to “purify my heart from every yearning for possession and power.”    I admit it:  I like the benefits of my position, and I wouldn’t mind more.  But they are a temptation, and may lead me to turn my back on love.

I pray that each of us, this day, will use the grace God has given us to love one another, not in words, but also in deed and truth.

It is worth contemplating that number.  Here is one way to put it into perspective: if we gathered all 5 million newborns into a single location, they would create the 58th largest municipality in the world, and would be the second largest city in the United States, behind only to New York.  (Note that these numbers depend on the precise definition of “city” and “municipality” used:  they suffice for a qualitative comparison.)   Further, this does not stop:  every 24 days, the equivalent of another city of 5 million people will be added to the world’s population.    Currently, world population is growing at at a rate of 1.1% annually, down from a peak of 2% annually in the 1960′s.   It is predicted that this rate will continue to decline steadily to about 0.5% in 2050.   These changes are significant.  If the population continued to grow by 1.1% annually until 2050, the population would be approximately 10.8 billion people, as opposed to the predicted value of just over 9 billion.  Were population to have continued to grow at 2% per year from 1960 onwards, it would reach over 17 billion by 2050.

How big a population is too much for the earth to support?  Answers are quite varied, and I must agree with Brett when he says that it depends.   I disagree with him in that I have a much more pessimistic than he is. The answer depends not only on the size of the population but on the rate of consumption and here we come to the crux of the matter.    A typical member of the middle class (however defined) in the U.S. or Canada consumes considerably more than someone living in Western Europe or Japan, who in turn consume more than the average member of the middle class in the emerging industrial nations of Brazil, China and India.   One way of quantifying both population and consumption is in terms of the global footprint or ecological footprint of the inhabitants of a country.   This is a statistical measure which tries to determine the total renewable resources that the earth produces:  fish, crops, lumber, etc.   It converts these to a standard measure called a “global hectare.”  (Intuitively, you can think of a global hectare as the number of hectares required to produce all the renewable resources consumed by one person. It does not include non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels, iron ore, etc.)     The global footprint of the average person in each of the countries listed above is as follows:

1. US  8.0
2. Canada 7.01
3. Spain 5.42
4. Germany 5.08
5. France 5.01
6. Italy 4.99
7. Japan 4.73
8. Brazil  2.91
9. China 2.21
10. India 0.91

Averaging over the entire earth, the mean global footprint of an individual is 2.7 global hectares.  However, the best estimate of the carrying capacity of the earth for a population of 7 billion people is 1.8 global hectares per person (given total resources equivalent to 12 billion gha).  In other words, we are consuming the Earth’s resources faster than they can be replenished.     Now consider again the 5 million people born in the last 24 days:  they will require approximately 13.5 million gha to support themselves.  (This number again is qualitative, since it assumes that each requires the global mean of 2.7 gha; in fact most of these people are born in developing countries where the global footprint is smaller.  The average global footprint of Latin America is between  2 and 3 gha, but for Africa is between 1 and 2, with parts of central Africa being lower still.)  And for years to come, every 24 days this number will increase by another 13.5 million gha.

We can debate the accuracy of the global footprint metric, but it is a fairly sophisticated attempt to measure, in one statistic, disparate phenomena we see around us:  depleted aquifers, deforestation, the collapse of fishing stocks. It is more accurate as a global measure; it appears to be less useful for local or regional analysis, since it obscures what is being over-consumed in a given region.  But I see no reason to believe it is not accurate at least as a first order approximation.   Given this, then I think two intertwined conclusions follow from this analysis.  First, world patterns of consumption are unsustainable in the long run.   The developed world simply cannot continue to consume natural resources at the rate at which it does, and even large parts of the developed world have consumption patterns that are not sustainable.  Second, increasing population makes matters worse.  A population of 9 billion could be supported only with a per capita consumption of 1.33 gha.  (Countries that currently have such an average ecological footprint include the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam.)   Given current disparities, the reality could well be a world in which some small fraction maintains much higher levels of consumption, while the vast majority of people exist on far less.

