Enchantment & Suffering
Well, stranger things have happened.
Maybe taking away their iPhones will save them.
Over the last few months I’ve read several of the pieces linking the anxiety of young people with their phones. So, the need for adults to be adults gets clearer and clearer. Fair enough.
I’ve found myself drawn back to a couple of realities that may be connected to all the anxiety. Not only among the young but more broadly
A world that has rejected the supernatural is discovering that humanity will insist on reinventing it.[1]
and
But operating (as many Americans are) in a teleological vacuum, many young people have no way to make sense of suffering. [2]
The quotes are from Maggie Phillips who does the “Religious Literacy in America” series for Tablet Magazine. A Roman Catholic writing for a Jewish publication. I read two of her articles today. And found myself once again reflecting on enchantment and suffering.
Enchantment
She wrote, “Social scientist Max Weber talked about “disenchantment,” or “the retreat of magic and myth from social life through processes of secularization and rationalization.” But after a twentieth century that seemed to be the triumphant march of reason, rationality, and materialism, obsessive fandom in the twenty-first appears to be part of an anti-rational backlash. We see this impulse as well in the resurgence of astrology, in Taylor Swift fans working out the numerological significance of her album release dates, and in true crime podcast fanatics who insert themselves into ongoing murder investigations. The people who were raised with a reverence for empiricism over superstition have nonetheless given themselves over to a kind of gnosticism, scouring the world around them for hidden clues and signs.”
It reminded me of something I read a few days ago by Emma Camp, '“This rapid secularization has resulted in serious consequences for American community-building. As it turns out, when Americans left their churches, synagogues and mosques, they didn’t replace time spent in religious observance by joining a secular community organization. Instead, we’re spending more time alone than ever. Young people in particular seem to be driving this trend. Thirty-four percent of Generation Z (born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s) are religious “nones,” the most of any generational cohort. … When I moved to Washington, D.C., after graduation, I started attending an Anglo-Catholic parish. I was first drawn to it out of a desire for ritual—especially the traditions and “smells and bells” of Anglo-Catholicism. But I was hooked by a totally unexpected reason: the community.” [3]
Which brought me back to John Orens, who is, in part, an Anglo Catholic because it offers enchantment, “The question we ought to be asking is "What does the world need?" And the startling answer is that the world needs us in that commonness which bespeaks divinity. This is why God has preserved our little Anglo-Catholic family through tempest and storm. In the secret places of their hearts, modern men and women are seeking themselves. They sense, although they cannot believe it, that they have enduring value, that there is more to themselves than their employers, their accountants, their government, or even their families can possibly know. What the world craves is the assurance that there is "a splendor burning in the heart of things." Naked dogma cannot supply this need, nor can empty ritual. Only the Catholic vision will suffice. But if the world is to find that vision it must be found in us, clothed in living thought and embodied in holy lives. … Ours is the vocation of enchantment, restoring to humanity the divine image which sin has hidden but cannot destroy. It is a ministry of holy responsibility as well as delight. We must teach the truth to an age that does not believe in truth, preach hope to men and women bereft of confidence in the past or the future, and labor for justice in a time of ideological bankruptcy and political cynicism. But what will ultimately win souls--drawing human beings out of despondency to embrace their true selves, their brothers and sisters, and their God--is wonder: the spontaneous love and joy which lures us to Mass Sunday after Sunday.”
Suffering
Maggie Phillips comes onto the matter of suffering through the Israel - Hamas War, “College students who are seeing images from Gaza on their phones are understandably shocked and angered—they are right to be, because war is horrible, and a symptom of the fallen nature of the human condition. Any good soldier would agree that it is to be prudently avoided if at all possible. But operating (as many Americans are) in a teleological vacuum, many young people have no way to make sense of suffering.”
The ideas that the young “have no way to make sense of suffering” has been in several conversations Sister Michelle and I have had since this war began. Of course, it doesn’t apply to all young people. Young women and men serve in the US military and some of them have been wounded and had friends killed in combat. Some have experienced the pain of serious illness and death among friends and family. But in comparison to earlier generations they haven’t known a world in which the scale of deaths personally touched just about everyone. In 23 years of the post 9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.about 7,000 US military have been killed. In World War Two 400,000 were killed in just four years. While the academic research may tell us that it is “normal” to see about one civilian death for each military death in war and "According to the Urban War Institute at West Point, the IDF has the lowest civilian to enemy combatant death ratios in modern urban combat, between 1.2 and 1.5.” None of that means that 36,000 deaths are insignificant. But it does offer a perspective that earlier American generations and much of the world today know from experience.
A faith
Of course there are other pathways into enchantment and suffering. But for us of the church the two are linked. We are enchanted by a suffering savior. Maybe if their parents limit their phone use they’ll notice the Spirit’s nudging. I’m kidding … or am I? Emma Camp knew the nudging through her suffering because of internet abuse she faced — “It’s a little embarrassing to admit that being lambasted on the internet helped me find religion, but, well, stranger things have happened.”
This abides,
Brother Robert
The Feast of Basil the Great, Bishop, Theologian
NOTES
[1] Fandom in Search of Enchantment
[2] Christians Have an Obligation—and a Way—to Stop Antisemitism