Mosaic of Madness

Some mornings I have to make active efforts to assert a view of the world in stark contrast with the one I see presented in the newspaper of record. The paper’s view is a mosaic made of hundreds of stories, some illustrated. Both are “selected,” each selection itself chosen to highlight a particular editorial impulse. The composite is what I called the ravings of a schizophrenic a while back. The vast contrarian mosaic possible from events across the globe would not by any means suggest that total madness has us in its grip. It would show, rather, humanity at its usual…

The view I must assert is not visible at all. It holds the overwhelming presence in reality of an altogether invisible order. I don’t hold that view to compensate for the “horrors” in the news—although my view does have compensatory effects. It’s not about “feel good” or “ain’t it awful”; those are the filters the paper uses in picking stories to cover and images to show. My view attempts to capture the truth. The compensation arises because the news-mosaic is extremely distorted and, alas, the only image that’s tangibly available. It tends, therefore, to persuade us that that’s the way things are. And that impression must be countered.

To be sure, virtually all of our information reaches us by the senses; not all but virtually all; to hold that reality is divinely ordered therefore relies on a minuscule input from our innermost selves. Not surprisingly, therefore, in secular ages, when faith is not reinforced by masses of other believers, it’s lonely out there.