Rejecting the Idea of History

In our fight with the regime, we must grapple with the ideology of Progressivism. To do that we must ultimately reject the idea of Progress. But for that we must first reject the idea of History.

39. Rejecting the Idea of History

“The overwhelming attraction of revolution is the panic of Christians confronted by the curtailment of their role in history. History has assumed such importance that everything relates to it. One is lost if not a part of history’s course. The answer, therefore, is to plunge into revolutionary action because it alone is certain to make history.” Jacques Ellul. Autopsy of Revolution.

Jacques Ellul is not being complimentary in the above quote. Dripping with sarcasm, he muses about the reasons why Christians sell out their faith to embrace every new cause. He asks why they join every new political movement, subordinating their faith to “the current thing?” Many Christians want to be seen as being on the “right side of history.” This creates, as we will see, a tremendous pressure upon Christians to conform their faith to the move of history, to be on the side of human progress.

So what is this thing called “history?” First off, lets set aside the notion that when we use the word “history” here we are not talking about a discussion of events that take place in the past. When we use the word “history” we are not talking about creating as accurate as possible picture of past events. It is not about telling the stories of ages past. It is not about learning lessons from the past. In fact, when we use the term “history” in this context—the way Ellul uses it in the above quote—it is an idea that generally tries to attack the past in favor of the present and the future. It is because of the move of “history” that we must challenge the past.

So what is “history” if it isn’t all about the past? What it involves is a shift away from Christian understandings of time and the meaning of events, towards a humanist understanding of events. Prior to the Renaissance, there were a number of ways in which events and the passage of time were understood. One was that time was cyclical. Events repeat themselves in regular patterns and cycles over and over again. The idea of Karma is rooted in this type of understanding. Another is archetypal. Time here does not repeat itself over and over in cycles, but does not at the same time have a linear progression from beginning to end. There is a kind of stasis in which familiar patterns manifest themselves over and over again. The same archetypes keep showing up but they don’t necessarily do so in repeatable cycles.

The Biblical idea of time is on the one hand archetypal, in that patterns keep emerging over and over again, but they happen within a larger superstructure of God’s action. Human beings are there and are integral to the story, but in the larger framework, God is the primary actor. God creates. God sets about the order of creation. When human beings transgress the boundaries set up by God, it is about the judgement of God. It is also about the promise of God. The bulk of the story is about God and his promise of salvation, to send a Savior. He chooses a people for himself, through whom he will work out the promises of his saving work. Those promises are fulfilled in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The whole saving work of God centers around the person of Jesus. The whole story of God and humanity finds its meaning in Jesus.

Here is where things begin to get interesting. While Jesus is the focal point of God’s action in the world, his time on earth is not the end of the story. The common expectation was that when the Messiah came, he would bring the Day of Judgement and the full restoration of God’s people, the Israelites. But that was not what happened. While God’s saving work was completed “in Christ” we live in a time in which this saving work is not yet fully revealed. Why not? This gives an opportunity for as many as possible to repent and believe and be included in God’s saving work in Jesus. Jesus will come again in a final Day of Judgement to fully reveal the glory of God’s salvation work. The whole structure is, in a sense, a static architecture that overlays all other events. All events should be understood as they relate to Christ. In Christ, not only are all of God’s promises fulfilled; so too are all the archetypes of salvation taken up and fulfilled within him. Jesus is Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Elijah and more. He is Savior, King, Priest, Prophet, Lawgiver and more.

We live in this intermediate time where salvation is complete in Christ, but not fully revealed. At first there was an expectation that Jesus was going to come back very soon, so soon that Paul was telling the churches that it may be best not to get married at all. As time went by, the belief in the second coming of Christ remained quite strong until about the year 1000. There was a great expectation among many that he would return then. But he didn’t. The power of the idea of the second coming began to wane. While it remained, and still remains, a big part of orthodox Christian teaching, many began to live and act and think as if Christ was not actually going to come back. Or, if he was, fewer and fewer people expected it to happen any time soon.

