Christmas in Santa Fe

     All the cognoscenti have breakfast at Tia Sophia's in Santa Fe. It's where the movers and shakers and locals eat. This morning, I had the requisite breakfast burrito, filled with scrambled egg, bacon and potatoes, smothered with melted cheddar and both red and green chiles ("Christmas" to those who know.) Actually, it wasn't as hot (temperature-wise) as it should have been, but the chiles made my nose run, so that's all right. 
     I also read both the Santa Fe and Albuquerque newspapers they had in the wooden rack up front. Local papers seem to me a symbol of American freedom and uniqueness. As they used to tell us in journalism school, anybody with a million dollars to lose can start a newspaper. An added fillip out here is that in the 1800s, people brought printing presses in by mule and set up shop in whichever little town struck their fancy and started a local paper, usually including humorous commentary and fanciful art. When they got bored with each other, the publisher would pack up and move to another town. 
     Anyway, my waitress was kind and tolerant when I couldn't understand her accent. She spoke slowly and laughed. At another table, an apparently local mother, grown daughter and grandchild sat. The daughter knocked over a large glass of orange juice. The mother leapt to her feet and began to berate one of the staff for failing to move quickly enough to get a towel. Several people were mopping the mess and bringing a new glass while she continued her rant. "She's an employee. She didn't even move. She should have brought a towel right away." Good grief. A minute later, the woman was speaking to everyone in the sweetest of tones, to make up, I suppose. Too late, though, lady. No one in Tia Sophia's will ever be glad to see you come in. 

What's That You Say?

     I used to watch “All My Children” on TV when I was in my twenties. The plots were convoluted and even a touch ludicrous, but they did make me want to see what would happen next. Then one day, a story made some glaring lights come on. A young woman was married to a much older man. Through some contrivance, she and a handsome young man were stranded together overnight. They “comforted” each other.

     When handsome young man took her home, the husband, worried and now angry, accused the two of doing, well, exactly what they had done. Instead of confessing, apologizing, or even making excuses, they became indignant at having been accused. “How can you say such a thing, after all we’ve been through?” was the gist of their response. Then the husband backed down and apologized for being so mean!

     This was such a twisted anti-morality, I never wanted to watch the program again, and I certainly didn’t want my children to see it. Now, though, I see this backwards outrage all around me in public discourse. When a “reproductive rights activist” (meaning someone who wants sex without any of that darn reproduction) cynically enrolls in a Catholic law school and then tries to force them to abandon their pro-life principles by claiming that she and her sister students need $3,000 worth of contraceptive services to get through the program, her duplicity and what sure enough sounds like promiscuity are simply “good citizenship” in the POTUS’s words. But Rush Limbaugh wonders out loud whether “slut” or “prostitute” is a more accurate term for her, and all hell breaks loose. OK, it was crude, but it was a way of naming her behavior. Pointing it out seems to be a much worse offense than doing it.

     It’s the same with talk about abortion. I use the term “baby-killing,” and I’m taken to task for being harsh and rude. Yet pointing a suction tube at a tiny baby and ripping its arms and legs off, oh, that’s just women’s health care. Pulling a bigger baby out of the birth canal except for its head, sticking a pair of scissors into the base of its skull and cutting up the brain so the head can be collapsed and the dead child pulled out, oh that’s just reproductive health. A woman’s right, don’t you know. Call it baby-killing, and you are the rube, the outcast, the criminal. And you can’t change the channel.

To Save What Remains

   Who can live without conflict in his soul? Only the saint, the righteous man made perfect, and the purely evil. All have sinned, even if we know better. Some have been washed and redeemed. But everyone who is honest admits he still does things he knows are wrong, though he agrees with the law. Heaven contains “the souls of righteous men made perfect.” Such souls must think only what is right and good. There is no conflict in them. On the other end of the scale, though, would be the demonically evil. No conflict in them either.

     Cormac McCarthy got me thinking this with his book No Country for Old Men. There’s a movie too. A young westerner out hunting finds the remains of a drug deal turned massacre. The money left behind looks like a rainbow pot of gold to him, and he takes it. It isn’t long before he realizes he’s being tracked down. Running to Mexico won’t save him.

     The assassin who’s tracking him, “Sugar,” is pure, consistent and unconflicted. The imaginings of his heart are only evil continually. (See Genesis 6.) He intends to kill the “thief,” and if that means murdering his relatives one by one, it’s no problem to him. His incidental victims say to him, “You don’t have to do this.” Oh, but he does, he tells them. He has decided to kill them, and he will not change his mind. Consistent.

     The sheriff means to do his duty against this evil agent, but he struggles and doubts and laments. He knows the dike is broken; the dark sea is rolling over the country he once felt at home in and changing it. He traces the breech back to the loss of manners in the young: no more “sir” and “ma’am,” no more respect. Manners and murder? Yes. The law of God is all one piece. Break one little requirement, and you have broken the whole thing.

     By God’s “common grace,” societies carve out a Netherlands in a sea of evil. Their dikes are made of law, customs, standards. They require constant maintenance. Yet some take them for granted. This level of peace and safety is the norm, isn’t it? And some hate the wall. They want to be “free.” They work to tear it down.

     In the story, Sugar enters an office and shoots a man in front of a terrified bystander. The second man asks, “Are you going to kill me too?” Sugar says, “That depends. Did you see anything?” The man answers, “No, no, I didn’t see anything.” Sugar leaves him alone. As the sheriff investigates, he is sure people have seen the killer, but none will say so. They are too afraid of this concentrated evil.

     A little crack in a big wall can cause the whole structure to fail. I think it’s our job to spot the wrong wherever it turns up and to seal the cracks right away, in our culture, in our families, in our souls. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against  principalities, against powers, against  the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand  in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”

     The sheriff knew that. He needed someone to stand with him.