December 16, 2024

Invitation to Exploration (2)

Invitation to Exploration (2)
Photo by Ben Wicks / Unsplash

It would be an interesting psychological experiment to ask the people what they do when the road is blocked by this sign that says, "Road Closed. Diversion." I don't know what you would do, but I would try to look around to see what is happening.

As a natural explorer and wanderer, I think of the other meanings of the word diversion. How can I divert my attention and explore what is happening here? Or what if something else is happening, and this sign is just a diversion? (..) While I have been to some interesting places, most of my travel happens through books and things I find online, both amazing and weird.

In this project, Europe At Midnight, I am sharing some of what I have found. Not because I know it all, I don't! But I want to do it in such a way that you will feel invited to explore your own questions and share what you have found. (After which I am going to suggest that it might be better to do this together...)

In the previous post, Invitation to the Journey, I wrote about the meta-crisis.

So we are now in this meta-crisis, the "more than just a sum of the ecological crisis + the economic crisis + the geopolitical crisis + the meaning crisis & the culture wars"-crisis. It feels like the unravelling of culture itself, the great shake-up of all things.

Our context is one of crisis, sometimes called a meta-crisis or poly-crisis, because we are dealing with multiple crises at the same time. However, this does not mean that we are dealing with a moment of bad luck in which multiple unfortunate things happen at the same time. If you are on your bike in pouring rain and you fall because you get a flat tyre, that is unfortunate but not a meta-crisis. With the term meta-crisis, we are looking at something more profound.

The ecological crisis is deep. It entails the loss of habitat, the extinction of species, the depletion of the earth, the loss of landscapes and culture, and climate change. It is also a deep crisis because it is deeply integrated with other crises. We have a global economy in which we produce, sell, and move stuff around in unimaginable quantities, often at unbelievable cost to people and the planet. This global machine is at the same time under pressure because of the current geopolitical crisis. With wars in Europe and in the regions on the border, and in a rapidly changing geopolitical climate, most analysts predict heavy weather for the forseeable future.

Many people in once-Christian Europe experience a meaning crisis. We don't know what it means to be a human person, how to understand the world, who to trust, how to deal with spiritual realities, how to live well, and how to die well.

Putting it all together

All of this is overwhelming and confusing. You will see that once you realise that all these crises are interconnected and feed into each other. The compounding effect at a global cultural level. Yet, this is not the whole picture. When you turn the fabric around you will see the real picture. The reality is that this meta-crisis is a symptom of a more fundamental crisis.

A crisis is a mirror through which we see the soul of our culture. This is true for every crisis, so the ecological crisis shows us that we treat the world as a resource ready for exploitation. What do we see when we look into the soul of the meta-crisis? Of which disaster is it a symptom?

In the previous post, I wrote:

Religions are back but in a post-secular shape within a multi-religious space, with plenty of options. Some 'young' Christians, both converts and re-discoverers, join the more traditional, liturgical churches. Others are rediscovering the great classical works of philosophy and literature that once formed the basis of what we call 'culture,' the culture of European Christianity.

What is fascinating about the culture of European Christianity is that it was this metaphysical intertwining of classical philosophy and the Christian religion. This is now (almost) fully unravelled. As a culture, we have even lost the memory of this source. We cannot assume that our children grow up learning the skills of Cultural Literacy unless we decide to teach them. This project is dedicated to re-learning these skills. In a way, we are trying to do what C.S. Lewis did:

To make ordinary people think about historic Christianity, and to see and feel the strength and attraction of the case for it, was Lewis’s goal throughout. All through his writings runs the sense that moderns have ceased to think about life and reality in a serious way and have settled instead for mindless drift with the crowd, or blind trust in technology, or the Athenian frivolity of always chasing new ideas, or the nihilism of knee-jerk negativism toward everything in the past. The Christian spokesman's first task, as Lewis saw it, is to put all this into reverse and get folk thinking again. (J.I.Packer as quoted by Paul Vander Klay)

What's in a name?

This journey is called Europe At Midnight. The name was suggested by a friend. While midnight on the clock is not exactly the middle of the night, it is suggestive of something. On the one hand, it is the middle of the night, it is dark, and it is not clear where we are. We want the night to be over, but cheap answers are not going to help us. I believe that it is particularly important that we learn how to stay with the trouble for a while. What can we do if we have not taken the time to deeply understand what troubles us?

And yet. Might we not wonder, hope, suspect, and pray that we see a trace, a sign of a new day? At some point after midnight, it will happen. And this journey is based on the assumption that building something like a Christian culture is a way we can wait out the night.

Or, as someone once put it:

Great art and saintly lives will always have the capacity to break through, because God is not incapable of saving the lost beloved. Beauty and holiness is not feeble. The kenosis of God's presence in our Fallen world is not absence. A low, self-satisfied depravity that is celebrated, even by intellectual elites who justify the worst by sophistry and their own culpable flight from truth and goodness may yet be challenged by daring and serious thought, by the radiance of life, the mystery of the Cross, by grace that may act in innumerable ways as simple as the right word or deed at the propitious moment. The Holy Spirit is stronger than the spirit of the age and we do ourselves a disservice by falling into despair just because the world gives us a picture of dust and nausea, ersatz festivity that hides an empty, despairing frivolity. And there is always Silence and prayer and confidence that the Risen Lord is indeed victorious. We may be living through a cultural Good Friday or perhaps the uncertainty and fear of Holy Saturday, but no amount of bad pedagogy or bad art or insular virtual reality can undo the victory of Pascha. Create art, think deeply, speak and act with kindness and confidence that love is stronger than death. Do not let sorrow over an ugly and imbecilic wickedness imply that Evil can find a place where Christ has not already descended and redeemed the earth. (Source)

What shall we do?

How do we create art and think deeply, speak and act with kindness and grow in the confidence that love is stronger than death?

This is my proposal: I am putting together a reading list of relevant authors and pieces which I will publish on this site. And I will soon start inviting you to an online reading group. We will meet 5 times (in February & March 2025) to read and discuss the work of some relevant thinkers on the list. I will introduce the text and you have the opportunity to share your reflections. While we engage with the questions, we will also practice Cultural Literacy in the process.

If you want to receive an invitation, all you need to do now is to make sure you are on the list for which you can sign up here. (Note: if you don't see the form below, you are already logged in.)

Thank you all for your responses so far. I am still interested in hearing who and what inspires you.

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