Inauguration...

Wednesday 20th January, 2021

Apart from pondering for a moment the departure of Trump as President of the USA I also said a prayers for Biden. What a hellish task for anyone.

Today has been dominated by two subjects. First memory and then faith. I received a long email from an old friend after fifteen years. He was reminiscing on certain subjects and brought up incidents and happenings which I totally failed to recall. At one point he said that in 2001 I called myself Kermit the Frog. He then spoke of an interview I had had with a National newspaper and again I failed to connect. I recalled a family holiday which in speaking and reminiscing of it later within the family my two brothers and I had totally different memories even to the point that they said it was sunny all week and I recalled rain. I would have sworn to that is a Court of Law. As would they.

I remember reading Proust and 'A la recherche du temps perdu' wherein he tastes a piece of Madeleine cake and is flooded with images and rememberances. What we suppress, what we recall, what we forget is an absolute mystery. Yet some people have a photographic memory and know every jot and tittle of something. So when I argue a point or recall sayings and promises and ideas of others I must learn to be humble and not absolute.

Then I tuned in to Klavan's Episode 5 of Young Heretics. It was about C.S.Lewis a man Klavan considered to be the greatest intellectual of the 20th century. It was utterly compelling. Lewis fought in World War 1. He saw the hell of suffering, degradation as well as courage and yet purposelessness. He was an atheist. In World War 2 he volunteered again but was refused so became a man to shelter refugee children. It was during the late 20s and early 1930s that he became a Christian along with such luminaries as Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, T.S.Eliot and G.K.Chesterton. It was during the second war that he gained fame as he spoke and broadcast in public. He wished to counteract the whole world of debunking anything but the animal, the material. He had a 'literary conversion' not a conversion through proof. It was about understanding the Truth. How to express the truth as we experience it. It was an interpretation of the world. It was J.R.Tolkein who persuaded him the Christianity was the true myth. Klavan concentrated on 'The Abolition of Man' and 'The Weight of Glory'. I have not read them but have read such books as The Problem of Pain and Mere Christianity and some of the Narnia stories. Lewis understood God in the context of man knowing there was more than the visible or material. He wrote of the great Moral Principles of the world. To me it was convincing for I too know there is more than just this!

It drizzled all day but I dashed out with litter grabber to post a letter. I walked for a mere twenty minutes and was soaked but it was worthwhile as I needed to shake down my huge lunch and breath on my thoughts.

On my return Biden was President. And a friend sent me a missive showing the first vaccine injection of a refugee in Jordan. I was born in that great Country and love that great people. How would it go down here in Great Britain if a refugee was injected before others! God help us for there are greater things than 'me, me and me'.