La Technique
What did I do on my summer vacation, you ask? Canoe on a still Canadian lake in the early morning...stop in at la panaderia cerca la escuela at noon...worry over a thousand pieces to an IKEA desk on the floor into the night in my son's college room...all excellent, thank you.
Other parts not so much, and these too are typical of our postmodern life. Our air conditioner went loco (in Dallas! Yikes ). Repeated efforts to get help landed us in the company's 'escalation specialist' department, which I naively thought meant escalated expertise. Then I noticed the psychological degrees of the staff on the website ... What was 'escalated' was me and my frustration, and mollifying me, and not my compressor, their aim. My credit card was hacked and daily scanning for fraud ensued. My airline overbooked my flight but reassured me that 'standby' would be no issue. Those pieces on the floor missed two bolts, so back to customer service, and could I recall which bolts they were? As if to mark the exclamation point the summer's latest installment of Bourne fights the last enemy, who is not Isis or Putin but Big Data. And none of these occurrences seem remarkable or ill- starred- they seem quotidian, and you could add your own entries. We are indeed in the grip of what the French anti- modernist theologian Jacques Ellul called 'La Technique,' system and machine spreading their control over more and more of our life.
This next generation are an interesting lot, which is one reason contemporary evangelism is big fun. My son works in the summer running a camp program for people with Autism and Downs. One might say that is noble of him, but that isn't what he says. He would say that they teach him, reawaken us, to the human. It is a great gift, one blessedly at odds with our age. In this regard he has been reading Jean Vanier of L'Arche on the disabled, insight into all our weaknesses and limits, and their close connection to our humanity. This lesson is related in turn to our being 'in the image of God' the Son, and its teaching is a diaconal ministry. Technique can help, but in limited doses, like medicinal strychnine.
Parishes are flawed, disabled, mortal, throwback, ametric, human places. This is part of their 'spirituality.' For they are places we can come and sit, cheek by jowl with our fellow creatures of mud and breath, and listen to the reading of human words about divine grace and eternity.
Peace
+GRS