This shift opened up a new possibility, one that put humanity at the center of events. It was ushered in with fine sounding language, with much emphasis on man’s divine image bearing, but the shift was clear. Increasingly, in the European context, mankind was becoming the center of all that was happening. Humanism was upon us. This coincided with a great explosion of learning and culture. People did great things. They explored new ideas. They circumvented the globe. They expanded the arts. Human skill was on display everywhere. They built great buildings. Yes, the Christian faith still informed much of the language, images and ideas. It set the framework and parameters. People built great churches and decorated them with exceptional art. Increasingly, though, there were new avenues of research. The mysticism of Plato was set aside for the practical, “scientific,” rigor of Aristotle. Scholarship was pursued for its own sake. Increasingly the subjects of art and culture shifted from the stories of Bible and mythology, to that of everyday people. As we moved into the period of the Enlightenment, humanity was firmly at the center of all things.

As the old metaphysical superstructure where Christ was at the center of all things waned, new ideas began to emerge. People tried to integrate the new with the old. Some broke away entirely. Powerful new ideas emerged, creating this concept that we now know of as “history,” that is the move of events with human beings at there center, moving towards a culminating situation. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argued that there was a spirit which resided within the collective lives of people. This spirit guided human events through a process of dialectics. There would develop a movement within the people, a thesis. This thesis would then at some point be opposed by an antithesis. There would be a cultural conflict, and from this would emerge a synthesis that would become the new thesis. This would continue, he argued, until the final synthesis, at which point the end of history would be reached and we could then understand the point and purpose of all human activity.

You can see the appeal of these ideas for Christians. It would allow them to keep parts of the old idea of God and his Savior being at the center of human events, giving all events there meaning; but instead, God and the Spirit of Jesus becomes the Hegelian world spirit. God becomes the force which drives history. Thus, the goal is now to align oneself with human events and be on the right side of the dialectic, to always be a part of those events which are moving history forward to their conclusion. Christians would see these as something along the lines of the things described in the Bible. You can immediately see the appeal for people. It allows them direct participation in God’s work through the events of history. Discernment means always being on the cutting edge of the moment of history, on the cutting edge of human events, always being on the right side of the move of history. You can see how this idea differs very much from the more colloquial use of the term “history” meaning an accurate description of past events, or the telling of those stories which were the most formative for us as a people. “History” now means being involved in the flow of human events, helping shape them towards the end of history and thereby ushering in the new heaven and the new earth.

Karl Marx took the ideas of Hegel and gave them both an economic spin as well as a revolutionary intent. He argued that history could be seen as a battle over who would control money, capital, and the means of production. He argued roughly that with the advent of Capitalism, we were nearing the end of history. The proletariat, the workers, would rise up, overthrow the bourgeoisie capitalist class and after a brief transition they would enter into a period of true equality where the means of production and the fruits of one’s labor would be controlled by all equally. Marx was an axiomatic atheist, and his vision was definitely utopian. Having become accustomed to this type of historical idealism through Hegel, many Christians have tried to translate Jesus’ concern for the poor into Marxist revolutionary thinking.

A third thinker was also decisively important to the formation of this whole ethos: Charles Darwin. For those looking to jettison the “superstition” of the Christian faith and the authority of the Church, Darwin helped provide a plausible explanation for how we as human beings came to be what we are, that of evolution. It is an idea familiar to us. Human beings show up as the result of a long process of genetic mutations which come about primarily due to the need for creatures to adapt to new situations and circumstances. Not dissimilar to Hegel’s world spirit, this evolutionary impulse caused all things to move from lower forms of life to higher forms of life, becoming increasingly adapted to their environment, making them stronger, smarter and better able to survive. This provided another layer to this emerging idea that all events have a kind of vector. In this case they move from lower forms of life to higher forms of life over long time spans. History is the story of human evolution.

