On Praying the Psalms, Part I

 

I wish that the faithful in these parishes would learn to pray and to appreciate the Book of Psalms (the Psalter) found in the Old Testament. Since the first century, the Psalms of the Chosen People have become the prayer book of the Church as well. Several of you have asked that I select a few psalms to help you begin this prayer discipline. Click here to see a partial listing of psalms.

On The American Regime

“For everything there is a season....a time to speak, and a time to be silent.”  Prudence may suggest that one must be highly cautious in criticizing his own political regime, lest he further wound the body politic. (Here, as elsewhere, I use the term “regime” as a translation of the Greek politeia, meaning both the arrangement of political power in a society and the way of life of the people.) The American political regime is both well established in the sense of having strong and deep roots, but it is also highly vulnerable to disease, and even to death. If the sickness evident in the American regime were not as serious as it is, prudence may indeed persuade one to keep silent, lest the disease be strengthened. That may yet be the case. But it seems to me that the regime is already so degenerated in both the ruling elites and in the way of life of the people, that it may be beyond recovery.  Or again, to indicate in rough and broad strokes, as I do, that this regime may well be perishing is hardly “letting the cat out of the bag.” On the contrary: one of the salient features of the American regime today is that many human beings living here see and feel the sickness and decay. And so I write boldly, thinking that these words merely articulate what many sense, whether they admit it to themselves or not. It is not pleasant to face the possible even likely death of one’s regime.

My hypothesis is that the United States of America, as it has been historically, as we have known it, is dying, and our way of life is dying. The impatient patient is highly feverish, gasping for breath, and quite likely beyond recovering its health. The famous words of Goethe--”America, you have it better”--remind us of what is now long gone, no longer a living reality. Then again, there are ways in which life in this country remains good: some virtues in many of our fellow citizens; prosperity for many; relative safety, especially in less urban areas; and so on. Some of our political leaders appear to be, to one extent or another, reasonably sane and honorable human beings. And it is possible that the goodness in a creative minority will regenerate and renew the fabric of the whole, and lead to a new Renaissance of the American way of life, of our culture, of science and the arts, of the political art of ruling responsibly. The future is unknown.  But trends point in a different direction, and it is these powerful trends and their overwhelming force that suggest that the United States is in an advanced state of decay, and passing away. Or perhaps one could maintain that the regime founded in 1787 has already died, and what lives on is not the constitutionally limited republic of the Founders, but an American Empire dressed up in democratic clothing.  

Now, before proceeding, a question must be raised: Is what I offer here intended as political theory, as analysis of the way things are; or is it written as a manifesto to help bring about the death of the dying?  Do I wish to understand, or to cause further illness? Frankly, it would be highly illusory to think that these words could have much affect one way or another. What political science has to offer is analysis of the way things are, in light of the best possible life for human beings. Few will consider the words, fewer yet would be moved to action by them. What is intended is political analysis. And if there is an element of a manifesto to break from the regime, it aims not at concrete political action, and surely not at violence, but at a personal break from the regime and from its corrupting power over one’s life.  In other words, what is needed in America is not more political speeches and actions, not a political revolution, but a solid renewal of human existence from the heart of the human being outward into the world.  An essential part of internal and personal renewal is a sober examination of one’s way of life, and a break from it.  In other words, our people need a genuine conversion of life, not more empty-worded political change. Through such change, individuals may be spared some of the rampant social and spiritual disease, even as the regime remains festering in its sicknesses.  

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“We the People” do and do not rule in the United States of America. We rule in the sense that some of us elect leaders who in turn reflect our way of life in its complexities of virtues and vices. “We the People” do not rule in the sense that, as is transparently obvious to a fair observer, the elected political leaders and the administrators, at least at the federal level, are as a group highly self-serving in their love of power, wealth, prestige. In any statement made by a national political leader, one can and should ask: “Is he or she speaking the truth, or seeking to deceive us?  How is he or she seeking to advance their own power position?”  I recall self-styled “liberals” repeatedly calling President Bush the younger (and Reagan before him), “a liar.”  And I have heard many self-styled conservatives call Presidents Clinton and Obama liars.  What is in common is this: “We the People” sense that we are being deliberately deceived, lied to by our political leaders.  Whether in reality they are lying or not is another question; what clearly shows up is the intense sense that “we are being lied to, deceived, duped, betrayed.” The body politic is in a real sense detaching from its head, and the head from the body of the people. Consequently, “We the People” are ruled, not by ourselves or by justly chosen representatives, but by a largely closed cadre of self-selected politicians.  

Underneath the awareness or belief in being lied to, then, is a highly widespread sense of alienation from the Central Government and from our “elected representatives.”  This acute political alienation is at once a leading symptom of decay and an ongoing cause of further decadence. Whether one examines attitudes predominating in inner cities, or in middle class suburbia, or in small-town and rural America, most Americans are in fact alienated from the political culture, and especially from the national leaders. As a small indication, I know of no one in my daily life who had any interest in watching President Obama’s second inauguration, or in his State of the Union address. Out of the many people with whom I spoke on the matter, not one showed the least interest in hearing what the President had to say. They are interested in their families, in their ranching or other work, in the local basketball team. The strong sense is that “whatever happens in Washington, D.C., is of little or no concern to us.”  That is alienation, whether accompanied by emotional disaffection or by avowed hostility. Rhett Butler’s words express the way the vast bulk of Americans feel about the rulers, their speeches, their ceremonies: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”  Mass communication makes it very easy for Americans to tune in and watch such ceremonies, to listen to speeches. But relatively few people make the effort (far fewer, for example, than watch the Superbowl).  Why? Disinterest, a belief that the leaders are lying, perhaps latent disrespect, and even hatred in some. In short, the widespread sentiment in our country now is: “The political leaders do not in truth represent us.”  

With the covenant or contract between rulers and ruled largely broken, what remains to constitute a political regime? In a word, power. The use of raw power or threat of force causes obedience to the laws, and not primarily or essentially a love of country and its leaders. In this sense, too, America is an Empire, not a government of laws, not a civil government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  Our federal government, at any rate, is government of the power elite, by the power elite, and for the power elite--with sufficient tidbits thrown out to largely politically ignorant masses in order to secure their votes. The President is a new Caesar, skilled in manipulating the masses to win elections and to keep their favor. In both tasks he is greatly aided by mass media which are little more than handmaids to the powers that be--or less charitably but more accurately, pimps for power. With thrills running down their legs, they salivate to heap praise upon their Caesar, and just possibly to receive his blessing--and perhaps some personal rewards (money, fame, approval, job advancement). The adulation offered Caesar by the mass media is far removed from the “freedom of the press” won by blood in the American Revolution.  

What we are experiencing is a major political crisis, whether it is analyzed as such or not:  Americans do not feel that they are represented by the elected, by ruled and dominated by government seen as corrupt and self-serving. As I recently wrote, this attitude predominates in small town and rural America. But it is also strong in urban areas, among masses who may want “stuff” from government, but feel little connection with the leaders and are often openly disrespectful and even rebellious towards signs of political authority. To grant “respect” in the form of adoration for elected leaders of one’s favored party or gender or color or ideological flavor, and not to give that respect to anyone who wins an election and holds office, manifests alienation and distrust. That many elections are “won” by deceit, fraud, stealing votes, media manipulation, and so on, only increases the clearly growing sense of alienation from elected officials--and especially from the Central Powers (elected rulers and administrators at the federal level). The notion of the “citizen ruler” taught by the Founding Fathers and long held as part of the American civil religion has been unmasked. The leaders do not live as most of us do, they are not held to the same standards, they are not responsible to live and act under law.  What appears to most of us is that the powerful rulers live pampered lives far removed from what we experience. The language of “democracy” has increasingly become a thin mask for political reality: government by an emperor and his ruling circle, with various petty rulers barking around him. The “imperial Presidency” analyzed years ago has become ever more true. America has a Tsar, a Caesar, a ruling elite in some real and imputed ways more remote from the daily life of Americans than King George III was from the colonists several centuries ago.

