Essays in Idleness

How marvellous the wind and the rain!

From my privileged window, I have been watching the menacing clouds approach from the west, promising to delete Mississauga. The rain, so far, is only a sprinkle, and I will pray for more, for torrents. The roar of the atmosphere seems to demand this: for it is suddenly tremendous. The spectacle is glorious, as in the old days when I could watch sunsets from my balconata. God, in His vocation as an artist, would never make two just the same. Each exhibited some feature of sublimity, seen never before, nor to be seen again. Praise Him. Praise Him from the belvederes and balconies.

The jackhammers have ceased. The neighbourhood is at peace, for a moment, as the jackhammerers lower their scaffolding hoists, from their self-interested desire, not to be blown off the building. The mounds of rubble, the half-demolished concrete stubs, everything — suddenly at peace. Perhaps the whole cosmic purpose of this progressive “creative destruction” was to remind me, today, what peace sounds like. It is a beautifully idle sound, when unnecessary work — work that is done only for money — is abandoned. And the modernist project, to replace everything that our ancestors built solid with the new, the cheap, the flimsy, the vile — comes to an involuntary halt.

For this modernist project is mostly “deconstruction.” In order to replace them with impermanent things, the permanent things must first be demolished. And this is, inevitably, a very noisy show, requiring jackhammers, buzzsaws, and explosives. But how magnificent: how blessed we are, when the modernist project takes a break!

Lord, in our humility we ask, that you thundering, destroy our destroyers.