"The More Things Change..."

Today is July 16, the 197th day of the year; 168 days remain in 2010. July 16 marks the beginning of the Muslim era. On this night in 622 AD (or, if you are a Muslim, 1 AH), Muhammed ibn Abdullah, warned of an assassination plot, secretly fled from his home to what is now called the city of Medina. Muhammed’s flight from potential martyrdom (nowadays euphemistically called his “emigration”) has been counted as the beginning of the New Age by Muslims ever since. “AH” stands for the Latin anno hegirae, “in the year of the hijra." By Muslim reckoning, then, the year is 1431 AH. On the Church's calendar today is the feast of Blessed Mary Magdalene Françoise de Justamond, a French Cistercian nun who, in 1794, was guillotined for refusing to deny her faith during the Days of the Terror in Paris. Russian Christians celebrate today solemnly, commemorating the murder of Tzar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and their five children by their Bolshevik captors in the basement of a house in Ekatrinberg, Russia. The Russian Church venerates them as “the Royal Martyrs” who are said to have died for their faith. On the Coptic Christian calendar, this is the 9th of Abib, the year is 1726, and it’s the feast of St Celadion, the 9th Pope of Alexandria. According to the Hebrew calendar, it's the 5th of Av, 5770. The United States Congress, which lives to please its constituency, has declared July not only National Hot Dog Month and and National Relish Month, but boldly named July National Ice Cream Month as well. Is it any wonder the old American Book of Common Prayer exhorts us to pray that God “wouldest be pleased to direct and prosper all their consultations”? In Canada National Rabbit Week concludes today; and for those who plan ahead, there are only 162 Shopping Days Left till Christmas.

July 16th is a bad day for Russian royalty. As already noted, Tsar Nicholas and his family were shot and bayoneted in the early hours of July 16th on the orders of Lenin (who till his death denied issuing the order; it wasn’t until after the collapse of the Soviet empire that Lenin's handwritten instructions were made public). But long before that, on this day back in 1605, the young Tsar Fyodor II Borisovich Godunov was imprisoned by his enemies in the imperial palace (Fyodor was the son of the Boris Godunov, about whom Mussorgsky wrote his famous opera, if you’re the highbrow sort; if not, you’ll be familiar with the name only because of the nefarious Boris Badonov of “Rocky and Bullwinkle” fame). Four days later a group of thugs broke into the royal apartments and strangled both the boy and his mother. The story was put out that the pair died of food poisoning. However, the nobles who orchestrated the whole thing were stupid enough to put the bodies on public display before the funeral, and the rope burns and abrasions around their necks were visible to everyone. His death inaugurated the period known in Russian history as the “Time of Troubles” (the Smutnoye Vremya), a time of civil wars, imperial imposters and economic chaos. The ascent of the Romanov Dynasty in the person of Mikhail Romanov, crowned in 1613, ended the Smutnoye Vremya. Peter III was crowned Tsar on January 5, 1762 and strangled to death on the afternoon of July 16. As a boy, the young Peter loved all things military. He was enthralled by the military successes of the Prussian Emperor Frederick the Great and on his coronation announced he would “turn Russia into Prussia.” To the discomfiture of the Orthodox clergy, he ordered them to shave their beards, adopt the attire of Protestant clergymen and remove icons from the churches. To drive the point home, he built a Lutheran chapel in the palace. The new Tsar alienated the clergy and pious. He ordered the army, then conducting a war with Prussia, to return home and abandon all the territorial gains they’d made in the war. The Tsar ordered new uniforms and equipment for the army based on Prussian models. Peter loved the sound of cannon-fire and would on occasion order all the canon surrounding the Kremlin to fire, one after another, all night long. When the whim struck, he would call out the imperial soldiers in stationed in Moscow to get up in the middle of the night and parade back and forth in front of him on the grounds of the Kremlin for hours. The new Tsar alienated the military. Peter took as his mistress Elizabeth Vorontzova, niece of the Chancellor of the Russian Court. The French ambassador wrote in his diary that Elizabeth “has a dull mind. Her pockmarked face has nothing to recommend it ad all her make-up does little to improve matters. In all respects she reminds one of the lowest class of serving wench. She swears like a trooper, squints, stinks and spits when she talks.” The emperor declared her “Grand Mistress of the Court.” The new Tsar alienated his nobles and most dangerously, his wife, who history would come to call Catherine the Great. Catherine gave every appearance of meek acquiescence but befriended the insulted clergy, the indignant generals and the outraged nobles. One afternoon when Peter went out to lead the troops in maneuvers, she had him quietly taken into custody and locked in the rooms of a royal hunting lodge. Beginning to see a pattern here? On July 16th, unidentified persons with ropes entered the lodge and later the Tsar’s body was discovered, showing all the signs of strangulation. Catherine was happily proclaimed empress by the clergy, the army and the nobles. But Catherine knew her history: Peter’s body was never put on public display.

