Post Tenebrae Lux

I have a dear friend who is troubled.

Well, in truth, I probably have more than one, and I would describe myself as troubled more often these days than not, but I have a friend in particular who shared a significant concern with me.

Their fear is that society is failing, if, in fact, it hasn't failed already. They fear for the future.

I didn't press for details or evidence of this failure, because I share an awful lot of these concerns. Divisiveness is the rule of the day in not only politics but social discourse. Income disparity between the rich and poor has never been greater. There no longer appears to be any common ground at all between people wanting to defend clean air and water and those looking to secure economic prosperity. The country we once referred to as the world's surviving superpower is now tearing itself apart under the leadership of an egomaniacal narcissist and proven liar, whose devoted followers have made it clear that he can do no wrong in their eyes.

Worse still, there are people in positions of power, people who should know better, who seek to exploit these divisions and exacerbate the conflict, turning left against right, rich against poor, greens against entrepreneurs, rural versus urban, you name it.

Us against them - it's the oldest game in the book, and part one of a proven strategy: divide and conquer.

It's an almost overwhelming tide of situational terror, reinforced with almost every news report. It is easy to become disheartened, and I didn't even attempt to refute my friend's assertion about society's failure, because I couldn't.

So where do we find hope?

Is it possible to mine it from the past?

Yesterday the family and I travelled to the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery to see the exhibit Anne Frank: A History for Today. It is a travelling exhibit from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and has no real historical artifacts in it per se. There are some recreations and a clever papercraft model of the secret annexe that she and seven others hiding for almost two years during the Nazi occupation of Holland before being found out.

The main focus of the gallery is a series of panels that block out a comprehensive timeline of events, the upper half depicting the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party and the lower half charting significant events of the Frank family - their fearful emigration to Holland, terrifying news from their homeland, the invasion of Holland, and the orders for Anne's sister Margot to report for a work camp, which prompted their seclusion.

To this day, no one knows who telephoned the police with the message "There are Jews in that house!" but all the occupants of the secret annex were arrested and shipped off to labour or death camps. Anne's father, Otto, was the only survivor.

Long after the war, devastated by the loss of his family, he was presented with Anne's diary, found after the raid at the annex. The depth of Anne's thoughts and the articulation of her feelings were a revelation to him.

I can't imagine how reading that diary must have felt, re-experiencing the growing terror of the Nazi menace from the perspective of a girl from ages 11-13. How much darker even than ours her world must have seemed.

And yet, she somehow managed to maintain a glimmer of hope, an optimistic assertion about the fundamental decency of humanity:

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

Now, it can be argued that Anne, being a child, would have been driven by a childish naivete, a lack of guile and understanding about the real world. Or that had she known her future held betrayal, arrest, imprisonment and death, she would have perhaps renounced her compassionate outlook. Hell, the usual gang of white supremacist asshats and Third Reich apologists tried to claim she was a fictional character herself and dared famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal to find her alleged arrester (which he did).

But I don't think so. 

I don't know that this brave girl was completely indomitable, but I choose to believe she went to her fate hoping for better days for those that came after her.

And came they did. Peace and tranquility did flourish for a time, if not universally or for very long. Having grown up in the shadow of the Cold War, I feel very strongly that it was a superior experience in most measures to being a civilian in the previous global conflict.

History and the story of humanity is not rhythmic, but it is cyclical. Peace is sometimes defined by the war that preceded it and many of our successes happen in spite of our past failures, not because of them. I sometimes wonder how terrified early humans would have been at the onset of winter, wondering on the longest night of the year if warmth and greenery would ever really return. Prior to the advent of language, was there a way for the elders to convey the idea that they had seen this all before, to symbolize the notion that yes, things would get better?

At church today, we had our first Tenebrae ceremony, a sort of reverse advent, where a series of candles are extinguished, one per week over the course of Lent. The final one will be doused on Good Friday before they are all re-lit on Easter Sunday. It will be strange watching this wreath give off less light each week until it is completely dark, but watching it happen, having a hand in it, while knowing that the light will return, is a curious thought experiment, an intriguing exercise in faith.

Anne Frank's hopeful words exist not only in the diaries that survived her, or in the movies and plays based on her life. They can be found on the walls of the Montessori school she attended in Amsterdam to this day, in her own handwriting, where I hope they inspire others as they have encouraged me.

My troubled friend and I have vastly different belief systems, but I hope he is not offended to know that I am praying for him to find faith, from whatever corner it may come - faith that things will indeed get better, that light following darkness is more than likely, it is an inevitability. Times might get worse before they do, but they will indeed get better, and perhaps that peace and tranquility will impact more people, and last a little longer. 

And maybe we troubled souls can find some for ourselves, as well.