Provincialism

Provincialism: concern for one's own area or region at the expense of national or supranational unity.

There are other nuances to the use of the word, provincialism. But, I'm going with this one today.

There are probably many words that could describe our collective state of being these days. And, while some of those appear to be not unsimilar terms that have been used for such things all along the way, it does feel like there is a timbre in the current set of language that is substantively different. And, the quality of that difference is noticeably disturbing.

Under the guise of populism, it is sometimes difficult to isolate what or who is exactly the fuel for many of our raging cultural fires. Is it a reflection of something important going on for everyday people? Or, is it a function of the charlatans who are stoking the flames of fear, common to everyday people?

It is against that backdrop, that I fear a word like provincialism falls woefully short of the description actually needed. But, for now, I’m going to use it as a means of getting to some of what appears to be involved. As I've mentioned, we recently recently traveled outside the country, and I was reminded again of the importance of doing such things. Sure, the vacationing aspect can be a lot of fun. But, it doesn’t take very much, even in that context, to notice things about the way other people live their lives that are important to consider; not only for their lives, but also for ours.

And, then, when you really talk to them, you get a whole lot of information about how they see things...and about how we see things.

Other people have fully functioning lives. Provincialism tends to be unaware of that. At the very least, it doesn't tend to respect it. It tends to have a high degree of respect for how 'we' do things. But, almost automatically, it has little space for the possibility that others do, too (especially when the way that looks is different). As the definition indicates, it elevates 'our' concern over that of others.

When you travel, you not only notice this, but you also sense that other groups of people having varying degrees of their sense of interdependencies in the world. The American version, right now, seems to be heavily focused on what we need...not what someone else needs (collectively and individually). It is our interests that should prevail, not only for what we estimate is best for us, but also over anyone else (unless it serves our interests).

People in Europe are very concerned about Russia (in particular, Putin). They have a visceral relationship with what is happening around them. This is likely due to the prices they have paid historically from the wars fought by their family members, on their soil. Our wars tend to be 'over there'. And, while we also have some similar fears about things like Russia, it is palpably not the same. Europe is highly sensitive to the powers that surround them in both the east and west. America largely disregards Europe's concerns.

Provincialism is like that. It tends to say things like, "that's not our problem..." and move on with our concerns.

Media can't bridge this gap. Experience can...and often does, especially when real human connection occurs.

I share some pics of our travels here (Top10...if you don't have all day) and here (Motherload...if you do), not for the purpose of thumbing my nose at the real problems of the world, including provincialism (effectively communicating something like, "sorry you got deported...sucks to be you. But, we're sure having fun..."). I'm sharing them to reveal some of the marvels of the way other peoples have adapted to their environments and live their lives...and for the questions that should lead us to.

Lean Into The Crack

If you wake up and the day feels broken, just lean into the crack.

-- Björk

What Matters

The most important thing is to stay focused on what matters. Most little things ultimately have no effect on an enterprise. It's the big deals — and the big decisions that do. Don't spend too much time on little things. The important choices and opportunities are the ones that move the dial.

-- Larry Tisch

Broken Up

I’ve noticed…that while routines are in some ways essential. They also need to broken-up from time to time.

Certain efficiencies can lead to unintended consequences.  Remaining open to new and disruptive possibilities helps us avoid becoming fixated and inflexible.

After a week of vacation, I returned this morning to my default daily routine.  But, I also noticed that I had to think through some of the steps I'd developed and whether or not I wanted to continue them.  Not a bad thing to do.  A break from the routine allowed me to re-evaluate it.  Do I want to fall back into the pattern I had developed?  Do I want something else, because of having not continued?  Push-ups — do I really want to do them?  Yes, I do...because I need to.  Bridges?  Rowing?  What about the other things?  What has changed since I stopped for a while?  Are my priorities still the same?

Besides, sometimes our routines themselves need to be altered.  Because of the inertia that can so easily get involved, breaking things up a bit can be quite helpful (if not liberating).  If nothing else, at least, making conscious choices (vs unconscious ones) is important from time to time.

A Deep Well Within

There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too.... Dear God, these are anxious times.... We must help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. 

-- Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life

Father Richard turns to Scripture and contemplation in the face of collective suffering.   

In the wisdom of the Psalms, we read: 

In God alone is my soul at rest. 
God is the source of my hope. 
In God I find shelter, my rock, and my safety. 

-- Psalm 62:5–6 

What could it mean to find rest like this in a world such as ours? Every day more and more people face the catastrophe of extreme weather. The neurotic news cycle is increasingly driven by words and deeds that incite hatred, sow discord, and amplify chaos. There is no guarantee of the future in an economy designed to protect the rich and powerful at the expense of far too many people subsisting at society’s margins.  

It’s no wonder the mental and emotional health of so many people in the USA is in tangible decline! We have wholesale abandoned any sense of truth, objectivity, science, or religion in civil conversation; we now recognize we’re living with the catastrophic results of several centuries of what philosophers call nihilism (nothing means anything; no universal patterns exist). 

