I'm a monk-lock

 

Thinking of the arrogantly certitudinous Christian absurdity of "speaking the truth in love," will it cost us our relationship if I tell you a truth? I understand what you are saying, I hear your complaint, I sense your distress, and I feel deeply for you. Maybe this will help in some way: you need to stay aware that you got yourself into this, you got yourself where you are by your own choosing, with full knowledge and awareness of the consequences. Now you have to deal with it, live with it or work your way out of it somehow. 

A principle of ἀγάπη is that we go on loving no matter what, no matter what mistakes or wrongful decisions or sinful actions another does in, with, and to their life. 

This morning I started a new book, quite a thoughtful gift, that I may mention here in Time, but not quite yet. One thing jumped out at me in the first pages, though. Before I get into a book, I always read what the flap on the front cover says about the book, and what the flap on the back cover says about the author, and I look through the table of contents, and I read the foreword and the introduction, so I'm not "in the dark," to get myself in position fully to appreciate the book itself. 

An early line in this book caught me up short because the author said something about himself that I find here: thinking with my fingers. Often I sit down an early morning, open the computer, tune in to B for Blogger, tap New Post and free the dancing fingers to start tippy-typing. Sometimes when it's done and ready to press Publish, I look it over and realize that the fingers typed it while I was off doing something else. So, my +Time blog has any number of unpublished blogposts, some of them pretty stupid, nomesane? 

Because I don't believe the same things that you believe, and because we don't agree on anything political, and because you sometimes do foolish things that lead my fingers and mind down some thorny path off the main road, some of my unpublished blogpost drafts could be hurtful to people I care about who care about me. Or, bad, worse, worst, tell things about myself that I hold close. So, I type them, or the dancing fingers do, and then, reading them and horrified, leave them in the limbo that Blogger calls Draft. Maybe my Executor or Personal Representative will read and publish them, IDK.

Why have I wandered off into this swamp? Some mornings I read the comics online. We no longer have the PCNH delivered to the 7H door, and when we did all I read was the comics, because I don't like someone else choosing what's "News" - - I'll decide for myself. But all the comics are available online free, daily. So, some mornings I check several. Sometimes a few others, but always "Calvin and Hobbes" and "The Far Side" because they are on the front page of the comics website. Before Scott Adams said something stupid and got Cancelled, "Dilbert" was a major favorite because for years I'd worked in the same offices with all the same idiots. 

Again, what brought me here? Calvin and Hobbes this morning, triggered this entire blogpost. As a boy at Cove School there was the lock and key. I'll say "lock" and you say "key" okay? Okay.

I'm a gold lock

I'm a gold key.

I'm a silver lock. 

I'm a silver key. 

I'm a copper lock.

I'm a copper key.

I'm a monk lock.

It didn't work on me, because a life resolve is to think before I open my mouth. 

Which means that I don't say much.

Which resolve itself hasn't always worked. I remember once at a clergy conference (this was years ago, Charles Duvall was our bishop at the Time), it was a clergy and wife (spouse) conference, and we were having an open discussion about whether our diocese should vote to confirm the election of a particular person as bishop. There were all these Episcopal comments about why that person was not qualified to be a bishop and should not be confirmed, the wrong education and such; and all these pious, politically-correct counter comments about why the person should be affirmed anyway. Listening, at the wrong point I stood up and expounded profanely about the person's fringe political and social views, and used one of my bad words. There was a gasp of horror, and stunned silence, and the bishop adjourned the conference for recess while tempers cooled; and when we reconvened I stood up and apologized. I try to watch my mouth, but now and then I respond to the Monk-locks by making a Monk-key of myself in spite of me.

It's Friday. I've been up since dark early, did my thinking, reading, and typing, and am dozing off mindlessly.

Hoping this finds you the same.

RSF&PTL

T88&c