Every city has its hip
area with trendy shops offering locally made trinkets, markets for vendors
of organically grown produce, and faux-French cafés. Accountants and stockbrokers who wear power
suits Monday to Friday may transform on Saturday into hipsters in faded jeans,
t-shirts, bandannas around their heads or floppy straw hats to saunter around trendy areas of city.
It is harmless fun being seen as a part of the 'scene'. I get caught up in the pretense myself. Although it’s hard to look trendy
in an electric wheelchair, I still enjoy sipping a mocha latte at a sidewalk café and watching an assortment of hipsters strolling
down the street.
But I occasionally find myself wondering if I’m watching a small outward expression (one of many) that is indicative of the age in which we live. Superficiality of image becomes everything, where taste and manners without deep-rooted substance stunts spiritual progress of the human soul.
But I occasionally find myself wondering if I’m watching a small outward expression (one of many) that is indicative of the age in which we live. Superficiality of image becomes everything, where taste and manners without deep-rooted substance stunts spiritual progress of the human soul.
While sipping my
Americano espresso recently, I read an essay by Matthew Schmitz in First Things magazine entitled “Between
the Hipsters and Hasids”. He wrote about a trendy area of Brooklyn where he
lives and the superficial culture of its hipsters.
Fashionable shops that play on themes of
tradition, vintage and
heritage to market cheese, fresh produce and beer. They want themes but not substance. Schmitz
wrote: “Respect for the way
monks brewed their ale (ora et labora) is not matched by a similar appreciation for the
prayer that structured their lives.” He continued: “A desire to emulate
grandmother’s knitting, pickling, and needlework does not extend to the habit
she felt to be the most important: daily Bible reading.” He then delivered a stinging and succinct
observation: “Hipsters are ambivalent reactionaries who love every aspect of
tradition ― except its authority.”
Near the end of his essay, Matthew Schmitz wrote
with stunning clarity that our generation loves an endless parade of “things
that excite our desire without demanding our love.” The milk in my
Americano turned sour. He’s right.
Christianity calls us to
something different. Catholicism demands our complete love for Christ and loyalty
to Him. We are called to desire things eternal not things temporal or superficial
that require little cultivation of the interior life. Christ and His Church draw
people ever nearer
to eternal truths revealed to us in the Scriptures and sacred traditions of the
Catholic Church. It is when we immerse ourselves totally in these teachings and
surrender more and more deeply to Christ that we begin to understand the
purpose and meaning of our existence: To
love God with our whole being and love others as we love ourselves and to spend
eternity with a God who is the very essence of love.
From my Catholic faith
I have come to understand my own
suffering throughout thirty-three years of
chronic illness in broader contexts than my reality. Pope John Paul II’s Salvifici Doloros extensively addressed my questions about the Why
of Suffering. Pope Benedict XVI spoke to
me about hope in his book The Yes of Jesus Christ. He told the reader who suffers from illness
or handicaps that God wants us to give Him a “down-payment of trust.” The Pope
told the reader that God is saying to us: “I know you don’t understand me yet.
But trust me: believe me when I tell you
I am good and dare to live on the basis of this trust. Then you will discover
that behind your suffering, behind the difficulties of your life, a love is
hiding.” This trust will serve as a vehicle of transcendence beyond my physical
circumstances and suffering. The
superficiality and cynicism of the world does not understand this. Trust
involves vulnerability and self-denial of inner control. It is the antithesis
of our age.
The desire to wrap
myself in attractive diversions of life is harmless until it leads to
constantly frittering away precious time on the trivial and superficial at the
expense of using my trials and pain to cultivate an interior life in Christ. Saint Clement of Alexandria (150-215) said,
“Bearing the Cross means to separate our souls from the delights and pleasures
of this world.”
[Click link below for I Am The Bread of Life by John Michael Talbot.]
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