united church

A simple belief in God makes easy that necessary and beautiful conviction of the infinite worth of each individual person, and of the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind. Convictions that are very hard to sustain otherwise. And some forms of religion - often but not always perceived as liberal - are felt, motivated and sustained by exactly this - the facilitation of brotherly love.

hive

To pass above on elevated tracks and see a fenced lot stacked high with yellow-painted taxi cab fenders, doors, hoods - put on me an impression of awe and gave a reflection of dread.

comforting the able

A related point: the more aware a friend is - the more aware of self and others and future prospects - the harder it is to offer comfort beyond sincere love and thoughtful understanding. Most forms of comfort are gentle bamboozlements, but for the alert and able, only love and understanding - and small acts of usefulness - are a balm.

This is fulfilling both for the loving and the loved.

Of course, comforting one who is just shy of aware is the same, with the beautiful addition of explanation. Think of the wonderful relief of a correct diagnosis from a sympathetic doctor or friend.

mitigation cloaked

But mitigations do not inspire - what people want are solutions. So mitigations are often cloaked as solutions. Religions, marriages, politics - innumerable of the good mitigations of each kind have been sold as solutions, adopted as solutions, and done good because they are not solutions - only mitigations.

more unnatural

Modernity is not the problem - the problem is within humanity, is an aspect of human kind, is part of human nature. But real solutions to humanity's core problems are worse than what they (dis)solve. Mitigation is the calling. To tame, entrance, enfeeble, hem, complicate, even harness what is natural but wrong within us each, and about us all.

unnatural

Many things are natural but bad. It is natural but bad to resent one's betters simply for the results of their talents, good fortune or effort. It is natural but bad to seek out those who may be oppressed and oppress them. It is natural, but impolite, to spit on the sidewalk. It is natural, but evil, to kill one's brother in raging jealousy.

That is why the argument that something is natural - or unnatural - carries little weight with me unless it is part of a larger and more sensitive argument. For example, that it is unnatural for old people's knees to flex to the point of fully kneeling is a perfectly sound argument for kneeling benches at the parish church.

permanently tired

When I am very tired I am irritable and dull. Some people are generally irritable and dull. Perhaps some such people are, at bottom, tired all the time, as a basic trait or burden?

Perhaps - but they would have to be more tired than can be addressed by adaptation.

starting march

The end of religion for me was the realization that no truth could sustain the introduction I wanted to give it: "Come we now to the universal core."

But nothing can follow that.

universal

We all take pleasure in the realization that an enemy is stupid or weak. This is not from the increased prospect of prevailing, for we feel it even in learning that a past enemy had been stupid or weak.

But then again perhaps it is the feeling of an increased prospect of prevailing, even though the occurance is past, never to recur: for so much of what we feel is the sensation of an inward play, and in that uncoiling of mental scenario, what's past is here, even as what might be, or what's hoped for, is here.

But what is here, often enough, is merely and flatly here. Daily bread. Quotidian. The alternatives, the glorious present, comes in three forms: the synchronicity of mental scenario and occurrence, which is a realization, or an absence of scenario that leaves us bare within occurrence, which is enrapture, or the sudden change of situation, which is transport.

sharp ascender, bowled decender, reaching tail

-

August

-

What a beautiful word August is, if said at a moderate speed, written with a good hand, or printed from a friendly roman font.

aha

How did I miss it all these years:

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

more eames

Form follows function, but the function of form may be very subtle. In government the manner of conducting deliberations and the like is as important as the policies that emerge. The accouterments - the globe and sword, book and map, raiment and gesture - within a portrait of state may be integral.

twain

The great advantage of shacking up is that it makes not being single easier to imagine: it's an accelleration ramp. This disadvantage is that it obscures the mystery of being two, which is there whether or not wanted, and whether kept sacred or profaned.

comments

Anonymity eases vice, and strips virtue of its rewards.

bald egal

The (relatively) poor are hard to befriend because of their troubles. And so with all those who are encamped with woe: only another wretch may enter in without the smell of charity or superiority.

Where status builds a wall that conceals the charitable or woeful offense, however, friendships are again easy.

glad hand

There is a temptation: to utilize another's uninvited misunderstanding to obtain a result that would not have been agreed if understood. But this is unsafe and usually wrong. The exceptions are generally short term misunderstandings, borne of another's emotional or other objective limitations, that stand athwart agreement and the other's urgent interests.

very well, thank you

The better part of courtesy and social grace is to signal that one is profitable to be near - a source of pleasure and strength, and no burden.

pacific

My potential I must lose, grain by grain.

desire

I would not be without my work, my pleasures, or my friends. Let me have but the means to hold them.

design

The world is not as we would have it and we are not as we yearn to be. This is the genesis of design, which becomes the tense opposite of death, victorious only in the struggle, able finally to achieve only its noble defeat.

On some days this is the happy and industrious sense of doom that lights my way.