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Test the hypothesis:  Suppose our country is not sick and dying, but healthy and thriving. Suppose the government really does represent the people, and that our leaders live self-restrained lives under law. Suppose that the vast bulk of Americans are not at all alienated from the governing class and government, but obey the laws and respect the rulers with genuine affection.  Suppose the country is a healthy body politic, in which the young are well-raised, well-educated, respectful of their elders, and readily find meaningful and rewarding work. Suppose the older ones among us are respected and live in noble dignity. Suppose the American regime truly does guarantee the “inalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and that every human life is respected, protected, and nourished as well as possible from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. Suppose that virtually every American citizen knows well what his rulers think and believe, and that their words are trustworthy, their deeds noble and exemplary.  

This hypothesis, these thoughts, are so far removed from reality that I can barely conceive them, but must strain to think of what to say. Regarding diagnosis of our illnesses, words come readily to mind, because we live in the midst of a decadent culture governed by rulers who seem to be bordering on tyrannical. One must willfully blind himself or herself to political lies and deceptions not to feel the intense contradiction between what the leaders say and what they do. They speak democracy, they act oligarchy and tyranny. The American republic gave way to mass democracy, and mass democracy has given rise to a tyrannical regime. The change has gone so far that to claim that our present regime is in continuity with the regime established by the Constitution of 1787 requires an intense exercise in wishful thinking. The regime of Washington is dead. The regime of Lincoln gave rise to the Progressive era of mass democracy, which in turn yielded up the tyrannies of T Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, and the more recent crop of sharp-tongued deceivers.  

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How does one live and thrive in such a destructive regime of lies and injustice? As the psalmist of old asked, “The foundations once destroyed, what can the just do?”  Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle broke from democratic and decadent Athens and highly advanced the profound spiritual movement known as philosophy. The prophets of Israel broke from the corrupt Davidic monarchy and priestly religious institutions, and paved the way for the radical break from Israel and from Rome evident in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  And so began the movement of Christianity, which in turn became statically encased in decadent institutions, and in time gave rise to the great movement of mysticism which remains perhaps the finest flowering of Christian faith, or of any faith.  

In short, the corrupt and corrupting institutions are not to be reformed or saved, but avoided and exposed for what they are. One must consciously choose to stand aside from the noise and confusion of the age, and take shelter in one of the enriching spiritual movements still alive and accessible.  As for American federal government and its deceptive rulers, “Let the dead bury their dead.” In the usual course of events, the federal government will continue its enormous growth, and extend its tentacles of power over more and more aspects of American life.  In other words, the federal government is clearly becoming what it is: a totalitarian regime. That is what happens when men and women drunk on power take control of government: they abuse power, and seek to dominate the lives of others. And those who rise to power in such a regime are usually the ones most driven by the desire to dominate, the will to power; for if they were not themselves seeking power and willing to get it at at any and all means, they would be crushed in the process by more ambitious, less scrupulous contenders.  In a regime such as ours, the worst characters tend to rise to the fore, for they are the most grasping for power. And of course in a regime with a democratic history, tyrannical power is masked beneath the cloak of “doing the greatest good for the greatest number,” or “just doing what is fair,” or “caring for the most vulnerable among us.”  There is an element of truth in these claims, but that element is minuscule compared to the corrosive damage done to the body politic, and to the virtues of the citizens. For citizens become mere subjects of power, and beneficiaries of goodies, and not free and independent human beings “pursuing happiness.”  Objects of power become alienated.  And that is exactly what has occurred in the American regime: bad government has alienated the affections and hearts of the governed.  Hence, as a people in history, we are dying.

