Is It What It Is?

I mentioned in a recent newsletter that in this life we’re often like the folks who drive up to a scenic overlook, snap a photo, and drive away, never realizing that they have not really seen what they came to see.  What I was getting at is that we were put here for specific purpose, and that we often miss that purpose. 

Fr. Alexander Schmemann said that all things that exist, exist to reveal God to us. And yet we miss this so often. One of the reasons we miss it is that we don’t pay attention. Another reason is that we simply don’t wait for God, we don’t look for God, we don’t make time to meet him. A less obvious reason, though, is that very often things are not what they are meant to be, and we focus on the state in which we find things rather than asking ourselves important questions about what those things and situations are meant to be. 

I’m curmudgeonly about the phrase, “It is what it is”. It’s just nonsense. Of course everything is what it is. That statement doesn’t tell us anything about anything. The important question is to ask is it what “it” is supposed to be or even more primordially, what is it that it is? Things are often gone astray because of the Fall of Man.  Many things because of sin aren’t the way God designed them. It is important for us to realize that God’s will often is not done, and what “It is what it is” is really implying is that there is some kind of fatalism at play in the universe.  Islam teaches that God‘s will is always done because God‘s will is irresistible. Calvinism, which is kind of related to Islam in this sense, teaches the same sort of thing. 

But in fact, God‘s will is often not done. God doesn’t have us do things that are useless, and he wouldn’t ask us to pray “Thy will be done” unless it accomplished something. God‘s will is often not done and manifestly so. We’re told in the Book of Wisdom, for example, that death is something that God does not want, that God does not will, and that God did not design or intend (Wisd. 1:13-16).  It is, in fact, something that God has had to overcome for us by undergoing death himself in the Person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So we find the world in a state of disarray, gone off the tracks in important ways, full of things that are not according to God’s will.  Death is only the most basic and universal (in our experience) of these; the spin of things toward chaos and disorder reveals itself in countless ways.  But this is a principle that God holds at bay, around which he has set certain bounds, and which flows directly from the disobedience of our First Parents and from our consistent and constant participation in that disobedience.  

So the important question is not, “Is it what it is?”, but “How did it come to be this way, and what can be done to bring it (or its effects) in line with God’s will?” The turn from God is something we rightly characterize as disobedience, but the universe is not in the shape it’s in because we break rules.  The state of the universe (including death) is not a punishment, but simply an effect.  If you put sugar in your car’s gas tank, things will go awry and you’ll wind up with a dead car.  That won’t be a punishment, but an effect following upon causes.  When we turn away from God, the source of our life, we and all things suffer from a disastrous privation.  We are deprived by our own acts and by the effects of the acts of our First Parents of our ability to perceive God clearly, to be at peace, to know true joy, to live forever in the presence of God.

Fortunately, God has given us access to the cure for every malady, including those most difficult maladies that we find within ourselves.  Our life in the Sacraments and in prayer, a life made powerful and efficacious by God’s sharing of the life of Christ with us in the Church, has the real capacity to set things right.

And one of the things that this new life can reveal to us is that the created order, though wounded, is still a wonderful revelation of God’s love and care for us.  It is what it is becoming, and that is a new heaven and a new earth.  Even in a world full of catastrophes, there is still the sight of the sunrise over golden fields,  or the moonlight on still water, or the wind on a cool day, or the laughing sound of a stream.  If you’re a fan of Yeats, I’d point out that these are some of the kinds of lovely, homey things that the Stolen Child will miss.  There are still those things still out there. But we’re not out there and even when we are out there, we’re not really present. Our screens show us all the catastrophes and none of the moonlight or sunrises.  Even when our screens do show these things, we are not really experiencing them.  We’re just looking at them passively.

So take heart, and don’t be overcome by the message of the Doom Scrolls.  Things may look bad, but we have hope.  Pray for the grace to see God in all things, to perceive his quiet power upholding his great craftsmanship of love.  Have frequent recourse to prayer and to the Sacraments.  As Dr. Seuss wrote in The Lorax: “It’s not about what it is. It’s about what it can become.”  And what it can become is glorious.