The Chosen

The death of the Queen and the promise of King Charles III

The people demand a king

Monarchy is often seen these days as an irrelevance, a vestige of bygone days when people were stupid and unenlightened. Leftists like to tell the story that kings came to power because they were strongmen who usurped what did not belong to them and bamboozled the simple masses into paying homage. Obviously we are smarter and know better than our ancestors.

The Old Testament paints a different picture, however. In the book of Judges, the Israelites are led by a series of leaders who arise to lead and unify the people as the moment demands— almost always when they are being attacked by an outside force. Some judges are military leaders, like Jephthah and Gideon, and some are seers and prophets, like Deborah and Samuel. At this point in history the Israelites are a loose confederation of tribes with cultural and kinship ties; weary of constant invasions from their better-organized neighbors, the tribes begin to press for something that will unite them and give them more cohesion and stability: statehood and a monarchy.

Detail from The Knight Errant, John Everett Millais

The first King, anointed by Samuel, is Saul, who has proved himself as a leader in battle. When he loses his mojo and things fall apart, it opens the door for David, a younger, more charismatic warrior to usurp him as King. David, of course, founds a famous dynasty that the writers of the New Testament would link Jesus to in an attempt to give him cachet and legitimacy as a messiah. 

The Bible reflects all of the ambivalence people felt about kingship— early chapters of 1 Samuel are pro-monarchy; in later chapters the authors seem to pine for the good old days of ad-hoc judges. My point is that monarchies develop not because some evil force of oppression or domination imposes itself upon pure, innocent lambs, but because people are trying to figure out the best way to organize themselves and sometimes it’s a bit of a crapshoot. 

The power in a symbol

In the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s death, there has been a lot of pondering and comparing the various merits of the constitutional republic style of government seen in the US and France, and the constitutional monarchy of the UK. There is some evidence to suggest that constitutional monarchies are, overall, more stable than republics. Both are, unlike ancient and medieval monarchies, fundamentally democratic, but the monarchy has an undemocratic element in the form of a hereditary head of state, though he or she is said to have very little “power.” 

I use power in quotes because we have a tendency to think the only power that matters is what we call “hard” power or explicit political power— the ability to make policy decisions, craft legislation, provide funding, etc. Queen Elizabeth is often said to have had a great deal of “soft” power— the power of ancient symbolism, the glamour of ceremony and wealth, the mystique of ancient legend and myth that follows the crown. We see this kind of power as being somehow unreal, nothing more than smoke and mirrors. And yet it inspires a tremendous degree of emotional response: respect and reverence as well as envy and resentment. 

We underestimate the extent to which our subconscious minds run on this kind of power. Every attempt to rid ourselves of it results in it springing up again in hidden forms. Protestant reformers in England destroyed all icons and shrines of the Blessed Virgin and created a new mother goddess in the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I. Martin Luther rejected human authority in the form of a pope and venerated what the late religious scholar Phyllis Tickle called a “paper pope” in scripture.  American revolutionaries gave the boot to the king and yet we developed grand national myths around the flag and the founding fathers; we invest an awful lot of regal symbolism in the office of president. 

The “Armada Portrait” of Queen Elizabeth !

Because these types of symbols are associated with the realm of religion and mysticism, we think they are silly and unenlightened; yet still we long for them. The most popular stories in the world are full of kings and queens who must reclaim their thrones, sacred objects that grant power, and destined leaders who have been chosen by the forces of fate. We imagine ourselves into these stories and want to believe that we too are chosen, that we have some great gift to offer by which the world might be redeemed.

You don’t have to be good to be chosen

In the biblical book of Esther, a young girl, a member of an oppressed minority ethnic group, the Jews, enters the world’s most high-stakes beauty pageant: one night with the King and the chance to be chosen as his wife. She hides her ethnicity to get a leg up and ultimately triumphs to become queen of the Persian Empire. 

Today we would call her a sell-out and a race traitor. She has the unearned privilege of being conventionally beautiful, of appealing to the male gaze. She has internalized misogyny and racism. By marrying a King for comfort and safety she has become a tool of Empire and is profiting off the backs of the oppressed. No doubt people said those things about her then, too.

