The Crux of the Matter

"It is true, and even tautological,
to say that the cross
is the crux of the whole matter." ~G.K. Chesterton

So it is as we walk through this weary vale of tears: the Cross stands ever before us.  No matter how we flee it, dashing through the numberless pleasures that society advertises and thrusts upon us, no matter how we turn our backs and pretend we can live without it, no matter how we pursue the right course and seek the perfect solution to every problem, we cannot ever escape it.

Our failure to wipe it from our vision is as simple as its existence is omnipresent.  We may think we can close our eyes to the tortured body of Love upon it.

Yet we cannot escape its form.  So many times I catch myself half-consciously tracing its form in patterns on the floor or on a wall while my mind wanders elsewhere.  Wherever we look, it stares back at us, for it is the very basis of architectural structures that we take so much for granted.

Whenever we stare through old windows, it greets us, framing the landscape with inescapable significance: life is suffering—life is bound by the Cross.

We cannot escape its reality any more than we can escape death and taxes.  Whether we flee or turn to face it in the great trials or petty annoyances of our lives, whether we carry it willingly or drag it like a chain behind us, whether we are crushed beneath it or let it lift us up to the heavens, we will feel the weight of its rough wood.

What matters then is how we will face it.  When we come to the end of our lives will we be able to say that we have let it mark our steps with love and courage?

We have the choice before us in every moment of every day.  We may not be called to give our lives in military service (as the above graves attest) or die as martyrs, but of course we can die to ourselves in little ways at every moment of every day.  We can give up making sacrifices to our idols and turn instead to the God of love whose Cross lies in the very form of our bodies.

When you see the Cross like a dragon rear its ugly head before you, what will you do?  Will you let it remain only the means of your cruel execution or will you be transformed by it into a beautiful new creation?

It is your choice and your choice alone.

Decisions, Decisions

“I must have a prodigious amount of mind;
it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!”

-Mark Twain

I often feel that way when faced with some momentous decision—or even some lesser one—and sometimes it takes me so long I think I must have an even greater mind than he.  Those of small mind must be lucky indeed.

They say one ought to choose the lesser of two weevils.*  Now that may apply very well to politicians—although I am not sure it does in fact—but the principle assumes that there is a lesser evil.  Sometimes there is not.  Many times we are faced with a thousand different decisions of equal or near-equal value and goodness.  That is when the mind becomes stymied and one begins to feel the weight of his mind's size.

What a free nation are we—free to choose whatever we wish.  We are faced with hundreds or thousands of options for everything ranging from vehicles to shampoo and from how to spend our leisure time to which emoticon to tag onto a text message. Those who thought we deserved thousands of choices must not have taken into consideration the energy and willpower that making these decisions requires.

After facing all of those choices that daily life thrusts upon us, it is a wonder we have any willpower left for aught else.  No wonder there seems to be a fear of commitment.

I must confess I find myself practically powerless when facing a choice of two goods.  Of course making no decision means a third path of lesser good and therefore losing both the goods instead of enjoying one.  Yet how is one supposed to choose between them?

A little girl in France now known as Therese did not much bother with that choice.  She tells the tale, in her autobiography, of a time when her older sister offered for her to choose among the goods of the various dolls and toys she had outgrown.  Rather than choose among them as her sister expected her to, or waver in long indecision as I would be wont to do, she merely stretched out her arms and unceremoniously took the entire basket, announcing, "I choose all!"

That is where I too stand.  Until my body fails me or reality reminds me of its impossibility, I must have all the goods, material and spiritual, that I can take, whether from greed or holier motive.

I choose all.

*See Master and Commander if you do not catch the reference.