7H, PPD & MLP

In a world worse, worsening to worst, unbalanced by bigotry, hatred, indifference, certainty, the news this morning. Ethnic, racial, nationalist snobbery of the British press; remarks of a clueless American president who not only can’t resist seeing self but cannot help seeing and styling self as the center of all that is and actually self believing that himself is so (who shall not be named, where are you when we desperately most need you?); unspeakable atrocity in Egypt, Burma, the US, meanness that discredits all religion for all time: in the West specifically, you cannot be a Christian and be selfish, greedy, hate, in thought, word or deed, nor save yourself by walking down the aisle to accept keeping X in XMas and be as sure for heaven as if you were already there. Yet, what about me: loving Jesus while hating bigots makes myself a bigot, doesn’t it, evil within me, oblivious self-assured innocence of the damned, who have been loved but have left some unloved. What, who, whom did Jesus hate? Pharisees? Scribes? The indifferent? The wealthy? The oblivious? The certain? Does it depend on whose Good Story one reads? JWB

What’s the matter with me this morning? That I started with news again instead of either with Fr Richard or with looking deep within. Do we also serve who only stand and wait, who only sit and watch, or does what we neither think, nor say, nor do render us complicit? What’s a moral difference in my having breakfast of oyster dressing and squash casserole on 7H porch, and the woman huddling her infant against the cold as Marley’s ghost moans, hovering, eternally but not formerly helpless. Who is Jacob Marley? Who is the Chinese beggar waiting and watching, the boy staring fascinated at him through the car window as gate swings open and Packard limousine exits the walled residence? Who knows what evil … ? The Shadow knows, the Ghost of Christmas knows. CJG

Today’s waiting and watching will include straightening out some of the mess I’ve created at 7H, moving furniture, books, art and accumulated over a fatherhood little treasures, to reduce the Beck room from guest bedroom to homeoffice, nap room, PigPen’s Den but not yet MLP. Someday Soon. A tiny TV hasn’t been connected “because.” Someday Soon. LCz

Who Knows Where the Time Goes. LHO

DThos+

Packard: Empire of the Sun, Spielberg