In Exhaustion, Deo
I’ve written several times now on the concept of babel, in some ways its articulation is what this blog was founded on, identify the tactics of the powers and principalities, discuss how they utilize babel to destroy our humanity. These forces, these powers and principalities are just some of the forces at work in our world. They are created beings, forces that are larger and more powerful than ourselves and things which seek to enslave and ensnare us; like us and all of Creation, they are fallen, meaning they, when left to their own devices, can only lead to the greater of moral authorities, Death*.
The powers and principalities are those things identified by Harlem lawyer, layman ethicist and theologian, William Stringfellow, as institutions, ideologies, and images — things we encounter and interact with on a daily basis.
It is easy, when referring to such forces, to fall into the trap of understanding them as something purely academic, purely abstract but these are things that are encountered as lived realities, even if we can’t name them as such. They are forces at work in the world around us, exhausting us, calling us into their service and their allegiances, in short, dividing us and leading us towards their worship born out of our desire to escape Death. As Stringfellow phrased it, “the powers themselves enjoy such prominence in everyday life [that] their meaning and significance cannot be left unexamined.”[1]
Babel, the tactic of the powers and principalities, is that which confuses language, it is division, it is discord, it is the jumbling up of once familiar language turning those who would be friends or allies, neighbors in other words, into threatening enemies. Part of the tactic of this babel is to create a sense of apathy, a feeling of disconnect, as I wrote in my previous post on apathy back in February:
This is what the principalities do, they create apathy, they demoralize, they exhaust, they leave us absent any expectation for change or for a just and good society, the seek to convince us that the way it is is just the way it will be. Through the denial of truth, doublespeak, overtalk, rapid hyperbole, constant outrage, the promotion of outright lies and generalizations; all of which is coming to us from a constant and ever-connected stream from every news source, every Facebook post, every declaration of the State, every overheard conversation in public; amidst this one can’t help but feel the sense of demoralization and apathy slowly creep in.
Unlike then, the feeling I struggle with currently is less apathy and more exhaustion. We can acknowledge without needing to get into explicit detail that there is a lot going on in the world right now, “the principalities are restless today,” fellow blog contributor Ethan and I will often say to each other. It has seemed equally true lately, with the burning of Notre Dame, the shootings and attacks on houses of worship and people of faith in New Zealand, Sri Lanka, California, even things such as the release of the Mueller report and the subsequent lunacy that has ensued becomes grinding with time. With the evident actions of the powers of white nationalism, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, ISIL, and all the legions of forces at work in the world avoiding exhaustion is a feat in-and-of-itself.
In my own lived experience within the principality known as the United Methodist Church I see this as true here too, from my impending reappointment in July to the west side of Michigan to the sour news following the Judicial Council ruling, the principalities seem restless.
Babel exhausts.
In Exhaustion, God.
We all become exhausted from time to time. I am aware at least that this is a thing that will pass, it is something I will get over, but for now I know this is a struggle I am working with. Exhaustion is a thing that can be combated by the gift God gave us in Sabbath, rest. I’ve left two Facebook groups recently that I realized were in no way aiding me mental or spiritual state. They were groups that had long since lost their value as places of shared ideas and support and had become places of contention and conflict, places of babel, where words lack their meanings and even fellow Christians risk labeling each other enemy.
My hope is that these disconnections might provide me the space to think and to stop feeling so combative all the time, my hope is that rather than frustration I may return to feeling hope. May return to feeling rest. May return to feeling, even despite the exhaustion, God.
Lord, I come to you tired. I come to you in exhaustion. In you I seek to lay my weapons down, grind my sword into a plow, my spears into pruning hooks, in you may I seek to see my neighbor and those I meet not as an enemy, not as an opponent in a screaming match but rather as a brother or sister in you. Free, this day I pray, me for joyful obedience in the name of your Son, our Lord. Amen.
* Stringfellow identified the only true, and the greatest, moral authority apart from God as the power of Death, for ancient Christians Death was thought of as the unbeing, as the absence of existence. For Stringfellow Death is more than just the absence of literal life, rather its effects are what we experience in every aspect of our lives. It is divided relationships, loneliness, suffering, sadness, fear, worry, pain; in short, it is the reality of the fallen Creation.
[1] Stringfellow, William. Free in Obedience. New York: The Seabury Press, 1964. 51.
