A Total Harvest

At the behest of my true friend, and last remaining loyal reader, Chris, I will put up some new content.  Indeed, in honor of Lent, I will try to put something up daily, even if at sometimes I must resort to the trite or mundane, but hopefully I will be able to churn out something worthwhile, at least occasionally.

My ultimate goal for this blog is to serve as a source of commentary on the prospects of professing Christ in a world that is often disinterested, but is often

...as we eat the flour of our pursuits, so, too, shall we live.

disintegrating, as well.  I understand that seems like both a vague and broad undertaking, and a daunting challenge, especially for one business medical student in a middling corner of the flat Midwest.  At this point, and as a means of introduction of my ideas, I can do no better than quote at length TS Eliot, noted poet, Nobel laureate, and erstwhile cultural thinker:

The fact that a problem will certainly take a long time to solve, and that it will demand the attention of many minds for several generations, is no justification for postponing the study.  And, in times of emergency, it may prove in the long run that the problems we have postponed or ignored, rather than those we have failed to attack successfully, will return to plague us.  Our difficulties of the present moment must always be dealt with somehow: but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.  The subject with which I am concerned in the following pages is one to which I an cconvinced we ought to turn our attention now, if we hope to ever to be relieved of the immediate perplexities that fill our minds.  It is urgent because it is fundamental; and its urgency is the reason for a person like myself attemptiong to address, on a subject beyond his usual scope, that public which is likely to read what he writes on other subjects. [More than I can say personally.--TE]  THis is a subject which I could handle better, no doubt,  were I profound scholar in any of several fields.  But I am not writing for scholars, but for people like myself; some defects may be compensated by some advantages; and what one must be judged by, scholar or no, is not particularised knowledge but one's total harvest of thinking, feeling, living, and observing human beings.

From, TS Eliot, Christianity and Culture, Harcourt Brace, 1939, p. 5.

Such is my endeavor, that "the total harvest of thinking, feeling, and living" as a believer in an age of uncertainty will be recorded here.  This apt phrase "total harvest" crystallizes many of my grave concerns facing society today: the compartmentalization of concepts and pursuits into specialized and distinct realms.  And as we sow our thinking, we reap our feelings and ideals, and as we eat the flour of our pursuits, so, too, shall we live.  

When our basic understanding of mankind at a fundamental level is fragmented within the increasingly inward-looking academy, the public eventually responds with indifference and moves to more hedonic pursuits.  And as hedonism is, at its core, selfish, what happens to society as people themselves become more inward-looking?

My goal is to restore and proclaim Truth that builds up such inward personal fulfillment that we can resume humanity's charge to live socially.  That the despair of consumption and its concomitant atomization of our society into the whims of the individual could subside into contentment and forgiveness.  Of course, I don't want to approach this naively, and want to convey emphatically that there are no easy answers, the usual suspects may not be guilty of the sins we charge, and supposed heroes may be flawed at best.  That arguing from conventional labels prevents serious thinking, but also that seeking common ground for fear of contention can be just as much an abdication.  That understanding first demands scrutiny of one's one positions, but not the assumption that apologies and doubt means you're being honest.  Perhaps you're just a wimp.  Strife is never valuable for its own sake, but contention sometimes is necessary.  It's been said before, but there is a difference between the use of a dagger and scalpel.  

I understand there's not much flesh on this skeleton of an argument right now, and you may have doubts or questions.  That's fine, and they're welcome.  I hope over the coming months I can, like in Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones¹, put sinew and muscle on them, and in the process, begin the resuscitation of a dying and dessicated culture.

¹Ezek. 37.