Monday, October 3, 2011

Questions I Ask Myself when Considering the Future

A world much like Earth, from a cloistered monk's perspective: "The work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them." - Neal Stephenson, Anathem

On Earth, the real Earth, might not there Be Powers that are jealous of story, but not for the sake of anyone's safety? Perhaps a selfish will is an evil will; perhaps an evil will is working every day to convince us to accept safety, productivity, prosperity as barely adequate substitutes for adventure, joy, and real contentment. Couldn't every act of submission to the status quo count for a small victory on the side of the hopeless, and shouldn't we who have hope be the most outrageously daring of any?

What have you done lately that would have been impossible, absent the power of Christ? How have you reimagined the "story" scripted for you by those who do not love you?