Union and Disunion

I write this brief essay because I communicate with folks living in urban America (presently in New York and California) who really seem oblivious to the way many of us think and live in “the fly-over states,” or in the “Farm Belt,” or in the South. From repeated experiences with self-professed “liberals” or “progressives” living on the coasts or major urban areas such as Chicago, I realize that the gap between their thinking and the more “conservative” way in less urban America is probably wider and more disharmonious than at any time in our country’s history.  Having read considerable material about the development of the so-called “Civil War,” I think that the gap between pro-big government liberals and more rural conservatives is at least as large and as unresolvable as the gap between the urban, aggressive, imperialistic, and capitalist North and the more traditional, agrarian, and defensive South before 1860.  

Consider a concrete case: As a political scientist, I should have realized that Romney’s bid for President was in considerable trouble from my everyday experience in Montana, but at the time, I failed to see it adequately.  Nearly no one I knew said that they would vote for Obama.  So I took that to favor Romney.  What I overlooked was in plain sight: nearly no one--if indeed a single person I know in central Montana--expressed any enthusiasm for Romney’s candidacy. And it was not because he was “Mormon,” although media know-it-alls could latch onto that superficial explanation. Only one person mentioned Romney’s religion as disturbing, and that man has been a lifelong Democrat who said that he could not vote for Obama because of his “big government liberalism,” but he could not vote for Romney, either. He related that he had had a “Mormon” boss years ago who expressed anti-Catholic sentiments to him, and that turned him off.  No, the utter lack of interest in Romney’s candidacy was much more basic:  Romney was seen as “one of them,” as “another liberal,” as a “big city man,” as “part of the establishment,” and most definitely not as “a conservative.”  Romney was “one of them,” not “one of us.”

What I have discovered in Iowa, South Dakota, and perhaps most especially in Montana is a fascinating and highly serious political phenomenon: most people with whom I live and work show little if any attachment to the Federal government.  Indeed, there is among Midwest and mountain Westerners two primary sentiments regarding “Washington, D.C.,” and the Federal Government in particular: many folks are highly suspicious of the government, distrustful, and in a word, alienated from American politics in general and surely from the political elite and rulers found in Washington, D.C. Whereas many, indeed most, are openly hostile, some would simply be indifferent, or have no positive attachment to the Federal Government. The hostility and the indifference are so deep and long standing that I am forced to wonder if open rebellion from the central Powers would not be possible, or even likely.  

It was said of the American Revolution (by John Adams, if I am not mistaken), that the real revolution and break from Britain occurred in the hearts and minds of the colonists long before firing a single shot. I would say that the break in political consciousness, of any real attachment to the Federal government, has already occurred in large areas of the United States of America. We are not united except by power, by force, and to a much lesser extent by a history that has all but faded from consciousness. Popular culture creates some bonds with the urban culture in America, but it does not yield a harvest of attachment to the regime.  

To put the matter in different words:  A common belief among Montanans (at least those whom I know, and with whom I speak of such matters) is that our loyalties are to our ranches, farms, and small towns, perhaps to the county, and more weakly to the state.  I detect little loyalty to, or respect for, the central government. On the contrary, as I have noted, what people think and feel is at best indifference, but more strongly a genuine antipathy to Washington, to the ruling powers, to government’s attempt to control our lives, and so on.  

The “red state / blue state” dichotomy is trite, and hides the deeper reality: Americans living in most counties across this country have attitudes and beliefs at odds with those living in major urban centers. From the rural perspective, the country is dominated by power elites, money, and highly degenerate culture from a few urban centers: Los Angeles, the Bay area of California, greater New York, City, Boston, and of course, Washington, D.C.  The attitudes and “values” (desires, wishes, beliefs) of these self-described “liberals’ or “progressives,” or “establishment politicians” of both parties, claiming to know what is best for everyone else, and seeking to impose a way of life on all of us through the media, through the destructive entertainment industry, and especially through the Central Powers are wholly out of tune to rural and small-town Americans.  

