The Dock

Conflicted, varying, and conflicting thoughts this morning, and remembering that this blog and its blogposts are my rambling daily self-expressions, partly to help keep my mind working right up to the cliff, partly as a substitute for a personal diary or journal, partly to log my moment, frustrations, angers, disgusts, joys, memories, loves …

A parishioner and new friend died last evening before midnight, surrounded without and filled within by the presence of Logos the Creator. “What happens to us when we die?” is a question that, as one in my vocation, is reasonably and often in my musings. The straight answer is that I don’t know, we don’t know. We may be certain that we know, but certainty is not truth and does not make so. Death is what it is, and my preference, imagination, faith and hope do not influence or change what is and will be. My inclination is peace, total peace down the other side of the mountain, at the foot of the cliff, off the end of that dock, or at the bottom of the sea. Pax, shalom, εἰρήνη. For spirit, I like Psalm 139.

WWIII that we are in, hopefully without using WMD to trigger the end of the species. This is our own doing and after more than half a century the chickens have come home to roost. It’s the banty roosters actually and not roosting, not at all, they’ve developed a horrific response of violence, revenge and retribution. Why? After WWII in guilty response to the Holocaust, we forcibly disenfranchised and dispossessed the people of Palestine and interned them permanently instead of resettling them humanely. The rest is history and here we are. What should have been done those years ago? Arguable, it’s no longer relevant except perhaps insofar as some future generation, if there should be such, may be reflective, retrospective, and sensible of the teachings of hindsight. But humans don’t have sense enough to have learned a damn thing; so today we are victims of our own sins and susceptible to ranting, raving demagoguery of blind hatred. ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω, but like the snowball in hell, there is not the slightest chance. 

Starting with a brisk walk and facing a busy morning and day when I feel scratchy, more entitled to the rest, respite and pax of a preacher’s weekend. Once I see friends, though, starting with Robert, the fog will clear and the day will be bright.

This morning Anu Garg is right on. 

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. -Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor and political activist (b. 7 Dec 1928)