NOVEMBER 9, 2016: DUM VOLVITUR ORBIS

Stat crux, dum volvitur orbis

It was a privilege for me, a European, to be present at this, the most important American election for a number of years, and in its result the most startling for many decades. One thing that strikes unprejudiced observers from my continent is the idealism of the American people, which shows so strongly in their national events, in their collective enthusiasm, in their warmth, in their communal kindness, and even in their anger. Idealistic, patriotic, they are the products of a nation that invented itself instead of just growing, and thus is obliged periodically to reinvent itself.

It is now accepted among many that during the recent campaign the vilification was all on the Trumpian side; but I must say that rarely in peacetime have I heard a politician so consistently an comprehensively abused as Donald Trump. We may say, in schoolyard mode, that "he started it", but the fact remains that he got as good as he gave, and that not only his opponent's team but much of the political establishment and the media returned the fire with interest. Yes, he said many reprehensible things no candidate for high office should say; but equal and worse (whatever the justification) was said about him. It was a savage and uncivilised campaign; and even those who initially wanted "when they go low, to go high" were soon convinced that highmindedness would get them nowhere.

Then came Election Day, and (for us, the right-thinking ones) it all went pear-shaped. All the polls were proved wrong, and the Great Beast was elected in what one commentator called "a primal scream" of an election. In the subsequent 24 hours, hindsight provided many valuable and even sensitive insights: it was race, it was gender, it was the economy, it was millions who felt left behind, ignored and unheard and who had provoked what one pundit called a "whitelash". It was finally realised that (as Tina Brown, former New Yorker editor, said) a lot of people had been feeling that on certain subjects conversation was closed, taboo. And the Great Beast alone had sensed the pent-up energy of disappointment and anger, and had realised it contained enough nuclear energy to propel him to the goal.

Why am I writing about this here, in a blog that deals with faith, prayer, and such things? Perhaps because the experience has taught us that ambient opinion, social and unsocial media and a culture of vituperation, in solving nothing, may teach us a profound lesson. The lesson is that, in politics -- local, regional, national and even international -- the one unpardonable sin is humiliation. The humiliated all too often cannot and do not forgive, but seek for revenge. The revenge may take the form of an assault rifle fired upon innocent bystanders, or of an electoral slap in the face for hated "élites": revenge it is, and it curdles the blood.

The ordinary citizen, indeed any individual, can do little but can and must do something: needs to know that the television has its own world and agenda, that social media are hollow vessels open to any filling, and that one's own small world, the few dozen humans with whom one actually interacts, is the terrain one is given, the place where, for you or me, the world turns: volvitur orbis. Here we live, here we act, adiuvante gratia tua, with the help of Thy grace; never forgetting that, for us as for our neighbour, while the world turns, dum volvitur orbis, stat Crux: the Cross stands, the Cross remains. Not as a memento mori, to speak of death, but as a reminder how far love can go. "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

Perhaps we should turn off the TV, the computer and the smartphone from time to time and look, really look, at the few square miles of the orbis in which we can and must act, react, and interact, with the few people upon whose lives we can truly have an effect. He did this; he loved us, he did his Father's will; he died for love of us, he rose again for love of us, he humiliated no one, he rendered unto Caesar what was Caesar's and unto God what was God's, he showed us the way love works.

Adiuvante gratia tua: with the help of Thy grace. A wise man I knew long ago told a woman who came to him for counsel, "Your problem is that you are trying to live a sacrificial life without the grace to do so." At the time this seemed to me harsh: now I realise its kindness and its wisdom. Only with grace can we live in this turning world under the Cross; and only through prayer can grace reach us.