Dispatch Faith: We Are Pilgrims, Still, by Kevin D. Williamson:
From evolution, we learn that our bodies and our behavior were shaped by natural pressures to maximize our chances of survival in ancestral conditions of radical scarcity and, hence, we could reasonably assume that at least some of our modern problems—the prevalence of obesity and anxiety, for example, in the rich, digitally saturated world—are the result of living in an environment that is radically different from the one for which we were optimized by evolution. From Christianity, we learn that man is fallen and out of step with his intended place in creation, that we have been separated from that condition for which we were fitted. And at whatever level of literalism you wish to apply to Genesis and whatever degree of sophistication you can bring to bear on your biological analysis, there is a point of commonality:
This is not the world we were made for. We are outcasts and misfits—or, if our separation is sanctified, we are pilgrims. …
It was a good deal colder in 1620, when our spiritual forebears signed the Mayflower Compact upon landing in Massachusetts on November 11, during a period known as the Little Ice Age. The ground was hard, there was sleet and snow, and the Pilgrims were not very well prepared for it. Subsequent winters, Pilgrim sources report, were even colder. As I have written before, I think it is worth remembering—repeating to ourselves, out loud as often as is necessary—that those trembling fanatics came here in sailboats, taking their children and only such supplies as they could carry across the Atlantic. They landed a month shy of the first official day of winter. But it was cold enough. Nearly half of the Mayflower passengers died before the winter’s end, with only about 50 of the original 102 living to see the snow melt and witness the blooming of the springtime ground laurel. (That plant, Epigaea repens, is now known as mayflower.) That suffering and brutalization was not forced upon them—they chose it.
What possessed them? …
The Puritan polemicist Thomas Goodwin, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, published a tract titled The Work of the Holy Ghost in Our Salvation. It makes good Thanksgiving reading:
God made and prepared a world consisting of, and filled with [a] variety of creatures, the making of which cost him six days’ work. There were delicacies of fruits for the taste, an entertainment for the eye in all sorts of colours, light, ornaments, and tapestry, which heaven and earth affordeth to this day. There was a brave world, and richly furnished, as the apostle speaks of it. The angels stood by, and wondered all the while for whom all this should be prepared, for they had not senses to be affected with them. God after all, at the latter end of his work, brings in man, and sets Adam down in the centre of this world; and lo, he had at the first of his creation an eye to see and to be taken with all the beauties God had scattered up and down throughout the whole. He had an ear to hear all the music which the melodies of birds singing, or the murmurings and warblings of rivulets, could afford. He had a taste and belly suited to take pleasure in all these varieties of fruits, or whatever else God had provided as a banquet for him; insomuch as there was not any one thing God had made but he had some sense, inward and outward, to take in a pleasure from it, or some faculty in his mind to close with and make use of it.
Whence it was apparent unto himself and the angels, the spectators, that God had first prepared and set out all these for the man, and then created the man, in like manner prepared and fitted for all these things. He had an ear and an eye (as both the prophet’s and apostle’s words are) to receive and take in what was thus made for him. Thus the apostle tells us it falls out in this new creation, God hath been from everlasting contriving and ordaining, and in the fulness of time preparing, all these glorious truths and things which the apostle to whom was committed the news and tidings of this world to come, by the Holy Ghost.
Half of them died. The rest were miserable, often sick, often hungry, often afraid. And they designated a day for thanksgiving. Again: What possessed them? What was the Holy Ghost whispering to them and showing them in their ecstacies and visions? Some of them dreamed of a new Israel, and some of them dreamed of a new Eden, well provided with “delicacies of fruits for the taste” and other good things in the New World. But all of them—these were serious men and women—knew they were landing on the shores of a savage wilderness. On the edge of winter. With what? Some hardtack, a little salt pork, a plan, and their prayers. They knew that this was a death sentence for at least some of them, likely many of them.
