US Strikes Iran and Still, Dinner Must Be Made

C.S. Lewis wrote about moles and it got me thinking.

Last night we had seven 14-year old boys over for a party. It was loud. Much pizza was consumed. My long-suffering husband played dealer so they could learn how to play Texas Hold ‘Em for 90 minutes. This morning, we wake up to news that the US has bombed Iran, Iran has retaliated. Once again, the world stage rumbles. Yet, dinner must still be made. The party must be cleaned up. Chores must be done.

How do we hold the mundane in the same hand as incessant geopolitical fissuring? How do we hold our personal griefs alongside even bigger ones like genocide in Syria or Myanmar?

We could say this is just one of the perils of the internet age. But while our access to information has exponentially increased, I don’t think it’s largely an information problem that causes the hand-wringing, exhaustion, or overwhelm. Information has trumped formation.

Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash

We think that more data will solve our deeper problems (whether they are personal or geopolitical). We imagine that more think pieces (however good some are) will help us finally understand. And with understanding, we imagine, wisdom and peace will come.

So we keep at the information hunt. We consume reels in the grocery store line. We wear fitness trackers to give us the right numbers so we know whether to stand up or to walk, and how to hit our macros. We feel guilty for watching a show or reading a book when others flee for their lives. So we consume information thinking that “being informed” will make it all make sense.

What if it doesn’t make sense? Or the “sense” it makes is far afield of the good, the true, and the beautiful?

Information cannot be the telos. It cannot tell you how to love your neighbor in the midst of political turmoil. What we need is not more information, but frameworks for understanding information. What we need are solid questions and solid boundaries, so we know when too much information is too much.

Let me give you an example.

In an earlier generation, C.S. Lewis could write, “the work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same conditions, being offered to God.” For his audience — young men who may have felt guilty studying at Oxford when there was a war going on — Lewis held out the life of learning as vocation to be tended, kept, and worked at. While both Beethoven and the charwoman are equally spiritual in giving of themselves to their vocation, they each had a different set of circumstances, gifts, seasons, or callings.

Study for the scholar, implied Lewis, was akin to the work of a mole simply living into its mole-ness: as he said, “a mole must dig to the glory of God.” If you’re a mole, then you simply must dig.

Do you ever wonder what your own mole-ness is? I know that’s a weird question.

But I imagine much of our digital overwhelm and news saturation could be cured by some clarifying questions — questions that helped us say (to extend Lewis’ analogy): “Yes, this is what I can do because I am a mole, and not a cheetah.” It is not that we’re unable to do small things in the midst of national or international calamity (or that some may indeed be called to much larger stages in which to act). But much of our heightened anxiety in the wake of news, is because we have not filtered information through the lens of formation.

Let me offer you a few small guiding questions:

WHERE AM I?: What season am I in?

TO WHOM DO I BELONG? To whom am I connected, and responsible for?

WHAT AM I GOOD AT? What do I do that feels like flow?

WHAT CAN I DO? What is a small next step?

You may be in a season of caring for young children or aging parents. You may be in a demanding job, or have a job that requires you to keep abreast of the news. You may find yourself in flow when praying, or exercising, or painting, or leading a sales team meeting. How might these unique things be the sort of “moleness” Lewis describes? Something that makes sense just for you and for this time.

For me, I’ve always loved a good story. Some of my best friends say that asking questions is my super power. It’s why I love interviewing people in my job, or asking questions over a cup of tea.

More information will not solve our cultural crises. But when we are uniquely human in the midst of cultural crises — when we acknowledge our finiteness, and pursue the good, the true, and the beautiful — we will at least not bury our heads in the sand, nor endlessly strive in order to make a difference. We will do our small part.

Questions can bring you back to human scale — to your body, your season of life, to your people and place. They are questions that take the abstractness of information and filter them through your real life. We feel overwhelm when we don’t sit with the questions.

It’s time to stop the scroll. What question will you sit with?