Of Agoras and Caves

 The statement that the meek shall inherit the earth is very far from being a meek statement. I mean it is not meek in the ordinary sense of mild and moderate{218} and inoffensive. To justify it, it would be necessary to go very deep into history and anticipate things undreamed of then and by many unrealised even now; such as the way in which the mystical monks reclaimed the lands which the practical kings had lost. If it was a truth at all, it was because it was a prophecy. But certainly it was not a truth in the sense of a truism. The blessing upon the meek would seem to be a very violent statement; in the sense of doing violence to reason and probability.  

GK Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

A week ago I noted that Sebastian Morello, a British philosopher and lecturer whose articles in the European Conservative I have been reading this past week, writes that "Catholicism has largely become an internet genre."

Taken one way, this is very true, in the sense that the internet has become our agora.  It is not just a virtual marketplace; it is the place where citizens of the world can make their voices heard.   And that is what they do.    For better or for worse.  And that includes Catholics.

This internet is also a library, as I found when I first discovered the internet in the last millenium -- that would be in 1998.    Back then, that's how I thought of it -- a slightly dangerous metropolis with the Best Library Ever.    Like Dublin, perhaps, and its Trinity Library; like Alexandria.  You could spend eternity browsing through Gutenberg books.    And this virtual library had places where niche groups, like "Catholic homeschoolers who want to talk about educational philosophy" could converge harmlessly , share resources and encourage each other.   For someone living in a small town mostly devoted to seasonal tourism with a tiny library this was an entry point to all kinds of mostly positive things

When my sixth child was born very ill, the internet became a sort of avatar (perhaps not the best word in this context, but icon doesn't really seem to fit ) of a real thing, the cloud of witnesses, the communion of saints Militant, Suffering, and Triumphant, as my internet friends prayed novena after novena for his life and wellbeing.

During the decade and a half when I was involved in small scale "content creation" and "content engagement" as I heard Rob Henderson call it recently, I became increasingly aware of how much of life wasn't really represented at all online.   There were bulks of people who basically never went online except  perhaps to post pictures of their grandkids on FB or maybe read the emails from their kid's school.   And that's just in the USA.   In other parts of the world, I'm guessing that life goes on without the internet even to that extent.

The conviction grew that it was time for a hiatus and more or less intentionally I disengaged and did other things.   I participated in my local parish's bible studies and in their board; I relearned to play the piano and started playing for my church; I learned to knit, and knit and knit; I engaged in the life of my grandchildren who were born in this time frame.    Sure, I still looked up dinner recipes and knitting tutorials and hymn selections to play for Mass, and ordered my Christmas shopping, but I didn't really use the internet's agora or city library features.   I went mostly dark.  

This is turning more autobiographical than I meant it to be when I started it and yet I have to include even more autobiography to make my point.   Back in January I wrote a bit about this in  There and Back Again   to try to explain my intuition that it was time to re-engage.

In that decade, the internet has changed, or maybe it is just me?   Probably both.   

Rob Henderson says that 1% of internet users are doing "content creation", meaning writing or making videos or podcasts or whatever you do with your "content".    9% are "content engagers" meaning that they make some sort of semi-public response to the creation -- they comment, or perhaps share with their friend circle, or push the like button, or things like that.

The other 90% are basically what is still called "lurkers" -- they read, or watch, or perhaps share things with their IRL friends and family, but they are invisible.

 

I think of this blog, in those terms, as "content engagement".   That is, I'm not really creating anything.   The writing is my way of processing what I read -- mostly read -- I don't watch things much, except when someone in the family shows me a cute pet video or a political clip.  

I'm a bit uneasy about the new internet culture, which I don't completely understand, so I am happy about staying in this little corner and not really interacting with other avatars.     Still, if you happen to find this and want to say hi or express a thought, please do.    I have the settings on public and that is because I'm trying to write things out about public things -- about my life in the agora, so to speak.  

The reason I brought up "Catholicism as an internet genre" at the beginning is because though I think it is an important concept in terms of the "agora", the public square where politics and sociology and theology intersect and collide, I think you have to balance out the insight with the reality of Catholicism as a Divine genre.  

When I was living off the Web for that decade, trying to engage in real life alone, it was quite difficult in many ways.    Everything I did felt particular, concrete.    I became very aware of all my flaws and imperfections -- I collided with them time and time again.    I made mistakes, and I sometimes hid, like Jonah.     Yet my life is not a difficult one.   I live in one of the most prosperous countries of any time or place.   

There are a lot of people living particular, hidden lives.   Some like St Therese of Lisieux become known after their death.    Some like Juan Diego or Mother Theresa receive a call to some undertaking that makes them known whether they like it or not.  

 Some are never known except maybe to a few people.     The lady who organized and led our small local Bible study was a revert who had come back to the Church after many years of anger and rejection.    She was a high school teacher who had an impressive ability to dig out extra information on the topics we were covering.    She never wrote any books as far as I know, she had no children, and she died of cancer several years ago.     I know at least one person who converted primarily because of her and several more whose lives were touched by her.   Her short time in our church brought our community far closer than it had previously been, as a station church mostly used by vacationers.

There are many, many people like this.   You read about them every day in the Martyrology, people who would be entirely unknown if they hadn't been in the early Church and testified with their blood and lives.   Soldiers, low-level officials, Roman matrons, virgins, former prostitutes, and so on.   

Chesterton in the Everlasting Man writes about the birth of Christ in the "cave":

There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace. That is perhaps the mightiest of the mysteries of{206} the cave. It is already apparent that though men are said to have looked for hell under the earth, in this case it is rather heaven that is under the earth. And there follows in this strange story the idea of an upheaval of heaven. That is the paradox of the whole position; that henceforth the highest thing can only work from below.

What I have been writing about through this blog is the sense in which what Chesterton called the "cave" is really the core from which things are overset, though perhaps the leaders don't realize it at the time.    The manger, the catacombs, the cloisters are where things were really happening; the heathen could only rage, like Herod, plot like Caiaphas, evade like Pilate, or make censuses, like Augustus Caesar.    It's not to say that writers, thinkers, politicians and cardinals do not influence the course of things -- of course, they do.   But the real things are like a heart, hidden and alive -- they vivify what is good and only what is good.   The bad do damage, but they die and are cast off, except for their role as the villains in the narrative.  When they seem strongest, they are actually at their weakest.    It is not the powers that be who inherit the earth.