A Little Practical Magic

Last night, I attended a Lander City Council meeting; I've never been to a City Council meeting in any town, and always assumed it was a terrifyingly bland affair, with an incessant droning sound (either from speaking or snoring, maybe both) the prevalent background to various wall charts, faded flags, and pervasive wood paneling.

Well, there is wood paneling. And metal-sculpture Canadian geese in perpetual flight across the Wall behind a High Table-Podium with matching chairs, mics, and small, white, generic computers. Why do they all have to have uniformity? Is it some subtle rhetoric, saying, "We're really One Person"?

I tiptoe in just as the meeting is getting going, and sit next to an older, pretty lady, who has bright eyes twinkling behind window-pane glasses, and a cheery scarf around her neck. I know her, and she is a woman who enjoys tremendous respect from the town--partly because she can point out, to me, various Council members as former students of hers. "I taught him--and him--and her--English." I smile, and reply, "Well, when they see you, I bet they watch their P's and Q's. " She laughs lightly, but as one who knows how things work in Lander. The English Teacher and I remark in unison, "Those Canadian geese have red bows on their necks." The English Teacher surmises that they were Christmas decorations.

The Mayor, Mr. Del McOmie, enters, and taps the mic. "Hello, everyone.Welcome. Let's say The Pledge." We all say it, and as I did in school all those years ago, I hold back an "Amen" at the end. I always feel like we should say that, for some reason, but I'm sure The English Teacher wouldn't approve. I return to Earth, namely the wood-panel meeting, and I notice that along with the five City Council members and the Mayor up at the High Table,  there are, all along the north side of the room, lower, but with their own matching mics, the people who Make It Happen: City Clerk, City Attorney, Police Chief, Planning Commissioner, Fire Administrator, and one more important position I can't seem to remember. What I do notice is that these people all look like their jobs, in a particularly Wyoming way: the City Clerk looks like a mom who takes care of it all, her hair carefully curled; the City Attorney is tall and has sharp corners everywhere; the Police Chief is also tall, has piercing blue eyes, token black hair in the background of his head, and a scarf-bolo tie clipped in a tiny, sharp metal thing at the top. He fascinates me, because he smiles and is pleasant, but those sharp blue eyes tell you he'd be perfectly capable of shooting you or hauling you off if necessary. The Planning Commissioner has a symmetrical and intelligent face, and he leans forward and looks carefully at everyone; the Fire Administrator is a bulk-bulldog of a man who looks like he could take on, single-handed, the Platonic Form of Fire.

They all have this wonderful Wyoming combination of tough survival tactic married to joviality and kindness, as do the Council Members. The Council Members have names like Dan Hahn and Cade Maestas; Mr. Hahn wears a bolo tie and I keep seeing a ghost cowboy hat on his head.

As the meeting progresses, I notice that the Mayor has done things like walk a neighborhood before an ordinance change decision, looking at survey lines and talking to the people involved; he knows minute facts, and speaks forcefully a couple of times about remarks that infringe on private property rights or "the government tellin' people what to do." The business of the evening consists of mundane things from the viewpoint of the paper they are catalogued on for those in attendance, but when they are discussed by the Council, the Make It Happen panel, and the citizens who speak, I realize that these are little universes of importance to the people involved, and the City, a city this size, cares. There are little dramas played out, with ramifications for people's long-term homes, friendships, and the Common Good.

Just as I am enjoying the serious nature of the dramas, the Cat in the Hat walks in the door with a little older lady as a side-kick. He has on a weird plasticine mask that looks like it has just been taken out of storage in a boot in the back of someone's truck. I seriously wonder if this is a mass killer who will just let it loose once he gets his paw in the door, but then I remember the sharp-blue-eyed Police Chief and sit back happily to see what it is all about. The Cat and his lady come in and announce that they are presenting the Fire Administrator with a donation for his help with a reading literacy program.

I feel like two universes have collided until the lady asks the Council if she can share a personal story. "Sure," says the intrepid Mayor.