Two vastly different political cultures have emerged within our country, so much so that in reality, we are two overlapping and co-existing regimes, not one. The “Union” so idealized and idolized by such figures as Lincoln, and forced on the whole country by Union armies, carpetbaggers, and much meddling legislation, is no longer a reality. America of the post-Civil War era is dead, or, shall we say, has evolved into what it was becoming in the Civil War: an enormous power shell devoid of spiritual substance, and seeking to dominate the lives of all citizens.  For many living outside of big-city America, the mask is off, and the central and centralizing government is seen for what it really has become: tyrannical, even totalitarian. It is alien to the traditional American way of life.  

I dare say that this is the reality felt and rejected by many living in rural and small-town America. The Federal Government is seen and felt as “the oppressor,” as an enormously powerful conqueror over our way of life. Resistance to its dominance takes various forms, and needs to be solidified, to be more effective. At times I wonder if a state such as Montana would join with Texas if it were to secede from what is felt to be the tyrannical Union. Perhaps politicians working in Helena would seek to keep Montana in the Union, in large part because their own power is linked with the fate of the federal regime. But I can imagine an issue, such as an attempt to confiscate rifles and handguns, that would ignite an open rebellion against the Central Powers unlike what has been seen for many years in this country.  And the underlying reason needs to be kept in mind: the break from the tyrannizing governmental powers has already occurred. Some have realized this, others have not. 

"The Power And The Glory"

Catholic around the world heard at Mass today (2/17) the words of the devil spoken to Jesus in the wilderness:  “I shall give to you all this power and glory...if you worship me.”

Demonic temptations to gain “the power and the glory” are rampant in human affairs, gaining such a stronghold in the human heart.

Pope Benedict has given a remarkable example of humility and prudential self-knowledge by resigning from his position as the Supreme Pontiff, the Bishop of Rome. One can locate photographs of his on the internet, as he announced his resignation. But look around him, and look at what he is wearing, and where he sits: on a throne, apparently laced with gold, wearing a lush vestment with gold and ermine. And the throne is in a room with a gorgeous marble floor, and huge paintings hanging around him. And seated around his gilded throne are Cardinals, all dressed in red, with white aprons. What a picture of “the power and the glory,” and how it contrasts with the Pope’s humble face, and his gentle and utterly sincere words of resignation.  Inwardly, I have little doubt, Pope Benedict is a man of God, and follows faithfully on the way of Christ. But outwardly, there is no connection between the carpenter from Nazareth and the Pope as a most powerful ruler, surrounded in such obscene wealth. In his book on Jesus, Pope Benedict asked a superb question: “Has the Church misinterpreted Jesus?”  Well, look around, and behold the enormous gulf between Jesus the carpenter and the Pope as potentate. One was utterly humble and lived poorly and in simplicity. The Pope, regardless of how humble, is hidden beneath layers of gaudy wealth and most earthly splendor. “Has the Church misinterpreted Jesus?” To quote Jesus from another context, “You have said so.”

The same utter contradiction is seen in American government and politics.  We still use the language of democracy, of limited governments, of the rights of the people, but the reality is utterly different: enormously powerful men and women--usually living high on the hog off the fat of the land--making decisions “for the people,” when they themselves have so little contact with everyday, middle or lower class Americans. We are in fact ruled by a power elite drunk on power, and so much so that they have turned “limited government” into a most empty phrase, and in fact have effectively turned us in to a dictatorship--not of the Proletariat, but of the ruling elite.  Our central government today is perhaps as unlike the intentions of the Founders for limited government as the Church hierarchy has become removed in lifestyle and appearance from the reality of Jesus of Nazareth.  

Hierarchy and central government rulers in the USA have something in common: “the power and the glory.”  Men chose power and glory, and signs of the same, rather than virtue, simplicity of life, self-restraint. And so we see decadent and decaying institutions in the Church, and in our own political society. “Sic transit gloria mundi.”  “Thus passes the glory of the world.”

