Nature and Nature’s God. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, May 21, 2013.
Mead:
[Our hearts and prayers are with all those
affected by the tornado in Oklahoma and their families. In light of this
tragedy, here are some comments we made on the eve of Hurricane Sandy on
natural disasters and our relationship to the higher powers around us. The
disaster is different, but the message is just as pertinent today as it was
then.]
While
the lights went out across Manhattan tonight, and the city that calls itself
the capital of the world was cut off from the mainland as flood waters
thundered through its streets, many people around the world watched the
spectacle and were reminded just how fragile the busy world we humans build
around us really is.
Manhattan
is one of those places where nature seems mostly held at bay. Except for the
parks, oases of carefully preserved nature deliberately shaped by the hand of
man, every inch of the city’s surface has been covered by something manmade.
The valleys have been exalted, the mountains laid low and the rough places
plain.
Those
who live and do their business there pay very little attention to the natural
world most of the time. It can be hard to get a taxi in the rain, and the
occasional winter snowstorm forces a brief halt to the city’s routine, but the
average New Yorker’s attention is on the social world, not the world of nature.
What’s happening to your career, your bank account, your friendships and loved
ones, the political scene and the financial markets: those are the concerns
that occupy the minds of busy urbanites on their daily rounds.
Into
this busy, self involved world Hurricane Sandy has burst. Sharks have been
photographed (or at least photo shopped) swimming in the streets of New Jersey
towns; waves sweep across the Lower East Side; transformers explode on both
sides of the Hudson as salt water surges into the tunnels and subways. For a
little while at least, New Yorkers are reminded that we live in a world shaped
by forces that are bigger than we are; tonight it is easy to identify with the
sentiments in John Milton’s paraphrase of Psalm 114:
Shake
earth, and at the presence be aghast
Of him
that ever was, and aye shall last,
That
glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush,
And
make soft rills from the fiery flint-stones gush.
Soon,
though, the winds will die down and the waters recede. The bridges will open,
the roads will be repaired, the water will be pumped from the subways and
service restored. New Yorkers will go back to their normal pursuits and
Hurricane Sandy will fade into lore.
But
events like this don’t come out of nowhere. Sandy isn’t an irruption of
abnormality into a sane and sensible world; it is a reminder of what the world
really is like. Human beings want to build lives that exclude what we can’t
control — but we can’t.
Hurricane
Sandy is many things; one of those things is a symbol. The day is coming for
all of us when a storm enters our happy, busy lives and throws them into utter
disarray. The job on which everything depends can disappear. That relationship
that holds everything together can fall apart. The doctor can call and say the
test results are not good. All of these things can happen to anybody; something
like this will happen to us all.
Somewhere
in the future, each of us has an inescapable appointment with irresistible
force. For each one of us, the waters will someday rise, the winds spin out of
control, the roof will come off the house and the power will go out for good.
We can
protect ourselves from a storm like Sandy by taking proper precautions; at the
Mead manor we have candles, firewood and food stocked against the possibility
that our power will go out. But one day, dear reader, a storm is coming which
neither you nor we can survive. The strongest walls, the sturdiest retirement
plans stuffed with stocks and CDs, the best doctors cannot protect us from that
final encounter with the force that made and will someday unmake us.
Coming
to terms with that reality is the most important thing that any of us can do. A
storm like this one is an opportunity to do exactly that. It reminds us that
what we like to call ‘normal life’ is fragile and must someday break apart. If
we are wise, we will take advantage of this smaller, passing storm to think
seriously about the greater storm that is coming for us all.
A grand
and powerful woman I once knew died after two encounters with cancer and a
devastating stroke took her from the realm of normal life into the storm tossed
waters that surround us all on every side. She’d never been a religious woman
and, growing up in a segregated South where so many churches and churchgoers
defended a brutal system of institutionalized injustice and cruelty, she was always
a rebel against the conventional piety and ritualized religious life she saw
around her.
But
late in her life when the winds around her howled and the dark waters were
rising, she was driven to face the truth behind the illusions and the pretense,
and told the person she loved best in all the world that “I’ve made my peace
with God.”
That is
something we all need to do. It involves a recognition of our helplessness and
insufficiency before the mysteries and limits of life. Like the First Step in
the Twelve Step programs, it begins with an acknowledgment of failure and
defeat. We each try to build a self-sufficient world, a sturdy little life that
is proof against storms and disasters — but none of us can really get that
done.
Strangely,
that admission of weakness opens the door to a new kind of strength. To
acknowledge and accept weakness is to ground our lives more firmly in truth,
and it turns out that to be grounded in reality is to become more able and more
alive. Denial is hard work; those who try to stifle their awareness of the
limits of human life and ambition in the busy rounds of daily life never reach
their full potential.
To open
your eyes to the fragility of life and to our dependence on that which is
infinitely greater than ourselves is to enter more deeply into life. To come to
terms with the radical insecurity in which we all live is to find a different
and more reliable kind of security. The joys and occupations of ordinary life
aren’t all there is to existence, but neither are the great and all-destroying
storms. There is a calm beyond the storm, and the same force that sends these
storms into our lives offers a peace and security that no storm can destroy. As
another one of the psalms puts it, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy
cometh in the morning.” Accepting your limits and your dependence on things you
can’t control is the first step on the road toward finding that joy.
Via Meadia hopes
that all our readers survived Hurricane Sandy with their lives intact and their
property whole. And more than that, we hope that our readers will take the
opportunity that a storm like this offers, step back from their daily lives,
and reach out to the Power who plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon
the storm. Getting the right connection with the highest power of all not only
gives you a place of refuge when the big storm finally comes; it transforms
daily life and infuses ordinary occupations with greater meaning and wonder
than you ever understood.
The
world needs people who have that kind of strength and confidence. Storms much
greater than Sandy are moving through our lives these days: the storms shaking
the Middle East, recasting the economy, transforming the political horizons of
Asia. It will take strong and grounded people to ride these mighty storms;
paradoxically, it is only by coming to terms with our limits and weakness that
we can find the strength and the serenity to face what lies ahead.
