Rob Field, CSW Director
Turning and turning in the widening swirl,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
And anarchy is loosed upon the world.
~ W. B. Yeats; paraphrase from his poem “The Second Coming”
The lords of chaos seem to be doing all they can to promote uncertainty, foreboding, and fear.
Are you worried about the future of the economy, or a war that keeps expanding in the Middle East, or dangerous new weather patterns that threaten land, people, and property? Good for us! I hear the chaos jockeys saying. When the people are mired in dread and debilitating anxiety, we’ll be better able to sell ourselves and our money-making schemes as their saviors and quick fixes.
William Butler Yeats wrote his seminal poem “The Second Coming” in 1919. This poor man had intimate familiarity with chaos. World War I had just ended, but there was widespread devastation, displacement and deep economic uncertainty in its wake. In Yeats’ home country of Ireland, a war of independence against Britain had just begun. And the 1919 influenza pandemic was threatening to take the life of his pregnant wife, who thankfully survived.
When Yeats wrote about things falling apart and the center becoming unraveled, he knew what he was talking about. A later-in-life agnostic, Yeats nonetheless was drawn to spiritualism and mysticism, which I’d like to think was a balm for his troubled soul.
And what about you and me? Do we have an inner anchor to keep us from becoming untethered in the midst of what is arguably the greatest period of uncertainty in 60 years? I do hope so.
I think all the uncertainty we’re experiencing is a paradoxical gift, however unwelcome it may be. On the one hand, uncertainty can breed despair, which can lead to depression and worse. On the other hand, uncertainty won’t let us comfortably assume the old truisms will continue to guide us. Today, many of us find that we have to dig deeper to find light and wisdom that can break through the anarchy that’s been “loosed upon” our world.
Many decades ago, a noted theologian declared that Christians of the future will be mystics or they “will not exist at all” (Karl Rahner, in 1966). I think this prediction is being realized in our own time, and might be applicable beyond Christianity. Rote, inherited religious traditions received without depth of understanding can no longer sustain a person’s inner life through adulthood. The uncertainty is just too strong, and the rising tide of secular materialism is making the spiritual life much harder to value and attain.
At Center for Spiritual Wisdom, we consider ourselves fellow seekers. As I am fond of saying, we’re not the Center of Spiritual Wisdom, but FOR. I invite you to accompany us as we seek together an antidote to the debilitating effects of chaos.
photo by Rudi Irwanto via Unsplash