On Pandemics, Progress --
and the Saints Who've Gone Before
This is a reflection on our current crisis, on the idea of progress, and on the lives of the “saints who’ve gone before us.” It’s refracted through the life of my mom’s dad. (1)
My middle name is Russell. That’s after my grandfather -- John Russell Myler. When I was growing up, we’d often visit my grandparents. They lived in Columbus, Georgia -- the place where Coca-Cola was invented. Fort Benning, the Home of the Infantry, is near Columbus, and my grandfather had retired from the Army.
As a boy I recall “working” (that is to say, hammering pieces of wood together) in what my grandfather called The Shop. This was actually a large shed with a workbench, old-but-usable tools, lumber scraps, various nuts / bolts / screws left over from old projects, and the odd rake and shovel. (There was also a mysterious well -- long dry -- in a side room. I never quite understood the history or purpose of that.) The Shop had a brick floor. It smelled of machinist’s oil and wood shavings.
Of all the mysteries of The Shop, one of the strangest was Grandpa Myler’s collection of empty, gallon, plastic milk containers. Why in heaven’s name would someone keep such a useless pile? The answer was, just in case. And the reason behind "just in case" was the Great Depression.
My grandfather was born in 1909 in a sod hut in (I believe) Missouri. He grew up on a farm in Kansas. All his life he wanted to go back to farming. Yet his life was, as we say, overtaken by events. The Dust Bowl and the Depression put paid to farming. He moved to San Francisco and did crazy jobs like hauling (as in physically) huge chunks of ice and feeding alligators in a zoo.
Eventually, like so many men, he joined the Army -- the defining institution of his life. In the Second World War, he survived the passage across the North Atlantic (where he was so sick he half-hoped the Germans would sink the ship), the invasion of France, and the Battle of the Bulge (where his hearing was greatly damaged by exploding ordnance).
After that War, the Army sent him to another war, the forgotten war, the Korean Conflict. Somewhere along the way he was also part of the Occupation of Japan. (I recently found a seventy-year-old note showing he’d given money to an orphanage there.)
In the decades that followed John Myler lived through the Cold War, the upheavals of the 1960s, the economic shocks of the 1970s, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He even, sad to say, lived to see the World Trade Center attacks.
My middle name is Russell. That’s after my grandfather -- John Russell Myler. When I was growing up, we’d often visit my grandparents. They lived in Columbus, Georgia -- the place where Coca-Cola was invented. Fort Benning, the Home of the Infantry, is near Columbus, and my grandfather had retired from the Army.
As a boy I recall “working” (that is to say, hammering pieces of wood together) in what my grandfather called The Shop. This was actually a large shed with a workbench, old-but-usable tools, lumber scraps, various nuts / bolts / screws left over from old projects, and the odd rake and shovel. (There was also a mysterious well -- long dry -- in a side room. I never quite understood the history or purpose of that.) The Shop had a brick floor. It smelled of machinist’s oil and wood shavings.
Of all the mysteries of The Shop, one of the strangest was Grandpa Myler’s collection of empty, gallon, plastic milk containers. Why in heaven’s name would someone keep such a useless pile? The answer was, just in case. And the reason behind "just in case" was the Great Depression.
My grandfather was born in 1909 in a sod hut in (I believe) Missouri. He grew up on a farm in Kansas. All his life he wanted to go back to farming. Yet his life was, as we say, overtaken by events. The Dust Bowl and the Depression put paid to farming. He moved to San Francisco and did crazy jobs like hauling (as in physically) huge chunks of ice and feeding alligators in a zoo.
Eventually, like so many men, he joined the Army -- the defining institution of his life. In the Second World War, he survived the passage across the North Atlantic (where he was so sick he half-hoped the Germans would sink the ship), the invasion of France, and the Battle of the Bulge (where his hearing was greatly damaged by exploding ordnance).
After that War, the Army sent him to another war, the forgotten war, the Korean Conflict. Somewhere along the way he was also part of the Occupation of Japan. (I recently found a seventy-year-old note showing he’d given money to an orphanage there.)
In the decades that followed John Myler lived through the Cold War, the upheavals of the 1960s, the economic shocks of the 1970s, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He even, sad to say, lived to see the World Trade Center attacks.
For many of my generation (I’m part of Generation X) the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a defining moment. (I was seventeen.) In my and so many others’ imagination it was the culmination of all that our grandparents and parents had worked toward, of all the progress that had been made toward democracy, human rights, and economic improvement. It was also proof that The American Way was the best way.
However, the first two decades of the twenty-first century haven’t exactly turned out to be “progressive,” have they? They began with an act of Terror. They’ve been followed by interminable Wars, by the rise of an ugly Populist politics, by the Great Recession, and now -- to cap it all off -- by a Pandemic. (I recently saw a cartoon that the next thing to look out for is frogs raining from the sky.)
