For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects. Touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world. –Father Zossima, The Brothers Karamazov
As far as I can recall, I’ve only shared a political post on Facebook once. I came to regret it in an unexpected way.
One summer afternoon years ago I hit the FB share button in a moment of camaraderie with a friend who shared a call to action I thought was good. This kind of post was new at the time, and had none of the degradation and ugliness of much of today’s social media, but it was pointed, and not really helpful considering the venue. I didn’t think much more about it.
It would be nearly a decade before I learned that I’d paid an unexpected price for that share.
In a conversation with a family member who often disagrees with me politically, I blithely lamented that the divisive social media situation we have going on in this country was diminishing our ability to speak calmly about our ideas. We’re making a caustic situation worse by using our family and friend feeds to denigrate each other, I mused.
“You’ve put political stuff on Facebook,” he said dryly.
Me?? I denied it until he reminded me of the link I’d shared years before.
Ouch. In a trigger-happy attempt to please a friend, I’d forgotten just how many people I love do not share my views or my faith (which I want to live and represent well, caring for everybody who shares it and everybody who doesn’t). I didn’t stop to think that someone I love would take note of the post see me differently from then on.
Who else among my Facebook friends had felt diminished by that one thoughtless share?
I’m not saying we should never use social media to advance a cause we believe in. But before we share, we should consider the souls of of every friend and follower who will see that post and consider whether the delivery of a the message will help or hinder their view of the things we stand for.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my thoughtless share and of many other quick and careless actions of mine since taking up The Brothers Karamazov for the third time, this time with the Lenten reflections on Hallow.
I was far too young to appreciate the Brothers K when I read it the first time, and my second attempt was primarily a listen, so I missed the serious reflection that is gained by taking the words of the spiritual father in Dostoevsky’s book to heart.
Father Zossima is a holy man who, after living an arrogant and unprofitable life in his youth, entered a monastery to begin a life of prayer. By the time we meet Zossima, he has lived the monastic life and has paid faithful attention to his spiritual state for 40 years.
He has become a man of mercy.
Madame Khokhlakov, a woman who seeks Zossima’s advice because her heart is full of doubt, is told that she’ll find her faith growing as she learns to love in action, “a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.” (This was one of Dorothy Day‘s favorite sayings and is remarkably like Gerard Manley Hopkins‘ advice to his friend Robert Bridges, who complained that he wished he had more faith. “Give alms,” Hopkins advised.
I’ve come to see social media politics as “love in dreams.”
The remedy is love in action. Costly listening, costly giving, costly patience. I have a long way to go.
But Zossima is unrelenting, insisting further that “as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it’s really so, and that you are to blame for everyone and for all things.”
In his introduction to the Hallow edition of the Brothers K, Alex Jones writes that after finishing this book a second time, he began to see others in a new way. Even if in just a glimpse, he was seeing as God sees:
I saw how my sin had contributed to this world, to this sea that we live in together. I saw how it had rippled outward, not just to those I had harmed but even to those I barely knew, and ultimately even to those I didn’t know at all.
This is a profound meditation for Lent, and though I know I will not finish my read on Hallow’s Lenten timetable, that is not the point. I am responsible for the other, both the invisible other viewing my online words, and the visible other opposing my ideas or inconveniencing my plans.
Everyone in the path of my “ripple” needs my love in action, not in dreams.
Zossima doubles down on it: “For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all the earth…this knowledge is the crown of the monk’s path and of every man’s path on earth.“
Dostoevsky himself was no Zossima, Gary Saul Morson points out; the great novelist insisted that faith and doubt intermingle in this life, which is always in process and never perfection. He quotes Dostoevsky, who once said that if perfection were the final goal of humanity, :it would no longer be necessary to develop, to attain, to struggle, to glimpse the ideal through all one’s falls and eternally strive toward it—consequently it would not be necessary to live. . . . Thus on earth man is only a developing creature, consequently one not completed but transitional.”
The crown of the Russian monk’s path and of every human’s path on earth is love. From one “transitional” human to another, Lent is a gift to remind us of that path.
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You might also enjoy Loving Your Neighbor while Reading the Times and Books Before Newsbites: Curating the News with C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Day.
What’s your favorite life-changing novel? I’d love to hear from you!
Photos by Geraldt on Pixabay William Iven on Unsplash.
