This last month, fond readers had to say goodbye to one of the finest sites the web has seen, The New Pantagruel. The parting lines of editors Dan Knauss and Caleb Stegall have been ringing in my ears ever since I read them:
Ours can largely be summed up as a localist, decentralist, anarcho-Christian and authentically conservative approach to politics and culture. As we have written previously, we believe that to suffer one’s place and one’s people in the particularity of its and their needs is the only true basis for finding love, friendship, and an authentic, meaningful life. This is nothing less than the key to the pursuit of Christian holiness, which is the whole of the Christian adventure: to live in love with the frailty and limits of one’s existence, suffering the places, customs, rites, joys, and sorrows of the people who are in close relation to you by family, friendship, and community–all in service of the truth, goodness, and beauty that is best experienced directly. The discipline of place teaches that it is more than enough to care skillfully and lovingly for one’s own little circle, and this is the model for the good life, not the limitless jurisdiction of the ego, granted by a doctrine of choice, that is ever seeking its own fulfillment, pleasure, and satiation.
What the Pantagruelists really got–and so many others miss–is vocation. Too often we use the word in only its most narrow sense, usually referring to our specific professions, our “day jobs.” But that hardly captures the depth of the idea that God has called each of us to our varied and particular times and places. Our surroundings, with all their mundane tribulations and seemingly meaningless tasks, are no accident.