The Catholic Weekly 24 May 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 16 NEWS 24, May, 2020 FEATURE Obsession with the future is useless SHORTLY AFTER the out- break of World War II, CS Lewis preached a sermon at the university church in Ox- ford on the subject, “Learning in Wartime”. The lives of the faculty and students, he knew, would soon be convulsed by war, but he chose to address the immediate value of their de- votion to learning rather than the likelihood of a hazardous future. His reflections offer a salu- tary perspective at this time of a different world crisis. COV- ID-19 has opened a window on certain spiritual truths, however painful the process of realisation has been. As the American writer Marjorie Lamp Mead has highlighted in a reflection on this sermon, CS Lewis did not downplay the menac- ing reality of war - he himself had served in the trenches of France during World War I - nor was he taking refuge in what he called the “placid oc- cupations” of academia. His aim was to challenge the idea that life is normally stable and serene, and that cultural activities and uplift- ing realities – beauty, learning, humour (he does not mention sport but he could have) – can afford to be postponed for more normal times. A knowledge of history had taught Lewis that life has nev- er been normal. It “has always been lived on the edge of a precipice”. Even apparently tranquil periods “turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies”. Lewis wanted his listeners to confront the realities of the present, not the prospects – however joyfully or fearfully conceived - of a future that does not yet exist. Lewis noted a tendency in our culture which has now grown far more intense - and that is, an obsession with the future. He believed this was intrinsically hostile to the Christian conception of life. Any new development in our time, such as climate change and now the coronavi- rus, exposes our proneness to living in the future, often in a state of apocalyptic fear. We are deeply anxious to predict the future. We take for granted that any scenario has the weight of established fact, even though our projec- tions can only be based on the modelling of past patterns, and draw their credibility from the belief that these will be reproduced or accelerated in the future. Yet, as Lewis made clear, THOSE SUFFERING the ef- fects of summer’s horror bushfires will soon benefit from new grants made possi- ble by private donations from Catholic individuals, church- es and organisations. Catholic Emergency Relief Australia (CERA) has opened its first round of applications for grants, with a total of more than $100,000 available to provide grief and trauma counselling and other mental and emotional support, along with community-building ini- tiatives. CERA chair Susan Pascoe said the country’s coronavi- rus pandemic response, while necessary, has exacerbated some of the problems caused by the bushfires. “Some of the people who were deployed to offer mate- rial, physical, emotional and pastoral support to affected communities, including peo- ple from Church agencies, had to put their efforts on hold as the pandemic took hold,” Ms Pascoe said. “Much of the immediate support for individuals, fam- ilies and communities had been delivered, but we know that the road to recovery is long and often bumpy.” Following the Australia Day church collections for the Vin- nies Bushfire Appeal, CERA began receiving donations to fund the medium and long- term response to the bush- fires. The grants are available due to generous donations from Sydney’s Vietnamese Catholic community, the Sis- ters of the Holy Faith, and the Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur, as well as donations from in- dividuals, schools and com- munity organisations. “CatholicCare and Cen- tacare counsellors and ex- perienced pastoral care practitioners from religious congregations, schools and hospitals are among those whose support will help peo- ple rebuild their spiritual, emotional and psychological selves,” Ms Pascoe said. Ursula Stephens, CEO of Catholic Social Services Aus- tralia, said it was grateful for the support of people across Australia and beyond who have donated to CERA. “We will repay that gener- osity with support and servic- es that make a difference,” she said. Applications close on 5 June. For more information: www.cera.catholic.org.au . ¾ ¾ Marilyn Rodrigues CS Lewis, above, noted a new tendency in our culture: proneness to living in the future, often in a state of apocalyptic fear. PHOTO: FLICKR the future is, in the strict sense, unknowable. It has not yet happened. A total ab- sorption in the future is to live in an unreal world – a world that is literally not real - which distracts us from present-day situations that we are able to influence. “It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for,” Lewis pointed out. “The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.” We should, therefore, leave the future in God’s hands. “We may as well,” he said, “for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to Him or not.” Living in the present is an imperative of the Catholic faith, which gives sacramen- tal meaning to the here-and- now. While open to the future, it demands an immediate, not a postponed, response. Another spiritual insight that might be drawn from COVID-19 relates to the value of solitude. Recently on BBC Worklife, the journalist Hep- hzibah Anderson examined the life of a hermit as an exam- ple of the potential benefits of solitude: “Being on your own can in fact be calming and restora- tive. Even teens, one study has found, are less self-conscious when they’re alone. Time spent with yourself gives you a clearer sense of who you are, and however discontented hermits are with the socie- ties from which they walk, on some deep, peaceable level, they’re quite contented with themselves.” Anderson rejected any sim- ple identification of solitude with loneliness: “While a certain bleak emptiness can accompany unsought solitude, there is solace to be found even so. Being alone doesn’t mean you need feel lonely, especially not when staying apart is a course of action collectively undertaken.” One of GK Chesterton’s last essays, cited by Anderson, was “The Case for Hermits”. Chesterton perceived a close link between solitude and sanity. The small child teased or bullied at a school or party will cry out: “Let me alone!” – and Chesterton noted that this spontaneous reaction contains the word “alone”. He went on to compare the yearning to be left alone to the experience of sleep. Our need for sleep is inescapable, and if we cannot sleep, we go mad. It is also true, said Chesterton, that if we do not have solitude, we will go mad. A second benefit he iden- tified is the connection be- tween solitude and sociabil- ity. The hermits, especially the most holy such as St Jerome in the 4th century, valued the separation from socie- ty – what we now call “social distancing” – because it gave them spiritual space in which to enjoy the company of God. They could also relate well to wild animals, as St Jerome did with a lion. Thus the her- mits, said Chesterton, in a typical paradox, “had a soli- tude in which to be sociable.” Did they miss the conven- Karl Schmude New body offers fire relief grants tional sociability available in, say, the amphitheatres and public festivals of St Jerome’s time? Chesterton saw these as a sign, not of social freedom, but of “social suffocation”. He compared it with our city- based experience, whether in the crowded conveyances of modern life, or – as we may now be inclined to feel - the pervasive channels of the in- ternet which banish solitude by filling every moment of our lives with “virtual” connec- tions. Chesterton did not dimin- ish the value of social inter- action. But he could see that it was frequently superficial, and he knew – as the spiritual geniuses of our culture, such as St Teresa of Avila and St Ignatius Loyola, have made clear – it needed to be bal- anced with solitude and the pathway of individual retreat: “Mere society is a way of turning friends into acquaint- ances,” insisted Chesterton. “It is in society that men quarrel with their friends; it is in solitude that they forgive them.” Karl Schmude is co-found- er of Campion College in Sydney and President of the Australian Chesterton Society. Any new development in our time, such as climate change and now the coronavirus, exposes our proneness to living in the future, often in a state of apocalyptic fear.”