secularism | CURIOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Sirens, police cars, stopped traffic—that’s what I saw and heard as I jogged along the Potomac for part of my run along the mall in Washington, D.C. For a moment or two I was struck by it all, and I thought that something of crisis-like proportions must have occurred; yet soon I reminded myself that in a big city, sirens are a pretty common occurrence and do not necessarily portend a major disaster.

Until my run that morning I had never seen the Lincoln Memorial, though like all Americans I know what it symbolizes. It was completed in the early 1920s and houses the famous statue of Lincoln, whose design by Daniel Chester French was executed by the Piccirilli brothers, American-born sons of the well-known Italian sculptor Giuseppe Piccirilli, who emigrated from his native land in the nineteenth-century. The building itself, which evokes the greatest of Greek temples, the Parthenon, is the work of the architect Henry Bacon. But these are all details gathered easily enough from the official website.[1]

As I jogged up that monument’s steps, I somehow had a feeling that I had been there before, though in fact I never had. Yet I could feel the pulse of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which I had not realized until I was writing this was actually delivered when I was but a small child. I have no personal memory of that speech, but the very sound of Reverend King’s words are nonetheless vivid in my mind and I savor his powerful, grand and inspiring tone, and relish the cultural memory.

The Jefferson Memorial was more beautiful, I thought, delicate and less imposing that the powerful and more substantial Lincoln Memorial. What these structures and the Washington Monument across the Potomac’s tidal basin from the Jefferson Memorial all mean, however, is much more important these days than perhaps ever before. They would seem to symbolize the best about our country, the potential for our country to be united, to set better goals and to seek to achieve better ends. The harsh words, the virulent and palpable hatred of our politicians these days, the political squabbling that has virtually immobilized our country, as well as our government’s out-of-control spending—all of that clashes badly with what these monuments mean, what they preserve.

That this is the case became clearer to me after my jog when I returned to my hotel. I was on my way to a conference on the challenges of secularism to religion.[2] Representatives of the three major monotheistic religions were sitting on a podium and discussing intelligently the issues that each of their faith traditions face in an increasingly secularized society. Now there were a lot of things that struck me that day, from early morning police sirens to the monuments that I saw on my six-mile jog, culminating with that interfaith dialogue, and I could wax poetic or at least prosaic on any number of them. But let me choose just one, the last of these.

Here sat three leaders from three different faiths—a rabbi, a sheikh, and a prominent Roman Catholic[3]—on a stage before an audience that I imagine was as amazed as I was to listen to these tremendously wise men, one of whom was in town also to receive the Irving Kristol Award.[4] There was no wrangling, no arguing, no vitriol, but rather profound respect for one another and each other’s religious traditions. And this was taking place in Washington D.C., the city of spleen. These men understood the significance of the monuments on the mall. The contrast between the bickering and back-biting of current leaders in of our country who, though they represent different parties, presumably hold a heart the commonweal and these men, whose religious differences are presumably greater than any political divide, could not have been sharper.

And that’s what struck me after I spent a day running around the monuments, struck me harder than anything I saw that day: respect, admiration and cooperation. Can you imagine? Now that would be striking.

[1] https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/memorial-features.htm.

[2] https://www.baylor.edu/washington/index.php?id=944857

s[3] Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf (President of Zaytuna College), and Professor Robert George (Princeton).

[4] The highest award given for by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

The chances of being in Norcia, Italy are relatively low. The chances of running into fellow blogger Rod Dreher in Norcia are lower yet. Norcia is a small town that probably you wouldn’t even recognize the name of unless you were to recall its name being associated with Amatrice, which last year suffered two devastating earthquakes. I did not make it to Amatrice on this trip—indeed, I’ve never been, though as an adult I have eaten pasta Amatricana with great delight a number of times. And when I eat it now, I think of how hard things have been for the people of Amatrice, and I think of one person in particular, not from Amatrice but from nearby Norcia, who suffered through those quakes. His name is Carlo.

What am I doing here so close to Amatrice in Norcia, you might well wonder? Well, as it happened, I ran into my friend, that one who is a philologist, who travels in Europe quite often to study very old books written by people who lived a long time ago, most of them Greeks or Italians, most of them males, all of them now dead. Despite the specificity (and concomitant ennui) of his studies, as I often do, I decided to tag along with him for a few days. And, as I alluded to just above, we chose to meet in Norcia because he was already in Italy in his Renaissance-like pursuit of manuscripts.

