Antidote to Madness

It’s all around us, shriveling our spirits: the killing winds of the election frenzy, theprotracted bombing of Mosul, the sterile dispatching of unwanted babies, the wanton garroting of truth-seekers, the covert erasing of embarrassing truth, the procrustean lopping off of imagination, the programmed mauling of the Core Curriculum, and the list goes on …

Such is the outgrowth of hedonism, secularism, and materialism that continues candy-coating its evil through the social media. All of life is trivialized, left vapid, and fed by such reports as Kate Middleton’s twenty-one outfits, disparaged by the Queen.

Other than unplug, turn off cell phones, have meals at home, monitor our thinking, and discern the drift of our choices, what can we do?

It’s about waking up to who we really are: persons created in the image and likeness of God. Such requires taking time apart from the madness, listening to our breathing, plunging into our depths and remaining there, even if awkward. From this very darkness begins to emerge a different voice, one that corrects, consoles, and counsels. If receptive enough, an inner authority, one we learn to trust, sends fresh cues. Obeying them produces a vibrancy that warms our hearts and others. No longer do we expose them to the seductive madness around us, no longer addicted to “the religion of rush,” as the Irish seer, John O’Donohue has said.

Thus guided, we co-create with our God.