"Well, one of the highlights of my young--aha--life has been to be in the Cat's entourage; the Fire Department brought us to the elementary school in a fire truck, with the sirens going and the lights flashing! It was thrilling, and the children were thrilled, too."

"Wonderful," says the Mayor, "and thank you for your story. Wonderful. Can we know who is inside that Cat in the Hat costume?"

"Ooooh, nooo," says the Cat's lady.

General laughter all round.

Next, two men sidle up to the mic; they are wearing matching outfits: Jeans, red dress shirts, and vests. Oh, the vests. Black leather vests with skull bones and unintelligble numbers embroidered on the back, and near-on 100 various pins clicking and clanking on the front; I notice that one pin has a large red train track section dangling from it. The older man, with shoulder-length, taffy-smooth, white hair, strokes his mustache and gets ready to introduce himself. The younger man stands with his profile to us the entire time, staring at his older twin, who looks, I decide, like Mark Twain would look if he lived in Lander and cared less about things like traveling the world or the South. Analogous Mark Twain says, "We jus' wanna introduce ourselves," and he adds quickly, "we aren't bikers, so don't be worried about that! We are the Mining and Historical Society [I am not sure what he said] and we are interested in startin' a chapter here in Lander. We are going to put a plaque on the Forge buildin' and we invite ya'll down to see what we're all about."

The Mayor suddenly looks up with interest: "Ah, yeah, you know the upstairs of that building used to be the bowling alley."

A collective "Ah?" sounds lightly around the room. The Mayor continues, "Yep." With a subtle, sly look, he says, "And I could tell you some interestin' stories about that building..."

General laughter, because everyone knows that there is always something weird about that building. It is the nefarious Jar-Jar Binx of buildings in Lander. Analogous Mark Twain and his side kick bob a bow and politely sidle back to their seats.

Finally, there is a discussion about requiring sprinkler systems in all new construction. A citizen gets up at the mic, his work-a-day hands rough, his dungarees well-used. "Don't hold it against me 'cause I'm from California originally."

"We all know who you are," quips the Mayor, in the midst of jovial, good-natured, derisive laughter.

"Thanks," says the Work-A-Day man. "I just wanna say that I am against requirin' these things; I mean, if they're up in the roof, they'll freeze here. Creates a lot of problems. And besides," he says, looking sideways at the Fire Administrator, "we don't wanna put you guys outta business."

General laughter.

A request by Mr. Cade Maestas for additional fire and planning reports results in the Mayor saying to the Make It Happen panel, "Well, we just gave you guys some more work." In that moment, I realize that the citizens vote for the Council, and the Council directs the Make It Happen panel; these are the people who do, indeed, in a very real way, work for us, for the Common Good. In a humble, simple, brown way, without gold tassles or fireworks, these people carry out the will of the people; it isn't perfect, but I remember Montesquieu's contention that democracies and republics only work up to a certain size and it makes perfect sense to me, now. In a republic of Lander-size, the Mayor (if he or she is a good one) will walk the streets to see what's going on with an ordinance and stop by like a good neighbor and talk to the neighbors; a Council Member will take all day to visit my rhetoric classes and encourage young people to hone their speaking skills; the Make It Happen people seem like capable, open people of the ranges, silver and stone people with real hearts; they know they are known, and they seem tough enough and humble enough, for the most part, to be known. They do not live in ivory towers, except for the occasional towering Ford F250. They aren't perfect; Lander isn't perfect. I am simply surprised by a certain magic in the realm of Practical Intelligence.

"Well," says the Mayor, "let's give our votes. Remember we'll have two more readings on this. Dan?"

"No."

"Melinda?"

"Yes."

"Mark?"

"Yes."

"Cade?"

"Yes."

"Monte?"

"Yes."

"Dick?"

"Yes."

They all look back at Dan. Melinda laughs, and says, "What're you up to, Dan?"

Dan laughs, and everyone laughs. Dan says, "Well, I knew ya'll were gonna vote 'yes'."

General laughter.

