A worm and not even human

Finding freedom in limitation

One day last week I was in tears driving home. I was listening to Ezra Klein’s podcast with guest Fareed Zakariah.

The topic was current foreign policy and near the end the two addressed the gutting of U.S.A.I.D. Ezra’s words that broke me were these, “I think one of the messages now is: The value of foreign lives is nothing. The value of people in the West Bank whose land is going to be annexed is nothing. Our care about the Ukrainians is nothing.”

The messaging is that those lives don’t matter because only American lives matter.

Fareed responded, “One of the ironies here is that American aid was never entirely about geopolitics and geostrategy. Part of it, I think, came out of a deep, high Protestant impulse of saving the world. And I think it is one of the central messages of Christianity that all human beings are equal in the eyes of God, and it is incumbent upon the rich to look after the poor.”

History is overgrown with the exploits of powerful men—many of whom called/call themselves Christian—destroying lives, land, and livelihoods for the sake of their own wealth, power, and prestige. After 2,000 years, one would think we’d have done a better job at approximating the teachings of Jesus. Or that evolution of consciousness would have awakened us as a species to greater compassion.

Thankfully unwritten history is filled with women and men who stood up, spoke out, and stayed true in the face of those other powerful men, often at great cost. That’s where the Fifth Kind of Monk is invited to stand.

We all come to things from different starting points. What has shaped my life and guided my choices and informed my thinking is unique to me. So Jesus tells us not to judge another without looking at ourselves first. And Benedict bases rank in the monastery by the date of one’s decision to seek God. But accepting the reality of difference is so very hard when the viewpoint of others is contrary to my understanding, when their values are radically different than mine, when they see the world through such different lenses.

In response, I have choices to make. So do you. Oliver Burkeman writes in Mediations for Mortals, “The only two questions, at any moment of choice in life, is what the price is, and whether or not it’s worth paying.” That is the dilemma for the Fifth Kind of Monk, for any kind of monk, for any believer. As a Christian, Jesus is the supreme example of making a choice for love and paying the ultimate price.

I want to be done with the generic groaning, “How can they do this?”, which brings me face-to-face with my fear of the consequences of my potential choices.

Burkeman paraphrases one of my favorite philosophers, Jean-Paul Sartre, “it’s easier to wallow in the ‘bad faith’ of believing yourself trapped than to face the dizzying responsibilities of your freedom.” That is a terrifying thought. I am free to be free.

I had never been with anyone at the moment of death until I came to the monastery. Each time I am struck by the absolute aloneness of death. We vigil with our sisters as they die but when the moment comes, they go alone. It is a solitary journey into God.

The thing is, that solitary journey into God started way before the beginning of our lives. I don’t fully grasp cosmological theology, but I trust its understanding of God and the universe. Benedict began his spiritual journey as a solitary and found himself writing a Rule for cenobitic (communal) life. He knew that no one can truly know us in our depths but yet we need others to sustain us on our way. Happiness is fleeting, misunderstandings lead to breaks in relationships, pain and death will come.

But the irony is, this awareness is what frees us. It frees us from ourselves, our smallness, our misaligned desires. It frees us for love and for joy, and to choose to pay the price for what truly matters right here, right now.

Living in our world today through this monk’s filter makes a difference. Benedict reminds us in his chapter on humility that we are “a worm and not even human.” Well, I am free to go about the business of simply being a worm. Fertilizing, decomposing, aerating. Doing what needs to be done, quietly, unassumingly, without overanalyzing or hand wringing. Yes, I might get stepped on. Plucked up by a bird. Fried on a sidewalk. Am I willing to do what I’m made to do, humbly, whatever the cost?

And the best part? The paradox of knowing that even though I am, as in Benedict’s metaphor, a worm, I am also one with God, loved by God. While I work to make this earth better, like a good (American) worm, I also know that I have the light of life and am running with all people toward that mysterious God—and yes, even with those who cause such grief. And that helps me channel the anger I feel at the injustice, the falsehood, the suffering, it helps me to overcome the fear and be willing to pay the price when I need to speak out and take action, and ultimately it brings me the joy of finding “freedom in limitation,” as Burkeman ends his chapter on paying the price.

Photo by sippakorn yamkasikorn on Unsplash