I look at the face of Pope Benedict, and I feel strong pity for the man: a scholar, a quiet man, no doubt a humble man, smothered under the burdensome weight of a vast Roman bureaucracy that has dressed itself up in all of the signs of power and glory it could gather over the years. The man, Joseph, now Pope Benedict, has surely served his time in purgatory, and more than deserves to live out his days “in prayer,” as he stated before the world. One must wonder how a man who no doubt wanted to live a life of prayer and study ended up as functionary in a huge institution. Even before resigning, there is indeed a time to say, “No.”

Everyone must resist the allure of the evil one who promises “the power and the glory.” 

On Our Extra Offerings For Lent

It is good and beneficial, and encouraged by our Church, that we all increase our spiritual exercises during Lent. These exercises may be more prayer, meditation, study of our faith, personal discipline such as fasting, additional works of charity to benefit our neighbors in need. Each of us should consider now what we plan to offer to Christ as our Lenten penances (or spiritual exercises). For the sake of our parishioners, we shall be offering a number of additional services during Lent.

First, at our three Ash Wednesday Masses (see schedule), parishioners are invited to bring forth lists of their sins, burdens on their hearts, concerns for neighbors, and Lenten penances, and offer them to God in fire. This offering is sacramental, if done in faith.

Second, adult faith class for both St. Mark’s-St. Mary’s and for Holy Trinity start up again in the first full week of Lent. I strongly urge you to consider attending adult faith class. Here we can study and discuss different teachings of our Catholic faith. Mere passive attendance at Sunday Masses is not sufficiently nourishing for the mind and spirit. I will be offering classes on Thursday at 6:30 pm in the parish hall of St. Mark’s (beginning 21 February), and Sunday at 12:25 pm, following Mass and a light lunch, in Centerville (beginning 24 Feb.) An adult or interested teen may attend either class during the week. Please bring your Bible, and a note pad. The topic for our classes is under consideration. In addition, study is continuing in Raynesford on Tuesday evenings at 7:00 pm at the home of Lois and John Hill.

Third, I strongly encourage each parishioner to attend at least one week-day Mass each week during Lent. If you cannot attend a Mass offered at St. Mark’s, perhaps you can attend at one of the churches in Great Falls. Daily Mass is a different kind of experience from a week-end (Sunday) liturgy. Certain temperaments may prefer the quiet of a weekday Mass. In any case, it provides some additional time to hear the Word, to respond in prayer, and to receive Christ in his sacred banquet.

Fourth, Stations of the Cross will be offered at least as listed in this bulletin, but my hope is that lay persons will continue the practice at St. Mark’s and at Holy Trinity when I am unable to lead them. As a form of prayer service without a Sacrament, the Stations need not be lead by a priest. When I lead them, I intend to use a traditional Scriptural-based meditation, but a lay person is free to choose another form of the Stations. I would suggest, however, that they should not explicitly promote action (such as social justice or pro-life); it is better to keep to the Scriptures, and let the Spirit work in each heart, promoting each to take action accordingly.

Fifth, the Church’s ancient tradition teaches that the best personal penances for Lent are prayer, study, moderate fasting, and almsgiving, or forms of charity for those in need. Give of ourselves, as Christ gives of Himself to us.

Can The American Wasteland Be Restored? (Part II)

 

Can America be restored?  How does a soul, whirling into nothingness, stop the process of decay? How can a country, degenerating from within, turn around?  Is it possible?

It is far better and easier to raise a child well than to restore adults and a country that have become a spiritual and mental wasteland. Some human beings pass through severe trials and manage to turn their lives around.  Consider, for example, some alcoholics, whose lives had become a restless voyage on “a sea of booze,” who by the grace of God and their utter cooperation with their “higher power” stopped drinking and learned to live soberly and with spiritual purpose. Victory is never gained once and for all, but one must engage in an unending journey out of the darkness of addiction and spiritual emptiness and onto the upward path of difficult and unending spiritual growth. Real life demands enormous mental and spiritual effort. Life is not for the spiritually lazy.

