On Terror and Pity

There’s an effort of will in committing a murder, or mass murders. By beginning with respect for the agency of souls even in the presence of mind-altering drugs whether natural or attained, I perceive that action results in guilt. Guilt is objective; it has nothing to do with feelings or motivations: we bathe in it every day. Hence the world’s redemption, accomplished through a judicial murder, to expiate the guilt of us all.

           Too much terror is about. Too many murders and mass murders: too much guilt. Too much fear for ourselves, for others. Terror creates consequences.Those of good will and sanctity pray for killers as well as victims: that is, the guilty as well as the innocent. ‘Troubled soul’ is the image.

            I’m reminded of Aristotle’s view that tragedy clarifies the emotions through pity and fear. To return ourselves to human scale, the appropriate emotion towards the guilty — whether through circumstance or design — is neither sympathy nor understanding, but pity. These individuals are in the hands of the powers of evil; that’s a deadly place to be; we confront human vulnerability.

            Lead us not into temptation, we pray, sed libera nos a malo. Pity and terror, O Lord.

On Visitation

‘One thing only is needful.’ I once knew a saint who died, as all saints do. He appeared to me in dreams, seated before a large book open before him on a table. He was correcting it in pencil, saying, ‘I’m editing the works of the poet here; it’s what I’ve returned to do. But I can’t be turned aside from it, because my time is limited.’

            As with Proust, who thought the world of sleep a separate room, into which we enter from daylight reality to meet another cast of characters, a different script, an altered life, I’m bemused to find the dead moving and speaking in dreams. Surely such visitations have meanings, beyond psychology?

            Do the beloved dead return, giving touches of comfort or understanding unhoped for in waking hours? Can warnings be given, answers to dilemmas, instructions, pleas? What is the one thing needful?

            Hundreds of bodies scattered across the road, in places far distant from one another, maybe. What was the one thing needful? From what must one not be turned aside? Where are the words of the poet, what are we here to do? We are not saints, but sinners, and our time is limited.

On Election

We struggle to elect a group of deeply flawed individuals to Parliament, whether of Left or Right: the Right can hardly come by a Leader definite enough to protect from the bath of anxieties wherein their followers float, while the Left may peer through windows of rosy glassiness distorting a landscape littered with dismaying realities. Do we get the politicians we deserve?

            In antiquity, you got the rulers you got. Mad Roman Emperors, corrupt hegemons, warlords, demagogues, ethnic strongmen, ruthless religions, relentless kings, unquiet queens. The word ‘demagogue’ comes from the ancient past, the original democracy.

            Preachers of ethnic election, universalism, internationalism or the narrowest aspirational nationalism: we’re not ruling you, we’re representing you. Many feel misrepresented, unrepresented or overrepresented, with consequent divisions, confusions, compulsions, implosions. The deeply corrupting influence of money lies over most historical events.

            That most idealistic form of governance, the Kingdom of God, was hijacked by the Roman state in the fourth century and has never been the same. It was a time not unlike the present, with massive changes in boundaries, nations, economies, and naturally, rulers. All the nations of the world were shown to Jesus at his Temptation: ‘To you I will give all their glory and all this authority,’ promised the devil, ‘if you will worship me.’ The deal is still the same.