But when the Jews, through the machinations of a resentful and self-serving courtier are threatened with extermination, Esther is uniquely placed to intervene. As she agonizes over whether to reveal her origins to the King and risk his wrath, her older relative Mordecai utters words that send a thrill down the spine of every one who has ever longed to be chosen: 

“Who is to say that you have not been born for such a time as this?”

An Ancient Custom, Edwin Long

Being chosen in these stories is usually not about being morally pure. It is not about perfection, often quite the opposite. It is about trusting that all the circumstances in your life— the struggles, deprivation, and apparent mistakes; the deep desires, talents, and unearned graces— are all adding up to something. 

Had Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor been born into a family of miners or farmers, we would have considered her unremarkable, except perhaps to those who knew her. Very few people would have ever known her name. Instead, she was born into a position of unfathomable wealth and privilege that came at a heavy cost: to spend her whole life in a fishbowl, allowing everyone to view her through the crooked light of their own projections and to never once complain. She understood this, and approached it as a very serious and sacred duty.

Her job was to be the symbol of a nation, an archetypal mother that allowed the British people, despite political conflict and increasing social fragmentation, and multiculturalism to see themselves as something like a family. In the wake of the violent wars and revolutions that characterized the early part of the 20th century, the Queen provided a sense of steadiness and calm, even as the world continued its dizzying pace of change. 

It’s fashionable now to see all ancient institutions as forces of evil and oppression, but as the British Empire— not, in fact, a terribly ancient institution, by European standards— unraveled, the Queen remained equanimous, respecting the desires of the formerly colonized territories to become sovereign nations while continuing to maintain friendly and open relations. By all accounts she was genuinely curious about other people and cultures and appreciative of the relationships she developed with the leaders of Commonwealth nations. Even Nelson Mandela loved her.

The fact that her passing strikes so deeply for so many, even beyond Britain, is a testament to the archetypal spirit of stability and constancy that she embodied. Not many people could have done that so well for so long. 

A young Princess Elizabeth photographed by Cecil Beaton

The more I study history, the more I become convinced that there are no purely evil or purely good governmental forms. Any tool, any concept, any system might be used for good or for ill, though some work better than others. The other thing I am convinced of is that there is a deep intelligence at work in everything, a consciousness in this seemingly random materiality, what some of us call God; and that there are often deep purposes being worked out through people, things, and situations that we don’t understand; purposes that only become evident in the fullness of time.

From that perspective, it is not so difficult for me to imagine that Elizabeth II might well have been born for such a time as her own. 

A holistic vision of Harmony

As the world watches her son, Charles, take the throne, there are many questions about whether the monarchy can continue to survive. He is not his mother, of course. But perhaps that is because he is a man born for a different time. A man who, in many ways, has been ahead of his time, advocating for environmental causes his whole adult life, even when they have been unfashionable.

Over the past week, I have been reading Harmony, an environmentalist manifesto written in 2010 by the then Prince of Wales. I have to be honest, I find it to be a remarkable document. It is an incisive assessment of our culture’s current madness and the frenzy has us barreling toward the edge of a climate cliff. He investigates just how and why we have become unmoored from our sense of being an integral part of the natural world and instead come to believe that we are something separate from it; a state of separation that has led to a heartbreaking loss of meaning and purpose and an inability to find our way forward. His solutions are both deeply mystical and deeply practical. 

Charles has been accused of being a dilettante, overly sensitive and quixotic; dabbling in arts and crafts, crusading against modern architecture, talking to plants, and spouting mystical nonsense. But it’s clear from reading his book that all these various interests have been woven into a deeply studied and profoundly holistic vision for what the world might be. It’s a vision that I, and I believe many others, would find tremendously appealing and inspiring. 

