The Complexion of Reality
commitment, devotion, and desire in an age with little of any
My friends,
As we begin Lent I’ve found myself at an interesting realization; I don’t want enough. I don’t think any of us do, and especially not my young peers. As CS Lewis said, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half hearted creatures…” — and he’s referring to his own time, when most people at least had exciting vices. Our vices are porn, doom-scrolling, and weed — all the fixations of a people who are, to put it bluntly, depressed losers. Ours is not a generation in need of temperance or self control, but one of flat, mindless bottom-feeding; one almost entirely lacking in the kind of passionate, overflowing desires that ought to drive an actual human life. We are actually supposed to want things and pursue them. We’re supposed to long for endless gain of the good things in this world and, ultimately, follow those desires to the one beyond. This is how greatness is pursued and won, but even greatness has little purchase on us these days. Say that word, and the irony-poisoned young laugh with cynical false-humility, and the rest avert their eyes like scolded children. I see why Christ came to set fire on the earth and lamented the fact that it wasn’t already burning.1 This is the world of the lukewarm.
This lack of longing, this poverty of desire has bothered me for a very, very long time, and I have only just now found both the words and the actions to express it. I hate this kind of apathy. I despise it with a revulsion for which I can hardly find words whether I see it in myself or my friends. Now, by the grace of God, I seem to finally be living a life not simply without apathy, but beyond it, and in response I want to want all the good things even more, somehow. I want all of us to want more, and then follow that desire to the end. For now, since I cannot change either of our hearts on a whim, I’ll start where I personally began; in a growing desire to commit.
“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament …. There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires. “ - JRR Tolkien, in a letter to his son, Michael
A few months ago, on one of our high school pilgrimages, a chaperone began a talk by saying “My life is just better than yours.” It was a bit sarcastic, but he was serious. He then explained to these high school juniors that what he meant was he was no longer in the time of questioning they are and will be in for the foreseeable future. He knows who he is; he knows his vocation; he knows where home is. The kids, on the other hand, probably don’t know any of those things. They’re figuring out who they are, vocational questions are only just beginning, and home will probably be changing a lot in the next few years as they head to college, get jobs, and live with a few sets of roommates along the way, even if it’s the same city, to say nothing about the likelihood of their parents moving for retirement, or their own substantial moves for future work. I laughed when this chaperone said “My life is just better than yours,” and it was funny, but he’s actually right. It has become clear to me, in a way our postmodern minds find threatening, that life really is better when you resolve, or never had to question those primary things. (Where is home, who are my people, and what do I do?) Yeah, Ed, your life is better than mine.
I live most of my life these days in and amongst a very large young adult community. That’s a huge blessing. It also happens to be a very religious community, which means it has more of a collective mind for primary things (like these big questions) and a kind of unity which most in today’s secular world rarely experience (this is partially because the secular world has been universalized, and is no longer personal and local). It’s not perfect though, and despite our many gifts, my peers suffer from the same burdens and flaws of our generation. The world, in a mad and foolish quest for total liberation, dethroned decisive commitment in favor of empty personal autonomy. Then, like a neglectful parent, set us about to “figure it out for ourselves.” What that really means, none of us know, and even those who recognize those broken parts of our culture and hearts can’t seem to escape it. We wander around avoiding commitment, thinking we choose our people, place, and work, and we cannot seem to understand why we don’t have them. If I’m supposed to choose, effectively arbitrarily, from literally every option of place and purpose, how am I supposed to choose at all?
Practically speaking, my problem of late has been this: why, in a community of tradition-minded young people (relative to the wider culture), many of whom have good educations, mentors, and useful skills, are so many of us still struggling with our Vocations2, or even what and who our permanent home and people are for longer than the next year or two? One might say the vocational question is primary, and maybe sometimes it is, but even that statement sets us apart from most men and women in ages past. You didn’t “decide” or “find” your vocation in a vacuum. You found it where you were planted, with the people with whom you lived your life; you had a moment of clarity, of fiery, real devotion, and set off in that direction; or you did what your friends did. Of course this all presupposes that you are planted somewhere, that you have fire and passion, and that you have friends, and these are all quite uncommon for postmodern man.
Whatever the reason, though, most of us in the so-called “young adult community” don’t have these primary things, and that worries me. The past few months have seen me set on this combat (that of the detached Gen Z adult struggling with the primary things of life), and as I begin my second, and final season as a missionary guide, the pitched battle becomes visible on the horizon. I’m not scared though, whether because of typical (in a nobler age) 25 year old bravado, or because its just time for it. My only anxiety is for it to get here sooner rather than later simply because I am tired of asking those primary questions. In a very real way, I long for that fight. I want my place, I want my people, and I want my work for more than a year or two at a time. I want these things and I want them to last.
