Brian’s Reflection: Monday, Jan 18, 2009

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Rudyard Kipling, British author; he died on
this date, 1936


I wonder. I wonder. There is a part of me which, after decades of Life, has to acknowledge that this is true. In America, our “shadow” has emerged with enormous power. And it is true of the whole World. We live in an age of the Shadow. If I were an 8th century Hebrew prophet, I would be raging to the people at the peril of my Life. Martin Luther King Jr., whose life is celebrated today in America, spoke to our Shadow – to our violent, racist culture. He died by assassination. Many prophets do.

Look at America today. I am appalled, as a human being and as a Christian, by what we seem to have become. I see the reality, but I am stunned by the viciousness, the mean-spiritedness, the vitriol, the hate, the murderousness, that has come to be so prominent in American society. To the point that I feel as if all reason has escaped us – as well as any rational concept of the spirit of the Constitution or any even vague sense of the heart of any Faith tradition, be it Christianity, Judaism or Islam. I put this down primarily to Fear, and to Covetousness, and to Arrogance – and to a profound loss of Identity as human beings.

Our Shadow – the negative side of our identity – is ascendant now. This is not because we, as Americans, espouse the separation of “church and state”. This position has been and remains a good thing. It has held back mainly Christians from imposing their position on the country – and alas a radically negative and essentially anti-Gospel view that seems endemic in American religious culture. But the Shadow is still among us – and we are being torn apart by it – deliberately, I believe by extremists on all sides.

We definitely, as America, resemble our Shadow at the moment. If we persist, we will destroy ourselves. I can only say that if the choice is to persist to live out of our negative Shadow dimension, destruction is our only hope for salvation. It has happened in many societies before us.

But there is a hope. We can choose to reject the Shadow. Religion, and non-religious thinkers, can reject capture by forces destructive to human community.

Kipling can be wrong. It is our job to prove him wrong!

Brian+