I want to stress that these are intertwined:  we cannot concentrate on one or the other.  Consider China, India and the US.  Multiplying their respective per capita global footprints by their population sizes, you see that the US requires 2.47 billion gha, while China requires 2.95 billion gha.  India, with its much lower rate of consumption, still requires 1.06 billion gha.  India, however, has both a growing economy (8% a year) and growing population (1.4% a year).  Suppose for the moment that global footprint grows at the same rate as the economy; then if these values remain constant, in 10 years India will require 2.6 billion gha, more than double the resources it currently consumes.

What is the solution?  That is unclear.  I believe that technology will necessarily be part of the solution:  technology allows us to use resources more efficiently.  However, I do no believe that some magic bullet will be discovered that will eliminate all of the problems that come together under the heading of over-consumption.   Estimates that the Earth can sustain a population of 100 billion in carefully designed cities strike me as both hopelessly simplistic and predicated on unproven technological advances.

But I think we must also confront population growth, and it would be in everyone’s best interest if the  rate of population growth were slowed as much as possible.  Family size is a personal matter, but it also has  global consequences.  Yes, at the far reaches of demographic projections (90-100 years from now) population begins to decline due to projected falling birth rates and the concomitant aging population.  However, the problems caused by population will have to be confronted long before we reach this point,and indeed before we reach the projected maximums.   Population growth can and should be moderated in a non-coercive fashion:  nothing I am saying should be construed as endorsing the Chinese model.  According to demographers, the best approach  to reduce the rate of population growth is via economic development and the the empowerment of women.  Brazil is a very good example of this phenomenon.

Ironically, economic development will result in   fewer people, but each one consuming more than in the past.  Therefore, future development must follow sustainable models;  the developing world cannot simply mimic the history of development in the West.  Furthermore, the necessity of change falls more heavily on the West than on developing countries, since it is the West that needs to reduce its consumption and reconfigure it into more sustainable forms.   To put it simply, we will have to make the greatest changes in our lifestyle.   Based on my own experience, this is far harder than it seems:  recycling, using cloth shopping bags, planting a garden and driving a Prius are good steps, but they are not sufficient.  My wife and I have made a considerable effort to live simply, and by American standards we do.  But the key is that this is by American standards:  measured against a per capita ecological footprint of 8.0 gha.    As a rough guess, I would say that we are, approximately, at European consumption levels:  lower than the US average, but still far beyond what appears to be sustainable.

The solution, such as it is, will require a radical application of solidarity.  The developing world will need to slow population growth.  This will require extensive economic development.  The resources for this must come from the West, which in turn must consume less and consume in a sustainable fashion.  To make this work, everyone’s life must change.   From the West it will require not simply charity, but a very different understanding of ownership and consumption.  Here, I think, the Catholic tradition has something to say.  One of the Eastern fathers, St. Basil, accurately described the understanding that will be necessary to achieve a just, sustainable future:

Naked did you not drop from the womb? Shall you not return again naked to the earth? Where have the things you now possess come from? If you say they just spontaneously appeared, then you are an atheist, not acknowledging the Creator, nor showing any gratitude towards the one who gave them. But if you say that they are from God, declare to us the reason why you received them. Is God unjust, who divided to us the things of this life unequally? Why are you wealthy while that other man is poor? Is it, perhaps, in order that you may receive wages for kindheartedness and faithful stewardship, and in order that he may be honored with great prizes for his endurance? But, as for you, when you hoard all these things in the insatiable bosom of greed, do you suppose you do no wrong in cheating so many people? Who is a man of greed? Someone who does not rest content with what is sufficient. Who is a cheater? Someone who takes away what belongs to others. And are you not a man of greed? are you not a cheater? taking those things which you received for the sake of stewardship, and making them your very own? Now, someone who takes a man who is clothed and renders him naked would be termed a robber; but when someone fails to clothe the naked, while he is able to do this, is such a man deserving of any other appellation? The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.

