Religion in the Everyday
Over the last two weeks, two events have happened that are worth examining through the religious, or spiritual, lens. what I mean is that people are doing things that are irrational - they have little utility in themselves. They are responses to a feeling of being face to face with the transcendent, the infinite, or God.
The first is the three minute silence in response to the earthquake in China. A three minute silence is irrational. There is no just reason for it. But it is an act people feel compelled to do. Biological or psychological explanations don't quite articulate the response accurately. Of course, I'm sure there were some fidgeting in the midst of the three minutes, and a few who wanted to get to work. Or maybe it opened up the emotional abyss that rescue work carefully held together. But there is little real utility to it, except as a gesture of mutual solidarity, one of reverence for life, for nature, for the dead, and for the living.
Perhaps it is one small moment to comprehend the depth of nature; our mutual aid; our loss; the only act we can do when confronted with our own precarity.
It is a religious act. It is not about mere personal piety - it was social, and it was mandated. It was proper and humane. For the most part, it was also voluntary, I'm sure, if also necessary. We don't think of the two as the same: free, yet compelled. But this is what the rite, the liturgy, our prayers, are about.
The second phenomena is the 75,000 people in Portland who went to hear Obama speak. It was a revival, a religious event.
We know that Obama is a person. He is a politician. He's not a messiah. He is someone who makes mistakes. But by his person, and ability to contain the contradictions inherent in leadership with a consistency that few of the other politicians are able to maintain, even in the face of media scrutiny, he represents the Geist of the age. He has become the new high priest for the new religion, which is a modification of the old religion, with a different sort of informational, technical structure.
It helps that his background conveys the tensions that the Geist, in its synthesis of former contradictions, requires. He is black / white, African / American, rural / urbane. He also has a deep sense of his own humanity and humility that has, paradoxically, magnified his greatness in the eyes of those who follow him ("my improbable campaign" "my imperfect campaign"). He has a deep sense of role, and how roles change.
McCain has some of the same qualities. Although I disagree with McCain's political views, my suspicion is that his sense of reform is all that could hold the Republican party together. I don't think he'll be successful because I think he misunderstands the greed and plundering that has occurred over the last 25 years, but also - as one blogger noted - the advent of HDTV.