The world is in our home

I must confess, I've been reading G. K. Chesterton on the side in addition to my sudden piling up of studies. So I wanted to share a bit about that, and my reflections of it in my own life.

In his book, "Heresies", Chesterton talks about the importance of family, as well as neighbour. It is interesting how many people flee from their homes to get away from their problems. It's different altogether to move on because we feel called to move in that way, or that there is some need we can be used for, which is often the excuse I suppose we would often make. What I mean, however, is the way in which we might desire to start anew, elsewhere, because we cannot deal with the immediate and local problems at hand. We flee. But it's not that we flee because, as Chesterton writes, we don't find home to be very exciting, but because we find home to be a great deal too exciting. Out there, elsewhere, wherever it is that we go to "get away from it all" and "experience something new" we are looking to discover the world, but it is precisely this world that is directly in our very own home, and indeed all we are doing is precisely that: "to get away from it all"—to get away from reality. Life is challenging. Because we are so prideful and often deem ourselves of a greater value than any other person, we seek to not even bother with such complications and "find ourselves" by seeking out comfort, ease, and avoidance of difficulty. But, again, as Chesterton writes: "It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero Restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt against the family, are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is old, like the world."

It is through difficulty and struggle that we are crushed like wheat, kneaded and pressed and made malleable; that our fibres are broken down so they are no longer tough and resistant. It is by these pressures, sufferings, dying to self and giving up to the Infinite Will, that we are made ready to become prepared as an excellent bread and fitting meal. There's a reason why family is the institution under which we learn and grow. We are born into a social setting we did not choose, that we did not ask for, yet are compelled to love, in spite of the battles, the harsh words, and the disagreements—that is, we learn unconditional love. This applies also when it comes to neighbour. It is the same with neighbour. Although we do choose where we live, our neighbour is who is much more immediate than the wideness of the world. There's a good reason God talks about having love of neighbour. He made our neighbour and to avoid them, again, is to avoid our problems, and to seek out only those with whom we are more comfortable.

When we try to avoid other people instead of dealing with them and treating them as equals, we are looking only to be affirmed in ourselves. Here's the tendency: we avoid certain people because we find them intolerable. We then surround ourselves with like-minded people who provide no opposition. We seek out the easy, the comfortable, the unchallenging. Essentially, we're looking to be confirmed in our present state. We're looking for a mirror of ourselves. We live in a world that is altogether too small. With the communication and technological revolutions, it is now easier than ever to find whomever we want in an instant. This is why the social skills today are so incredibly lacking. Because if I don't want to deal with the problems at home, at school, or at work, I simply need to depart from there and travel via internet connection to some remote forum group which agrees with me in everything I say. This is easy, and in this manner, we don't have to try. Being social, and loving others is a difficult task! It would be easy, of course, if everyone also loved, but that is not our present situation, and so if we are not willing to step above this situation, we will retreat from it, retreat from confrontation, from effort, from suffering, and from any hope of producing any kind of FRUIT. It's a spiritual sloth from which absolutely no growth can take place and no fruit can be produced without the effort and willingness that goes into it! Until we meet one another as equals, and learn to stand in the face of opposition and love anyway (obviously by the grace of God, that goes without saying) we will be rendered inactive, spiritually lazy in a sort of atrophy whereby our spiritual limbs are not even so advanced as the baby who flails their limbs uncontrollably. We are as dead.

I speak, of course, in hyperbole, (the most extreme sense) to reflect upon my life and where I have done the same thing, and so that you may also do the same. I have come to realise the instances in which I have retreated from my problems instead of learning to love completely 100%, but only to put in a portion of love, so long as it was convenient to me. So in these matters I have limited myself in growth, until such time that God thrust me into more difficult situations from which I could not run and was, in a sense, forced to deal with. I began by not dealing with it, and retreating, but once I realised it got me absolutely nowhere, I started to understand why dedication and consistency are so necessary and vital in the prayer life, even when it's hard, even when spiritually pressed. God removes His presence and certain familiar graces from us to sharpen our will and make us more vigilant. By making us have to work for the relationship, we grow in love, and thereby in unity and closeness to Almighty God. Thus our neighbour, and our brother, sister, parents, children and relatives, are all there as an earthly sign and reflection of the heavenly relationship. Relationship is hard and must be worked at. For faith without works is barren, and if we do not prove our worth in action, we find that in heart, we really had no faith at all.