In the end, here I find something far sadder than the problems facing the Earth.  For there are solutions, and we, as a Church, hold a strong part of the solution in our hands.  But to share it, we must first acknowledge that there is a problem.

“It does not mean that some aren’t  invited into salvation. We always understood and continue to understand that while ‘multis’ says many it means ‘all.’” –Cardinal Donald Wuerl

Then, with all the potential for confusion over such a central tenet,with such enormous practical and spiritual consequences, why not just simply say ‘all’?

An RCIA presentation on the “last things” was flung my way, and I thought readership here might kindly provide some helpful feedback to the way in which I am going to approach the subject. Having not had much prior interaction with this subject, I do not intentionally put forward any claim in a heavy-handed sort of way. Rather, I seek feedback and, where necessary, correction. Here’s the first section on death.

There are all sorts of ways in which one can approach the mystery of death. For example, one approach to death sees this phenomenon from the perspective of the relationship of death to sin.

In the creation narratives of Genesis, the author presents what “ought” to have been. The word “good” is repeatedly placed in the mouth of God to describe God’s experience of all that he is responsible for bringing into existence. Humans ought to have lived in harmony with one another, with creation and with God, but when sin imposed itself, the reality unfolded differently.

The way this is described is through the image of two persons,  Adam and Eve, who eat of a tree under the pretence that by eating of that tree they will become something that they are not. When the two are told that far from the tree being a danger to them — as God has said it is — the tree will actually make them like God, do the two move towards a belief that God was lying to them? Do they believe that God has held something back, and now, knowing this, are the two no longer satisfied with the way in which God has made them?

Their act represents a turning from a God, or a placing their trust in something other than him, and this act is presented as having an effect not simply on themselves but upon all who follow. In fact Paul, of the New Testament, interprets this image of the first persons in the following way: He says that “sin entered the world through one man, and through sin death, and thus death has spread through the whole human race.” So, one approach, has death as a consequence of sin.

This has the benefit of identifying how our relationship to one another, to creation and to God differs from what it ought to be. It has the advantage of tying human suffering and the way in which we experience human death to sin. In reflecting on this relationship between sin and death, what emerges is the view that our experience of death is not some penalty additionally imposed by God as a result of our action. Rather, because the first couple represents the view that to turn from the Lord is to die, we have, not persons the Lord has consequently struck down, but rather persons who have abandoned the only source of life that exists.

However, this approach to death has the weakness of — when confronted by modern science — the weakness of giving the impression that only after sin did death emerge. It dawned on persons of the Victorian age that the world was so much older than previously thought, and consequently it was recognized that the reign of death had lasted so much longer than previously supposed. With human persons emerging, or entering into a far-older-than-supposed world, the human person was seen as being drawn naturally into this reign of death.

This led to the recognition of someone like Tennyson that if God is so all-powerful and so all-good, as previous persons had supposed, then how could one possibly come to terms with what had been learned about nature: Nature being so “red in tooth and claw” (so brutal). In 1798, slightly before these advancements of thought, Thomas Malthus had written an influential essay on population, and had observed the way in which epidemics, famines, and war tended to keep the world’s limitted resources in balance with those who would consume such resources. Persons of Tennyson’s era, who had belived in God’s goodness, were faced in light of such advancements with the question of why God would employ such an exceedingly wasteful plan for those he presumably loved. The result, for many, was a shift towards unbelief.

Another way to approach death is to see the phenomenon in terms of its relationship to one’s body and one’s soul. 

Christian teaching has articulated death in terms of the separation that occurs upon death between one’s body and one’s soul. This implies that one’s soul assumes in death a different relation to what we call the body. In biblical thought, the tendency is towards seeing the human person as an undivided whole, but nonetheless in Christian history non-biblical terminology (body & soul) was picked up, and perhaps this was even helpful.

Understanding death in terms of the separation that occurs upon death between one’s body and one’s soul has the advantage of understanding that even in death, there is a continuing and authentic reality of the person (even if separated from what we call the body). I am more than my corpse. 

