I have said for years that I am anachronistic

I have said for years that I am anachronistic. I embrace that. Even as children, my sister would tease that “there’s an 80 year old man inside you.” That natural internal pendulum does not sway so freely in me. It’s rather one of balance. It’s not that I’m never shaken or angered, but, by and large, that’s my gear: bolt upright, stabilizing. I get that from my maternal grandmother, who was much better at it than I. I appreciate normalcy. To get there, my wheels are usually turning. I think often of the words Margaret Mitchell wrote in Gone with the Wind:  “I want peace,” she wrote.  “I want to see if somewhere there isn’t something left of charm and grace.” Those words ring true. I suspect they did for Margaret Mitchell, too, when she wrote them. Unlike Mitchell, I was not born in Victorian times, though I sometimes feel particularly shaped by them. I am a stickler for tradition and protocol and I appreciate an order of things: who goes first, when, and what. When I was confirmed in the church, this desire particularly showed, as I wanted details down to the letter, where I would stand, a cue to kneel, where the bishop would be, and what would generally happen, ie where I should be, moment to moment. Even as an acolyte, as many times as I served, I felt an intense wave of formalism each and every time. I like things “as they should be,” with giving and showing respect where it’s do. I think anyone who really knows me would agree, and thus the reason I sometimes feel lost in this modern world, which seems to have forgotten so much, respect among them. I suspect it has a lot to do with why I love the past, where I can retreat – though the past was not perfect at any point, at least there was an expectation of standards then. We lack that today, as we’ve embraced a very self-centered ideology. At Christ the King, Fr. Mike often preaches of a social gospel that’s become pervasive; a world trapped by moral relativism. Modernity increasingly does not like rules and order – not biblical, not constitutionally, not from moms and dads, and certainly not from society itself, despite being rules that have served the world for millennia – and things today, assuredly, are not as they should be. We need only look about us and what do we see?  A confused world that has seemingly forgotten God, people who insist right is wrong and vice-versa, the justification of vile behaviors, burning and looting and threatening, a four-letter perversion of the language, public acceptance of public bad behaviors. So, as Mitchell before me, I long for it.  What exactly did happen to class, charm, and grace?

I wonder if we can really look at some of modernity and are proud.  The truth is – and I can’t help it – manners and respect and propriety are important to me, forces of stability in my life and across the expanses of time.  I grew up hearing the old proverb: God helps those who help themselves.  It’s just I’m not sure we’re helping, at least not in the affirmative.  We’ve become a lax society.  We’ve made bad decisions, and we’re paying the piper. If we want a better world, only we can start to fix them. As we look to the Easter season, now would be a good time to start.