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Sunday, December 11, 2005
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: Fingerprints On The Soul
Sunday is the one day of the week when I sit down to write without a pre-formed idea of what I'll be writing about. Normally, I simply settle into my desk chair, fire up Word, and wait for the swirling masses in my head to clarify and present me with a topic. And so it is today, or rather, was.
In part, this is because my Sundays start with the greatest of all prayers, the Mass. If you're a Christian, you already know what sort of effect that has on the tenor of one's thoughts. If you're not, forgive me, please; I can't describe it without desecrating it. But there's nothing else to compare to it. One of its lesser effects is to evoke hidden themes from the events of the week, by clarifying the patterns they made but which I'd been too preoccupied to notice. From that effect will flow ideas for exploration, usually far more than I could cover in a single essay. (Lucky you that I limit myself to one.)
We're at roughly the midpoint of the Advent season. It's traditionally a time of preparation in expectation. What's expected, of course, is the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and Redeemer of Mankind. Christians everywhere anticipate that feast as one of the two "anchor points" of the liturgical year, the other being Easter, which celebrates Christ's Resurrection.
The secularized version of Christmas fosters a spirit of anticipation, too, albeit of a more worldly sort. Unfortunately, that's acquired an unpleasant cast. I find it more than a little trying, because of the sense of obligation our culture has cultivated about the gift-giving custom. This is in part a contagion from political effects. Curiously...well, perhaps not so curiously...the very forces in our milieu that strain to make charity involuntary have striven hardest to strip it of all that makes it good, leaving only the formal shell of material transference. There shall be no personal connection between benefactor and beneficiary; there shall be no consideration of whether the gift will do net good or net harm; there shall be no requirement that the beneficiary even acknowledge that he has received something he did not earn. Above all, there shall be no obligation for answering generosity with gratitude.
The late Julius Nyerere, ultra-socialist dictator of Tanzania from 1961 through 1985, stated the modern creed of obligatory one-way transfers in a concise and unambiguous way:
In one world, as in one state, where I am rich because you are poor, and I am poor because you are rich, the transfer of wealth from rich to poor is a matter of right. It is not an appropriate matter for charity.
One could hardly find an uglier sentiment in Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto. But it's Sunday, isn't it? I'm not supposed to talk politics on Sunday. Yes, it's my rule for myself, but it's a good one, and I ought to keep to it. (If you don't do what you know you should do, how on Earth will you bring yourself to do what you know you must do?)
All the same, the contrast between the Christian spirit of Christmas and the secular, publicly practiced habits could hardly be more vivid. According to the Christian tradition, the birth of Jesus was the starting point of God's greatest gift to Man, for which we should all be infinitely grateful. According to the secular custom, the mere existence of certain connections among us obligate us to give to one another regardless of consequences, and regardless of whether the return for the gift is gratitude, indifference, or contempt. This has predisposed me against the Christmas-gift-giving custom.
Watch the people around you. Watch them agonize over what to get this one or that one. Watch them strain to exclude from their thoughts all matter of whether a gift for Smith is a good idea, whether they can afford it, or whether Smith is likely to appreciate the gift or the thought behind it. A priest in my parish characterized it neatly as a frenzy to spend money we don't have on things we don't need for people we can't stand, and he was absolutely correct.
But that doesn't quench the impulse to generosity that dwells in nearly every decent man. We want to give to others. We want others to be aware of our desire to give to them, and to know that they can count on it at need. Adam Smith captured it nicely in his Theory Of Moral Sentiments as "fellow-feeling," his capsule term for our desire to act out Christ's command to "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."
Because we are finite, there must be limits on our generosity. Some of those limits are baldly economic; others flow from our recognition that blind giving is more likely to do harm than good. But we want to give, and even the desire brings a benefit, both to ourselves and to others.
Sometimes, the innately charitable man doesn't even know that he's given, or what he's given. Of course, such gifts are unlikely to be of the material sort. Some of them are the most precious of all.
What are the non-material gifts that one can give to others, which cost nothing but brighten the recipient's day, or life?
When I started to ponder that question, I assumed that there were only a few such, but the list appears longer than I could enumerate in one Rumination. Today I'll muse over only a few of the most powerful, and allow you to continue the compilation at your leisure.
