Divine help

I used to believe that with divine help which is available to you through genuine pleading and honest effort on your part - you can achieve peace, understanding and love between yourself and yours and your neighbours. Now I've come to believe that the latter is impossible and the former is still necessary - not to achieve perfect love, but to avoid a total schism, conflit and murder. And you're lucky if you manage to.

Egalitarianism - Freedom - Christianity

Juergen Habermas said in an interview given in the late 1980s:

"For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk."

Hitler's Pope?

From Wikipedia:

"Five years after the publication of Hitler's Pope, Cornwell wrote: "I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following Hitler's Pope, that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany."

The Judgement Method

I use the judgement method to develop my ideas. I quickly make a judgement after learning something about an issue - and express it. That expressed opinion, very often a strong one, gives me a stimulus further to investigate and relfex on the issue. This approach is riddled with risk, but it makes topics, views, philosophies involved personal and exciting.

The PR folly

Simon Jenkins has just summed up well the proportional representation: first you vote, then you learn who you voted for, and finally you get the manifesto.

Gods interenve

In an article in a Catholic weekly I read that one of the 'secret' Fatima prophecies claims that Mary, mother of Jesus, diverted a bullet aimed at a holy man and thus saved his life. The mas is supposed to be Pope John Paul II. It struck me that this is exactly how - if not for the same reasons and with the same intentions - ancient gods were believed to intervene, and be able to intervene, in the lives of mortals. Strangely perhaps, this realisation made me feel more respect for the anctient rather than lessen my faith in the Christianity.

Thank Heavens!

I went today to church expecting just a litany there (it's May). There was a mass, too. Fine - I have nothing against the Mass - as an enthusiastic, orthodox Catholic. But the priest decided to read an extensive biographical article about a prominent local priest. It went on for too long and gave too much info in a too cold church. When the priest read: ''he died at the age ...", I found myself murmuring "Thank heavens!''.

I'm visiting some relatives in the country and get another lesson in priorities. The house is ugly, the style should be getting me down (but fortunately I don't care much - can switch off my 'style sensor'), a lot of the attitude on display saddens me, but just as I was considering making a judgement I ask my relative's son (whom I considered completely talentless academically and socially-challenged) a few questions. He (13) turns out to be an ancient history buff and after half an hour of a conversation during which my jaw had a consistent downward trend, I find out that he not only knows more than me about that period (and I know quite a lot), but also has a good grip on universal history and world's geograpy. What's more he makes a lot of right connections in his mind about what he knows and asks a lot of good questions.

To embarass me more, in the eventing my cousin asks me if I could join them in the evening prayer, which I do and ask for more wisdom to never judge on trivialities (style, language, accidental features), but just on aspirations.

This is what I'd like to say to my son about religion, morality and freedom of choice:
religion and its commandments, strictures, etc. do limit your 'choice' in a certain way.
But they also prepare you for a very important choice further (or quite close for some of us) down the line.

Think of it in this way: imagine you're playing a strategic computer game. On the one hand it's fun to be able to make all possible mistakes, explore all the available paths, make all - even the most extreme - mistakes. On the other hand, what if there's a time limit. Would you reject tips from someone who's gone through all the levels. Not detailed instructions - there would be still room for experimenting, mistakes or individual approach. But the kind of tips that could save you precious minutes and points right at the end where you'd be getting behind time probably.
Now imagine that you're told that you're playing for your life. Would you then reject the tips for the sake of some experiences, explorations that could not only prove useless, boring or hurting - both you and others - but also cost you the ultimate price.

The repentant villain on the cross .... (he must have prepared to ask Jesus what he did)

Worn out English

'It's absolutely seriously delicious!', I've just heard. This is the kind of English - and kind of the English - I detest. The result of overuse and absuse of the language; the exhaustion that leads to such artificial contraptions, where one good word 'tasty' or 'nice', perhaps with an addition of 'very' doesn't work any more, because it has been worn out on stupid, trivial and empty things and situations.

Where Have All The Bright Boys Gone?

I imagined today some men I know - friends, acquantances or people I heard of or saw once or two - that have ended up in some kind of mess (but then, you may ask, who does not?), a kind of obvious, conspicuous mess: debt, drink, broken marriage and family, drugs. And many of them can at times be bright, compassionate, reasonable, loving.

Where did all go wrong? Why did their weaknesses got the upper hand in their lives?

Then I imagined them as altar boys, who come back home after the Sunday mass and - sometimes bored, but at other times genuinely interested and intrigued - listen to their old respecatble uncle (who's a former soldier and now a parish council member) who tells them old stories with a moral; they roll their eyes up when their mother reprimands them about their table manners, but they noticed that the girls at school notice their good and cultivated behaviour.

There is also a sense of guilt and discomfort when they breach the rules that their relatives, family friends and priests preach (rules that many of the 'preachers' break themselves - the boys know), but decades later they may have been grateful for instilling in them such feelings....

But it is a past that wasn't. They sit now lonely in a cheap rented room, far away from their families, drink - between three of them - a second bottle of vodka before 1pm and between the jokes, old stories get glimses of the past and present that could be and is not.

My life arch

I had this vision the other day:

I walk under this great arch, like a triumphal arch. I look up at the reliefs on it. There are scenes of tragic event, people being hurt, tormented. There is a man shown time after time doing something hurtful, wrong or evil. And it's all about me and my life.

The approach and then passage under the arch takes a painfully long time. There is strange light around and the atmosphere is heavy. It's difficult to breathe for some reason. I don't know if I will make it to the other side.

But somehow I do - I walk under the arch and find myself on the other side. I keep walking as I want to get away from the arch as far as possible, as soon as possible. But I turn round to take the last look.

And - to my surprise and relief - I see different kind of scenes here: of when I was kind, helpful and right.

'Evil can be bookish'

A few good quotes I heard recently:

'Evil can be bookish' (Today, Radio 4, item on Molotov's library)

If you want to give someone truth, you'd better be funny!

['What's happened to all the money invested in Island?'] [An Islandic banker or politician:] 'It's in money heaven!'

Certain strength

I believe there you can acquire certain strength of intellect if you grow up in the country. It may come from all the moments when it was only you, the nature and your thoughts. No noise of the streets, no crowd around you, no constant running into friends, acquaintances or simply other people. No endless temptations of events, places, opportunities. Just you, the nature and your thoughts.

You learn to hear them clearly and make your way throught them, as you walk along the country lanes, to their conclusion, because you are not interrupted by what people in towns and cities constantly are: places to go, people to meet, things to do, or worse - buy.

There’s more: the thoughts you think lead you somehow to the wisdom that transcends your garden, your village, your neighbours, the country and the world.
You begin to make out the voices that once were so faint in your mind: those of past men who left all those wise things you now and then had a glimpse of.

The voices become clearer and sentences longer and more intriguing and convincing. At some point, another voice, whisper rather reaches you. Although quiet, it has some unexplained incredible force. Could it be ...