On Saying

Many things are unsaid; few are unspeakable. I’ve seen enough sudden death, often of young people. Significant speech is hard to come by. I can’t confront it, engage it, or ameliorate it. It confronts you.

     Mourning is actually a virtue. It stands with mercy, peace-making, pure hearts and desire for right living. Mourning falls under the cardinal virtue of Justice, that gives back to every thing what rightfully belongs to it. What can the beloved dead require? Mourning gives back the treasures their presence gave to us. It’s an honest rendering of account.

     Suicide is not unspeakable, nor is murder. We live in an unjust world. It doesn’t only happen to other people, other families, other friends. It’s here. Closer than you think.

     At the crossroads, where we won’t be missed, or will we? the virtue of mourning may display how the most desperate will still be missed. Saying is saving. So few things are actually unspeakable. However unlikely it seems, we will be mourned.

     Find someone you can trust. There will be one person, perhaps not the one you expect, who can be trustworthy. For one honest soul, the Lord will not let the city be destroyed.

On Making a Mark

I remember being so young, I wanted to make my mark on the world. I thought if I could perform so well I’d win admiration and respect. The ancients thought of this as glory and honour, but significantly, these qualities spread to include not only self, but family and nation as well. You don’t win for yourself, but for all.

            The mark you make will be your own mark, as it turns out. It may be admired or despised, depending on your gifts, limitations, intentions, inspirations and chances. You always make some kind of mark. Some marks are faint, some regretted, some authentic.

             You may also erase the marks of others. This could be grave sin or needed correction. Laws may be rewritten, antiquities destroyed, lives liberated or encaged. Lao Tzu felt the less done the better.

            I’m fascinated by the marks Jesus wrote on the ground when confronting the woman taken in adultery. What does he write? His ministry was to bring sight to the blind and liberation to captives. The men accusing her were blind to their own faults and had to be enlightened. She herself was freed to make her fair mark. Make it so.

On Work Not Grace

The argument that unemployed, sick, disabled, or aged persons aren’t worthy of government support, even where their taxes have filled government coffers, isn’t a financial but a theological view. Just because people seem atheistical, ignorant, secular, or indifferent doesn’t mean they have no theology. Indeed they may be more influenced by it than those who take a conscious position.

            In this 500^th anniversary year of the Reformation, politics provides ongoing evidence of the pervasiveness of work over grace. Where the signs of salvation (a limited quantity) are shown in hard work, frugality, and self-discipline, those who are born to fail display other qualities. The theology is of a judging God, a judging State. United States culture, due to Puritan influence, is vulnerable to this view.

            Where this is secularised, you get judgements such as: you should’ve saved against misfortune; shouldn’t have taken drugs; shouldn’t have lost your job; shouldn’t have married a violent man. Grace, which is the unmerited favour of God, would say: so this has happened; we will help you.

            We’re about to be living in a post-work world, as robotics advances. What then? Will peace be then on earth, to those of good will?

On Plutocracy

‘If religion was a thing that money could buy the rich would live and the poor would die.’ I couldn’t find a name for the original writer of these lyrics, but versions were around throughout the latter 20^th century. Version, itself a word that scares people. Version implies at least two views, with its meaning of ‘variant’ offering diversity, difference, mutability. That translation varies deeply threatens some. Who dares vary?

     The word plutocracy, first noted in the 17^th century, links wealth and power. The reign of the rich. The three Magi, or kings, brought their precious offerings to the King, thus keeping their treasures within the circle of authority. This King had a variant view of the poor.

     From the worldly rich in their states of power we see the poor: disorganised, feckless, profligate, decadent. They fail the test of virtue: they fail to be rich. Plutocracy has no room for the poor.

     King Herod was troubled when the Magi appeared. Where is this treasure going? To the Benefactor of the poor, of women, cripples, sex workers, tax collectors. Tax collectors? Yes, we need to pay more tax. And it needs to go down, not up, into plutocracy. 

On 2016

It was the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, a synonym for mass slaughter. World memory of history was so poor that fanatics of all kinds arose, finding advancement and comfort. In 2016, Britain became an island, cut off from the main, although the bells were ringing continually. New epidemics blossomed. Governments were set in place without the consent of the governed. Musicians and actors, carriers of the culture, departed taking with them the genius of their times. Wars and rumours of war produced fleets of refugees.

             In 2016, liberation of the captives: 21 of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by terrorists in 2014 returning home to their families. A few, but to those few everything. Terrorists, in spite of discovering new means of mass murder (especially trucks used in Nice and Berlin) must suffer more failures than success. Recovery of sight to the blind: Fred Hollows Foundation gave more than 890,000 sight-restoring operations, throughout poverty, war, and oppression. Medical miracles appearing. Acts of kindness and bravery. What gets reported is more often of fear than of hope.

Who proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord? We do. You want to find meaning and purpose in life? Get up every day, determining to do as you must to make today an acceptable day of the acceptable year: 2017.

On Facts

We live in a post-facts world, so I hear. Certainly facts are widely ignored. Or is that statement actually true? Science has processes for determining facts about nature. Philosophy examines ways to identify facts and verify them. Anti-facts appear, sometimes called lies: statements presented in opposition to objective reality. Subjective reality becomes fact. We see a lot of subjective reality in social and political life.

            Note that subjective reality is subject to proof. The proof is: I say it is so. The proof then becomes the person saying it. The person is thus a fact. Definitions of fact include: something that really happened, a real situation, something we know is actually going on. A lot of facts in politics are anti-facts in science and philosophy.

            We could return to the Latin, where ‘fact’ means ‘deed’. A fact has already been performed. We live in a post-fact world, where the fact (science: climate change) meets the anti-fact (politics: no climate change). We do not live in a post-truth world. For Christians, Jesus Christ is the Truth, where word (already a deed) meets fact: homo factus est. It is therefore deeds of compassion and mercy we must perform, following truth in fact.

On Internet Dating

When looking for a partner, or even a date, people can search for someone appealing on internet sites: sometimes rewarding; sometimes discouraging. Like the young woman looking for men who are tall, good-looking, good income, good personality. What about honest, intelligent, kind, sincere?

            Looking for a dog is similar. Dog rescue sites, mainly discouraging, I find. There’s an art to responding to rejection, when the only cause is someone else got there first. Not an overwhelming number of homeless dogs around. Lots of actively bored cattle dogs, actively determined huskies, actively mischievous staffies with various crosses of these, but what if something sweet and fluffy would be more suitable? Gone already!

            Or am I like the buyer at the slave market in classical antiquity, ‘I’ve seen enough Caucasians; I’d rather have a Gaul.’    Stereotypes were big in the ancient world (‘all Cretans are liars’) and I’ve just stereotyped a whole set of dogs. Maybe the most charming and desirable dogs rarely find themselves in dog rescue shelters.

            Is the answer to go somewhere and look someone in the eye? Eye to eye can’t be stereotyped. Surely the virtues of patience and resilience are developed on internet searches.