Taming beastly civilizations with schism
Which has nothing to do with marsupials
Greetings, Friends.
The big news this week around these parts was a loose kangaroo. Pictures of a bewildered looking skippy, paused on suburban lawns to consider whether to bound left or right, appeared a few times on local Facebook pages but few believed it was really happening—that it was an AI-generated scheme—until the public information trooper at the Kentucky State Police put out an APB for an escaped marsupial.
Eventually, the alien creature was caught and returned to its owner. Or, presumably was caught. Maybe it skipped back home. How it was returned was not detailed to the public. Why it lives in Kentucky and with whom also remains a mystery to all but a few. How does one contain a pet designed to bound? Why does one keep a pet that does?
All the fuss reminded me of a strange site I encountered once while peddling furiously from Utrecht to Amsterdam in the Netherlands because I had to cover a session at the European Congress of Psychiatry meeting that evening. But, as I was rounding the outer bike loop of the city, I saw miniature kangaroos shearing leaves from some kind of deciduous branch as a llama stared off in the distance. So, of course damn the meeting, I pulled my brakes and inspected the scene hoping to form some kind of explanation. No joy, so I just took a few photos and resumed biking back to the Ij Harbor hotel where I was staying.
When I used to travel overseas as frequently as I did, it was also go, go, go, and I used to tell myself all the time, “Try to remember all these amazing things you likely will never see again, remember the tastes, smells, textures…” But that was before I had any inkling I would end up back in Kentucky where I routinely see weird things like fugitive marsupials.
I try to remember both my previous adventures and my current ones.
Well, anyway…
Back to the point of this publication, America. Today I was thinking about a book club I belonged to when I lived in Washington. It gave me no end of pleasure to be a part of the group, which was specific to our apartment building only, and included many sophisticated and extremely intelligent readers. I’d always hoped when I was younger that one day I would be surrounded by intellectuals who might help burnish my thinkiness into wisdom. This was my chance.
There were several retired professors, attachés of one sort or another, a mysterious Eastern European man who was unusually suave and I suspected he was once a spy (the Russian spies who lived among us until Obama kicked them out just before his presidency ended, were so obvious—paunchy, gauche chain smokers, one of whom would just sit in front of the building drinking vodka, presumably, watching everyone come and go), a few former CIA “analysts”, and among others, an Israeli author of several texts on the diaspora and other Zionist concerns.
It all seems so exotic to me now. But regardless, I was thinking about it today because of something the man, had said about the book I had chosen for our group to read. It was, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches by SC Gwynne. It’s among my favorite books about the Indian Wars of the post Civil War West, and there are so many good ones. The Earth is Weeping by Peter Cozzens, for example. But this was the one I wanted to hear the pointy headed ones in the group evaluate.
The Israeli man kept referring to the Comanche as savages, which took me aback, and struck me as a limited way to view a violent but proud and highly intelligent people. So, I asked him to please broaden that out, hoping he wasn’t going to settle just on such a demeaning appraisal. How we got from there to where we ended up I don't remember, but somehow the “savages” would be absorbed into the greater streams of world religions.
Following that, the take away was how great belief systems, such as Judaism and Christianity, for them to be of any use, must go through a reformation. This man suggested that is why Islam is so extreme: it hasn’t yet had its reformation. What year was this? Probably 2015, so don’t twist your knickers about Israel over this. But I have been thinking about his idea that schisms and iterations are necessary to essentially tame people.
I don’t know if I agree, but I will probably come to a conclusion eventually. Why I was thinking about it was because of a program I got a grant for. I had the idea that even if we have ecumenical clergy associations here in town, the people who attend their respective churches don’t know a damned thing about what is going on in one other’s churches. I thought that might be a place where light could be shed, friendships could be forged, and curiosity piqued and sated. I am thinking about the future when all hell is going to break loose and we will need each other more than ever.
But today, after Mass, while I was presenting my idea to the Catholic Church in town and asking for volunteers to visit other churches one Sunday a month, it struck me how sad the schism in the church is, the one created because the original Trump, that is Henry VIII, couldn’t get his way and so busted up the church.
I don’t think I can say with a straight face that Christian Nationalism, the result of schism and iterations, is healthy and helpful, given that it is the devolution of a once great Evangelical tradition into a cult of whiners.
Well, that’s as far as I have gotten in my thinking about it.
If you have thoughts, I would be interested in hearing them. I don’t know that all the breakdowns have done much to further civilizations, but maybe I am missing something. If you want to have a zoom call about this, and are a paid subscriber, I would love to start having regular chats. Let me know. Meanwhile…
Keep your kangaroos where they belong and have a great week!
W