Spiritual turn-around and renewal are heart-wrenchingly difficult tasks for any human being. For a culture of death to become a culture of nourishing life may be well near impossible. More many-worded speeches by politicians whose main attribute is their ability to deceive the masses and the media elites will accomplish nearly nothing of any good, but in fact contribute to the decent into a spiritual wasteland. Promising so much, these politicians in truth deliver next to nothing of any true and lasting goodness. These politicians can rake in and redistribute enormous wealth under cover of the law, but they cannot help human beings out of the spiritual morass in which we live. The damage they do is in convincing people that they have solutions they do not have, and that they have healing powers they do not possess. These men are deceived deceivers, and in time their deceptions increase the cynicism and alienation visible in many Americans.  These charlatan-leaders people all walks of life in our country, and the most deceptive among them usually rise to the top in their chosen profession. Why? Because they are more willing to deceive, to use fraud, to cheat, to lie, to use power to weaken enemies and to advance their “cause.”  These maniacal leaders make ever-greater promises, and dupe ever-larger numbers of people. So rather than help cure spiritual and mental illnesses, they mask problems and keep us from setting about to the real and proper task of recovery.

Considering the unfolding of life in America since the Second World War, if one looks honestly and well, he will see a pattern: in all walks of life, in all of the formative industries and pursuits, increasingly degenerate and deceptive leaders have risen to the fore. Whether one considers politics, media elites, the educational establishment, or mass entertainment, one can see the same pattern: the men and women who should set examples of noble character and guide our people to more healthy, more life-enriching pursuits, are in fact often so full of themselves, so full of self-seeking, self-preservation, self-absorption, self-exaltation, and sheer power-and-wealth seeking that they have been helping to liberate Americans from God and reality and ground us further in the emptiness of our own self-inflated delusions. Consider, for example, how popular television transitioned from fairly harmless light entertainment in the 1950‘s into what has been on public display for several decades: propaganda encouraging all sorts of deviant and destructive “life-styles” (which are really various ways of dealing death). Consider the array of self-important politicians over the past fifty or more years, and wonder how can any country survive, let alone thrive, under such mental dwarfs and pretenders. It seems that the only way to get and to maintain power--the primary goal of our politicians--is through deceptively promising far more than they can or will deliver. And “we the people” are duped, again and again.  We the people are we the deceived.
  
Given this pattern of the rise of incompetent and self-deceived and deceiving “leaders” in various walks of life in America, how can there be a genuine cultural revival? If governments, educational establishments, religious institutions, mass media and entertainment industries, and so on, are more often the source of greater corruption than of genuine mental and spiritual growth, what can be done?  If institutions such as government and churches which should enrich and renew actually mislead, deceive, and further destroy, how can there be spiritual renewal?  Is our country in fact doomed to pass away, the victim of its own material successes and sheer spiritual emptiness?

Perhaps. No one knows the future--i.e., what will develop in time. It is possible that our country will be conquered by a more energetic, spiritually-focused society. It is possible that we will tear apart from forces of division within, and more or less dissolve as a people in history. It is possible that we drag along for decades as an enlarging cesspool of personal, moral, spiritual corruption, held together by power and manipulation. It is indeed possible and perhaps likely that more noble souls will opt out of social life, as they realize that active involvement does themselves and others virtually no good. It is possible that increasing doses of political power and psychologically manipulative force will be applied to a decultured, decadent civil society that will not control itself; and then America, “land of the free,” will become even more a land ruled by sick and self-seeking totalitarians.  What increasingly looks and feels like an insane asylum will become a vast prison governed and peopled by destructive criminal types. 

Perhaps. No one knows the future, but the course on which we are set looks dark and destructive, perhaps frightening to some. Yes, there are still to be found in our midst some better, self-giving, generous men and women. But these more healthy souls have increasingly little effect on the American way of life. Goodness is marginalized by socially predominant forms of evil: love of power, greed, violence, deception. The sicker types are prevailing and coming to the fore in the socially predominant walks of life.  That is the reality that shows up, and can be seen by anyone who cares to look.
 
