The Way begins where for Christ Himself is mortal part ended at the cross. There alone, with all our earthly defenses down and our earthly possessions relinquished, we can confront
the true circumstances of our being; there alone grasp the triviality of these seemingly so majestic achievements of ours,
like going to the moon, unraveling our genes, fitting one another with each others hearts, livers, and kidneys. There, contemplating God in the likeness of man, we may understand how foolish and inept is man when he
sees himself in the likeness of God. Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered.
Chalet LAbri, January 1,
2003
A page from my journal.acg
Once more, precisely on schedule, our
planet, whirling and tilting in space, records a new beginning to a brand new year.
I take note with an immense measure of gratitude that I am among the living, that I seemingly have most of my wits
about me, and that I enjoy a full measure of good health as the calendar turns. Living
as I do in the shadows of the Blue Ridge where the seasons are distinct, I give thanks for the faith to believe that no matter
the foolish interferences of man, a sovereign Captain masters our good ship Earth.
I am reading again Malcolm Muggeridges insightful book, Jesus
Rediscovered. Ever the iconoclast, Muggeridge spears the sort of scientific
utopia imagined by writers like Aldous Huxley and George Orwell in a sermon he once delivered at St. Aldates Church, Oxford. In it he asks the question, "Is God in charge of our affairs, or are we?.Whereas formerly
it was considered mans highest aim to understand Gods purpose for him, and his highest achievement to fulfill that purpose,
now we are urged to dispense with God altogether, and assume control ourselves of the world, the universe and our own collective
and individual destiny. God, we are told if he ever existed has died; as a concept, He is not needed any more. Our apprenticeship
is served; mankind has come of age, and the time has come for us to assume control of ourselves and our world in our own right."
Muggeridge imagines some future historian looking at us back across the centuries:
"What will he make of it all?.They cant really have believed, hell say to himself, that this notion of Progress they
bandied about meant anything. That happiness lay along the motorways, and wellbeing
in a rising Gross National Product. That birth pills, easy divorce and abortion
made for happy families, and sex and barbiturates for quiet nights. There must,
hell conclude, be some other explanation; a civilization must have been possessed by a death wish which so assiduously and
ingeniously sought its own extinction physically, by devoting so much of its wealth, knowledge and skills to creating the
means to blow itself and all mankind to smithereens; economically, by developing a consumer economy whereby more and more
wants have to be artificially created and stimulated in order to take up an endlessly expanding production; morally by abolishing
the moral order altogether and pursuing the will-o-the-wisp of happiness through satiety;
spiritually, by abolishing God Himself and setting up man as the arbiter of his own destiny. A big laugh there for our historian.as, looking back, he notes how our generation of men proved the least
like gods, the least capable of coping with the complexities and dilemmas of their time, of any that had ever existed on earth."
As I journal these thoughts, a flock of robins traveling in tandem has appeared on my front lawn. Why come they to this place at midwinter? Quo Vadis?, Where are you going? I ask the robins and myself as well. Some inner radar guides
their flight down the mid-Atlantic. Some inner radar likewise screens me safely
to places yet unknown, watched by a loving, caring Creator. Uppermost
in my thoughts as the new year begins is a prayer that I might be a worthy steward of my allotted time, that my quest for
meaning might increase, that I might garner the wisdom to share that which is vouchsafed me, and that I might wring from every
moment the joy of being a child of God.
