Monthly Muse: 12/2023
Recapitulation, contemplation, provocation
Monthly Musings are published during the last week of every month. In each Monthly Muse, I recap content from the past month of Handful of Earth, offer some freewheeling reflections, and share a quote or passage that I’ve found especially thought-provoking.
Here’s the December 2023 Monthly Muse.
Recapitulation: Published this month on Handful of Earth
Contemplation
The holiday season serves as a dual reminder of how things change and remain the same. During this time, I often find myself reflecting on my life in relation to years past—similarities, differences, and the peculiar experience of having spent another calendar year on Earth. In a society deficient in time-marking rituals, the holidays provide a rare opportunity to take stock of where we stand. Needless to say, this experience can be, depending on the year, inspiring or painful (or a mix of both).
Navigating the personal and interpersonal dimensions of the holidays can be hard enough as is. Add to this political hyper-polarization and converging global crises, and it’s a recipe for feeling overwhelmed or shutting down entirely. I find that grounding—one of the core concepts here at Handful of Earth—is especially important at this time of the year.
Indeed, it’s all too easy to be consumed by the inexorable pace of “progress” in today’s groundless world, which contributes to the feeling that change is the sole reality of contemporary life. At the same time, however, I’ve recently been reflecting on how many of the challenges at the end of 2023 are not annual but, rather, perennial in nature. While the immediate issues themselves may be “new” (like the war on Gaza and fresh attacks on free speech) the underlying issues at stake (the problem of war and peace and the question of whose voice can be heard) are, in a sense, timeless.
This is why I strive at Handful of Earth not only to provide grounded commentary on current events, but also a deeper level of grounding in the form of careful attention to the perennial dimensions of our present predicament. This entails going beyond “think pieces” or “hot takes” toward the philosophical and even theological realm. Last month, I delved into this realm in “The World Is Built by Gratuitous Kindness” and this month in “Why Free Speech (Part 2).” As always, I’d love to hear what you think.
Provocation
“Technology is no savior. We can eat, sleep, look at screens, make money — all aspects of our physical existence — but that doesn’t mean anything. Art is the exact opposite. It’s infinite, and without it, the world wouldn’t exist as it does. It represents the immaterial soul: intuition, that which we feel in our hearts. Art matters today more than ever because it outlives the contentious political veneer that is cast over everything. In art, we can find a humbling sort of wisdom. We see themes and ideas repeat over many lifetimes. Those ideas don’t belong to any one person, and as they evolve, disappear and reappear, they remind us that regardless of what’s happening now, our lives on this earth will always be part of something bigger. Any astronomer can tell you that what we know about the universe makes up a fraction of what there is to be discovered. Art, in the same way, both inspires us to go out and find something new and highlights what we don’t know.”
—Sonny Rollins, “Art Never Dies”