He criticizes corporate capitalism pretty strongly, and while he’s not an anti-capitalist, exactly, he understands that the incentives and demand for constant growth that underpin our current economic system are deeply destructive. He’s a passionate advocate for preserving the knowledge and essential life-ways of traditional cultures around the world, both the cultures we typically think of as indigenous, like Native people in North America and Aboriginal groups in Australia, but also the folkways of his own home country. He understands that healthy communities go hand-in-hand with sustainable living, and his various architectural ventures have been experiments in building communities that people actually want to live in. He appreciates the wisdom in all the world’s religions and believes there is profound truth at the heart of them all.

He has a lot of ideas about sacred geometry and the patterns found in the stars and in nature and how these might guide the way we build our physical environment. Most people will probably find this the most risible element of his vision. But why do we think this way? For millennia, our ancestors built in alignment with solstices and the helical rising of  Sirius and other stars; they decorated with acanthus, palms, spirals, and various other patterns found in nature. Their time was regulated by the rhythms of the sun and moon and the seasons, not the clock. An hour was one of twelve equal divisions of light and twelve of darkness. The daytime hours literally expanded in the summer and contracted in the winter, like the rhythm of our lungs in slow-motion. This kind of consistent, embodied entanglement with the earth and its planetary dance obviously shaped the way people understood and located themselves in the universe. Our forebears lived in world that was deeply relational. We’ve spent the last 500 years trying to rocket ourselves free from the surly bonds of earth and we wonder why we’re so fucked. 

Saturday was the feast day of Hildegard of Bingen. I think she Charles would have a lot to talk about

A friend with whom I shared the book was also quite bowled over by it. “It’s rather remarkable,” he said. “I wish those simply bitching about colonialism would give Charles a deeper look. Frankly, we need all hands on deck for what’s currently happening. Anarchists and socialists and monarchists.” 

That attitude of surprise and admiration was also evident in a recent interview with one of Harmony’s co-authors, Ian Skelly. The interview is a very good introduction to the ideas and a serviceable TL, DR for the book. Incidentally, if you do want to read it, my friend snagged one of the last affordable hard copies to be had— as of last check it was going for $128 on Amazon. Fortunately it’s available as an audio and e-book. 

You were made for these times

King Charles’ vision is certainly bold, but I can’t help but think that’s what’s needed right now. As Europe, and soon the rest of the world, cope with the breakdown of food and manufacturing systems, energy crises, and climate derangement, we may find ourselves glad that there is someone who has had the privilege and luxury of time and money to study climate and sustainability and experiment with organic farming and energy-efficient, community-centered design. 

I don’t mean to suggest he, or any leader, should be above reproach. He can certainly be out of touch, as anyone raised in his circumstances is bound to be. His planned villages have not been without their missteps. He apparently gets quite snippy about pens, though I would probably be snippy about a whole lot more if I was obligated to perform an endless “grief marathon” of ceremonies and speeches and vigils in the immediate wake of my mother’s death. In the modern age, a monarch can and should be held accountable by the people.

Certainly others have been studying and speaking out about climate change and the problem of modernity for some time. My favorites, like Charles Eisenstein and Wendell Berry, have, like Charles III, approached it from a spiritual perspective. He is not singular when it comes to his ideas. 

But he is singular when it comes to the unique power, symbolic and concrete, that he holds. He is the head of state for a nation that still wields a tremendous amount of cultural cachet and economic influence. And in all those respects, I think he is a man born for such a time as ours.

I see this potential for chosenness in King Charles and the late Queen not because I believe the wealthy and powerful are more special and elevated than you or I. I see it because I see it in all of us. I believe we all have unique gifts to offer the world, gifts that are the product of the specific circumstances, longings, struggles and opportunities we’ve been given in life. We are all, in some way, chosen, if only we could keep the truth of that in our hearts. 

Your chosenness may or may not bring you riches and fame. But if you choose to nurture and cultivate it, it can bring you satisfaction and deep reward. And I trust that it can serve to reweave bonds of love and harmony in a deeply fragmented and disconnected world. To approach your life as a sacred duty, a heroic challenge, or a mystical calling is to understand that you are no better, no worse, but equal to Kings and Queens. Who is to say that we have not been born for such a time as this?