the meaningful future

Only what is contingent is meaningfully future, and only what is contingent on us (singular or plural, as the stance may be) is personally future, meaningfully. The rest of the future, and all of the present, is effectively past.

what is man, though

I was asking myself on the way home from work one of those great Scriptural questions: What is wisdom?  And to my surprise, I find the question answerable, at least in the definitional way of answering.

Wisdom - by which I mean the kind of wisdom that is the subject of the wisdom literature - is the way of careful attentiveness that does not impede productivity.

How to get wise; and if one can; and how to transmit wisdom; and wisdom's domain and limits: these are all questions that such a definition does not address.  But I'm reasonably sure that most people who get wise do so by practicing and surrounding themselves with others who do and by controlling impulses. And that the answer to how wisdom is transmitted is inside that answer of the getting: wisdom is transmitted much as other kinds of strength are transmitted, and to similar extent. That the domain and limits of wisdom are in form those of other forms of strength as well. 

I can say that if the God of the Bible is as portrayed, that Godliness would be the cornerstone of such wisdom. And if not, then not. 

Sunday

Sacred never did mean inviolable.  Sacredness long anticipated the violation, and through the violation, to restoration.  And it is this anticipation through that transcends and sanctifies, falsely or truly.  In one way or another, we all think through the event of death to more, or else devalue individual life.  The latter is a real option, and in some configurations even a respectable one.  But we more often think through to an afterlife, another life, or - more rarely when more than vaguely - a convergence back into the bloodstream of family, state or human history or the path of all life, or something of cosmos.  It is not the impossible correctness but the imperfect effectiveness of all this that may awe us.  And it is one of the arrows of time.  One can reason backwards and forwards in time.  But faith runs only forwards, either towards the future or towards the unknown past, which is a kind of future.

camp fire glory

The old, British television version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a laconic delight from first to last. It is constantly exciting by doing what's supposedly dull. Exposition isn't merely that when the storytelling is so eager, the tales so bold. And the fine actors rise to the challenge of these long passages, relishing the room to unfurl their talent and beckon us in. And in the midst, a glory. Beryl Reid's Connie Sachs. The weeping, comic savant, the alcoholic, lonely lover of "her lovely boys."  Even opposite Alec Guiness's best, she glints with asymmetric tears that shine like the facets of the kind of diamond that we name and think cursed.