Truth and Wisdom we seek, of which good philosophy and theology are part.  Yet what one finds is amorphous, without solid core and constantly changing; it lingers just out of reach and description and, when defined, doth change leaving the describing words foolish and anathema.  Truly when we write, now is already hence; one can only truly write of then – past and future and by so doing ascribe the recent past and near future to some sense of nowness.   Thus, as the Christian Trinity is a mystery unknowable to humankind, so, too, ‘tis mysterious what to write about times like ours as the winds shift the dunes quickly and what remains is most often a landmark set in ancient times by authors who themselves are become the shifting dunes.

People rage on in baseless fury demanding attention and stomping at fires as unquenchable as the sun, claiming fixed moral fortitude and superiority supporting ends they say justify immoral means laying bare their thirst for power.  The world ripens and rots with power’s inevitable corruption as though somehow many voices make lies true, and bedfellows make evident bestial absurdities not of mankind and animal, but of mankind and the beast, the prince of lies, the ancient adversary, ha-satan.   Truly, in sorrow and lamentation, the Cross and the Fish, they are sometimes his symbols.  Subverted for control of trade no less than the regimented controls of Domitian, these symbols, at times then, now, and in nowness, are sometimes no longer the symbols of love and truth, so my least fond thoughts inveigh when considering would be righteous elements of the right.

Yet, in study and memories one knows that it has always been thus.  That Christendom was not the truth, the life, the way seems clear starting near the start, imbibing the wine of power and vomiting out murderous mobs, misogyny, anti-Semitic purges, enslavement, and all manners of evil in due time.  Strange bedfellows begin sharing the night as Constantine ceased oppression of the Christian, and all other religions, only for our strength to strangle worlds, and the New World, with horrific nightmares unseen by Dante.  Thus ‘twas, thus it stands in the nowness of today, why then am I unwilling to accept that this is an eternal state?

That amorphous undefinable core is ascendant and shifts for that purpose, that is why I resist and why I say prithee resist too.  It shifts and changes, and it moves always towards compassion, love, light, and life.  Somewhere within it lies the truth, the way, the life, of that I am confident, but we cannot know it, not now or near, no, we can only try to find it, and if we seek to contain it, we shall fail and build the vapid kingdom which must fall for perfection cannot be grasped.  That it is, we may know, it may even touch us, but we cannot attain its glory save it bestow understanding upon us.

Thus ends my period of vexation and inability to write, having said many things in few words.  The day will come when we are ready to embrace love and reject bias and hate.  May God speed that day, and give us wisdom and understanding.  As we cultivate our garden, regardless of our beliefs, let us seek to serve each other.  Perhaps that closing line of  Voltaire’s Candide is prophetic, for our best ends are not in high minded philosophy but in each other’s embrace.  In truth, I am because you are.  This is wisdom.