This approach to death, however, has the disadvantage of conditioning an unhealthy and incorrect view of material things like what we call our body. Think of that scene in the movie The Fountain, where the Inquisitor says the words: “Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul.” We don’t hear people use this imagery, but we do witness a disdain, in some, for creation or for sexuality, for example. So, the phenomenon of death, seen in terms of the separation that occurs upon death between one’s body and one’s soul, has the potential to glorify soul at the expense of the body, and in doing so, reject the biblical presentation of the human person as an undivided whole.

An approach worthy of consideration views death from the perspective of human freedom.

Death is a fact of life. It is as inevitable as it is universal. It appears unavoidable. But death is not simply a fate to which we move towards and eventually passively suffer, but rather death can be a profoundly human and personal act in which the person is actively engaged.

One way of understanding human existence is through a person’s search for meaning and fulfillment. Human existence is individually possessed but shared insofar as human life requires ongoing interaction between humans and the wider world of people and things. I am a person who is acted upon and in turn I react. I receive. For example, I am given my existence without my consultation or choice. But in growing I must take what I have been given, my life, and act. It the process by which I become, to someone like Jean-Paul Sartre, an authentic person.

On the opposite end, my existence will be taken from me without my consultation or choice. Death is not something over which I have final control. And yet, at the moment of approaching total domination, I have opportunity to make a final and decisive expression of my own freedom. Think of Jesus: At his approaching death, Jesus made a final and decisive expression of his own freedom, and said of those who had been hurt him: “Father, forgive them.” After that, he promised joy to one dying thief by his side. Death consummates human life by bringing to fulfilment all that a person has accomplished during the personal history that comes to an end in death, and even though the end is something over which the human has no power, he or she does have the power to decide something that is of irrevocable and eternal significance.

Death can be seen as that final act of human self-surrender to that mystery which he or she has trusted in life. Death can be seen as that final moment of risk to believe in a God of love, forgiveness and acceptance.

In the poem “A Thought on Death,” Ms. Barbauld distinguishes between different experiences of death. When I say that death can be a profoundly human and personal act in which the person is actively engaged, or that at the moment of approaching total domination, I have opportunity to make a final and decisive expression of my own freedom, the fact is that not all have this opportunity. In that first stanza, Barbauld notes that when these opportunities do not exist, “how hard it is to die!” But when I say that death can be seen as that final act of human self-surrender to that mystery which he or she has trusted in life, and one who has risked to believe in a God of love, forgiveness and acceptance,” Barbauld affirms this with her own fourth stanza: “When faith is firm, and conscience clear, and words of peace the spirit cheer, and visioned glories half appear, ’tis joy, ’tis joy then to die.”

K.

Kelly Wilson is a Seminarian for the Archdiocese of Winnipeg. Besides Vox-Nova, he writes at his blog Musings. 

John Médaille seems to think so.

I suppose anyone whose retirement plan amounts to kids and land (for rabbits – apparently they’re very efficient at converting plant matter into protein!) isn’t going to be able to run from the label forever.

Three weeks ago, I stumbled across a used copy of the classic Otto Klemperer recording of this great work. Even though I already own four other recordings of the work, I could not pass up the  bargain price of ten dollars. ( I know, it’s still a vice).

Since then, I have not been able to get the opening coro and chorale off my mind. This always happens whenever I listen to the Matthew Passion.

As an attempt to let go and as an offer for your enjoyment/sanctification, I thought I’d share this video of Tom Koopman’s interpretation of the piece.

Have a good weekend.

Chorus I
Come, ye daughters, share my mourning,
See ye—(Chorus II) whom?—(Chorus I) the bridegroom there,
See him—(Chorus II) how?—(Chorus I) just like a lamb!

Chorale
O Lamb of God, unspotted
Upon the cross’s branch slaughtered,
See ye,—what?—see him forbear,
Alway displayed in thy patience,
How greatly wast thou despisèd.
Look—where, then?—upon our guilt;
All sin hast thou born for us,
Else we had lost all courage.
See how he with love and grace
Wood as cross himself now beareth!
Have mercy on us, O Jesus!