Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-21-25

A friend recently shared words of Erich Fromm, the social psychologist and psychoanalyst, from many of whose ideas I dissent, but a broken clock is right twice a day. Seriously, this comment addressing the contemporary crisis of humankind is on the mark:

Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total… Man has created a world of man-made things as never existed before. He has constructed a complicated social machine to administer the technical machine he built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces… he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.

We must add, of course, the most consequential factor – that is, missing factor – regarding alienation. It was supplied by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose life and (literal) trials were a more intense crucible than any experienced by the theoretician Fromm: Mankind has forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Henry Adams, the descendent of two US presidents, despaired of an American culture that was dissolving into pockets of personal alienation, with disunity as a harbinger of worse. In the early 20th century he visited two Medieval French cathedrals, Mont St-Michel and Chartres, and wrote detailed letters about them to nieces. He intended to address architecture, but found himself admiring the societies that built them during the so-called Dark Ages. Despite the putative retreat from accomplishments of the Roman Era, communities were structured and unified, where all classes communed and shared purposes, where beliefs were common, accepted, and cherished. These factors Adams admired.

The unifying force was the Church. Every town and city was built around the church; every civic event (not only religious) occurred in the church; every worker toiled at his or her job, and then worked for hours to build churches – often over generations. At this time all conversations, correspondence, and arts were centered on Biblical teachings. Every symbol in carvings, every image in stained-glass windows, every narrative in tapestries, every color in cloths and vestments, had spiritual significance that even the peasants understood.

It was unity. Individuals engaged in activities and crafts and professions… but worked as one. Foundational beliefs, common purposes, and communal loyalties were the essence of one’s existence on this side of Heaven.

Adams recognized that in his day, the essential matters of life – individual and collective – unity was disappearing in Western civilization. Despite advances in literacy, medicine, and prosperity, the “Dark Ages” were not totally dark, and that era’s demise was to be mourned. He attended a world’s fair in 1900 and beheld an exhibition called the Dynamo, a massive, clanking machine that did nothing except represent the coming “Machine Age.” Adams understood the thematic purpose; but he lamented its prophecy – that the coming world would be centered on, and virtually worship, machines. Machines (read: computers, AI, etc) would replace God.

The critiques of Plato, the early church fathers, St Augustine and Luther; Adams and Solzhenitsyn; secular observers like Kafka and Fromm; resonated in the person and legacy of Charlie Kirk. An unlikely heir? He is at home with most of the great prophets and great martyrs of Western history. Sadly but proudly.

This morning I had a call from my daughter Emily in Northern Ireland, where she has lived for 20 years. She expressed concern about the Charlie Kirk situation… and I expressed surprise that she knew of Charlie beyond my appearance on his show. She replied that he was quite well known in Ireland. Her family listened to him online at least once a week, and has done so for two years. My granddaughter is now 14. I asked what attracted her to Kirk; the main reason was his strong anti-abortion stand; next was “his intelligence in debates and how he was strong in sharing his ideas.” TurningPoint USA is a youth movement, but not only for youth.

Around the world there have been spontaneous and massive protests and vigils in the wake of Charlie’s murder. London, three million in the streets (all, as elsewhere, peaceful – to be compared with left-wing violence). Parades in Ireland, Berlin, Hamburg, Rome, Warsaw, Korea, Australia. Charlie’s mode of mentioning Jesus and promoting Christianity (focusing on faith more than himself), spread his larger message across the globe. His spiritual and related social themes coincide with the political upheavals throughout America and Europe: my family told me about a protest in the Northern Irish town of Newry where Unionists and Nationalists – that is, Protestants and Catholics who have been killing each other (the “Troubles”) for generations – were locked arm in arm in… unity.

Charlie’s message plugged into the West’s emotional dissolution. Frustrated societies have found hope in his spiritual, social, and political critiques. A worker in that Irish protest said to an interviewer that “even the church has let us down.”

Undeniably, this is true for many people. In fact virtually every institution in Western societies has let people down – Big Media, traditional political parties, the Entertainment Industry, the Education complex. Liberals in the church and other monopolies can push back or say that we are paranoiac. But perception is reality.

People believe they have been let down because they know they have been let down. Proven in the recent US election – and the political storms brewing in every European country – is the realization that traditions, culture, and community mean more to people than, even, poll-taker’s headline “issues.”

Returning to my first point, people are finally sick of alienation – being forced into modes that resist traditional, folkish identity and interaction. They are sick of dealing with what Fromm called powerlessness. Charlie Kirk’s major message was not political nor even social, but spiritual. Turning to Jesus, returning to Jesus, is the comfort food that is attracting hungry youth. His ministry, raised to the nth degree by his martyr’s death, is the spark that likely will ignite a fundamental change in America, the West, and around the world.

It is why he was killed. He was a Christian patriot… he argued for change… but most significantly, he was effective.

