Scrolling Past Medusa
The Medusa’s hair writhes with snakes so ugly; one look and you turn to stone. The only way the hero can destroy her is not to look. He holds up his shield, wields his sword.
Back in the day, the horrors of children burning, hurricanes flooding cities, students being shot were limited to a half hour each night on the news, a newspaper cracked open in the morning, and magazines. These days we face our phones and scroll. We see the horrors peel past our eyes all day, every day. People post their losses—beloved spouses, siblings, pets. They ask for prayers. We flinch.
Our politicians curse each other and us. We think our memes will save the world.
We stare at the snakes writhing on the monster’s head. We turn to stone. She’s not even angry. She just is.
But each of us wields a marvelous shield called wonder. Sometimes it’s decked out with Northern Lights, the Big Dipper behind them, or we see a comet with her veil flying. Butterflies still dance. Squirrels scold, jumping from tree to tree. With the sun set, the horizon glows orange and then blue and then dark blue, with a star or two. The moon rises and sets, changing shape day by day.
We wield the promise from Julian of Norwich, spoken during the Plague: “All will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” And that’s how we slay the monster.
I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective with a nod to Martin Shaw.
This was first published on WNIJ, where you can hear me read this version here.
The Medusa
Well I tried saying St. Patrick’s breastplate before bed and got walloped with one of the most terrifying dreams I’ve had in a long time. Bruce and I were walking the dogs down our road. At night. It was darker than normal night, darker than when clouds are coating the night sky. There weren’t even city lights reflecting something. And something was after us. Don’t know if it was an out-of-control teenager driving a super duty F250 or something black that had risen from the apocalyptic dread much of the country is feeling. Electric shocks zapped me from head to toe.
I woke battered. I struggled with the blankets and felt Bruce get up. It took a few minutes to calm the tingling. My heart hurt. Everything I’d said about all will be well, looking at wonder, didn’t seem to work and I have been plunged into terror in my chest, which I suspect is a harmless arrythmia I felt nearly thirty years ago. I’d done what Paul Kingsnorth said not to do in All the World is a Myth. I have lost the peace in my heart. I’d not guarded it. But my gosh there is so much pain in the world.
Every morning I open my phone and look at the Medusa. Often I’m caught in a mental argument—what I would say if I wanted to take the time and energy and bear the flak that would fly back. I head out to walk down the road, with both dogs, where I quiet my mind and give thanks, which is hard since I’d just filled my thoughts with the latest on Facebook. Even though I have wanted to tighten up my morning and get right to my walk instead of getting sucked into my phone, I have felt helpless. The other day, I was dawdling and Omalola squatted and peed a couple of pints on the tile floor. I pulled many sheets from our one roll of paper towels and cleaned it up. Then we walked. The next few days, when I walked right out where good days.
But this week I took a gander at Ms. Medusa by reading some of my favorite Substack writers, Matt Taibbi, Micheal Shellenberger, and El Gato Malo. I support them because I believe they are doing old fashioned journalism. But I made my heart hurt.
The destruction Hurricane Helene wrought on Appalachia is beyond imagination. Pastures have been turned to mud. Crops and livestock destroyed. The dead have not all been recovered. Roads are washed out. People’s ability to make a living has been destroyed. I keep scrolling. Russia is training 10,000 North Korean troops to fight in the war in Ukraine. Iran has the bomb and has shouted Death to America. Isreal is fighting a war on two fronts. Civilians have been killed and maimed on both sides of that conflict. There is genocide in Burma, the Sudan, China.
Here in the U.S. no matter who gets elected, there will be trouble. People on the left and right are frightened by what’s next. We are terrified of each other. I have plenty of political opinions, but I keep quiet because the ensuing drama and high blood pressure isn’t worth it. According to Jim Geraghty of the National Review people in Washington D.C. are talking about ordering plywood to cover their shop windows. Many are leaving town. Former ABC News Political analyst Mark Helperin says that we will go through a major mental health crisis if Trump is elected because people will wonder how we could elect someone the media and Feds have called Hitler. And yet, it’s the Biden/Harris administration that has weaponized the DOJ, FBI, Homeland Security. Under the headline, “Kamala Harris’ Hitler Focused Argument Is a Shameful Stain on her party”, Michael Shellenberger says, “Democrats are the party of mass censorship, the weaponization of the CIA, FBI, and DHS, and the politicization of everything. What does that sound like to you?”
There is a worldwide move to censor and criminalize speech. Something that is legal to say today might land a person in prison tomorrow. Cancel culture is a precursor to this. I’ve had visions of being imprisoned for marking “Like” when el gato malo has said become ungovernable. There’s a draft of a novel sitting in the cloud that explores a home-grown militia movement born of angry farmers owing too much money on their farms back in the 80’s. The technology is there for my story to flag a giant federal computer.
The Shield
I wonder if the more we feed into this dread, the more we are enflamed with fear and anger, the more power we give the powers of darkness to bring about the very things we fear. In a recent video Jonathan Pageau emphasizes this point with regards to AI. He emphasizes how AI might turn on us. He says it’s not good to invoke foreign gods. “Bringing something up in culture, either positively or negatively is making it part of the web of relationships that is engaging in that culture. Talking about something, either for or against. You make a movie about an evil Skynet that brings about AI, that AI comes to destroy you and you think that you’re just opposing it, but you’re also participating in bringing it out because it’s now reality functions. I think when we oppose something and we do it publicly and we’re doing a whole campaign against something, you don’t realize that you’re also making it vocally more present in society and possibly it will make it manifest even more than what it was before.”
In essence it seems like all of us are invoking something awful to happen around election day. I take heart in what the Psalmist says in Psalm 34, “I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears.” We need to resist by praying. Often I don’t have words to pray for government, so I pray the following from The Book of Common Prayer:
“ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favour and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honourable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
When I see the authoritarian noose wrapping around the world I remember Psalm 2:
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6 “As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
My heart still hurts. I put my hand to my chest when I walk along the road after sunset. I barely have words to talk it out with God. I listen for cars coming up behind me. I take heart in what Maggie Ross has said about we might have tears in our hearts, how they might not be flowing out of our eyes. She says, “There is no question that interior weeping occurs without actual tears—although material tears are always a blessing when they accompany this interior weeping. There is also no question that one who prays or is prayed without ceasing weeps continually, whether these tears are inward or actually emerge from the eyes. Knowing that eased my tension around the anxiety” (168). Tears would be a relief but they don’t come.
But then I opened Facebook and found this from Jon Sweeney’s Meister Eckart’s Book of Darkness and Light
When You Are Empty
When you are empty
Feeling bereft,
Or not feeling much at all,
Hesitate before trying
to fix your situation,
because this happens
to be just what
you are: a vessel
awaiting the fill
of heavenly
fulness beyond any
this-worldly feeling.
Works Cited
Holy Bible English Standard Version. Crossway, 2016.
Ross, Maggie. The Fountain and the Furnace. Eugene: Wipf and Stock. 2014.
Shellenberger, Michael. “Kamala Harris Hitler-Focused Closing Article is a Shameful Stain on Her Party.” Oct. 25, 2024 https://www.public.news/p/kamala-harris-hitler-focused-closing
Sweeney, Jon and Burrows, Mark. Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light. Hampton Roads: Newburyport. 2023.
The Book of Common Prayer. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1869.
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