Drug Lord

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Maybe it's because we are surrounded by so many comforts that so many can't accept it. Maybe it's because I fight despair, depression and anxiety that I identify so much with it.

We aren't talking about the "war on Christmas" with happy holidays or the Starbucks red cup debacle. We aren't really talking about anyone's "war" on our beliefs at all. And when it actually is a thing, it typically goes by the name "persecution." But, if we in America are being persecuted, it is surely the lightest of persecutions and the lightest of sufferings. Even my personal afflictions aren't much. Now there are many who do suffer. Many who are afraid and afflicted in our own country, but I don't think that I would count myself among them.

1 Peter 4:12 "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you."

Even if such a thing should happen we should not look upon such a thing as surprising. It seems that we have been under a magical spell where we forget that people and the universe are inherently broken and do bad things. But we unfortunately, do not get to live in exterior peace unless we choose to isolate ourselves.

We should remember, those outside of us, in whatever little thing we do, we should take in the world, that good and the bad, as St. Silouan taught. We are pretty terrible about that. We see and feel indignation not that the wrong exists at all, but because we actually expected it not exist in the first place. But that isn't the world we live in. It isn't the world that I'm going to lie to my kids about. This is a beautiful place where eternal things can shine through decay. Remember though that it is decay that this glory should come through.

The early Christians had a beautiful word for this, χαρμολύπη or "charmolipi," which means something like "joyful sadness" or "bright sadness." Maybe it's time we remember that once again and embrace it as the default of our attitudes, as the attitudes of the general humanity that came before us and will come after us. Not either joy or sadness, but both co-existing, because God, who is love, has drawn near to man, and man is impossibly broken. Two different kind of impossibles meet.