I’m reading through “The Journals of Fr. Alexander Schmemann 1973-1983″(*) and I got to an entry about the essential differences — along with relative strengths and weaknesses — about being American and being European. Born in Estonia, living for many years in Paris and eventually an American citizen, he may be one person qualified to speak knowledgeably about both cultures. And though he wrote this in 1975 after having gone from Finland to Paris, it seems astonishingly applicable.

(As a quick aside, I’ll mention that I realize that Fr. Schmemann’s writings have become a little controversial to some Orthodox, for reasons I don’t fully understand. The section below doesn’t have to do with Orthodoxy, and so I’m hoping to avoid disputes here. If you still want to take issue with me for quoting Fr. Schmemann, please send me an e-mail to discuss it.)

Emphasis mine throughout, but it’s better really to read the whole thing.

After a busy day lecturing at the university, I find myself alone at last and thinking: What is there in Europe that is clearly absent in America? What is it in America that is not in Europe? And, more personally, why am I drawn from America to Europe and from Europe back to America? I feel that the usual answer is, Europe is culture, roots, traditions; America is freedom and also lack of culture — rootlessness.

This answer is incomplete, one-sided, simplified and incorrect. Tentatively, I would say that in America, one finds everything that Europe has, while in Europe there is hardly anything of what America is. One is drawn, not so much to Europe as out of America because in Europe one is spiritually more comfortable. There is always something to lean on, almost physically, whereas America is spiritually difficult. For years, people have rushed to America for an easier life, not realizing that deep down, life is much more difficult there. First of all, America is a country of great loneliness. Each one is alone with his own fate, under a huge sky, in the middle of a colossal country. Any culture, tradition, roots seem small there, but people strongly cling to them, knowing full well their illusory character.

Secondly, this solitude in America demands from everyone an existential answer to the question “to be or not to be,” and that requires effort. Hence so many personal crashes. In Europe anyone who falls, falls on some ground; in America he flies into an abyss. So much fear, such angst.

What draws a person to America is the possibility of having one’s own individual fate. Once you have tasted it, it becomes impossible to be just a Finn or a Frenchman; in other words, to be determined once and for all. One is liberated from it. And although liberated, one is often drawn again to the illusory stability of Europe, to dreams and fantasy. But Europe’s dream is ending; its ground is breaking. Europe is becoming a pitiful caricature of America, unable to become the “original,” but an imitation denying its own originality. Our rather simple and slightly barbarian Gerald Ford is quite genuine when compared with the Giscards, Joberts and tutti quanti with their pseudo sophistication.

While walking from Notre Dame to the Seine, to Place des Vosges, I realize that all that I like so much is illusory, not needed, that it has no relation with the France of Mitterrand and others. The real France wants to become America. America does not want to become Europe, therefore it is genuine, whereas Europe is steadily losing its genuine character.

New traditions are steadily generated in America; Europe’s traditions, having lost their genuine character, are collapsing.

“If it does not die, it will not live.” Europe gave birth to America out of its dream, and is dying in it as Europe. Out of that dying, America was born and is growing.

Not to say that I think everything Fr. Alexander mused will turn out to be prophetic. It’s hard for me to assess whether America is still growing as he saw back in the ’70s. And like a lot of Americans, I keep waiting to see if some wonderful “new” Europe will emerge out of the ashes of “old” Europe. But still, as always, I offer it for what it’s worth.