A place for our eyes

‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified ...' Then [Jesus] said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. (Luke 21:9-11)

I wonder what ‘the burn’ looks like now. Different, I’m sure; better, I hope, for it’s been more than 40 years since I saw it. But it keeps coming to mind because of the anxious Facebook posts and news stories that greet me any time I choose to pay attention.

I saw the burn while backpacking in Rocky Mountain National Park. Our guide said he brought all his groups to this place. Slowly … and sadly, he walked us through several hundred acres of blackened pine and aspen stumps, a needless fire, the result of human carelessness.

He had an eye for destruction and a heart for the violated wilderness, but there was another place for our eyes he did not seem to notice.

It was late spring and a profusion of wildflowers and grasses covered the landscape. New shoots from seeds released in the fire had sprouted tiny trees, new growth pressing through the soil.

The whole scene was alive with life … and hope, which is exactly what I don’t read in those Facebook posts or hear in the news since the presidential election.

Fears of a dystopian future are far more common, human rights ignored and violated, immigrant and undocumented workers swept up and sent away, decimating their hopes, their families and perhaps also sectors of the U.S. economy.

More than a few gaze across the broad landscape of our society no longer recognizing the country they thought they knew … nor their churches, which they have long loved.

In so many places, the future looks dark ... or at least murky, the country riven by poisoned politics and a wide variety of ‘isms,’ racism, sexism, nationalism, globalism, isolationism, etc. etc., not to mention old-fashioned vices like greed and narcissism that erodes trust and feeds cynicism about whether things can or ever will improve.

All of this is worthy of our concern and action, but what most worries me about the darkness of our present time is its capacity to convert us.

What we attend to is what we love, St. Augustine said, and what we love we will become. It’s a variation on a well-known contemplative adage: We become what we contemplate.

Fixation on the darkness or troubles of the moment—or the era—desolates the heart so that we see little else. Imprisoned in a world of our making, we no longer have eyes to see the wildflowers that can and will grow because ‘the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and … bright wings,’ as Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in the depths of his darkness.

In his soul, I hear the soul of Christ, who did not shy from the suffering and tribulations that stain human history with blood and tears. Wars, insurrections, famines, earthquakes, plagues, all that and more will come. It’s the stuff of every age and generation. Ours is little different.

But ‘do not be terrified,’ Jesus said, words that echo through history … and certainly through the hearts of martyrs and mystics, who never lost sight of the beauty of our hope, trusting that we and this world are loved with an everlasting love.

Just keep your heart open, one of those mystics, Julian of Norwich, tells us, ‘and you shall see it.’

David L. Miller