Christmas is a birth talk!
For Hannah Arendt, “birthing” or “natality” is a political act, an act of poiesis - a poetic work that we all are called to. Referring broadly to the human condition of birth, the concept is closely associated with the faculty of action. In Arendt's sense, action is performative, which involves the individuals acting in concert to bring new possibilities into existence. This birthing quality inherent in action led Arendt to see it as the activity that has the closest connection with the human condition of natality. She writes;
The life span of [hu]man running toward death would inevitably carry everything human to ruin and destruction if it were not for the faculty of interrupting it and beginning something new, a faculty is inherent in action like an ever-present reminder that human, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin.[i]
Most often, we are focused on mortality rather than natality! When mortality becomes our foundational focus, “catching up” becomes our primary mode of living. Whereas natality is the capacity to intervene and alter, which calls us to create what is new. For Arendt, the opportunity to undertake something new is what we conserve the world for, and it is this capacity for new beginnings, the action that takes place within the world, that, in turn, contributes to the world's renewal. Birthing a new world through initiating new interruptions, critical imaginations, and performative practices are at the heart of natality.
In the initial chapters of the Gospel accounts of Luke and Matthew, we see a critical mass community that carries this power of natality. This critical mass gives birth to a new world order through their performative actions, embodied commitments, relentless perspectival changes, interruptions, radical poetical imaginations, hope against hope, and practicing redeeming messiness. Meditate on Mary, Joseph, Zachariah, Elizabeth, Hannah, Simeon, angels, and shepherds- as a critical mass who trusted their journey towards new possibilities of imagination and existence. Most importantly, the “messiness” they carried in the process of “eventing” the birth of Jesus was undeniably natal and sacred.
Therefore, the call of Christmas is to return to our natalities, to enact “birthings!” Because it is the only hope that we have. The work of Christmas actually is an act of after-ing the Christmas! Howard Thruman invites us for a radical return to our natalities.
When the song of the angels is stilled,[ii]
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
The pairing of Hannah Arendt and the quotation from Howard Thurman about "the work of Christmas" is compelling! Hannah Arendt is such a valuable companion, I agree -- the emphasis on natality, beginnings, and action in concert. Her challenge to much of western individualism and how it neglects or forgets the common world is so important - and also how the Arendtian "common world" seems at times at odds too with Christian orthodoxy about this vale of tears, left for the eternal city of God. What I remember too however, at least in Human Condition, is the way that actions can bring about unintended consequences and a kind of imprisoning effect, like in the death spiral of revenge sequence. One of Arendt's most provocative theological claims where she does seem to draw right from Christian orthodoxy is in the radical way that forgiveness can create something new through in a way, obliterating (?) action (in the Human Condition, book, as I remember). I mean that there is this side which sometimes seems at odds with the revolutionary tradition of politics, the aspect of forgiveness and the common world. Sorry for long response - I really enjoyed this and would be happy to engage more.
ReplyDelete