Think of all history’s examples of malignant opponents who “killed the messenger.” Every time it has been futile; that is, the advance of reform and renewal has withstood the desperate and usually evil attempts to stop it. The System, all over the world, has pressed down individuals and tried to mold an obedient mass distracted by bread and circuses, supposed to hate whom they are told to hate.

Mankind has forgotten God. Perhaps, by martyr’s blood, they are remembering.

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Click: Abide With Me

9-8-25

Those who follow these weekly thoughts know that I occasionally obsess over language, grammar, and precise meanings. I realize that it sometimes is annoying – even to me, believe me. But I want to be understood when I speak and write; and so should we all.

There are many friendships and business partnerships and marriages that have blown up over misunderstandings; and many wars have broken out because of crummy communication. Too often. Needless.

English is full of linguistic land mines because it is the recipient of two major strains: Indo-European via Germanic; and Romance languages. This results in a potential for rich communication (despite contrary examples like Icelandic, which has 100 words for “wind”) but also leads to confusion. Germans and French are logical languages and scarcely permit exceptions to their rules. The French even have an official body, the Académie Française, that regulates usage and abusage of grammar, spelling, and literature.

In contemporary America… well, you suss where I’m at.

I am as much an observer of the American language as a practitioner, and sometimes a slave; a latter-day Diderot or Mencken in my own way. I am fascinated by memes for several reasons. They frequently summarize a thought, even substituting for longer explanations, often with heightened clarity. They are almost by definition clever and humorous or ironic. Many memes rely on a visual component, which pleases me as a cartoonist and illustrator.

Memes are paths to clarity, which has positive effects on social communication. But some of those paths have potholes and detours.

A friend of mine is one of the Internet’s wisest meme-mistresses. As Adri Ana she consistently posts terrific words and quotations and images that start the day with Good Morning coffees, and fill the day with humor, provocative thoughts, and wisdom. (Does that make her a “poster” girl?)

She recently posted one of Anaïs Nin’s most quoted passages: I weep because you cannot save people. You can only love them. You can’t transform them, you can only console them (“Nearer the Moon” from A Journal of Love: The Unexpurgated Diary, 1937-1939).

I am ambiguous about La Nin (that is, I agree with only some of her peripatetic thoughts: her emotional inconsistencies are compelling) but her statement is not pessimistic. It is where reality meets love, and compassion is the result. A reader of the meme’s post replied: Sure you can [save people], good advice at the right time is the difference between a bad choice and a good choice. Most of the bad choices happen when you don’t have someone to give you proper advice. Giving love is not enough.

Here is where language can seduce us into acceptance of perceived wisdom, but can dig some potholes. And it might cripple some peoples’ search for truth. Of course the subject under discussion is “save” – what is the definition? Physical? Emotional? Spiritual? For the moment? For eternity? “Saved” from what, and for what?

The pitfalls of English, and common misunderstandings. Many of us think that words are interchangeable when they are not. And some people respond, “Oh, you know what I mean,” when I don’t, and neither oftentimes does the speaker. Not guilty is very different than Innocent. To Dismiss is not to Forgive. A Reprieve is not a Commutation, nor a Pardon. And Saving someone has deeper implications and nuances than Rescuing them.

Nin advises “loving” and “consoling” as effective, and maybe definitive, alternates to “saving.” Yes, they are precious actions. For my part, responding to that, I have always resisted telling people I will keep them in prayer: it takes the same amount of time, and breaths, to actually pray with them on the spot. And God never advised postponing prayers, especially to fit our schedules of comfort zones.

Well, you knew I’d go spiritual on you. The words saved, salvation, and, you guessed it, Savior all have common roots, at least conceptually. Human beings, at all times and in all places, have myriad dissimilarities… except for one common aspect. We all need a Savior; we all have sinned; we all fall short of holy standards; and we all know this is the case, instinctively.

Anaïs Nin came close in her secular deconstruction. She says that love and consolation are decent substitutes; her correspondent replies that even love is not a sufficient response, suggesting palpable action. I think that we “cannot save people,” which made her weep, is a profound statement.

And that is what completes this discussion’s circle. The most intense compassion we can summon – the spiritual context – indeed cannot save anyone. We can love, we can forgive, we can excuse, we can pardon, we can rescue, and yes again, we can love. But we cannot save a single soul. They can seek salvation; they might accept salvation – but that is not ours to give.

God grants salvation; it is why He sent the Holy Spirit, to lead us to salvation. Through Him we accept Jesus, the “only way unto salvation.” All other ground is sinking sand. This proper understanding is not to denigrate our love for friends and family and humankind; but to think we have the power to save is an insult to God’s ways. We are to plant seeds; the Holy Spirit’s job description is to reap the harvest.

Properly speaking – to coin a phrase – it is a privilege to discern our places in God’s plan for humankind. Word up.

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Click: In the Garden