America, look and see what you are becoming: not “a shining city set on a hill” to give light to the world, but a spiritual wasteland mired in self-destructive forces.

As things stand now, my guess is that the United States of America is passing away, killed by its rejection of God and of reality, and immersion in its decadent and destructive self.  As is said, “time will tell.”

America the Wasteland

 

The mind that is not seeking to learn, to love, to live well, to accomplish  various duties, becomes an empty wasteland.  For a while, one can people the wasteland with all sorts of diversions--hours of “entertainment,” of watching television or movies; of listening to purposeless music; of playing games; of endless chatter with others; of eating and drinking; of restless carousing for a paramour; of shopping to shop; of frenetic money-making in one form or another. The empty soul tries to stuff its emptiness with whatever it can find to divert itself from the truth of its reality: the mind that is not seeking truth, learning, applying itself to duties, has become a spiritual and mental void. And that void tastes of hell.  

The human mind must, according to its nature and purpose, love well and seek truth. The intellect needs to discover and contemplate reality in order to fulfill itself. The passions need to be focused on achieving good, and particularly on right loving and energetic fulfillment of life’s demands and duties. When the mind is not properly engaged, it becomes unhappy, sick, malcontented, restless, anxious, depressed, destructive, violent, obsessive, fearful. The soul that will not spend energies seeking truth and doing good becomes, over time--as diversions fail to divert--a haunt of jackals and wild beasts, of demonic forces over which one has ever-decreasing control.  Into the empty mind come destructive, dominating forces that gradually take over, leaving one disintegrating under their power, which effectively severs the soul from its grounding in God and in reality.  This is spiritual death.

I see these forces at work in my friend Mark, who is diagnosed as suffering from depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. These clinical terms do little to assess the real problem: his mind is emptying of truth, his soul not engaged in doing good. The divine presence, the Spirit, which grounds and illuminates and enriches, has been ignored and effectively shut out of his existence. So what happens? Gradually Mark is becoming divorced from reality and living in a kind of hell of imagined reality, a hell of darkness, depression, waves of anxiety, obsessive thoughts, stupid compulsions such as repetitive hand-washing. His spiritually empty soul is indeed becoming a wasteland, and as he disintegrates into the emptiness of self-enclosed-self, he becomes increasingly unwilling and unable to accomplish anything good or beneficial.  He is dying mentally and spiritually, and soon, physically.

Mark is an American, and his soul is a portrait of our culture, of us as a people. We have become a mental and spiritual wasteland. Having ignored the divine presence, having removed God in various forms from our lives, what is left? Having failed to concentrate, to focus the mind on acquiring truth for its own sake, and to love and do what is good and right, what has happened to us? Many Americans spend a large portion of each day in mindless entertainment, in pursuing various lusts, in shopping, in social chatter, in gambling, in sexual fantasies, in viewing sports, and so on. And many Americans spend many hours of their lives under alcohol and drug influences. Our country is spiritually and mentally dying.  Education becomes increasingly about trivial pursuits, bits and pieces of information whirling around in bored and boring minds. Some persons revolt, engaging in senseless violence. Some persons spiral into depression. Others live anxious and worried lives, endlessly, as if on an unending treadmill of joylessness.  America is a portrait of spiritual death.

Having turned from God, from the Spirit of truth and of genuine love meant to fill and guide our minds, we are a decaying, deadening, dying culture filled with human beings suffering all sorts of spiritual and mental illnesses, or just engaged in mindless diversions--intended to prevent people from recognizing their emptiness and the futility of their lives, and turning around to the source of life. Our self-inflated politicians can talk endlessly, and order all manner of policies to be effected, and pass volumes of excessively detailed laws, but they cannot prevent the decent of America into the wasteland of spiritual and mental death. Indeed, they share in the same wasteland, whether they know it or not. For our political and social leaders seem oblivious of the causes of our decay. Human being without the Divine is destructive and endlessly unhappy. America is killing itself: unborn, children, adults, elderly. We are killing ourselves and others. America has become a spiritual-mental wasteland.