All of this is happening along side a great explosion of learning, science, new technologies and wealth. It was a time of great optimism. There was nothing that we as human beings could not do. Even though Christianity remained prevalent in society, increasingly the move and presence of God was seen as something historical. God was immanent in the creation. God was immanent in human events. There was a lot of talk about incarnational theology.

We layer this emerging idea of the directionality of history with two other very significant philosophical ideas. One is Rousseau’s notion that we are all born as blank slates. He rejected the idea that people themselves are born sinful and flawed. Instead, they are born blank. If they are corrupted, it is due to the influence of society. You inject this idea into a time of great scientific and technical optimism, alongside emerging ideas of the directionality of history moving towards a great utopian, evolutionary, revolutionary conclusion, and soon it became the responsibility of every God fearing Christian to be tirelessly working to engineer all of the mechanisms of society towards the emergence of the utopia talked about in the Bible. We would look past the ideas of judgement and focus on the coming of the new millennium of God’s rule over all creation. We as Christians are God’s instruments in bringing about the fulfilment of his promises.

To all of this we add the philosophy of existentialism. What existentialism does, broadly speaking, is turn the idea of “being” on its side. In the old way of looking at being, rooted intellectually all the way back in Plato, and Neo-Platonism, was the emphasis on a static unchanging hierarchy of being. Everything in the universe had its place in a grand metaphysical structure that undergirded all of reality. The way to find fulfillment was to assume the role you were given. You embraced the Forms. This static structure easily accommodated things like archetypes. If you were born a king, you became a great king by embracing the archetype of the ideal or true king, the Form of the King. There was Forms for all things. The form of Knight, Priest, Farmer, Man, Woman, Son, Blacksmith, Fool, Seer, etc. You found fulfillment by living into the Form, the Archetype. The stories which were told of past events all opened up to you in some form or another the essence of the the Forms, of the Archetypes. You lived into the stories. It was why you erected monuments to men and women whose stories revealed the archetypes. You surrounded yourself with the stories that helped reveal the order in the universe.

Existentialism, took this static, timeless understanding of the metaphysical order, and turned it on its side. Now, being was no longer thought of as something static; rather, it was dynamic and very much caught up in this notion of the directionally of history. The idea is that if your existence is static, it is dead and lifeless. What you need to do is to throw yourself onto the horizon of time and become who you are. No longer is “being” important. You are instead in a process of “becoming” of forming yourself on the horizon of time. The idea of history becomes personalized. You are working to give expression to your authentic self. You are trying to create your own being. You are not a type. You are not murderer. You become a murderer by plunging the knife into another. You take action and claim yourself, form yourself on the event horizon of history. Existentialism makes us all historical beings who must write our own history, who must shape ourselves. We do not let the world impose upon us an identity which we haven’t ourselves chosen. Just as personal growth becomes the path by which one claims one’s own identity, so too the Christian faith, of course, now becomes all about “spiritual growth.” Worship in which one fits into the forms of old must be rejected in favor of a kind of worship in which all the emphasis is on authentic self-expression. We must do the things that allow me to best express how I feel in this moment about God.

Back to Ellul

With that super brief lesson in the philosophical and cultural changes of the last 1000 years or so, basically the journey of what we know as “the West,” let’s return again to our opening quote from Ellul in Autopsy of Revolution:

“The overwhelming attraction of revolution is the panic of Christians confronted by the curtailment of their role in history. History has assumed such importance that everything relates to it. One is lost if not a part of history’s course. The answer, therefore, is to plunge into revolutionary action because it alone is certain to make history.”

With our brief philosophical background, we can now see what Ellul is saying here. Christians looked at this emerging idea of “history” which is foundational to the whole idea of “human progress” and over all it produced a great anxiety within us. We did not want to be left out and put on the sidelines of this powerful new set of ideas which were driving our culture, this idea of historical development towards a fulfillment of history with human beings at their center. Our culture blossomed with a great progressive energy. We have this idea that if you are not moving forwards, you are moving backwards. Christians wanted to be seen as moving forward, of not being left behind, of not being “backwards.” Christians wanted to be a part of this great move of history in some form or another. As a result, we have largely emptied our faith of its content to embrace “progress” in some form or another.