The Willing of Wisdom

"And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made..." (Genesis 2:9; 3:1).
...
"Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?

 Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.

 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.

And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord" (Job 1:9-12). 
...
"Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

'Here I am,' he replied.

Then God said, 'Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you'" (Genesis 22: 1-2).
...

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil" (Matthew 4:1).

...

We are stewards, we are not masters; we are sub-creators, we are not the Creator; thus, we are tried and tested in the fires of temptation. We are sons, not slaves; thus, we are disciplined, not dominated. 

There are moments in the Holy Scriptures that move me, and not primarily rationally; I am slain in wholeness by these moments: sometimes in love, sometimes in awe. One of these moments is in the Garden, after Adam and Eve fall to the the serpent's solipsistic rhetoric, and their world, their souls, are shattered in a preemptive knowledge reserved by their Father for Himself. Perhaps it was for them also, but at the right time. In the lengthening of that brass day, the metallic taste of their choice raging in their mouths, they cower in the shadows: "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day...[a]nd the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?" (Genesis 3:8; 3:9). 

The Lord brings His presence to them; I've always had the impression that this was normal, a part of each day. In the Middle East, and in Mediterranean countries, this "walking in the cool of the day" is a time in the later afternoon when the sun, his raging joy, his life-giving abundance finished, becomes a gentle presence, his gold now liquid like a calmed, early-summer stream after the snow-melt rush. This is the time of day for leisure, for the commerce between families and friends over a drink at the end of a work day that began in the very early hours of the morning. One has had a siesta, and this is the magical moment when people find each other again after an absence of sleep in a heat impossible to resist. 

The Lord finds them then, when they are meant to be rested and ready for conversation, as perhaps He did every day, in that jeweled pattern, that cool-wine-laden, patterned stream of life. Instead, He knows, and finds, that they are not rested. They are disturbed by death, by gluttony, by arrogance, by pride; their souls are bleeding, and He knows that they must now carry these wounds, and scars, into the generations, and that He will have to take on wounds, and scars, to heal them, finally. He knows all this. 

Yet, He comes as is His wont, and calls to them: "Where are you, my son, my daughter?" 

Every parent knows this moment...you know that something has happened to your child's will, to their soul, you know it well and the consequences it will bring, yet you do not rage into the shadows where they have hidden their soul from you in angst and shame. You call them: "Where are you, Ana? Where are you, Sophie? Where are you, TJ, my son?"

First come the denials, then the excuses; second, the silence; third, the tears. You want so much to erase it, to go backwards; but you know these tests are necessary. 

You know these tests are necessary. 

Why?

Why did God plant the tree, the temptation, in the garden with them; why did He allow the serpent to ply his pandering rhetoric; why did God allow Satan to test Job; why did God ask Abraham to go out into the wilderness and sacrifice his son; why did the Israelites have to be tested in Egypt and in the wilderness of Sinai? 

It has to do with desire, which is the foundation for virtue, for vice, for love; it is love, in a sense. The desires are appetites, which are, according to St. Thomas, a kind of will which moves towards objects of desire. We are bodily and spiritual creatures, or as the poet Bruce Cockburn quips, "Angel-beasts"; therefore, our desires are also bodily and spiritual, a kind of two-tiered, or twin-nature. Our knowledge is also different from the angels, from purely spiritual beings; we live in the body, in time and without that sight, as St. Augustine discusses, of beings in the eternal present, beyond time. 

Furthermore, our true happiness, or fulfillment, must come through our nature, as God made it thus. We receive this nature, and it is meant to be perfected in God, where the dual appetites will give Him a varied glory, different from other creations. It is the glory of beauty one finds in the variety of the flowers, in the very multitudinous aspects of sunlight throughout a single day, in the very varied veins in our beautiful bodies. He loved us, thought of us, and we were made: We are His, in our very bodily and rational and spiritual desires, our true happiness to give Him joy and glory. 

But we must desire this with all our varied being, our composite selves. We must desire it, for in love, He created us with free wills, so that we can also love; for, there is no deep, selfless love without a self, a self with a will to love. There is no love without desire. 

