I have been reading and re-reading an article by Alana Newhouse in “Tablet”: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/everything-is-broken. Her words are haunting.
The more I ponder what she has written, the more it seems to me she is saying something important, that I need to heed. But, at the same time, what she has written causes me to feel a tiny bit nervous.
Newhouse is navigating tricky waters. I sense a controversial undercurrent that I feel ill-equipped to traverse without risk of running up against dangerous submerged rocks which I don’t even see coming. Newhouse is operating at a level of intellectual sophistication and subtly that lies beyond my limited abilities. She grasps nuances and implications that I fail to catch.
I understand that, by trying to engage with Newhouse’s writing, I am launching onto waters that are treacherous. I am certain to get struck by a wave I cannot see coming or a storm I am unable to predict.
So, feel free to rage away against Newhouse’s ideas, or my response. But be aware, my intentions are noble. I am not trying to lob a hand grenade into anyone’s little life boat. I am trying to understand what Newhouse is saying and to be sensitive to the challenge I perceive in her argument. I hope to uncover the wisdom for navigating my own little broken world that it feels to me is lurking in the shadow of her words.
Her basic premise is simple:
“Everything is broken.”
A decade ago my theme song was Bob Dylan’s growling anthem “Everything is broken”:
Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,
Everything is broken
You do not have to look far to see evidence that things do not work all that well. Even before COVID drove a massive truck through the institutional structures of our society, it was clear that most human organizational constructs were limping badly. In the Christian Church, the institution with which I am most familiar, our brokenness is tragically and abundantly obvious at almost every turn.
So I am sympathetic to Newhouse’s argument that everything is broken. And I love the general outline of her prescription. Confronted by pervasive brokenness, she wants us to resist the temptation to rush to fix it, or to launch a campaign to build a better widget to solve the problem. She does not want us to try to tidy up all the mess. Instead she wants us just to “sit with” the mess. She suggests we “seek out friction and thorniness, hunt for complexity and delight in unpredictability.”
What this might look like in practical terms Newhouse leaves to the end of her essay – I will return to this. But, in principle, I am sympathetic with the direction she is pointing.
I know we do less harm when we accept “friction and thorniness.” And, if ever an institution should be comfortable with “complexity” and “unpredictability”, surely it should be institutions that are committed to the vast, confounding mystery we call “God.” And, as a Christian “unpredictability” is my stock in trade. My faith is based upon the person of Jesus who majored in the unpredictable. He was forever upsetting the expectations of the people of his day. I seek to submit to the unpredictable wind of the Spirit which “blows where it chooses” (John 3:8).
So, I am happy, in broad terms with the Newhouse prescription for dealing with the reality of brokenness.
It is between description and prescription that I get a little bit nervous. Newhouse answers the question, “Why is everything broken?” with a simple, but complex response,
“Flatness broke everything” (emphasis added).
With some trepidation, I will venture into this tricky territory tomorrow.
In A Spacious Place 
5 comments
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January 18, 2021 at 10:28 am
Michael Alan
Now that was a Rant!
What if nothing was really broken? What if one does not subscribe to greed or apocalyptic journalism (where the answers are considered with a link to a fresh new solution)? What happens when we operate in life from un-brokenness?
It seems to me that being caught up in the drama simply perpetuates it or furthers divisions (those evil ‘ flatteners’). What sees the brokenness is the unbroken. That is the simple good news. How would the unbroken be best described? Nature. Nature doesn’t care, per se. It moves, adapts, morphs into new versions of Itself by Itself. Things get better when we let her do her thing. It is 100% safe and indestructible.
Now before this becomes a ‘counter rant ‘ let me simply offer that the ‘ individual’s ‘ job is to know its wholeness as Nature. Wholeness then, takes care of Itself and the world is healed already… even in its brokenness. Quite the miracle. (The job of Wholeness will get done)
January 19, 2021 at 5:41 am
Christopher Page
thank you Michael Alan for keeping my feet to the unitive fire. This is complex terrain. You ask “What if nothing was really broken?” and then conclude “the world is healed already… even in its brokenness.” It feels to me that there is pain, even tragedy, in the human condition. Some of this suffering is unnecessary caused by realities that I would label “broken”. But yes, we will navigate the brokenness in a much more fruitful and life-giving way when we manifest from “wholeness”.
January 19, 2021 at 8:11 am
Michael Alan
Pain is unavoidable but misery is optional. I really do think that was Jesus’s primary message in all the ‘healing’ stories.
If we are the essence of nature (Holy spirit in religious language), it follows that it is a fact that we are unbroken. It is the belief that I am “separate’, that is the root of all psychological suffering/ misery.
The world is manifesting the collective separation, it is true on that level. In Jung’s terms it is the collective psyche. Your featured writer is playing the fear card to shake up the reader. Her solution would indicate CONTROL and LETS CHANGE THE WORLD. I’m not certain, but I don’t think that has ever worked in the history of the world.
What is moving the needle is the collective conscious who join from wholeness to naturally re-align ‘the world’ , come what may. As Jesus said ” heaven is upon the earth but men do not see it”. (It is healed already)
January 19, 2021 at 7:14 pm
Christopher Page
I was in a group recently in which one participant said they were quoting Rupert Spira who apparently said, “Suffering is the price that consciousness pays for manifestation.”
If Spira actually said this, it seems to reflect that there is a tension between “the essence of nature” and those forms in which that “essence” manifests. Thus, I agree, “Pain is unavoidable” as long as we are living in this conflicted reality. I think when people say “Everything is broken” they are simply reflecting the pain inherent in this tension.
January 21, 2021 at 9:10 am
Michael Alan
Yes, when people say (there is a lot of this) “everything is broken” they are reflecting what they see in the world and who could disagree? I’m just not sure that aligning with that sentiment as the ‘truth of what we are’ bears any fruit. The truth of what we are, I would argue, is not conflicted.
Pain is a tough master, though. What happens to it when it is not argued with? Perhaps that is the threshold that all truth lovers meet.