Speech Bubbles

I guess in some ways a blog is like a speech bubble. You say or write stuff off the cuff which you later reflect on and then think “what the heck was I thinking?” My one previous post - Of Love, Loss and Brutal Beauty - below is perhaps such an example. When I was reflecting on what I had written, I was reminded of Michael Novak in “Harpers” magazine: “The quantity of sheer impenetrable selfishness in the human heart is a never-failing source of wonderment. I do not want to be disturbed, challenged, troubled.” My intention was not to minimize the reality of the often tragic lives that have befallen those that find themselves on the street. To be honest, I wasn’t really thinking about them. I was merely indulging in self-pity – so typical I guess of those of us who are focused on achieving or fulfilling our own destiny or goals – whatever it happens to be, or however earnestly we believe it will contribute to the greater good of humanity. It’s a kind of strange contradiction that we live as modern day Christians – the selfish art of self-fulfillment or self-actualization, which conflicts with our Christian faith that challenges to something far deeper. I am often reminded of Erich Fromm who wrote that his problem with Freud was not that Freud failed to understand human sexuality, but that he failed to understand it deeply enough. For me the whole self-actualization industry and its parent, secular humanism, is precisely the same – it fails to understand the dignity of the human person deeply enough. There I was, full of my own self-importance and carrying on about the meaning of my life or lack thereof, where a fellow human being stood in need of healing – on whatever level, and who for whatever reason, found himself ill-equipped - to cope with life and had opted out onto the streets. I believe that Christ’s first concern is not with pandering to my self-pity but to demonstrate to me that the very thing that I disregarded, which was the plight of my fellow human being, is the path to both his and my own emancipation from meaninglessness. This is the paradox of Christianity and demonstrates how little I have traveled on the path to putting on the mind of Christ as I am supposed to. The thing that should worry me the most is not that I was and still am so self-centred. It is that I was and remain so indifferent – and indifference as we all know, is the opposite of Love and opposes the work in my life of the One who is Love.