Somehow our occupation and vocation as believers must be to first restore the Divine Center by holding it and fully occupying it ourselves. If contemplation means anything, it means that we can “safeguard that little piece of You, God,” as Etty Hillesum describes. What other power do we have now? All else is tearing us apart, inside and out. We cannot abide in such a place for any length of time or it will become our prison. 

God cannot abide with us in a place of fear. 

God cannot abide with us in a place of ill will or hatred. 

God cannot abide with us inside a nonstop volley of claim and counterclaim. 

God cannot abide with us in an endless flow of online punditry and analysis. 

God cannot speak inside of so much angry noise and conscious deceit. 

God cannot be born except in a womb of Love. 

So offer God that womb. 

Contemplation can help stand watch at the door of your senses, so chaos cannot make its way into your soul. If we allow it for too long, it will become who we are, and we’ll no longer have natural access to the life-giving “really deep well” that Etty Hillesum returned to so often to find freedom. 

In this time, I suggest some form of public service, volunteerism, mystical reading from the masters, prayer — or, preferably, all of the above.

-- Richard Rohr

It may not be in our power to determine how things will unfold, but it is in our power to decide how we respond. It is in our power to hold on to the practices that nourish us, inform us, and give us courage. 

-- Adam Bucko

3 Observations & A Question

A lot of life is about calibration. 

By nature, human-beings are, more often than not, reactionary creatures. 

Escaping the present by constantly anticipating the future may result in a different future than you imagine.

When it is no longer about right and wrong or good and bad, but about power, what do you do?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

I Just Got Back From Europe. They All Know….

Just when we thought not much more could happen...we’ve only been out of the country for a little over a week and, boy, were we wrong.

I Just Got Back From Europe. They All Know America’s a Mess and That He’s Nuts

Being embarrassed is the least of it….  What can possibly happen next?   Well…:

When 60,000 Votes Don’t Count and Harriet Tubman Disappears

While most just don’t want to know, we will find out either way.  So, wouldn’t it be better to engage (than it is to pretend)? 

Bells

There is something about bells — here’s some from Rome:

The orchestration and playing of bells seems to hail something of significance.  Often, it appeals to our sense of the historical.  But, it uses sound to symbolize that something involved also meets the present. And, because of that dynamic, it extends something into the future. Perhaps, one the more significant points of history is what it speaks to us about today.  Bells can call us to some of history’s voice.

Visual imagery works the same dynamic (even if not quite as effectively as sound).  Here’s some we’ve seen this week:

Rome, Italy

Love Whoever Is Around

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

-- Kurt Vonnegut

LT: What's Right

Bad leaders care about who's right. Good leaders care about what's right.

-- Simon Sinek

Once You've Experienced It

Ever noticed...you often only really know stuff once you’ve actually experienced it.

Cathedral of Saint Andrew Apostle

Amalfi, Italy

4 Observations (from Others)

Hatred corrodes the container it's carried in.

-- Alan Simpson

So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.

-- David Super, Georgetown Law School...regarding Musk's actions

We must pay attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion, and constant disorientation.

-- Daniel Hunter

I always thought that belief precedes action, and sometimes it does. But all too often, it is practices that shape us, that change our beliefs and help us internalize them in ways that are transformative. We learn by doing. 

-- Karen González

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

On The Lighter Side: Greenland Says

On the Lighter Side:

Perspectives

Sometimes it looks like all we are really doing is borrowing the words of others to maintain a description of what we see and feel.

Inherently, this is not automatically bad (after all, no ideas are in a vacuum). However, if this stays confined to just what we think we see, we miss the opportunity for any broader perspective. And, too many missed opportunities—other perspectives—invariably seem to lead to a certain degree of distortion (this, by the way, is a direct contradiction to those who claim other perspectives distort the truth).

Somehow, we have to merge what we think we see with what actually is. This requires experiencing something beyond what comes from our normal understanding. It takes some wisdom to do this—usually wisdom from outside of what we tend to try to maintain in our minds.

This can be stretching at times and...liberating.

We are traveling this week to a foreign country. I suspect that we will see many things that, at the very least, operate differently, not to mention the assumptions which drive them. When I was in college, I traveled both to the greater part of Europe and Japan. The implications of what I saw there rocked my paradigm of how I thought things worked (especially my assumptions about the universality of how things worked), including challenging what I thought was even true.

Those experiences set in motion some things that have persisted throughout the balance of my life. And, I think I would have to say looking back that, without those experiences, my view (if not my understanding) of things would most likely remained unaltered.

We continue to borrow (more heavily than we often realize) from what is around us. That seems to be a given. It is the quality of what we are surrounded by that becomes the issue worthy of our consideration. Perhaps, our greatest opportunity is both to acknowledge and appreciate the value of alternative perspectives. The agency involved seems to be our openness and willingness to do so.

It is easy to repeat the not uncommon mantra that it’s important to have perspective. Wisdom, though, seems to include the conscious choices we make to pursue it.

Once You Realize

Once you realize that you can do something, it would be difficult to live with yourself if you didn’t do it 

-- James Baldwin

A meditation on the concept: Silent Agreements of the Group

Lifestyle Creep

That what each of us calls our 'necessary expenses' will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary.

-- George Clason, with insight on the entropy of lifestyle creep