The life of a perpetually single, ever-transient young person is exhausting. Not in a physical sense, but spiritually. I’m tired of living for myself, or at least being able and encouraged to make decisions that way. I am a missionary right now, yes, but I won’t be at the end of the year. I will then enter into yet another transition where I will be told I must figure out “what I want to do.” Well, I want to live for something; someone, some people, and in some place, permanently. I’m not interested in a revolving door of “trying things out,” nor am I interested in a life of endless vacation.3 I have lived 25 years of choose-your-own-adventure4, and it is nowhere near as fulfilling as those moments, still glimpses but becoming more real, when I find myself aflame with great devotion for someone, some people, or something beyond myself. Of course, we cannot conjure these moments for ourselves. They must come organically, and while hoped for they probably shouldn’t be looked for. However, it seems to me that for those of us who, through the malice of individualism, must find these primary things rather than simply grow into them, the adventure of our great work, our great loves, and consequently, our death, must come with the weight and substance. They must come with the “complexion” of reality. These things ought to feel like they have consequence, because they do. I would venture a guess that the malaise and perpetual grasping of my peers is, more often than not, a result of living in a world that has ignored and denied the existence of this ordinary, yet heroic call.
A month ago, some friends of mine returned home with terrible news. We all already knew it, but still, it was sad to hear it from them officially and feel the weight of a decision that we all find to be unjust. Then sitting there, listening to two men that I deeply respect and admire tell of the death of their old lives, and their brotherhood in the uncertain future, I felt in my chest what I knew in the moment to be true devotion, and it had that “complexion of reality.” I didn’t act on it; there wasn’t a moment to, and so perhaps it was the drama of the situation that stirred this in me. But I am certain, if either of those men had stood up with fire and strode off confidently to a new venture, uncertain and dangerous as it may have been, I would have jumped out of my seat to go with them without a single thought. I have no rational reason for that, and maybe it would’ve been a “mistake” (many say so about moments of passion like that, though I wonder how they would know), but the devotion and “sense” of the moment I had that night had the complexion of reality Tolkien is talking about. I would’ve gone to war that night, if I was asked to, or even if I wasn’t asked to and my friends tried to go alone. So while I was not given the moment to give myself to some people or cause, at least not in a dramatic way, I am confident that when that time comes, whenever and however it does, I will, somehow, know it the way I knew it that night.
Death, by that Divine Paradox
In my December essayI spoke of the call and necessity of leadership, particularly in the new era that seems to have suddenly, and possibly unexpectedly, been thrust upon our country. I would extend that idea to encompass our civilization as a whole too. Something has changed in the West, and America, quite literally the epitome of the West5, seems to be the first one through the door. Coupled with the problems even the Left foresaw (artificial “intelligence,” financial ruin, etc), the apparent execution of bureaucratic governance, the long-coming demise of our “sacred norms” that governed our relationship to political and economic power, and the general destruction of the post-war consensus6 seems to carry with it a particular call. In the same way those with much to give must lead the way forward, so must all of us answer the call to relationship — true relationship — to live entirely for our people, home, and faith. That is devotion with the complexion of reality.
History is moving again, and the future is going to favor those with the courage to plant deep roots and take up the banner for them. It will not favor those with strange slavery to abstract communal ideologies, nor will it favor the individualist. The volatility in politics, war, and on the domestic issues is not likely to subside any time soon, and as we watch the anti-culture destroy countless hearts and minds before our eyes, any restoration must come through concrete relationships and heroic commitment to your people, place, and vocation. Those are the three primary ways relationship is lived out. For the young people I mentioned before and with whom I live, it is already too late to be living in the aether all for yourself. You must find your place, your people, and your call — and commit. You cannot conjure up the fire of devotion, but when it you sets you ablaze, you must follow it to the end. There is no other way out of the shipwreck. You either grab hold of someone and something, or you both drown.
