The criminals of England are not the starving poor who steal food they cannot afford, but the rich, who devise clever financial systems that siphon away food produced by laborers and sell it for a profit in the cities or abroad. Cobbett put these ideas to the test upon meeting a group of angry farmers on the road, intent on punishing an elderly man for stealing cabbages. “Would you punish a man, a poor man … and, moreover, an old man,” Cobbett asks them, “when that Holy Bible, which I dare say you profess to believe in … teaches you that the hungry man may, without committing any offense at all, go into his neighbor’s vineyard and eat his fill of grapes?” When the men insist that this fellow is a “bad man,” Cobbett reminds them that “the Bible, in both Testaments, commands us to be merciful to the poor, to feed the hungry, to have compassion on the aged; and it makes no exception as to the ‘character’ of the parties.”
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/saving-the-commons
Tag: Plough Quarterly
don’t be significant or effective
Some of my critics were happy to say that my refusal to use a computer would not do any good. I have argued, and am convinced, that it will at least do me some good, and that it may involve me in the preservation of some cultural goods. But what they meant was real, practical, public good. They meant that the materials and energy I save by not buying a computer will not be “significant.” They meant that no individual’s restraint in the use of technology or energy will be “significant.” That is true
But each one of us, by “insignificant” individual abuse of the world, contributes to a general abuse that is devastating. And if I were one of thousands or millions of people who could afford a piece of equipment, even one for which they had a conceivable “need,” and yet did not buy it, that would be “significant.” Why, then, should I hesitate for even one moment to be one, even the first one, of that “significant” number? Thoreau gave the definitive reply to the folly of “significant numbers” a long time ago: Why should anybody wait to do what is right until everybody does it? It is not “significant” to love your own children or to eat your own dinner, either. But normal humans will not wait to love or eat until it is mandated by an act of Congress.
Wendell Berry, “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine” in What Are People For?
One of my favorite lines of thought within good Christian theology is a critique of the desire for efficiency and significance in modern culture. I based the entire first series of my essay project at The Radical Ordinary on this critique. For Wendell Berry, it is an on-going critique as well, and he states it so well in this essay. The world conforms itself to the demands of economics, of numbers and dollars and cents: everything must be efficient, streamlines, frictionless.
But, as Berry reminds us here, love is not efficient. Love is not significant, at least not in the way the world would view significance. It does not contort itself meet the needs the invisible hand of the market, but instead, moves things out of its reach. As Christians, and as the Church, questions of efficiency must always be pretty far down the list of priorities in making decisions about the use of our time, resources, and love. Other things must come first.
In the newest issue of Plough Quarterly, there is a story about the Palazzo Migliori, a mansion just off Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican, that Pope Francis had turned into a home for people with no where else to go. The story contemplates the divine wastefulness of turning such a beautiful and historic building into a shelter for just a few people. In this section of the piece, I am reminded of these conversations I keep having here about effectiveness, and the words of Stanley Hauerwas and Wendell Berry:
This place gives Anna a story that bends toward peace and rests there. Something about its over-the-top-ness: the carefully painted crests on the ceiling, the terrace overlooking Saint Peter’s Square, the unnecessarily good food. The visitors who know your name and your favorites and your good and bad habits, who know you need to put that cream on your foot and will banter with you until you do it. Above all it is knowing: that this place could have been a posh hotel; that some might call its current incarnation a waste; that you are not being given the bare minimum.
When we love someone, we are not thinking of how to do so efficiently; we are thinking how to do it well. Think of new parents preparing a beautiful nursery: they may buy things the child never uses, and perhaps some of that money and effort might be better used elsewhere. But we are not surprised when loving parents put more thought and work into preparing a place than is strictly necessary.
There are certain things that we know make a good place for anyone – shelter from the cold, a quiet place to sleep, a warm stew, a clean place to wash up, art, song, softness – and we can prepare these things even before we meet the recipients. Once we meet, there begins the work of making it a good place for them in particular – for Astriche, who loves chamomile; for Lioso, who is so much more tired than hungry and just wants to sleep; for Ajim and his appetite; for Anna the teller of tales.
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/princess-of-the-vatican
The mindless drive for efficiency and significance is a depersonalizing drive. Love is not depersonalized. It requires intimacy, connection, and a knowing of the other we are called to love. You can build a generic homeless shelter, sure. But you can’t build a home, or a relationship that way. And only those relationships of love are what save lives and make the world a better place. And remember, you don’t need permission to act this way, or to develop a strategic 12-point plan to figure out how. Just ask, how can I show love today, or in this situation, or in this specific encounter, and then do those things. Don’t worry if it is the most effective use of your time. Don’t worry about whether it will undermine some bigger Plan. Don’t run a cost-benefit analysis. Just love, and be loved, as God wants us to be.
Excerpt #14
A society that cannot imagine placing the weak at its center, that forgets that society exists for the weak, will be drawn towards the Manichaean modes of cancel culture. We see sin but not grace – we try to find and throw out the bad apples, whom (we think) no one can restore to righteousness. Or we see ourselves mirrored in the most notorious sinners, and work to deny sin, since we don’t want to be cast out with them.
Paul points us towards the proper expression of our vulnerability in his second letter to the Corinthians. He struggles with his own thorn, and asks the Lord to spare him. “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Cor. 12:8-9).
To give an honest accounting of ourselves, we must begin with our weakness and fragility. We cannot structure our politics or our society to serve a totally independent, autonomous person who never has and never will exist. Repeating that lie will leave us bereft: first, of sympathy from our friends when our physical weakness breaks the implicit promise that no one can keep, and second, of hope, when our moral weakness should lead us, like the prodigal, to rush back into the arms of the Father who remains faithful. Our present politics can only be challenged by an illiberalism that cherishes the weak and centers its policies on their needs and dignity.
Leah Libresco Sargeant, “Dependence: Toward an Illiberalism of the Weak” in Plough No. 26, page 58.
Justin DaMetz 