much Time

Neither sleeping nor idle, I blogged Sunday afternoon and again yesterday, Monday. Sunday after having read in the March 2023 issue of The Atlantic, an article on "The Great Gatsby" about a viewpoint and substantial case that Jay Gatsby is Black, "a pale Black man who passes for White," with Fitzgerald having sprinkled compelling allusions throughout the book for readers sharp enough to pick them up and "see". Fascinating, but I don't think so.

Another read in the March 2023 issue, about the French and le wokisme. That on the Woke issue the French come down in a different place from us, wanting to avoid the Woke firestorm that establishes identities and sets them against each other politically and socially, counter to the French determination for equality as the foundation of their republic; yet to ignore differences denies current events, a head in the sand danger to their secular society today in a flood of Muslim immigrants whose culture increasingly seems to have no place in egalitarian French society. Will France live its ideal, or will France follow the United States into divisive blocs of irreconcilable hatreds?

Sunday afternoon I blogged on that, then suspended it as the writings of an idiot.

Monday morning, yesterday, opened with "On This Day In History" commemorating the Allied saturation bombing of Dresden on February 13, 1945, and surfacing the anguish of that: brutal war crime atrocity of enraged vengeance? or military action in the final push to bring Germany to its knees? With memories and strong feelings, I blogged at length on that, then put it aside suspended - - who cares what I think and what the hell does it matter what I think? I recall, and was personally part of, our vehement hatred of the enemy; yet even Churchill himself afterward had doubts about Dresden.

So instead of finishing and publishing my furiously written blogposts, I edited busily for a while, finally gave up, set them aside suspended, and decided to abide in Time.

Which then, Time again this morning takes my focus to my favorite of C S Lewis' seven Chronicles of Narnia, "The Silver Chair." Favorite because of Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle who, of all characters throughout the Narnia series (well, maybe Reepicheep the Mouse too) symbolizes agapé at its purest and most simple. (No, Aslan had to chastise Reepicheep for his pride, didn't he, but he did come round, didn't he, so IDK). But no, only Puddleglum.

What is Time to me, and why do I try always to capitalize it? I capitalize it because it's all I have: Time is all we have in life, which is short and we haven't much Time. Now 87 looking at 88, I'm more and more mindful of Time, which often puts me in the underworld with Puddleglum and the others as, walking a dark corridor deep under the earth, they come upon a figure sleeping in a crevice in the cave wall.

Who is that? one of them asks.

"That is old Father Time, who was once a King in Overland," said the Warden. "And now he has sunk down into the Deep Realm and lies dreaming of all the things that are done in the upper world. Many sink down, and few return to the sunlit lands. They say he will wake at the end of the world."

They say he will wake at the end of the world. Brings to mind St Paul and his trumpet sounding and everybody rising into the air to meet Jesus for judgment. Mixing theology and astronomy (and ignoring humanity's self-destructive bent toward global apocalypse any moment), with Earth lasting maybe another two billion years before the end, it's a long Time to sleep in Jesus. At the End of Days, as I float there among the clouds waiting my turn with untold other billions of living and resurrected dead, maybe He will have forgotten most of my sins. Or maybe by then they won't seem as bad to Him as I feared them to have been in my Time?

At least, I was determinedly never Certain of anything.

IDK. Yesterday as we sat down to noon dinner, we opened Linda's phone and found out that another dear friend had died.

Time.