AT THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

By Walter Mills


Everyman in the New Year

The passing year has been on my mind, as it is about this time every
January. The lists have come out, rating the best and worst of
everything that can be judged. The year's top stories have been ranked
and reviewed. Is the world any better a place at the end of 2004? Did we
make progress, or are we slipping backward?

As a young English major in a southern college, I studied the story of
Everyman, a play performed by traveling actors in town squares and
church yards across 15th century England.

In the old Medieval morality play when Death comes to Everyman to call
him to account, Knowledge volunteers to help - "Everyman, I will go with
thee and be thy guide, in thy most need to go by thy side."

This has been a year when Death has spent a lot of time with Everyman,
on the shores of South Asia, in the cities of Iraq, and on the paths of
hurricanes pummeling the islands of the Caribbean and the American
South. The essential story of Everyman has not changed much over the
past 500 years. For all our technology and our wealth, we are still
subject to blindness and error, and threatened by forces far too large
to control.

This year we have lived through a morality play with a few lessons we
might do well to study. First of these is a lesson in humility. In our
society, arrogance and self-esteem have become virtues. Yet we should
know that we are fragile creatures on the surface of the earth, little
more than fleas on a dog's back. Nothing drove the point home to me more
clearly than the knowledge that the earthquake in the Indian Ocean
shifted the earth's rotation to some small but measurable degree. We are
living on the surface of a geologically active planet, not on a
friendly green ball. Hurricanes pounding the South one after the other
gave a further sense of the power of natural forces over which we have
little control.

We could also use some humility when we assert our power in the world.
As a society we have made numerous mistakes in the past. It is to our
credit that we usually try to correct them. But being rich and powerful
hasn't made us wise, as Everyman also learned. If this year proves
anything, it is that war should be a last resort, and not a first
response.

We once knew the difference between being able and willing to defend
ourselves and making violence the only tool in our bag of diplomacy.
We've lost the distinction in our politics, as we have in our movies and
games, where we enshrine an indiscriminate violence as our first and
only response to opposition. Our children now learn how to blow away
villains on a screen instead of how to organize a sandlot ball game or
game of tag. If we need to project our power in the world, we will gain
more respect by rescuing a million victims of the tsunami. That will
show the world how powerful we are.

Everyman learns that Good Companions and Worldly Goods will not travel
with him as they promise. And Knowledge will only go so far, not beyond
the grave. In the end only Good Deeds, the kindness he has shown in
life, stands with him at the reckoning. This is not the theology I was
taught as a boy when we were told that we would not reach heaven through
good works, but only by faith. But I've come to believe that faith
without action is hollow. We cannot see into each other's hearts. Some
may call themselves born again when their actions show little sign of
Christ.

In these days when the sun fails to break through the clouds and evening
falls so early, thoughts of the year past and the year ahead come
naturally. The celebrations are over, and like Everyman, we face an
accounting. Have we done good or ill? Is the world a little better
because of our presence? There is still time to show a little kindness,
a new year to record some Good Deeds in the account of our days.




(The above column originally appeared in the Centre Daily Times and is
copyright © 2005 by Walter Mills. All rights reserved worldwide. To
contact Walt, address your emails to wmills@chilitech.com ).