When I lie awake at night, or when I’m riding my moped, I often reflect on how awful the first decades of the twenty-first century have been. I say to myself: “We were making such progress! We were heading in the right direction! Then everything went pear-shaped!”
Some smart people have written about the idea of progress. There’s even something called “the Myth of Progress” -- by which some mean the story we tell ourselves about how the world is always getting better and by which others mean that the whole idea of improvement is a sad joke.
In some ways things definitely are better. The human race has never had it so good as to life expectancy, health, economic empowerment, and so on. As unequal as American society is, as riddled with injustice as it remains, sixty years ago African-Americans had to use separate water fountains. The fact that my saying this makes us all shudder, that is a sign of moral progress -- albeit from a terribly low bar.
Moreover, the thing about “progress” is that, more often than not, it cuts both ways: For every advantage achieved, there’s at least one risk added. The same globalized system that brings us cheap laptops from China makes it possible for a disease to erupt on the other side of the world and force my adult children to move back home.
My grandfather was born just a few years before the start of the First World War. People have said that World War I was the great calamity from which all other calamities of the twentieth century followed. The funny thing about that is that in the decades before World War I many people thought that society had reached such a level of progress, of globalized trade, of scientific advancement that things could only get better. They were like seventeen-year-old me -- clueless.
However, the first two decades of the twenty-first century haven’t exactly turned out to be “progressive,” have they? They began with an act of Terror. They’ve been followed by interminable Wars, by the rise of an ugly Populist politics, by the Great Recession, and now -- to cap it all off -- by a Pandemic. (I recently saw a cartoon that the next thing to look out for is frogs raining from the sky.)
When I lie awake at night, or when I’m riding my moped, I often reflect on how awful the first decades of the twenty-first century have been. I say to myself: “We were making such progress! We were heading in the right direction! Then everything went pear-shaped!”
Some smart people have written about the idea of progress. There’s even something called “the Myth of Progress” -- by which some mean the story we tell ourselves about how the world is always getting better and by which others mean that the whole idea of improvement is a sad joke.
In some ways things definitely are better. The human race has never had it so good as to life expectancy, health, economic empowerment, and so on. As unequal as American society is, as riddled with injustice as it remains, sixty years ago African-Americans had to use separate water fountains. The fact that my saying this makes us all shudder, that is a sign of moral progress -- albeit from a terribly low bar.
Moreover, the thing about “progress” is that, more often than not, it cuts both ways: For every advantage achieved, there’s at least one risk added. The same globalized system that brings us cheap laptops from China makes it possible for a disease to erupt on the other side of the world and force my adult children to move back home.
My grandfather was born just a few years before the start of the First World War. People have said that World War I was the great calamity from which all other calamities of the twentieth century followed. The funny thing about that is that in the decades before World War I many people thought that society had reached such a level of progress, of globalized trade, of scientific advancement that things could only get better. They were like seventeen-year-old me -- clueless.
When I try to make sense of these things -- again, lying awake at night or riding on my moped -- a number of things come to mind.
The first is that the Christian idea of what humans are -- creatures at once fallen and sinful yet also bearing the image of God -- explains our tortured relationship with “progress” exceedingly well.
The second is that, as others have said, while history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme. To a not insignificant degree, wisdom consists in noticing these rhythms and in adjusting accordingly. This wisdom leads also to perspective, such that we can evaluate our own plight in the light of others who’ve had to suffer.
The third is that, as others have noted, we humans are storytelling creatures. It’s in our natures. We see this in the story we want to tell about progress, about how things are getting better. The thing is, though, our stories tend toward the tragicomic. The only way to beat that, to rise above tragicomedy, is to remember that the ultimate story is God’s story. Somehow through our pain, brilliance, suffering, and achievement -- through human “progress” -- God is writing his own story. And we know that God’s story revolves around hope, the fervent expectation of renewal, of the New Heaven and the New Earth.
My final reflection concerns the saints. By this I don’t mean famous Christians for whom the Church has officially placed an “S T” in front of their name. Though the Bible says that each of us as believers are now saints (hard to believe, if you know me well), I’m referring in particular to those faithful women and men who’ve gone before us.
The Book of Hebrews has a famous chapter (11) about such folks. It begins like this: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.”
It then goes on to list a roster of faithful people from the Old Testament, from Abel (murdered by his brother) to Rahab (a woman with a bad reputation). It talks about their accomplishments, from shutting the mouths of lions to conquering kingdoms to walking around in goatskins.
It concludes with these lines: “Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us...”
