A HIDDEN LIFE
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs” [italics mine] From “Middlemarch” by George Eliot.
(Along with Eliot’s words, consider Thomas Merton’s own composed version of the classic saying of Chuang Tzu in his book, The Way of Chuang Tzu. This particular saying is titled as When Life was Full There was no History.
“. . . They [worthy men] were honest and righteous without realizing that they were ‘doing their duty.’ They loved each other and did not know that this was ‘love of neighbor.’ They deceived no one yet they did not know that they were ‘men to be trusted.’ They were reliable and did not know that this was ‘good faith.’ They lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history.”)
During COVID-19 lockdown, we have been watching quite a few movies. We strolled down memory lane and watched Roman Holiday and fell in love with the timeless romantic story. It oddly reminded me that we would have been in Spain right about now walking the Camino de Santiago had it not been for COVID-19. Frozen 2, You’ve Got Mail, Little Women (the new one), some random Chinese martial arts movies (only for me), and Korean variety shows are among the few we’ve watched so far.
My wife and I also watched A Hidden Life directed by Terence Malick. I found out later that Malick also directed The Tree of Life. Years ago, my wife and I watched The Tree of Life and were completely befuddled by the experience. At the end of the movie, my wife and I exchanged one of those non-verbal total bewilderment look. While A Hidden Life didn’t grab me initially while watching, it lingered with me, particularly the quote by George Eliot at the end of the movie. (Don’t worry. I will not spoil it for you here.)
I can’t help but to wonder and ruminate on the qualitative truth about Eliot’s words. Eliot is fair and careful to use the word partly; I would be tempted to use words like sizable or even significant. The main character in A Hidden Life, Franz Jägerstätter, is an Austrian peasant farmer who refused to give his allegiance to Hitler and fight for the Nazis. He is one of many countless lives that were so remarkably ordinary and yet so extraordinary.
“The good of the world” has to be in direct contrast to the evil of the world. It is a knock-down-drag-out fight to the end between the good and the evil.
In his latest book, What do we do with Evil?: The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, Richard Rohr describes, “The devil, therefore, is those same corporate evils when they have risen to sanctified, romanticized, and idealized necessities that are saluted, glorified and celebrated. . . ” Rohr goes on, “Paul knew these forces that were really running the show were hidden inside of common agreements that every culture idealizes for its own survival.” Rohr concludes, “I believe Paul and his school teach that sin shows itself as social, cultural, or historical entrapment, cultural blindness, or bondage, along with personal complicity with such delusions.”
History is not merely made or advanced by the usual suspects, the list of so-called history makers. The modern mind has learned to almost “worship” larger-than-life heroes, especially with our need for entertainment and technology and our ability to revise and spin history mainly from the “dominant” point of view. I say this in solidarity with those who are helpfully trying to debunk the very idea of going along with the usual suspects. History makers are those who made headlines by creating and impacting “watershed moments” in history, almost always after the fact. We have become enthralled with such “heroes or heroines,” some of which for good reasons. I am not discounting or even downplaying the impact of the usual suspects and the overall good. I am questioning our own tendencies of blindly and uncritically accepting the usual suspects.
Even then, it is quite illuminating that both the “faithful” and the evil at work are mostly hidden, and therefore the fight between the good and the evil is also mostly hidden. Perhaps our one collective work as Jesus’ followers is to turn these hidden (both good and evil) work visible for the good of many.
At the end of the day, whether our heroes or heroines’ lives are hidden or not (which explains “partly dependent”), it comes down to each of us stewarding what we can from our own originality, authenticity, and creativity as human beings. Heroes and heroines are made in the extraordinary times where genuine courage and creativity are called for as we are living right in the middle of that now. Another true story I read from a Dutch priest named Adrian van Kaam tells the story of a mailman during peaceful times turning into a guerrilla band leader and fighter against the Nazis. His “real” or true identity was hidden and dormant until the war broke out. Crises (both external and internal for sure, but in this case external) often force us to discover who we truly are. They are open doors for us to walk right in to let our instinct and God’s creative and thus our natural make-up to take over.
I believe that the Kingdom is mostly built and advanced by these hidden and unsung lives rested in unvisited tombs or those “who made no history!” Jesus’ own words of the Kingdom parables speak of these unspectacular and visibly hidden from normal line of sight.