On July 16th, 1453, King Henry VI forbad kissing throughout his realm. The Black Plague was ravaging the Netherlands, and there was much fear it would cross the Channel. Though the notion of “germs” was unknown, a group of royal physicians convinced the king that invisible “specks,” which passed from person to person at times of intimate contact, were the cause of the plague. While stopping short of outlawing acts of procreation (which one speculates might have proved ineffectual anyway), it was decided that a royal proclamation against kissing would be sufficient. Regardless of how we may snicker, there was no outbreak of the plague in England that year. So put that in your pipe.

On July 16, 1935, the first parking meters in the world were installed on the downtown streets of Oklahoma City. Ten years later, to the day, the world’s first atomic bomb was exploded in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Call it a coincidence if you want.

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Walking the Labyrinth—Odi et amo, “I love and I hate,” wrote the Roman poet Catullus two thousand years ago. Though he was writing about something very different, I know how he feels every time I sit down in front of my computer. Old friends know I viewed computers with a mixture of distain and distrust for more than a decade. Twice people gave me computers as gifts in the 1990’s—I “regifted” both, one never even having been removed from its box. I viewed them as expensive, time-consuming and overly complex typewriters. I had pencils. They fit in my pocket, didn’t need manuals or require on-call technicians.

Historians regard Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press as one of the most significant events in history. As a lover of the printed word, I agree (for what that’s worth). It seems obvious to me, though, that Gutenberg’s revolution pales in comparison with the computer revolution of the past two decades. We are in the process of seeing a new world created around us and we don’t know where we’re headed with it, or where it’s taking us. The conservative wiring in my brain (see? it’s already affected our view of ourselves!) tells me to be afraid, but when I can travel to Mongolia or view Bourbon Street live while sitting at my desk, I am amazed. I can examine—in unbelievable detail—a 6th century Byzantine manuscript locked in the vaults of the Vatican Library. I’ve done it. Seconds later I could be listening to the raspy voice of Johnny Cash sing the theme song to “The Rebel,” a TV show I watched when I was a kid. I’ve done this too, but I’ll leave it to you to guess which of the two web pages I spent almost three hours of my life on. Odi et amo. The possibilities frighten and entice me.

It may be—I have a sense almost certainly it will be—centuries before we grasp what we have wrought. But there are a few things a walker in the Labyrinth can know right now. In spite of the fact that you can buy fabric that enables you to make a shirt or blouse “wearable computer,” we, us, our souls—remain unchanged through the millennia. We don’t like to hear that. Look at what we’ve done! We can circle the globe in hours. We’ve been to the moon and back repeatedly. I can talk to someone in Africa after pressing a few buttons on my cell phone, which now fits in the pocket of my t-shirt. But when they answer in Africa, what are we going to talk about? When you look at the horned moon white in the black night sky, do you see only real estate? No doubt, some of us do. But there beats in the breast of every computer geek a heart longing for Mystery. Life must be more than balance of trade agreements and electro-cardiogram readings. Our hearts are restless for more than computerized shirts.

As wonderful as it is to view up close a 1500 year old parchment on my laptop, it’s the words that matter. Pressed into a clay tablet, carved in stone, quilled onto papyrus, written on foolscap, printed in a book or read on a Kindle, it’s the words that matter. After Gutenberg and Gates we’re still in search of who we are and why we’re here. That hasn’t changed because we haven’t changed. The greed and generosity, the envy and self-sacrifice, the hatred and love around since Eden surround us still. We continue the same. Technology may terrorize us or bless us or—most likely—it will do both. After all, it’s made in our image.

We’re made in the image of Another. The labyrinth of your life is laid out to take you to Him, every step molding you into who He created you to be. Our labyrinths twist and turn in unguessed and sometimes unwelcome ways. We don’t know what’s around the bend. We do know, we can grasp with certainty this truth: our lives, our sorrows and joys, sufferings and delights have meaning. More meaning than you and I can imagine. Through our insignificance (“what? do you know who I am?”), in spite of our pettiness and failings, He Who made us in His own image is redeeming and recreating the world. Next to that truth, our greatest technologies are toys.

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A note to those who’ve written (some repeatedly) asking me for my thoughts on the Pope’s Anglicanorum Coetibus: I appreciate your patience. I’m not being coy, just ruminant. Months back I spent a few days writing on this, but on review it seemed premature. There’s still much to learn before anything definitive can be said, but since nothing I say is definitive anyway, that’s not an issue. It’s become plain to me is that the most important things to be addressed are not the “hows” or even the “whys” but the presumptions that run in front of these questions. I’m now writing, but I won’t be publishing what I write on Labyrinthus, it’s not the proper forum. If you’re interested, please let me know. As always, I’m more than happy to hear other people’s thoughts. I may not always agree, but that’s how I learn. On such an important topic, I hope that there’s more praying than talking going on, but my emails suggest otherwise.