This desire of Christians to be on the front lines of “history” produced a mixed bag of activities. It contributed to the push to end slavery. It drove many who worked to end child labor during industrialization. The whole social gospel movement was tied to it. Prohibition sprang from this well. For many, being a part of the civil rights movement was seen as part of the historical move of God. Others have also embraced the sexual revolution as a progressive expression of the Christian faith. But this impulse also makes itself felt among Christians who would consider themselves orthodox and traditional in their faith. As we noted above, this emphasis on the idea of “spiritual growth” is tied into this broader set of ideas. So too things like the church growth movement. Here, there is an embrace of business and technical methodologies in the service of growing large active churches. It is about the “Great Commission.” It influences the felt need to make worship “relevant.” Seeker services. “Praise and worship” style services. Churches want to be seen as meeting people where they are at. Anything that might be strange or considered too traditional is jettisoned for forms which are contemporary and current.

In response, what Ellul argues is that true Christian practice will result in dramatic and constructive change in society, but that these changes are not the end, the goal of the Christian faith. They are a secondary achievement, the byproduct of something else. The Christian is meant to consecrate their lives to God. They are primarily a holy people, a royal priesthood, dedicated to the things of God. The Christian does not have to “save” society anymore than he has to “save” people. Christ already did this. Christians need to resist the pull to bring God down, to “immanentize” God such that he is no longer transcendent, but merely the force behind social and political change.

In practice this involves two main interwoven shifts for us as Christians in the modern age. The first is to see that salvation is not about us and secondly that “history” is not really a thing. Because the burden of history has been placed upon us, because we are required to shape our identity and give meaning to our lives, we often look upon salvation as tool for us to get our life together. God is there to help us achieve our goals and live the good life. Jesus died to help us. God is my co-pilot. But this is not the case at all. Salvation has never been about us. It has always been about God. This is a profound shift:

²² “Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. ²³ I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.

²⁴ “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. ²⁵ I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. ²⁶ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. ²⁸ Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. ²⁹ I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. ³⁰ I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine. ³¹ Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices. ³² I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Sovereign Lord. Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, people of Israel! Ezekiel 36:22-32

Look at the focus throughout this passage. This is God speaking about what he is doing for himself. The people he chose disgraced his name. So he will save the people to make his own name great again. If it was not clear, verse 32 says it straight out: “I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake.” Remember how we talked about how all events, all of what we would call history, find there meaning in Christ. Here is a prophecy pointing forward to Jesus and the outpouring of God’s Spirit. All of what was done in Jesus was not done for you or me. We are not at the center of salvation. God is at the center of salvation. This is God’s work. We do not make salvation happen through our actions. At best we can join God in his work, for that is what Jesus did:

¹⁹ Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” John 5:19

Many today want to talk about “God’s plan for their life.” They put themselves at the center. God will make me special. God will make my life special. He has a plan just for me. I hate to break it to you. God does not have a special plan for your life. You are not at the center of things. It is not about you. It is about God. In fact, most of the time, being in line with God’s saving action will mean setting aside your plan for your life. It will mean sacrificing what you want.

^25 “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25

But you are thinking, “I though salvation was about me and my sin?” It is, in part. But this is not the main focus. Re-read the passage from Ezekiel. Here is a familiar one:

^16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Even here, it is not about you. It is about God’s love. It is about God’s sacrifice. The goal is not your salvation. Your salvation is a means to the true goal:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. ² For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. ³ Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” John 17:1-5

Your salvation comes to bring glory to God.

^10 “All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them.” John 17:10

God’s greatness is the point of your salvation. Not your life. Not your plan. Not the good things you hope might come because of faith in Jesus. Yes, for you eternal life is a big deal. But even your eternal life really isn’t about you. It is about God.