Norcia is the home of a monastery where one might expect to find manuscripts. But paradoxically there are none there. Rather, one finds there a beautiful chapel, one that the monastic community has just built—it is still under construction, actually—out of fine local timbers, wood that hopefully will flex and bend when the next earthquake might come. It should do better, in any case, than the brick and mortar church did when the earthquake rocked and destroyed too much of the hitherto quaint, hitherto removed, and even untouched, Norcia. When you walk down that town’s streets, though you will see great beauty you will also feel pain, pain that you feel for Alessandro the local merchant, whose shop survived but whose town largely did not, or for Orieta, who skillfully mans the desk, along with Marco, at the Hotel Seneca, where my friend was staying with his friend, Tom Hibbs and his son, Daniel, of Baylor University. But I am speaking about pain, real pain. Yet in the midst of that very pain there are some signs of resurgence, even of joy. Life coming back like grass springing between cracks of a sidewalk.

Life and resurgence, like that of Carlo, whose thankfulness and cheerfulness was palpable as he drove us up to the monastery. He and his wife and two children miraculously survived their entire house falling in on them, as they managed to huddle beneath their kitchen table when the stronger of the two quakes struck Norcia. It was frightening, he told me, like bombs going off in wartime. He was grateful to God, he said, to have survived. He hurt his shoulder, he said, trying to protect his babies. And the rescue team had to dig them out, which they had just in time, just before, he thought, they were about to suffocate. “Un miracolo,” he said, “veramente un miracolo!”

But back to Rod Dreher, whose son, Lucas, it was a pleasure to meet, as well. This was the first time for me to meet Luca, but it was actually the second time I had met Rod Dreher, for Rod had given a keynote speech a few weeks ago at a fundraiser for the Benedictine monastic community of Norcia, to help them replace their former, now destroyed, monastery with a new facility, one in which they might slightly expand or at least update some of their brewing equipment.

Birra Nursia is perhaps the finest craft beer I’ve ever had. Not too hoppy, yeasty, not too grainy, it finds the perfect balance between all the shoals of poor coloring and Syrtes of harsh taste, for craft beers often are, as you may know, either too sweet or too biting. But the monks of Norcia, especially Brother Augustinus, know how to brew. Yet Birra Nursia is not the reason I wanted to participate in the expensive fundraising dinner when it was held last month in Texas. Nor was my desire to hear what was in fact a wonderfully thoughtful, even provocative speech by Rod Dreher. Rather, it was to help the brothers there recreate their Christian community, in and through which they seek to honor God and do good in their community. The beer is just a bonus.

And Rod Dreher’s new book, The Benedict Option, is based on the way that that community functions. Of course, it owes its harmony, its rhythms to the fine medieval work entitled The Rule of St. Benedict. But Dreher’s argument goes deeper than just following a recipe for living, just as Brother Augustinus’ brewing goes deeper than following a recipe for beer. Dreher’s main point is that we all have choices about how to live in this dark world and wide, and the option he advocates for Christians is that of the Benedictine community, tangibly mapped on to the lives of those of us who do not happen to be monks, who do not happen to be single or celibate. But mapped on, in spirit (or rather in Spirit), nonetheless. The choice to separate ourselves from the ways of the world, to raise our families apart from rampant secularism, he argues, belongs to every Christian.

And thus happening to meet up with Rod Dreher in Norcia, something not unlike running into Paul McCartney strolling down the streets of Liverpool, was more than just a bonus. It was special to be there with him at the epicenter of his thoughts about the Benedictine order, about St. Benedict himself. And, there, even there, I gave him a copy of The Curious Autobiography of Elaine Jakes, which I happened to have in my shoulder bag. What a crazy confluence of Welsh heritage, a Benedictine monastery, a world-famous blogger, earth-rambling (for globetrotting won’t do here) philologist, and an academic dean with his son in tow—all of these in one remote place at one unlikely moment. Which begs the question: coincidence or providence? But I leave that aside, as that could be the subject of another blog.

For the time being, I urge you to keep the community of Norcia monastic or otherwise, in your prayers, as the recovery will be a long time. The grass springs between cracks of the sidewalk, but it will be a long time until we see a plant grow. Yet the One whom those monks and the entire Christian community in Norcia honors is mighty to save and will make everything blossom in season. As a (prayer?) bench in the Hotel had inscribed above its wooden canopy, Ora et labora, “Pray and work.” Not bad advice, for that’s how miracles happen. Certainly Carlo and his whole family know that.