ashes! ashes! we all fall down
SM No. 12 // how did we get to where we are today? everything is not just 'okay'.
*Before I continue further, this post will not be like my other ones. I do my best to ‘end’ each article with a somewhat hopeful note. But I realize that sometimes authenticity matters more than putting on a smile which I just don’t feel, though I know the sun will shine another day. If you aren’t feeling up to a slog through a mental maze, feel free to check out another SM. Otherwise, thanks for sticking it out. I hope you can feel a sense of kinship with me rather than discouraged by my laments.*
"Does it ever look wrong to you, Vin?" "Wrong?" she asked. Kelsier nodded. "The dry plants, the angry sun, the smoky-black sky." Vin shrugged. "How can those things be right or wrong? That's just the way things are." "I suppose," Kelsier said. "But, I think your mind-set is part of the wrongness. The world shouldn't look like this." Vin frowned. "How do you know that?" Kelsier reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He unfolded it with a gentle touch and handed it to Vin. She accepted the sheet, holding it carefully; it was so old and worn that it seemed close to breaking at the creases. It didn't contain any words, just an old, faded picture. It depicted a strange shape--something like a plant, though not one Vin had ever seen. It was too...flimsy. It didn't have a thick stalk, and its leaves were far too delicate. At its top, it had a strange collection of leaves that were a different color from the rest. "It's called a flower," Kelsier said. "They used to grow on plants, before the Ascension..."
Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire, has impressed me with its mix of political and social intrigue, character growth, and more significantly it’s unexpected depth. I’ve yet to complete the first book in the trilogy, but I have been surprised by the way he weaves humanity’s real-ness throughout the fight scenes and witty banter.
For those not familiar with Mr. Sanderson’s work or have not yet read the Mistborn series, the backdrop to this touching conversation is a kingdom ruled by a theocratic government, tyrannical in all aspects. Many times mentioned is the falling of ash, like a constant black blizzard, on the Final Empire—the name of the location in which the story unfolds. Poor living conditions, beatings, sexual assault, and mistreatment of the lowest class seems to be the norm, while the dirtiness itself covers the slums of those who are slaves to the nobility. Vin and Kelsier are part of a band to disrupt the theocratic government, overthrow it, and proclaim freedom for the maligned peoples of the Final Empire.
Sitting at my local coffee shop, curled up in a cozy chair, with buzzing voices and pop music playing over the speakers, it felt like the world was growing distant, at the same time I was being alienated from it. Any serious reader has experienced this, I think. A moment when you are immersed in a story that takes you away into a foreign land where people can fly, cruel nobility abound, and the whisper of rebellion spreads. Something else stirred in me, though, as I re-read that section for the second time. It wasn’t just the power of a fantasy taking me over, engulfing my senses. I could almost smell the ash in the air, feel the weathered photo in my hand, experience the confusion over having seen a flower for the first time.
Yes, that was what was underneath it all: sadness. Bitter sadness. An aching sense of loss and also a touch of dire urgency.
While all of the noise of the 21st century pressed on me, even with noise-cancelling earbuds in, there was another weight that smothered me suddenly, as if someone had thrown a heavy weight at me unexpectedly, catching me unprepared. The weight of realizing how near Kelsier’s observations hit their mark, right on center.
My friends, when did it become normal to tell little children it’s appropriate, even wonderful, for them to change their species? When did the mass murder of unborn innocents become old news? What of the wars and rumors of wars plaguing our entire world? The desecration of structure in our society1, of beautiful creations worthy of adoration being torn down in lieu of ‘modern’ and more ‘efficient’ methods—when did this become okay? What happened to caring for the eldery and vulnerable rather than eliminating anyone not worth economic gain?
Terrifying as it is to admit, I would not be honest if I said that even in myself, I feel something worse than apathy: Well, that’s just how the world is, September. People are fallen, the world isn’t a safe or healthy place to be in anymore. Has it ever been?
