Mike Todd - he of Waving or Drowning fame - is brilliant. Absolutely. He's written a post called A Fork Cross in the Road for which he fears he will burned in effigy. I doubt it will come to that but who am I to say? This world is an anarchist's dream.
Last night the Resident Love Goddess and I sat and watched the season premiere of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.They do some amazing renos for some deserving people - and they deserve to be lauded for the work they do. But what kept nagging at me as I watched the show was something more than the number of times they focused on the various family members crying, or asked questions designed to start the tears, as if to heighten the drama. Underlying the entire show was an assumption that says, "Now you have a beautiful home. Now your life will be good." I can't quite put my finger on it, but after reading Mike's post I can't help but think the problem isn't just that we don't care, which is enough in itself, believe me. It seems like so much more than that - like we're just screwed up on so many levels that everything seems fine. As I said, I can't quite put my finger on it. It's greed, it's selfishness, it's short-sightedness, it's misplaced values and priorities, it's an essential misunderstanding of the message of Christ, it's egotism, it's ethnocentricity, it's... I don't know, it's almost like we have to invent a new word for the complexity and sweep of screwed-upness the world is in. Total Depravity comes to mind, though that term might be overworked in some circles.
I think our moral bankruptcy is, essentially, the absence of any connection whatsoever between our individual rights and freedoms and our collective responsibilities. This may say something about the nature of democracy and it's relentless elevation of the individual above the village. Democracy is the single most pervasive paradigm of our society, having such reach as to have compromised even the gospel of Christ with a cross that speaks to the guilt free life following the sinner's prayer, the apostrophe always before the 's', and never after. I don't know how we can read the Lord's Prayer, or the Sermon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments and not recognize the collective nature of those documents. I don't know how we can watch a show like Extreme Makeover Home Edition and not recognize that's something's wrong. I don't know how we can go on like this.
This week, in our small, fair city on the shores of The Tiny Perfect Lake, two men died. One drowned in a small creek, in less than six inches of water. The other was found in the marina. In both cases a street person drank too much, passed out, fell into the water and drowned. Their names have been withheld pending notification of next of kin and I understand the significance of that. For right or wrong, for good, bad or otherwise, however, these men were members of our community and it feels very much like they are every bit as faceless and nameless in death as they were in life.
I don't know what to say about that, either.