It is easy to live in abstractions when we are…
Full of food we didn’t make,
Living in buildings we didn’t make,
Wearing clothes we didn’t make…
and so little grateful for all we didn’t make that we gladly make it all an abstraction, losing the objects in the world and our agency around them.
Let us move back to objects and agency, to objects that both resist and resonate with our agency in a work that is ultimately out of our control.
Then we will be able to rest. Abstractions are so much work to maintain in the face of reality.
Let’s make more,
And abstract less;
And rest more
From restlessness.1
This is inspired by Hartmut Rosa’s The Uncontrollability of the World and Matthew B. Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.
I had been thinking about risk for awhile. And Holy Spirit. So I went out on Amazon and read the blurb to The Uncontrollability of the World. I need another book like I need another hole in my head. But this one will be nagging me to buy. I can see why Nathan wrote below. Hunting in nature where nothing can be controlled must be exhilerating. We don't trust Holy Spirit. We don't risk more. Enough. All 7 billion of us, in this madness to control, may cause extinction. So much potential for goodness.
Wasted
Interesting conversation. This reminds me of one of the reasons that I choose to engage the practice of hunting wild game for food. It connects me to nature and to the whole process from field to table of what is involved in sourcing animal proteins for our sustenance. There's no blind side stepping the process that something must die so that we can live. And you have to take personal responsibility for it.