Just enough for the city…
What I know for sure.
The Stevie Wonder song “Living For the City” came to mind this morning while I was showering, after reading through my emails and comments on the blog. I love that song - but it was really only the one lyric that popped into my head - “just enough for the city”. I thought of it in reference to what I know - which is just enough for the city… At the risk of sounding pretentious, I suppose that city would be the City of God.
“I know more than all who teach me, for I do your will.” Psalm 118
My background is fine art, my education has been focused in that direction. As a child, my sole interest was God, the saints, prayer and the Eucharist, and most especially, Our Lady. I thought I wanted to be a priest or a monk, and the idea of preparing for a vocation kept me on the straight and narrow for much of my childhood. My interest in the saints led me to become something of a history buff, but only as it concerned the Catholic Church. My devotion to Our Lady of Fatima is perhaps what really awakened any political, socio-economic interest in me - primarily because Our Lady brought up the errors of Russia in her apparitions. Thus I had to learn about communism, capitalism, monarchism, and so on. Therefore, as a kid I knew a lot about a little.
Now that I am older, I realize I know only a little about a lot. Since my conversion in 1972 education became unimportant to me. I had fallen so deeply in love with God, that everything else seemed insignificant. It was my conviction that in our age of affluence, the chief riches the world valued and competed for were the number of degrees a person earned, or the size of his financial portfolio. I lost interest in that - I wanted to be poor like Christ, without any greater status than being an ordinary Christian. (Which is why I took the name Christian in the monastery and the Third Order of St. Francis.) However, I have never ceased to study, but I still know only a little about a lot.
“I will run in the way of your commands, you give freedom to my heart.” - Psalm 118
Since my conversion my main source of knowledge has been the gospel, well all of scripture, which has pretty much guided my life and supported my prayer. Naturally the Church has guided this ‘education’; the writings of the saints, the fathers, and the popes have enlightened my learning. But I’m no theologian, philosopher, political analyst, economist, or anything else.
I’m just an ordinary guy who prays. I also paint and try to write - occupations which serve me well in an effort to document what I understand. Otherwise, I’ve pretty much simply observed people and events, pondering their meaning. Being intelligent, I’ve acquired certain analytical skills, intuitive abilities, along with interpretive skills, resulting in what I believe is rather sound judgement. Nevertheless, I have no degrees in the sciences - although I know a little about a lot of them.
“I gain understanding from your precepts and so I hate false ways.” - Psalm 118
For instance, I wrote about Dorothy Day being a saint. I know a little about her politics and socio-economic theories. I also know a lot about her life, her heroic virtue, her Catholic devotion, her fidelty to the Magisterium, and her awful, Christ-like love of the poor. Her life was an affront to the modern American status quo, and it remains so for many. Most saints I have a special devotion to have been like that. Like many great saints, Dorothy Day reveals the awful truth of what it means to follow Christ, denying oneself to death, following the narrow way of the cross, a contradiction to all the material and intellectual wealth the world esteems and values.
What I am saying is that I don’t care about complicated theological debates, or arguments over liturgical discipline. I grow weary of politics and politicians, economics and economists. What I care about is invisible. It is the little way of the poor that captivates me more and more, with what seems to be ever rapid acceleration as I get older. And what has been most impressed upon me late in my life is the primacy of love, which entails forgiveness, acceptance, and even more love.
They say ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ - yet for me, I think it may be just enough for the City.
