Thursday
66°F 96% humidity, Wind SSE 12 mph, a more typical January winter day here on the Florida Gulf Coast than the freezing hours we had a couple days recently. Wind is the worst thing about cold weather here, damp and raw.
Hot & black and a little pile of cornbread cubes this dark, early hour. The cornbread has bits of green pepper in it.
Even if the political news is close and appalling, the wars are being expanded and the news is incredibly horrendous on all fronts. Shot down and all killed: a Russian transport plane carrying Ukrainian POWs; in Gaza a UN compound sheltering civilians targeted with disastrous results. Political leaders are - - what's that flower? - - narcissistic and paranoid, dangerous, elected by fools and impossible to dislodge. We hate people who are different from us. There is no morality, and immediate direction of world events seems headed to nuclear exchange, Where will you go to hide? And, especially, Why?
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Sunday's coming:
The Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Old Testament
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Moses said: The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: “If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.” Then the Lord replied to me: “They are right in what they have said. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak—that prophet shall die.”
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It's Lectionary Year B, when for the most part we read Mark. The OT passage is more apt for Matthew and John, who work on Jesus as the prophet whom Moses foretold.
As for the Collect, the theological assertion that God governs all things in heaven and earth - - well, it's nice to say nice things, but it's fraught and comes up against both life as we make it with the governors who are actually on the ground, and life as theodicy confronts it.
As for the Collect's petition, "Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace," why do we ask this of God when as the governing species on earth we so work against peace? God has no hands but our hands to do His work today. Are our prayers only rote to satisfy ourselves that we have done the liturgy, such that our prayers don't confront and frustrate us into seeing them through? Or, maybe what is happening on earth IS God's peace? What do I believe?
Baruch ata, Adonai Eloheinu, melek ha-olam, how do you stand us?
Or have you, as Thomas Hardy conjectures poetically, simply given up on us and moved on?