The first gift is acceptance. We're a varied lot, we humans. Some of the variations provoke distaste, resentment, or fear in others. Yet most of them are harmless. (Most of them. A taste for serial murder or the automatic transmission of a deadly disease belong in a separate category.) To accept the different characteristics or ways of others, not necessarily for inclusion into one's circle of intimacy but as tolerable variations in human taste or conduct, confers a sort of validation that all of us need. There are no truly "lone wolves" among men; indeed, it's open to question whether there are any among the wolves.
Acceptance is seldom automatic. From birth, we learn how to see the differences among us. Those differences matter; they individuate and identify us. Yes, the commonalities are visible as well, but what matters most to social peace and the fluidity of human affairs is how well we cope with our differences.
For this reason, the "politically correct" demand for unlimited tolerance of divergences among men is not an entirely bad thing. Surely we can agree that just as some deviations cannot be tolerated, others can -- and must. Differences among faiths, differences among nonviolent, non-fraudulent social practices, and differences in political convictions must not set us at one another's throats. We can accept these things, sculpt mechanisms that will minimize the frictions they cause, and carry on as neighbors, occasionally as friends, in something resembling peace.
The second gift is encouragement. Even the most potent of us will occasionally face a challenge that daunts him. It might be within his powers, or it might not; he can't be sure. But perhaps he must tackle it anyway, because no one else will -- or can. In many such trials, the most important impediment to success is uncertainty.
Every champion, no matter how mighty, no matter how courageous, will know the taste of fear.
It's ironic that so many exemplars think less of themselves than others think of them, but it's also integral to their status. An arrogant man cannot be an exemplar. One's confidence must have bounds, just as one's abilities do. Never to feel the bite of doubt means only that one has not yet been tested to one's limits.
To encourage is not to guarantee. We are all capable of failing. But encouragement is valid and valuable even when doubt is substantial and well justified. The point of human life is to learn and grow. These things cannot be done without courting failure. Sometimes the failure is the whole point -- that what flows from it is precisely what one needed to experience in order to move on. "Defeat is education. It is a step to something better." (Louis Nizer)
Our encouragement implies that we will love the encouraged one no less in defeat than in victory.
The third gift is example. Precious few of us come to adulthood properly formed in all particulars. We're erratic in all things: work ethic, prudence of management, fidelity to promises, moral code, even our duty to maintain ourselves. If we solidify as we age, it's usually because of the examples of better men around us: men we admire, whether openly or secretly, and would like to emulate.
Some of us have some ability around which we've molded our identities. Others do not, despite the proclamations of the feel-goodists that "you are special and unique, just like everybody else." But the inability to claim excellence at anything does not render one a cipher. The true zero is he who conceives of himself as a zero, rather than striving to be all he can be. No matter of whom we speak, no matter how crippled or stunted or retarded, he has the ability to score 100% at something: the embrace of a code of conduct and absolute adherence to it.
Granted that some codes are superior to others. Granted also that many traditional codes are being altered even as we speak, to make room for some of the unthreatening divergences among us. Granted finally that in times past, widely accepted codes have been used to justify public censoriousness of an unpleasant, even coercive sort. To adhere openly to a respected code of conduct is what makes one an exemplar.
The world needs examples. We once spoke of the need for "muscular Christians:" vigorous men who'd impress others into faith with the example of their physical prowess. Rather, give me sincere men, Christian or otherwise, who can be trusted to speak plainly and do what they've said they'll do, and make little or no fuss about it afterward. These are the men I want around me. Whether they can lift a refrigerator in one arm, run a four-minute mile, or sleep hanging from the ceiling with their wings folded around them is no concern of mine.
These are mighty gifts, yet they cost nothing and benefit the giver quite as greatly as the receiver. How often are they given? How often could they be given? Which of them would you like to give this coming year?
Note that I did not ask "to whom?" For these are gifts that, once cultivated, will reach everyone you know. Your parents, your children, your children's children, and everyone else you know will acquire your fingerprints on their souls from these gifts. As if that weren't enough, there's no need to wrap them.
To those who have accepted me, have encouraged me, or have been an example to me this year or in years past, my sincere thanks.
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
Simply beautiful. Thank you Fran. And thanks for the above-mentioned gifts that I have received from YOU since we me.
Blessings.
Posted by Liz on 12/11/2005 at 03:25 PMOf course, you know that word is “met.” And, thanks again.
Posted by Liz on 12/11/2005 at 03:26 PMBeautiful.
Posted by Fausta on 12/12/2005 at 08:58 PM
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