Numbness, complacency, an ah well with the brokenness in the system. When did the serious lack of beauty, harmony, and a general sense of wellbeing become simply ‘everyday life’? How is it that women (and men) can’t walk along the streets of NYC without chronically looking over their shoulders, glancing about them in silent normalized wariness that they may be mugged or worse? Suddenly, we can’t send our children to any sort of public education setting without sitting them down first to help them understand what sort of sexual innuendo could possibly be out there in the likely case they will be introduced to it through peer groups, encouraged to take part in all forms of perversion.
Yesterday while I was out walking with my mom, I lamented my generation’s lack of stability. The West has been shaken to it’s foundations in the past five years, even a decade ago. Shocking as it was, I realized I have never grown up in a world that is stable or at least makes sense. My young teenage years all the way up to adulthood have been wrought with disillusionment, the enemy’s tactic which he’s released into this world to capitalize on our search for purpose and meaning. Rampant chaos has always quietly, sneakily crept into our ideas, habits, and even our physical being; health in the West is at an all time low. Yet, there seems to be an all out war between the spiritual forces of Heaven and earth with human beings used as fodder by the enemy of God.
Part of the affects of long-term disillusionment is that we actually think a kaleidoscopic lens of the universe is meant to be. I’ve got news for all of us: it’s not. Constant unrest in society, government, and individual lives is absolutely not how God intended the world to be. But it seems that secular culture is hellbent on making us just be okay with a complete breakdown of any sort of order established or peace among peoples maintained.
How in the world have we gotten to this place in time when to call somebody by their biological sex was actually a heinous crime? While there are constant wars in Africa between civilian groups, desolation, and destruction of lives, Africa finds itself sending missionaries to America—that should give the American church serious pause.
My friend and I were discussing her upcoming mission’s trip to Africa with Mercy Ships, what sorts of patients she would be seeing after their respective surgeries. Distinctly, I can recall her mentioning cleft palates and abnormal growths in different areas of the body as what the average patients would come in to be treated for. The reason why this is so life-changing for them is because these malformed people—human beings, like you and I—are cast out because the other villagers fear contagion or spiritual darkness surrounding these victims. These people live as outcasts until they can receive medical attention. Despite all that, they still see their brothers and sisters across the sea sinking in a mire of their own making.
And we are squabbling about whether or not somebody should be able to live as an animal or fairy? Look, I’m not saying these issues aren’t important. I am saying that the fact they are even an issue in the first place is the biggest problem. We have so much luxury in the West it is destroying us. We are literally choking on our gluttony, and it breaks me to see young people constantly lash out at one another, call each other names, and push each other down, all in the name of ‘justice’ or upholding their ‘truth’.
Just today, whilst I sat writing this piece at a coffee house, I overheard the two baristas on the other side of the bar talking about the new hit show on Amazon Prime called Bad Guys. One girl said that she was excited to watch the next season, while her coworker told her that she thought the show was stupid because all it encapulated were a group of men yelling at each other and being shitbags (or some such other slur—her words, not mine) to one another. She followed her harsh criticism up with, “Why would I watch a tv show like that when I could go outside?” implying that she sees that sort of behavior all the time in the opposite sex.
What was worse was the way she causually threw those insults and teardowns out there into the world, as if everyone would care to hear them, as if they didn’t matter at all.
How? How is that normative? Is that how we approach others? Use them for our personal gain or cast them aside, depending on if they corroborated our own personal stances and lifestyles?
Would you stand outside and watch ash continously fall as slaves are beaten or hung by their necks with a hook through their throat, shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, that’s the way it is”? I shudder when I can hear an inner voice tell me, yes.
At twenty-one, I am very worried for our country, and I am bone-tired. A desolate spirit hovers just behind my shoulder, out of arm’s reach but close enough to feel the oppression seep in. Why does everything feeling so exorbitantly exhausting? Jobs, school, dating, friendships, family, church, getting up in the morning? Don’t you feel it too, a heaviness that you just can’t shake sometimes? There is certainly revival happening, a regrouping, so to speak. The Church is recognizing its egregious oversight of spiritual deadness running rampant in the street and I can only hope to God that people’s hearts will change.
For now, I step out my door,
and I feel a weight settle on me,
that there is no rest for the weary.
Check out this five minute YouTube video where J. Peterson talks about hierarchy.