These necessary relationships will, paradoxically, certainly lead you straight to your death anyway. Whatever it is that you and I give our lives for, and I truly hope we do, that will be the definitive step on the road that will eventually bring you right to the doorstep of your demise. That is the essence of that “divine paradox.” We choose, possibly for the first time, to truly live for some people, some place, or some work on their behalf, and in that moment our lives will take on a weight and Realness that we have never experienced up until that point. Then, in the first heroic moment of our lives, Christ’s deadly words will suddenly become real:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.” - John 15:13
The fundamental call of reality is relationship. It is not to individualism; it is not to personal pleasure; it is not to dog-eat-dog competition; it is to relationship, plain and simple. That is why I have given up the modern dream of piloting my individual life to fulfillment, in the pursuit of my every whim and passing desire. What do I want to do with my life? I want to give myself entirely for someone, for something, and die for them. I’m not romanticizing it.7 I know it will kill me.
“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” - John 16:25
Christ’s words strike me as true, because for those who always work to save, preserve, and enrich their own lives, what do they gain? At best, some success, but probably a middling, uninspired life; at worst, selfish loneliness, and they all end up dying anyway. Sure, you can take some middle road. That’s probably pretty “safe;” but what a sad way to live.
This then is the “divine paradox” at the heart of the Eucharist. Somehow the bread and wine on the altar is both the fullness of life, the key to eternity and boundless joy, yet given up entirely and now eternally present in one single “moment.” It is all of those and at the same time a foretaste and sign of death. It is Christ himself, having passed through those dark doors to come to us in the Sacrament. We, in the path of the New Adam, must live and love something, someone, some people, utterly, to the point of death. That is why the Professor8 can truly say that in it “you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.” The fullness of all greatness, all love, is concentrated in and anchored on that one single point.
I am absolutely convinced that I would not have come to this place of truly desiring, truly longing to commit and devote myself if I was not receiving the Eucharist almost daily. It is an unusual and alien disposition even to me as I experience it. I love it, and I wouldn’t trade the pain of this longing for anything, but still it is strange to want to utterly give up myself and die for someone else, and possibly earlier than I would have otherwise. It’s only there, in the reception of the Eucharist, that I know with certainty that love can take on that “complexion of reality.”
I will know death on the road of devotion and love — death of some kind. If I choose to remain somewhere or with some people, to settle with roots, and if my wanderlust dreams are buried with my passport in a basement grave, my ability to exert myself however I want will die on the altar of community, and my individualism will wither in love. Get married and have a kid, and I will undoubtedly experience death every single day as I must now live for people utterly dependent on me. Or, I’ll enter religious life, and embrace the green martyr’s path of penance and fasting on behalf of a world that doesn’t know me. Either way, if I choose to love to the fullest, I am going to die, but in the process will, mysteriously, gain the fullness of what I’m made for: relationship.
I confess that I cannot truly know if I am “ready” for this, whatever that means. I suppose one can’t ever know that though. It starts with desire, it starts with passion, and only later is it refined into the golden resolve and shining heroism of one utterly in love. I haven’t tasted it yet, not fully, but I walk closer to the doorstep every morning when its placed on my tongue. Mine is an apathetic generation, even as we try to paint it over with activism9, and it has taken quite some time to stir up this kind of desire in my heart, even as much as I knew its goodness in my mind. My longing seems to increase every day though, and so I will say it again. I am approaching the end of this phase of life. I am getting tired of living for myself. I, in great passion and the most real love I have known yet, want to devote myself to something - some great work, some dear people, some beautiful place - permanently, and I want to die for them. I don’t know where that will be, or when I’ll find it, but I’m confident I’ll know it when I do. There is a moment for everyone, or perhaps a series of moments, that seem something like Frodo’s decision to bear the Ring. It is the moment when our part to play, our road to the end suddenly dawns on us, even amongst the clamor of this messy and broken world, and we know, as its face takes on the complexion of reality, that this is what we must do. And so, with great daring, and with all the sincerity I hope that rich young man had, I ask:
“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
in statu viae,
Ryan
Luke 12:49
The capital V is intentional.
I’m looking at you, “I just want to travel” people. Grow up.
A popular form of video game, and occasionally TV show. I’ve been told the people really like being able to make decisions about every single thing in their simulated lives.
Culturally and politically, but also geographically, which is not incidental.
I mean that which has dominated the Western mind since WWII.
To any jaded, cynical elders who would laugh at my foolhardiness, I pay no mind. He who has ears let him hear: I would rather boldly “ruin” my life than choose the pathetic, “realistic” path of he who does not believe in greatness, mourns his every decision, and chooses cowardly caution at every turn.
Tolkien
I mean constant activity and the need to “do,” not just political activism, although that is a form of it.
Keep writing, my friend. This is pure genius.