W.H. Auden was a deep poet.
He wrote a final long poem, called "The Age of
Anxiety" in the late 1940s. It was
a very long poem (200 pages) set in a bar in New York City, where four
strangers, three men, and one woman, meet, drink, and talk.
It explores emptiness, loneliness, and a lack of purpose.
These lines jump out (reminded of them by Richard Rohr,
but I read the poem as a literature major in college).
“We would rather be ruined than changed, / We would
rather die in our dread / Than climb the cross of the moment / And let our
illusions die.”
This is the American right. This is perhaps the "right" of
every time and every place. The
so-called conservatives would rather conserve the status quo than change, no
matter how deadly, unjust, inequitable the status quo is. But even so-called progressives can be
afflicted with this problem.
This is the dilemma of the addict. Rohr suggests we all have an addictive
component to our nature. A need to
medicate and control. To find stasis,
even if the means we use to find that dead space is deadly.
We can be addicted to a substance, to buying, eating,
smoking, even to an activity.
We can be addicted to power. To an ideology. Even it appears that we can be addicted to a
lie.
It is interesting that the first thing Jesus says when he
begins his ministry is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And of course, John the Baptist, preparing
the way for Jesus’ ministry, said the same thing. Repent!
Which is another way of saying, “Change! God’s new thing
is at hand.” This is why the church,
evangelical, progressive, conservative, liberal, must always be about
change. About seeing who and what we are
addicted to. What ways we must change. What things in the world must change.
What is it about us that would not work, would not “fly”
in the kingdom of God?
What is it that is present in the world that would not be
allowed in the kingdom of heaven?
Exclusion, for one.
A hungry child, for another.
Racism.
Toxic individualism.
Economic inequity.
Make your own list!
Some suggest we will never really change until we are in
fact ruined (Alcoholic Anonymous for example).
Nazi Germany could not die to its ideology of power and
racism until it was ruined.
Alcoholics have to hit bottom to start recovery.
I don’t believe that.
I believe that God can wake us up to Sacred presence
The Spirit can move in our souls
Love can motivate us to create change
Right now!
Today!
We can choose Love
We can choose God
We can choose change
We do not have to die in our dread!
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