FRONTIERS

Take a Deep Seat

“You sometimes begin to see the light when it is turned down low.” —from Bumfuzzled, Too

“When ya believe in what ya stand for it’s hard for ’em to knock ya down.”
“A shadow will show ya there’s a light shining somewhere.”
“Giant oak trees began as little nuts that took a deep seat.”

We received our Bumfuzzled Too calendar just this week, and the lines above are borrowed from the many old-time (and mostly cowboy) sayings that author Lewis Bowman shares on its pages. One constant, and it’s true also of Bowman’s book of the same title, is an attitude of positivism and “can-do” enthusiasm. The material is the sayings that Bowman heard from family and the cattlemen and rodeoers he was raised around. There was never a people who were as buoyant as these. The idea of “taking a deep seat”—of getting set, or of summoning up the gumption it sometimes takes to stay in the saddle—this is what they are all about. The quality of hope shines through.

Spring, with its sense of renewal and fresh beginnings, has traditionally been associated with hope. The same goes for times when a new White House administration takes over—people say that hopes are running high.

Last issue, in this space, we challenged the incoming president—we didn’t know at the time who he’d be—to take up the mantle of Lincoln by asserting, as Lincoln did, that “God blesses America.”

Now that we know the winner, it seems fitting to say something more. First, despite the thanks we’ve received for our “Put a Cowboy in the White House” campaign, we don’t claim to have had George W. Bush in mind. We began that effort in 1997, more than a year before we’d ever heard Bush mentioned as a candidate. Besides, as a magazine for all cowboys, and one that strives for journalistic impartiality, we don’t want to take political sides. Our point was to espouse cowboy values.

If neither candidate was perceived as “cowboy,” then our “Put a Cowboy in the White House” bumper sticker was a negligible factor, as far as the election went. However, if it’s true that Bush was perceived as more cowboy than Gore, then to that extent the bumper sticker, of which more than 40,000 got into circulation, could have had some modest impact. If only, say, one out of eight stickers (or 5,000) made it onto a bumper, and if each was seen by 1,000 motorists—which seems conservative —that translates into 5 million impressions.

Enough to swing a state somewhere? Who knows? Only in an election that close could we even be entertaining such an incredible notion. Besides, the point is, we backed an idea, not a candidate.

Second, we wanted to say something about hopes, because they ride high at times like this. You hear people say that when things take an upturn, such as happens when the season turns to spring, that people gather hope. True enough, but there’s more to it than that. And real hope operates differently.

Hope is deeper than mere uplift. G.K. Chesterton explained how the virtues of faith, hope, and charity have something about them that sets them apart from the “cardinal” virtues of justice, temperance, prudence, and fortitude. Those latter four virtues are those the world has agreed upon, in all ages, by common consent, to be worthy of the designation “virtue.” Only the religious hold that faith, hope, and charity are universal virtues, and it is Christianity that began that tradition.

In his book Heretics, Chesterton demonstrated the difference. He wrote that “Justice consists in finding out a certain thing due to a certain man and giving it to him. Temperance consists in finding out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and adhering to that. But charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.”

Chesterton says these theological virtues are “unreasonable” in that they neither arise from, nor answer to, mere human reasonableness. They touch something deeper, or higher.

He remarks that “… the only kind of hope that is of any use in a battle is a hope that denies arithmetic… the only kind of charity which any weak spirit wants, or which any generous spirit gives, is the charity which forgives the sins that are like scarlet… [and] whatever may be the meaning of faith, it must always mean a certainty about something we cannot prove.”

And again: “Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse…”

This being so, the old saying that “The only causes worth fighting for are lost causes” may have more truth in it than many of us have realized.

And finally this, also from Chesterton: “It is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue... begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at that moment when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.”

Spring doesn’t usher in hope. Hope ushers in spring—if by spring we mean any kind of betterment. But that is an empowering idea. Because hope, like faith and charity, is, in the end, a decision, not something that happens to someone. We don’t get hope. We take it. Hope means taking a deep seat.

If Bush is indeed a cowboy president, then we challenge him to take a deep seat and be true to what he believes in.

And if it’s true that this new president is someone who reads the Bible every day, as has been said, then we challenge him to be like Lincoln in this sense also: to be a president not just of the cardinal, secular virtues, but of the higher—of faith, hope, and charity—as well.
—JFM

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