Giving thanks in Omelas

Two days ago the Mormon prophet, Russell M. Nelson, released a special message for the Church.

“As a doctor, I know the value of good therapy. So, dear friends, may I prescribe two activities to help us experience the healing power of gratitude.”

COVID-19 ravages cardiovascular systems. President Nelson is a cardiovascular surgeon—I can think of several activities that would makes sense for doctor-cum-prophet to prescribe: a mask mandate for his religious followers, a dictum to spend holidays with only the people you live with, no indoor gatherings of any kind.

But instead, the seer and revelator of the Mormon faith asked his followers to turn their social media presence into a weeklong gratitude journal and to say a prayer of thanks. Literally: thoughts and prayers.

The toxicity of this campaign does not fall on the shoulders of individual people. It falls on the institution. In the last few days, I’ve seen a bit of discussion about gratitude and grief and the tension between them. That tension, to me, is not compelling. I am weary of treacly advice to “hold both.”

This dichotomy is not the problem. The problem is Omelas.

---

In a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin (it’s only four pages—you can read it here) Omelas is the name of sparkling, mythical, celestial city.

How can I tell you about the people of Omelas? They were not naive and happy children— though their children were, in fact, happy. They were mature, intelligent, passionate adults whose lives were not wretched. O miracle! but I wish I could describe it better. I wish I could convince you. Omelas sounds in my words like a city in a fairy tale, long ago and far away, once upon a time. Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all.

Citizens of Omelas are preparing for the Festival of Summer. Every horse has ribbons braided in their mane, bells are ringing, the meadows are green, the mountains are white.

But the joys of Omelas come with a cost.

In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten.

Everyone in Omelas knows about this child that is locked away and neglected. The situation is usually explained when they are between the ages of eight and twelve. Many of them go to see the child for themselves.

No matter how well the matter has been explained to them, these young spectators are always shocked and sickened at the sight. They feel disgust, which they had thought themselves superior to. They feel anger, outrage, impotence, despite all the explanations. They would like to do something for the child. But there is nothing they can do.

If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed.

Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.

The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.

---

This is not a story about gratitude and grief.

This is a story about the places, power, and rules where we find home—about what it means to look away, and what we’re really serving.

The leaders of the Mormon church will ask us to sing praises and give thanks for the blessings of our people. They will ask us to jump at the Festival of Summer, and we will say “how high?” They will assure us that they know of the child—that the Church is a big-enough tent.

What good is a tent to the child if its poles are used to poke it?

The trans person, gay person, or single person who reads “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” is a child the Church looks away from. So are women—denied voice, power, apology. So are Black members—denied reparations for spiritual abuse. So are Indigenous nations—denied the land and languages we stole from them.

The families of Omelas all seem to look the same. But of course, they are not heartless.

Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it.

Yet it is their tears and anger, the trying of their generosity and the acceptance of their helplessness, which are perhaps the true source of the splendor of their lives. Theirs is no vapid, irresponsible happiness. They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion.

It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there sniveling in the dark, the other one, the flute player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer.

Omelas is built on suffering. It is not beyond redemption, but this cost will never be paid. Gratitude does nothing for the child. Good intentions do nothing for the child. Tithing does nothing for the child. Not the bishop’s storehouse, or a rent check paid, or a cheap college education. All these things serve Omelas and Omelas alone.

But there is one more thing to tell—and this is quite incredible.

At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go to see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or woman much older falls silent for a day or two, and then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman. Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back.

The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

---

Thanks for reading Gemini Mind! Elsewhere, you can find me as @yokizzi 💫