But physical appetite can become gluttony, with free will; mental appetite can become arrogance; spiritual appetite can become pride--because one can, using the will, turn the desire inward, and worship the self, or another creature, or another good. But the self, or another good besides the Good, cannot fulfill desire; these devolve into the slip-streams alongside the river where the water gets side-tracked and lost in a small place of stagnation and self-eating mold. All goods, even self, are only clear and healthy when they flow towards their true end, from their true end, the Source and End of all, for He is the source of all love, and all desire; thus is He also the End, and humility for the creature is the essential quality of knowing one's place, and understanding the love behind that placement. 

Thus testing is a pattern with the Lord, right from our beginnings in that garden. He knows this is necessary to craft a creature as an Artist, to craft a creature capable of choosing rightly, a creature who understands the greater good as greater good, beyond the self, and yet chooses it. 

An essential part of healthy desire, or appetite, is the understanding of the lower as related to the higher. I find an abysmal difference between understanding and knowledge; Adam and Eve took from the Tree of Knowledge, but did not thereby gain understanding. They gained knowledge not meant for them and it wounded their souls. The Tree of Knowledge is a temptation: it is if God is asking, "Do you desire knowledge alone, apart from Me, or do you desire that which is related, but Higher, and always with Me and through Me? Do you desire knowledge or knowledge within understanding?"

A few men and women chose understanding in the face of their own, lower knowledge, and the history of the Israelites, of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses, of the kings, of the prophets, is this story, its successes and failures. Sinai itself was a test of this: the great phenomenologist, Emanuel Levinas, images the moment at Sinai when the mountain towered over the Jews, when it suddenly was the navel of the cosmos, when they had before them the way of life and the way of death, when the Law was the mountain that would bring them to understanding, or the undigested knowledge of it would crush them.

And so, like the Israelites, the archetypal human community before Christ came, we each face this mountain, this tree, this parting of the ways, between knowledge apart from God, the knowledge that creates desires that ultimately enslave, and the understanding, or wisdom, that can only come from God and with God, the wisdom that creates right desire for all that is highest, and will ultimately free both soul and body.

We face this mountain toppling and the tree enticing and the emptiness of the crossroads, and wounded as we are, we cannot control our now revolutionary nature. 

An image rises, then, in God, another Thought, and it is also His Word, a Word ringing out from the eons outside of time, and is born in time; this image we find now sitting alone in the desert beyond the City of God, facing again that mountain. Christ is led, by the Spirit of God, His spirit also, into the wilderness. That same Satan, so eager to defeat Eve, and Job, rushes in like Herod half-dressed but with intentions sharp as knife-edge, to play the play again. Yet Christ is now the actor in his own, deep drama, and He asks us to seek both katharsis and our own identity through imitative knowledge, an imtative knowledge that becomes, in the fire of suffering, understanding and wisdom.

St. Ambrose says, "See what weapons Christ uses to defeat the power of the devil. He does not use the almighty power he has as God--what help would that be to us? In his humanity he summons the help common to all--overlooking bodily hunger and seeking the word of God for nourishment. Whoever follows the Word is no longer attached to earthly bread, because he receives the bread of heaven and knows the divine is better that the human, the spiritual is better than the physical. Therefore, because such a person desires the true life, he looks for that which fortifies the heart by the means of its invisible substance" (On the Share of the Devil). 

Our Lord, Our Bridge, Our Sharer in Suffering, who is also Our God who walks in the cool of the day calling us back, has given us the power through His own suffering in our stead to choose understanding and thus to desire rightly, and thus to be truly wise and fulfilled. 

For this to be possible, He must go before us, and within us He must will it; for it to be love, we must follow him and also will it: this is the balance between faith and works, and it is our double-gift from God, it is our time of testing. 

Let the Psalmist have the last word:

"Behold, You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart...restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit...the sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalms 51:6, 12, 17). 

*painting by the Russian artist Ivan Kramskoi