For the Christian church, their purpose and point is not saving society or being on the right side of history, it is about increasing the glory of God. Faith is meant to bring about a radical transformation of our priorities, orienting them towards God and his work. Now this might involve working with the poor or changing the lives of the downtrodden, but these things are not the goal. The goal is always the glory and greatness of God.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³ For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:1-3

This will bring from some the criticism that the Christians are so focused on the glory of God that they will ignore that the social structures of the society around them are falling apart. But we must remember that while Christians may live among the broader society, these are not the people to whom they belong. They are first and foremost a part of the people of God. The community of Christ is God’s nation here on earth. We establish his kingdom first of all by living lives focused around the glory of God. I went much deeper into this in another piece and won’t walk you through all of that again.

Discipleship, Politics and the Problem of a Christian Society

The Hierarchy of Being

Since it is not about us and our action, if the move of “history” is not a thing for the Christian, what then do we do? In part, the first step of being in the world but not off the world, is to recognize that we live with a different understanding of time and the move of events. The events which happen all around us do not find there true meaning in us, rather, they find their meaning in Christ. They find their meaning in the action of God in and through Christ. This means resisting the idea that “being” unfolds on the horizon of time through our authentic self-expression. You do not have to form or shape yourself. In fact, embracing a faith in Christ should lift this burden from you. Your identity is now “in Christ.” You identity is given to you. You are also released from the burden of having to condemn the past in order to prove that you are among the progressive and best of all people. You are free to embrace the stories of the past in all of their complexities, allowing the full power of their poetry and metaphors to speak truth to you.

Within the Christian community, freed from the burden of history, you are able to integrate yourself into the great hierarchy of being with God at its apex. You can both find the place where you fit into this order, while at the same time beginning the journey of moving up this hierarchy according to its rules and patterns. You begin the struggle to set your heart on things above, to be who you are in Christ. You are no longer engaged in a struggle to find yourself or to form yourself. No, that has already been done by God “in Christ.” Your struggle is to reveal who you already are. I have talked about this elsewhere as well.

Breaking the Habits of Western Thinking: Cause and Effect is Not a Thing

This dramatically changes our notions of time and the way the universe works. We can release ourselves from the restless idea that if we are not moving forward we are moving backwards. Once we enter the world of the Christian faith and the community of God we are entering a timeless space in which all things have already been completed “in Christ.” Our task then is not to build anything of our own, but merely to reveal what God has done in Christ primarily through us as persons and as a community. The amazing thing is that this has a deep and profound impact on our lives and the institutions we form. And if the number of Christian communities increases, this can only have a deep and profound impact on the life of society as a whole. Remember, as discussed in the piece on discipleship and politics above, the Christian community conquers through conversion and discipleship. Again, growth is not an end within the Christian community, but a byproduct of being a holy priesthood whose attention is set upon Christ and the glory he brings the Father.

Stasis - The World of the Shire

For the longest of time within the Christian community, stasis was the mode of historical thinking. Events happened. Kingdoms and empires rose and fell. But everyone was really just waiting for Christ to return. In the meantime, you did the best you could to build well functioning institutions. You knew they could not be perfect, as sin is an ever present reality and Christ has not yet come. They did not try to eliminate poverty, nor would they have attempted to end racism, because they new that such efforts were doomed to failure from the outset. And saving the world was not our task as human beings anyways. That was the work of God. In Christ, that task was already complete anyways. We were just waiting for its full revelation at the time of the second coming.

It must be acknowledged that this worldview can lead to a kind of fatalism, an acquiescence to the injustices of the world because “that is just the way things are.” The highborn simply treat the common folk poorly and that is way of things. This must be recognized. It also led the church as an institution into being part of the problem when it came to supporting an unjust status quo. It did not do its job of being society’s prophetic voice well enough. It became tangled up in the power structures of the day, thus part of the problem.

