Dear Friends,
At a public art installation in Saint Louis (where I was attending a conference a few weeks back) I was able to take a picture of myself taking a picture of myself. It was a selfie within a selfie. Here is the picture:
In my more pessimistic moments, I worry that this photograph is a metaphor for what’s wrong with the modern world. We’re all so busy looking at our phones, and this phone-looking is so self-involved, that we fail to pay attention to the world beyond that which is presented to us electronically from the glow of a hand-held screen. This self-absorbed electronic life is very good for those who profit from monetizing our personal data, and it is good for those whose happiness is predicated on the preservation of the status quo.
But a digital life is not good for the soul, and it is not good for those whose well being has been deferred due to the complacency of folks who might otherwise start a revolution. We need to set down our phones, walk away from our phones, and look around us—at the people in our communities, at the spaces where we live and work, at the wonder world; we need also to pay attention to injustice, to discrimination, inequality. We must do what we can to make a difference, something we only can do if we look up from time to time.
And if we do look up we are likely to be rewarded. Here is what I saw after I stopped taking the selfie within a selfie and walked a block to the east:
Here we have stunning architecture, both in the Gateway Arch and in the courthouse building where Dred and Harriet Scott first made the legal case that they should no longer be enslaved (they won their case in St. Louis, but the United States Supreme Court later overturned the decision). This also is the courthouse in which a young lawyer named Louis Brandeis joined the Missouri Bar in the year 1878.
In this second photo we can see the juxtaposition of the beauty humans can create and the injustices we can inflict upon one another: one cannot think of Dred and Harriet Scot without calling to mind the evils of slavery and the disaster of the civil war which, in part, came as a result of what came to be known as the Dred Scott case; nor should we see the courthouse without remembering champions of justice such as Dred and Harriet Scott and Louis Brandeis. In the same way, one cannot (and should not) see the Gateway Arch without remembering that this stunning installation was built to celebrate Manifest Destiny and the genocidal conquest of the American West.
We need to see the beauty and the evil present in the St. Louis skyline and, indeed all over America. If we put down our phones and walk away from our glowing screens, surely our ability to see will improve.
God’s Peace,
Ben