It’s a dull pain. More gnawing than throbbing.
In your light we see light
My head hurts. My heart aches. It’s a dull pain. More gnawing than throbbing.
We have a new President in America. I didn’t vote for him. He pardoned people who assaulted police officers. But just before he did that the outgoing President pardoned a guy who murdered two FBI agents.
I watched them say goodby to each other. It’s on YouTube.
It’s a dull ache.
For I am but a sojourner with you, *
a wayfarer, as all my forebears were. (Ps 39:14)
I like to make sense of things. At least in my head. But my head hurts. So, I haven’t read all the articles in the New York Times about yesterday’s events. I now see how 18 year olds believe they get all the news they need by seeing the headlines on TikTok.
The US Flag
Peter R Kohli wrote this in the comments section of the Free Press this morning. “Until a couple of months ago mine was the only house in my development that had the US flag. Everyone else had either non serious flags such as welcome to spring or the Ukrainian flag but never the US flag. At the polling station in November a neighbour saw me and said I know who you’re voting for, I guess just based on me flying the American flag. But after the election there are now American flags on other homes.”
In a cabinet in my living room there are three small flags sitting together.
I’ve often wondered at the same thing Mr. Kohli did. Why did those who so love their freedom not fly the flag?
Revitalize
“We live in serious times, and we have two paths, and we can and should argue about the particulars, the policies, the legislation, who is best fit to lead, but we should be crystal clear about the stakes. Either we succumb to our proliferating woes, or we revitalize our institutions, right the ship, become the country that will enable future human beings to colonize the solar system, achieve ourselves, reclaim what for so long has felt God-given.” That’s Peter Savodnik in the Free Press, “Trump Is Uncool. And That’s a Good Thing.”
I care deeply about America. I’ve aways been patriotic. For some people it was not cool to be a card carrying member of the Socialist Party (you know Debs, Thomas and Harrington) and also fly the flag. And I read that paragraph by Savodnik and I know that’s why I have this dull ache.
When his family heard it,
they went out to restrain him,
for people were saying,
“He has gone out of his mind.”
(Mark 3:21)
Richard Holloway (one-time Presiding Bishop of Scotland) reminded me that piety was “A kind of fondness or love, a recognition of what you owe the land that bred you,” A duty, a response, to your parents, your nation and God.
Is this some turning point? So nasty and wrong in many ways. But maybe the turning of a page. I don’t know. Neither do you.
But I do believe, that in the nation and in our church, we have maybe been too cool. Too laid back and aloof. The Episcopal Church is half the size it was when I was young and we just won’t ponder that. And our country is divided between two poles, each certain of its purity.
So, a dull pain. More gnawing than throbbing.
Later today I’ll join others from the Order of the Ascension in a parish development clinic. We’ll explore how the revitalization of institutions takes place and we’ll say Evening Payer.
For with you is the well of life, *
and in your light we see light. (Ps 36:9)
This abides,
Brother Robert, OA
On the Feast of Agnes & Cecilia, Martyrs at Rome, 304 & c.230