Saturday, March 9, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Killers of the flower moon
Rich man, poor man
Beggar man, thief
Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy
Just watched the movie and fell into the history of it, and the truth of it, and the personality of it. And I thought of the book by John LeCarre and the old nursery rhyme discovered by A. A. Milne
And what about a ploughman or a keeper at the zoo,
Or what about a circus man who lets the people through?
Or the man who takes the pennies on the roundabouts and swings,
Or the man who plays the organ or the other man who sings?
Or what about the rabbit man with rabbits in his pockets
And what about a rocket man who’s always making rockets?
Oh it’s such a lot of things there are and such a lot to be
That there’s always lots of cherries on my little cherry tree
Milne … and then the song, Bob Dylan’s song, about serving SOMEbody
you may be a businessman or some high-degree thief
They may call you doctor or they may call you chief
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes, you are
You’re gonna have to serve somebody (serve somebody)
And this is where the movie left me, deposited on top of a hill of beans, calling out the name of that owl – the sign of death, oncoming, incoming, a foreboding, a fear, a premonition. A presentiment that can not be ignored.
Who you gonna call?
Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.
Was that the guy named William Hale? Or is it simply me? Surely, both and all of us. Mr. Hale wrote a letter from his prison cell to the four local newspapers, which said:
“JUDGE NOT! The vilest criminal may rightfully be allowed to prove his innocence by a jury of his peers. Judge not!”
Perhaps Mr. Hale did NOT fall into understanding of his own guilt, even within his own soul. God’s love prevails, and that’s the truth even if we can’t comprehend it. As for my own guilt, implicit, complicit, personal, corporate?
In The Problem of Pain C.S. Lewis calls this corporate thing “a re-awakening of our social conscience. We feel ourselves to be involved in an iniquitous social system and to share a corporate guilt.”
But your piety is like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away.
He also cautions himself and us not to be too quick about this, and run the risk of forgetting our own personal sin, “those hum-drum, old-fashioned guilts of your own which have nothing to do with ‘the system’ and which can be dealt with without waiting for the millennium.”
It is easy to fall into despair, the pit that swallows and does not belch up. Woe is me. I am undone.
Come, let us return to the Lord, because though it is he who has torn us to pieces, it is he who will heal us. He has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds.
This world is not our home, we’re just a’passin’ through
Our treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
The angels beckon us from heaven’s open door
And we can’t feel at home in this world anymore
(Hosea 6, Psalm 51, Psalm 95, Luke 18)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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