Why? Why do that to themselves? Why do that to their children? Why, in God’s name? …
My fear of death has not diminished in middle age—it has been multiplied by five. I do not want to die any time soon and miss out on this “brave world, and richly furnished,” that God in His infinite goodness has seen fit to provide for such a specimen as me. But when I think about the possibility of an early death, the part that is almost unbearably excruciating is thinking of my wife and sons grieving, of their being deprived of the man who is, whatever his considerable and well-documented inadequacies, the only husband and father they have. My terror of death is “still just as great as it would be for you or me” considering the eventuality on any ordinary day. The fear of death “remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror.”
Be careful which virtues you pray for—God may give you what you are asking for, and, if Scripture is any guide, you are not going to enjoy that very much. As you may have noticed (and as a few of you have remarked), God has given me many, many different means and opportunities to learn the virtue of humility, to only very modest effect. I do not mind it so much. But what terrifies me the most is that He may decide that I need a lesson in gratitude. And I know how He goes about teaching that lesson. …
To have something truly precious to lose is a great blessing—and a great terror. …
Well-meaning friends sometimes try to tell me that my family stuff was, looked at properly, all for the best, that these experiences built character and made me resilient, that these made me the man I am, which they mean in a complimentary way without knowing how it sounds on the other side of these particular slightly protruding ears. Freddy Nietzsche’s proverb notwithstanding, that stuff did not kill me, but it did not make me stronger, either. It can make it hard to enjoy the holidays without a little shadow of regret, which is something that I do not want to share with my family. There are some things that just do not get better, some injuries that get worse over time rather than healing, some kinds of loneliness that just become a part of who you are, however many friends you have, however joyful a family with which you are blessed later in life. It doesn’t stop. There is no upside to any of that, and nothing in it for which to be grateful. But it is personal and, if it is not your private affair, it is tedious to hear about. So I do not usually say what I am thinking when any of that stuff comes up, as it does from time to time, especially with my oldest friends, who, being Americans, are addicted to the power of positive thinking, even for horrors, applying their positivity thick like a heavy coat of revisionist varnish. …
The center of the world is in the monastery, in the cathedral, in the tabernacle, at the corner of 73rd and Park Avenue, high on the Llano Estacado, high in the Himalayas or here in these mountains, cold today and lightly sugared with snow—the center of the world is where we find it. The cathedral is where we find it—where we build it, and so is the tabernacle. That mystical center is the place we pilgrims are going, wherever that happens to be, because we bring it with us only to find that it was already there. It is “the cross that raiseth me.” It is the cross we carry, and the pilgrim ship that carries us across the dark waters, it is the shore we land on, and all of us pilgrims are standing on holy ground because holy ground is the only ground there is to stand on, sanctified and consecrated by the touch of its Creator at the moment of its creation. And who or what could deprive creation of its holiness? “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Gratitude is, in a sense, the spiritual discipline of trying to align ourselves with God’s own stated point of view on the matter. But we are small and vulnerable, easily wounded, often resentful, and—the point, as I experience it, keeps getting sharper—not made for this world. To try to take up God’s point of view is not an easy thing. Bitterness is easy. Indifference takes more work, but I have never shied away from labors of that kind.
It is 2:27 a.m. I have shaken off the bad dreams. I am awake, all the way awake. The triplets still sleep in our dining room—it will be a few more months (and a bathroom renovation) before we move them upstairs. Our older boy sleeps soundly in his little room, having recently transitioned to his first big-boy bed. I think I have managed to avoid waking my wife. If our dachshund, Pancake, is awake, she is content. God’s creatures. Well done, Lord. I try to “enter into the center of the world and pray to God from there.” The prayer of a righteous man availeth much, Scripture says, but, for now, the world will have to make do with mine—the righteous are still in bed. They don’t have my dreams. There is a little snow blowing around outside, and just enough moonlight to see the babies, bellies down, breathing nearly in unison. There will be deer-hoof prints in the snow in the morning, possibly bear tracks. It is cold. But we are warm here in our little pilgrim ship, and, as far as I can tell at the moment, our course is true, with fair winds and following seas. And I think I know, at least for the little piece of time between 2:27 a.m. and 2:29 a.m., what is required of me.
I look upon His works and, behold, they are very good.
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