Universality

The corona virus causes immense anxiety. Its arrival is like that of an asteroid. It hits our ‘earth’, our safe day-to-day life. One of its effects is our reawakening from among our daily distractions. The milliard pluralities around which we have been spinning, being torn into thousand pieces, suddenly is compressed. Like the will-o’-the-wisp, the multiple lights of our high-tech culture disappear. We are left alone and facing again the one reality. Our fragile, long unscrutinised life.

Facing this one life is just as painful as facing the merciless pluralities that confront our consciousness. Actually, this loss of control, the exhaustion by the thousand forces which we are captive of is an unbearable pain. We simply can’t get out of their grip. Our sins like artificial lights are dazzling our eyes. We are coloured, day and night, by these explosions of artificial lights. Yep, our one life can be lost for good. Just as real, as the coronavirus on the threshold of our secure existence.

In the light of the powers of distraction (our constant being de-centred) Jesus’ words attain a new significance. ‘Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.’ (Luke 10:4-5). This is the only way to regain our strength in the sun-storm of deconstruction in which we live. This is the only credible voice, our command of simplification. We must simplify ourselves in order to perceive the lost unifying centre. Amidst fake pluralisms the one genuine universal.

I don’t know what it is. But we will perceive it, even grow a language to be addressed by it, and speak to it, when we undergo the experience of having one moneybag, one haversack, one pair of sandals and no worthless distraction.
 
24.02.2020