Saint Joan and Dagny Taggart

(edited about a hundred times....)


Joan never cared about the in-betweens
Combed her hair with a blade did the Maid of Orleans
Said Christ walked on water we can wade through the war
You don't need to tell me who the fire is for
- "To the Dogs or Whoever" - Josh Ritter


I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and going through the continual crisis of my professional life.  If you've ever read AS, you know this is a combination of things designed to result in introspection.  I'm reading AS on my Kindle, and I think I have highlighted about two-thirds of the book. (Which you can see, I think, if you know who I really am, have the Kindle app, and "follow me" on the Kindle page...)  I've come to the conclusion that, despite what I said in my last post, in the most critical ways, I probably am Dagny Taggart, and in my own way, I am trying to keep my own personal Taggart Transcontinental running.  


I see so much of the dystopian world she struggled against surrounding me, so much double talk, government ineptitude, false "progress," and general malaise.  I feel like I'm fighting the same kinds of illogic and refusal to think she found lurking under every rock.  But I keep doing it for the reasons she did.  I can't let them win.  I can't accept that this is all there is or all that anybody wants.  I can't let go of something I love, something I believe to be important, vital even.  I can't be the person who steps back and says it can all go to hell, to chaos, who gives up and walks away, who says there's nothing left worth fighting for.  


And there is so much worth fighting for.  There are all those beautiful faces every day, all those wonderful moments, every precious time one of them can get what they need to go where they dream of going.  That is what I battle for, what I get up and put on the armor and take up the sword to protect.  


It's not the path of least resistance for me.  It never has been.  This is my very conscious choice to stay on this field where I am and fight.  But I also want it understood that this is not a path of crucifixion and martyrdom.  I don't expect any praise for it or any pity.  I am not looking for acclaim or awards.  This is what I am and what I was made to be.  There is a cost to it, but there is a cost to every calling, to every choice, isn't there?   


What else could I do, though?  There has never been anything else for me. You do the thing you feel the bliss, the consuming passion for, the joy of completeness for, inside you until you are led to a new understanding.   That is what I am doing now, and even though there are times when following this bliss leads me through moments of terrible pain, the fundamental joy of what I do does not alter.  The pain is not related to what I do.  The pain is caused by those who try to stop me from doing it, or who try to keep me from doing it the way I know it to be right.  


What I don't have that Dagny had is that soul-deep joy of understanding in another person.  It would be nice to have another person understand why I do what I do, why it is important to me, not to talk it to death, but just to be able to look at them and know they get it.  Of course, in her case, I guess that understanding is laced with pain since the person who understands it does not really want her to do it any longer, or at least not in the way she's doing it at the present time.....  Complicated, isn't it?  I'm not quite done with the book, so I don't know yet who is going to win that fight, her steadfast idea that it's wrong to walk away and let it all fall down or his idea that no matter how much of herself she destroys trying to save her portion of it, it's already dead anyway.  I have to say that this is no small portion of the thing that is keeping me reading.


You may wonder about the reference to Joan of Arc at the top.  Partly, it comes because at some point during my reading the Josh Ritter song there spun through iTunes while I was reading and the lyrics clicked with what I was reading.  The connection between the woman I was reading and the woman in the song got made.  Hence her presence in this blog.  Joan has been kicking around with me for a lot longer than that, though.  I have a very old saint's medal of Joan that I wear as a reminder on days when I really feel like crap as among her many patron roles, she's patron saint of strong women.  For awhile a couple of years ago when things got very bad indeed during a time when they were already going poorly, I used the picture of her from the US War Bond posters of WWI as my FB icon.  I don't know if anybody else even noticed, but I enjoyed the irony immensely.  


I have always admired Joan of Arc.  She went up to a bunch of hopeless (and I mean that both ways -- without encouragement and useless) men, told them that she had a vision, made them believe her, saved her country by the force of her will, and kept her beliefs even when everyone sold her out afterward.  Her values hadn't depended on them....  Somehow, I sort of feel she, Dagny, and I are related.  On the surface we may not look much alike, the peasant turned general, the fictional tycoon with the spine of steel, and the humble local school teacher nobody will ever hear of, but I think in this much at least we are kin:  we know what it is to have a purpose and believe.  Maybe I don't shame them too much with my comparison.  And no, it hasn't escaped my notice that at least one of us so far (I don't know about Dagny...I'm not done with the book) wound up on the fire because of it.  


Well.. as Joan herself said, "One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it.  But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying."