Order is the Shire of Tolkien’s hobbits: peaceful, productive and safely inhabitable, even by the naive.
Chaos is the underground kingdom of the dwarves, usurped by Smaug, the treasure-hoarding serpent.
Chaos is also the formless potential from which the God of Genesis 1 called forth order using language at the beginning of time. It’s the same potential from which we, made in that Image, call forth the novel and ever-changing moments of our lives. And Chaos is freedom, dreadful freedom, too.
Order, by contrast, is explored territory. That’s the hundreds-of-millions-ofyears- old hierarchy of place, position and authority. That’s the structure of society. It’s the structure provided by biology, too—particularly insofar as you are adapted, as you are, to the structure of society. Order is tribe, religion, hearth, home and country. It’s the warm, secure living-room where the fireplace glows and the children play. It’s the flag of the nation. It’s the value of the currency. Order is the floor beneath your feet, and your plan for the day. It’s the greatness of tradition, the rows of desks in a school classroom, the trains that leave on time, the calendar, and the clock.
Order is the public façade we’re called upon to wear, the politeness of a gathering of civilized strangers, and the thin ice on which we all skate.
Order is the place where the behavior of the world matches our expectations and our desires; the place where all things turn out the way we want them to.
But order is sometimes tyranny and stultification, as well, when the demand for certainty and uniformity and purity becomes too one-sided.
- Before the Twin Towers fell—that was order. Chaos manifested itself afterward. Everyone felt it. The very air became uncertain.
- What exactly was it that fell? Wrong question.
- What exactly remained standing? That was the issue at hand.
When the ice you’re skating on is solid, that’s Order. When the bottom drops out, and things fall apart, and you plunge through the ice, that’s Chaos.
Order is the Shire of Tolkien’s hobbits: peaceful, productive and safely inhabitable, even by the naive.
Chaos is the underground kingdom of the dwarves, usurped by Smaug, the treasure-hoarding serpent.
Chaos is the deep ocean bottom to which Pinocchio voyaged to rescue his father from Monstro, whale and fire-breathing dragon. That journey into darkness and rescue is the most difficult thing a puppet must do, if he wants to be real; if he wants to extract himself from the temptations of deceit and acting and victimization and impulsive pleasure and totalitarian subjugation; if he wants to take his place as a genuine Being in the world.
Order is the stability of your marriage. It’s buttressed by the traditions of the past and by your expectations—grounded, often invisibly, in those traditions.
Chaos is that stability crumbling under your feet when you discover your partner’s infidelity. Chaos is the experience of reeling unbound and unsupported through space when your guiding routines and traditions collapse.
Order is the place and time where the oft-invisible axioms you live by organize your experience and your actions so that what should happen does happen.
Chaos is the new place and time that emerges when tragedy strikes suddenly, or malevolence reveals its paralyzing visage, even in the confines of your own home. Something unexpected or undesired can always make its appearance, when a plan is being laid out, regardless of how familiar the circumstances.
When that happens, the territory has shifted. Make no mistake about it: the space, the apparent space, may be the same. But we live in Time, as well as Space.
In consequence, even the oldest and most familiar places retain an ineradicable capacity to surprise you. You may be cruising happily down the road in the automobile you have known and loved for years. But time is passing. The brakes could fail.
You might be walking down the road in the body you have always relied on. If your heart malfunctions, even momentarily, everything changes. Friendly old dogs can still bite. Old and trusted friends can still deceive. New ideas can destroy old and comfortable certainties.
Such Things Matter. They’re Real.
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