Friday Takes: The Relative Merits of Hot Running Water Edition

In Which I Think More about That TikToker

File: Maitre Birth of Esau and Jacob.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Friday, you guys. It’s Friday. So anyway, as my kids say.

One

I went and watched a lot more TikToks of the person I wrote about yesterday, who went “no contact” with her grandfather. She is very troubled, as you doubtless guessed by the one TikTok I linked. In this one, she elucidates all the “abuse” she suffered as a child. I put the word in scare quotes not because her childhood didn’t sound ghastly—it did—but because that word has been stretched beyond all recognition. She claims a whole range of trauma, of being autistic, of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, who often spanked her, and of suffering untoward punishments and humiliation. And what struck me was that it all did sound awful. I’m sure she felt constantly alienated and forlorn, that her mother was bad and her father was bad, and so were all her teachers and everyone else around her. I don’t disbelieve her in the least.

Two

What strikes me is that the shift from the Boomers all the way down to Gen Z isn’t just the ordinary ebb and flow of one generation into the next. Young people have always, to one degree or another, felt misunderstood by their elders and vice versa. One need look no further than the heartbreaking episode of Isaac and Rebecca being sad and angry about Esau’s choice of wives. As the narrator goes along, telling the story, the reader suddenly realizes that some terrible relational break must have occurred. How did Esau not know that he ought not marry a foreign wife? His grief matches theirs, and all sensible people want to rush in and try to repair it all, only all those people are long dead.

It’s not as if families have ever gotten on with each other. But this TikTok account strikes me as not mere family trouble, but a new culture birthed forth that speaks a different language and has different assumptions about the world.

Three

The trouble is that the old Grandfather thinks he lives in a world where one amasses facts as best one can, and makes a decision, it matters not who might feel trampled along the way. America, for example, is a settled entity. It has borders, democratic elections, an economy, and fairly cheap energy. Many wars have been fought, and if not won, at least not exactly lost either. Children should be grateful, of course, but they don’t need to be taken to church, or imputed with souls. The stuff one buys them should be sufficient to buy their obedience and gratitude.

Four

Watching

Raven

, who appears to be on Substack as well as TikTok, I can’t help but feel heartbroken. For, one of the biggest lies that Americans have believed is that material comfort is more important than the comforts and well-being of the soul.

I don’t even know who it was, but I happened to see a short video of some very famous person talking about how great Americans have it. The person waxed lyrical about hot running water. Can you even imagine, this person said, the blessing of a hot shower. All you do is step in, turn it on, and stand bathed in water. It is a miracle, and so few of us are grateful for it.

And I can’t argue, of course, because I love running water. I don’t ever stand up to take a shower, because I find it exhuasting, but I sit in my old claw footed tub and let the showerhead wash away not my sins, exactly, but my bad temper, the sticky grime of humidity in early May, the sawdust from sanding down a failed attempt at polyurthaning the little wooden Cenacle for Catechesis. But just let me tell you what it’s like to take a bath where this no running water.

Five

One could do it in the dark with a measly bucket of lukewarm water, splashing around and hoping for the best, feeling impoverished and miserable.

But there is another way to take a bath without running water. First, you have to acquire two large metal tubs. And, it helps to have a bath hut with a drain, a cement floor, and a thatched roof. You have a nice mirror with candles hung on either side, and an old calendar with a print of Botticelli’s Venus, rising from the Sea Foam. The candlelight adds elegance to what is, really, a complicated process.

First, you have to light all the lamps in the house, for there is no electricity, before nightfall. Then, you have to heat a large kettle on the stove in the kitchen, which is across the house. When it boils, you have to argue about whose turn it is to bathe, and then someone, who is strong enough, has to run the hot kettle of water across the house and pour it into one of the metal tubs. The person whose turn it is to bathe is then left alone with many choices. How much cold water to add from the large water jar in the corner? If you judge wrongly, you have a cold bath. And then you must consider. Do you want to scoop the water over yourself? Or sit in the tub (if you are small enough)? If you do that, you won’t be able to rinse yourself off with clean water. One option is to wash off with a small portion of hot water, and then add enough cold to be able to sit in the tub, and then, as clean as possible, climb in and luxuriate. If by “luxuriate” you mean sitting in a small metal tub of warm water for a few minutes, hoping that a poisonous snake won’t stick its head up through the drain, which must always have a stone placed over it when it is not in use.

And the thing that I constantly ask myself as I look at people caught in the misery of families that sold their spiritual soul for more stuff is, is the electricity worth it? Is a subsistence level of life so awful as that?

Six

The other way to say it is that sin is immiserating. There isn’t such a thing as happiness in this life. Whatever you do, it will be hard and uncomfortable. If you have hot running water and an easy way to cook food, what you will have to do is pierce yourself all over your face and get many painful tattoos. But whatever circumstance you find yourself in, you can surely count on your family failing you when you most particularly needed them not to do that.

Seven

And what I thought to myself is that, as usual, the only answer is Jesus. For the person who suffered a lonely and humiliated childhood, cannot find relief through politics, no matter how hard she tries. And the rich person in his luxury will die just like everyone else. And the person dying of a curable disease because Western countries changed their politics will find no comfort whatsoever. Except that in each case, it is not the comforts and privileges of this life that matter. It is the next one. And every generation in every age in every place knew this and so devised rituals and gods to ease the pain. But ours, who knew of Jesus, who knew of the resurrection of the dead, who had such a rich and gracious depository of faith, yet threw it all away for some reason that is not even worth sorting out.

And the casualty of that choice is @majoreyeroll. And that breaks my heart. And yet, it is Easter season, so while there is life, there is hope. Ok, so, Read the Comments below the line!