Late summer ennui

You don't have to read my blog to know that 2020 is a strange year. For me, one of the strangest aspects of this strange year is the flow of time. By that, I mean how my days and weeks are now divided up. Like many people, the flow of my life has changed. Unlike most people, I have managed to actually become busier. I don't say this to brag. On the contrary, I am kind of ashamed to admit it. As a result, I am frequently struck by waves of tiredness. My fatigue is off-set by my restlessness. In other words, I find it hard to take a nap, sit still, focus, read, etc. My ennui does not flow from doing nothing to do but having too much to do.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, OFM Conv

In this same vein, while I am loath to blog about blogging, I found it difficult to post something today. But I am not doing it out of a sense of obligation (if you could see the number of readers these daze, you'd grasp this easily). I am doing it because, as I have often stated, blogging has proven a useful vehicle for me over the past fifteen years.

Yes, fifteen years! Actually, Monday, 16 August, will mark the date when, sixteen years ago, I first posted on this blog. I initially dubbed this endeavor Scott Dodge for Nobody. It wasn't until the following July that I began blogging regularly. From that time and for the next several years, I blogged compulsively about anything and everything. If I had any shame, I'd go back a delete a lot of posts that I now find embarrassing. But I like seeing where I came from. Maybe this is because it isn't possible to see where I am going. The present is always that point of tension between the past and the future.

No sooner do I set aside a day to just rest than I am hit with a raft of new things to do. In the middle of all this, I remain aware of how much suffering is happening. Of that fact that so many people lost their jobs as the result of government-ordered shutdowns. I am highly aware that with the Senate now on break while unemployment is slated to run-out for many people and local and state governments proving largely indifferent to their plight that we're in a bad place. As do so many, I feel very helpless in the face of all this. Don't get me wrong. The pandemic is real and doing what is necessary to keep people safe is hugely important. But... anyway... a little venting is good, I suppose. I worry about the future, not my future so much but the future. I'm afraid we're on the doorstep of dystopia.

I nearly always feel this way in mid-August, which is the hottest time of the year where I live. I must have reverse seasonal affective disorder because I feel more down in the heat than I do during the cold, dark months of winter. If sunlight and heat act as natural disinfectants they also seem to strip away the dirt from the lens of my heart.

Far from being hopeless, I think now more than ever the Gospel matters. I think Pope Francis was correct when he asserted that revolutionary ideologies succeed in many majority Christian countries because the Church has not served, cared for, or acted in solidarity with the poor. At the end of the day, the Gospel, too, is revolutionary- but only if we live it. Living the Gospel is no easy task. The Gospel calls for solidarity, not acquiescence to what is self-evidently unjust.

By solidarity, I mean something along the lines of what Saint Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast day is today, did in the concentration camp. He offered his life to spare the life of a Jewish man who had a family. Like Saint Oscar Romero before he became Archbishop of San Salvador, there wasn't much in Kolbe's background that would lead one to predict this astounding act of selflessness. This gives me hope both for myself and for the world.

This is one of those posts that doesn't have neat, tidy conclusion. Since it is Friday, I offer as our traditio School of Fish singing "Three Strange Days" for these strange times.