The thing about these people is that none of them were perfect. My grandfather wasn’t perfect. (He once got really annoyed with me for mixing up his good hearing aid batteries with his dead ones. Why would he keep dead hearing aid batteries? No idea. Must be something to do with the Great Depression.)
What they were was faithful: that is, both full of hope in God and diligent in keeping that hope alive.
May the same be true of us.
The first is that the Christian idea of what humans are -- creatures at once fallen and sinful yet also bearing the image of God -- explains our tortured relationship with “progress” exceedingly well.
The second is that, as others have said, while history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme. To a not insignificant degree, wisdom consists in noticing these rhythms and in adjusting accordingly. This wisdom leads also to perspective, such that we can evaluate our own plight in the light of others who’ve had to suffer.
The third is that, as others have noted, we humans are storytelling creatures. It’s in our natures. We see this in the story we want to tell about progress, about how things are getting better. The thing is, though, our stories tend toward the tragicomic. The only way to beat that, to rise above tragicomedy, is to remember that the ultimate story is God’s story. Somehow through our pain, brilliance, suffering, and achievement -- through human “progress” -- God is writing his own story. And we know that God’s story revolves around hope, the fervent expectation of renewal, of the New Heaven and the New Earth.
My final reflection concerns the saints. By this I don’t mean famous Christians for whom the Church has officially placed an “S T” in front of their name. Though the Bible says that each of us as believers are now saints (hard to believe, if you know me well), I’m referring in particular to those faithful women and men who’ve gone before us.
The Book of Hebrews has a famous chapter (11) about such folks. It begins like this: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.”
It then goes on to list a roster of faithful people from the Old Testament, from Abel (murdered by his brother) to Rahab (a woman with a bad reputation). It talks about their accomplishments, from shutting the mouths of lions to conquering kingdoms to walking around in goatskins.
It concludes with these lines: “Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us...”
The thing about these people is that none of them were perfect. My grandfather wasn’t perfect. (He once got really annoyed with me for mixing up his good hearing aid batteries with his dead ones. Why would he keep dead hearing aid batteries? No idea. Must be something to do with the Great Depression.)
What they were was faithful: that is, both full of hope in God and diligent in keeping that hope alive.
May the same be true of us.
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Footnotes:
(1) This piece was written in early April 2020, fairly soon into the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. Its original audience was the congregation of All Souls Charlottesville; it was given virtually. Less than two months later the US was engulfed in protests for racial justice, protests sparked by the murder of Mr. George Floyd at the hands of police. So within that span it became out of date. As I publish it now, I am choosing to leave it largely as it was. Incorporating in such a short piece new, epochal events -- massive demonstrations, not seen since the 1960s -- alongside what had just been established as epoch-making -- the worst pandemic in a century -- would be an exercise in “retroactive continuity” I am unable to pull off. Moreover, to do so would have modulated the piece’s tone in significant ways. COVID-19 is (largely) something we’re suffering from. Racial injustice -- of the systemic sort -- is something that a person like myself is complicit in, to varying degrees of awareness and culpability. That will require a different essay.
Images:
"The Spanish Influenza." Chart showing mortality from the 1918 influenza pandemic in the US and Europe.
Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spanish_flu_death_chart.png
"West and East Germans at the Brandenburg Gate in 1989."
Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:West_and_East_Germans_at_the_Brandenburg_Gate_in_1989.jpg
The image with the dragon on it is a name plate from when my grandfather was in Korea. The reverse says "Nov 1952 / Korea 1953."
Original 7/11/20.
(1) This piece was written in early April 2020, fairly soon into the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. Its original audience was the congregation of All Souls Charlottesville; it was given virtually. Less than two months later the US was engulfed in protests for racial justice, protests sparked by the murder of Mr. George Floyd at the hands of police. So within that span it became out of date. As I publish it now, I am choosing to leave it largely as it was. Incorporating in such a short piece new, epochal events -- massive demonstrations, not seen since the 1960s -- alongside what had just been established as epoch-making -- the worst pandemic in a century -- would be an exercise in “retroactive continuity” I am unable to pull off. Moreover, to do so would have modulated the piece’s tone in significant ways. COVID-19 is (largely) something we’re suffering from. Racial injustice -- of the systemic sort -- is something that a person like myself is complicit in, to varying degrees of awareness and culpability. That will require a different essay.
Images:
"The Spanish Influenza." Chart showing mortality from the 1918 influenza pandemic in the US and Europe.
Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spanish_flu_death_chart.png
"West and East Germans at the Brandenburg Gate in 1989."
Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:West_and_East_Germans_at_the_Brandenburg_Gate_in_1989.jpg
The image with the dragon on it is a name plate from when my grandfather was in Korea. The reverse says "Nov 1952 / Korea 1953."
Original 7/11/20.