It is also an outlook which resists novelty and innovation. There is the danger of stagnation. The truth is, though, that most average folk don’t really want or care much for the machinations of history. Regular people usually bear the brunt of the suffering during upheavals and revolutions. They generally have a bias towards what is as opposed to what might be. The average person wants stability. Nor is he inclined towards social change. As Ellul says in “The Technological Society”:

“The individual found livelihood, patronage, security and intellectual and moral satisfaction in the collectives that were strong enough to answer all his needs but limited enough not to make him feel submerged or lost. They sufficed to satisfy the average man who does not try to gratify imaginary needs if his position is fairly stable, who opposes innovation if he lives in a balanced milieu, even though he is poor. This fact, which is so salient in the three millennia of history we know, is misunderstood by modern man, who does not know what a balanced social environment is and the good he could derive from it.”

Today we have this restless need to always be moving forward. We must make progress. We must hit goals. Again, if you are not moving forward, you are moving backwards. It is not enough for your business to provide a reasonable profit, a reasonable rate of return, year after year. Your business must also be growing. Profits must be growing. No one really wants a mature stable market. We want to know which sectors have the highest rates of growth. We must make more and consume more. We are so busy always moving forward, always growing, that we never stop to ask, “Why we must grow?” This is just what we do. It is similar for us as persons. You cannot simply “be.” You must “become.”

What is interesting in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is the prominence that the Shire plays in the story. Tolkien spends an enormous amount of time painting the picture of the seemingly timeless world of the Shire and the Hobbits. It is world where the events of history seem to pass them by, and they are ok with that. This is why the closing sequence —the liberation of the Shire from Saruman— is so important, and a real lacunae in the movies. Having gone out into the world and engaged in the stories and become heroes, the Hobbits must now return and claim for themselves their timeless life. The mysterious figure of Tom Bombadil and his seemingly timeless forest and home reinforces this notion. This is in stark contrast to the ambitions of Sauron and the restless building and manufacturing, the furnaces that blaze and consume the forests. The Elves. The Ents. They all live in manners and places untouched by time. Every time there is rest, it seems the restless nature of “history” falls to the wayside. There is time for lore and for stories and for songs. The modern world has no place for the old stories, those with power. They cannot be controlled, harnessed or rationalized. All through the grand tale, Tolkien draws a careful contrast for us with the timeless Shire at its center.

Build Something - A Progress Free Community

I talk often here about building a parallel community, a parallel polity alongside our current society. It is important for this space to be a real contrast to the world around it. But we have to be able to paint a picture of it in our minds. We don’t really want to replicate the kind of rationalized planned, social engineered, corporate spaces we marinate in today. It must provide a contrast to the world of “progress” built on the idea of “history” with humanity at its center. It seems like it should be a place where time has the sense of stopping, and the restless motion of the world can fall away. It does not necessarily have to be a Luddite space, but it will have a different relationship with technology. The idea is to subordinate it and give it a proper place in the hierarchy of being.

This would be a place of stories, song, metaphors and the past. A place where the archetypes can once again be lived into and allowed to manifest in the lives of the people. This is, in many ways, the beginning point of “re-enchanting” the world. It begins with allowing the world, and ourselves along with it, to just “be.” It means letting what is “in Christ” reveal itself, even in part, to the world through our lives. This process of revelation is a pulling back of the curtain which separates the transcendent in all its supernatural power from our day to day lives. In the believing community there is the real possibility to provide a living contrast to the whole ethos and spirit of the West, that of a human centered history as it manifests itself in the progressive urge. The regime senses this potential within us, even if we as Christians manifest so little of it today. We have the potential to bear witness to a real contrast to the regime, to be everything it is not. We can be the manifestation of God’s rest, his shalom, his Sabbath, here on earth. Even if we can only manifest this in part, we provide an out, a refuge, a place the regime cannot. We can anchor ourselves in being, that is, in Being, in a way they cannot in their restless quest to “become.” Even if it does not know this, the world is hungry for rest. And we can let them into the “Shire” of our communities to taste the life which the regime cannot provide them.