Quotations

Sunday 2nd May, 2021

Another of those days of mixed weather conditions. I started with a streamed Mass from Canada. The sermon was about faith and the way it structured our lives. My recall is of the story the priest began with. A man orders a tree house online. It comes. He unwraps it and spreads the pieces to be assembled on his floor and picks up the instructions. After the usual mystification, puzzling and irritations he realises he does not have the pieces of a tree house but of a sailing boat. He sends off a furious email to the company. Back comes an apology and a promise to rectify. The email then notes that he might like to amuse himself by wondering how a man in a tree house is sailing the local lake! Faith is the manual, I presumed. Whatever it fitted in with my continuing to read the book on how Christians are to survive and grow and give example in this post Christian world where they are seen as detrimental, prejudiced and discriminatory and bigoted by many. Trust in God certainly echoes through my mind. Faith holds me together but my fears are about my knowledge of God and of Christ. Is my faith a faith in Jesus or is it an idol of my own making?

The sun appeared by 11.30am so I took the opportunity to get out. I went on one of my usual routes but in reverse. I came across a man with his wife, daughter and grand daughter. He had a litter grabber like mine. 'Snap,' he shouted, 'here are the Wombles reassembling'. We had a chat and I moved on. It was a glorious walk but the first part was all up hill and I recognised my age. Two runners came passed and waved. I gnash end my teeth! Otherwise I had a lovely walk in the woods and across the hill too with no one else about. The views were, as ever, breathtaking. I came down in to the back of the village and in to the local Private Park. I passed two mothers and there three children and was pointed out as 'that good man doing such good work'. The children seemed unimpressed but the dog seemed chuffed. I went down to the lake and found a Grand Mother, her son and grand daughter in a pram. They were feeding the ducks. To my delight the six ducklings were there. I noted their fierce protective mother as she saw off two drakes getting too close. Marvellous. I had feared their demise. On I went and came across the two women and three children again. 'The good man' a little girl shouted and I chased her with my grabber and she screamed with delight and the other two joined the game. 'Not a good man,' said the little boy, laughing. I ended my walk having emptied three bags of litter.

I read some Rod Dreher and noted the quotations from Alexis de Tocqueville: he was convinced that democracy would not survive the loss of Christian Faith, which gave it structure and a moral framework and a social glue. Faith drew men outside themselves and taught them that laws must be firmly rooted in a moral order revealed and guaranteed by God. I so agree for otherwise it is each for himself, for his own interest, his own definitions of social rules. If all we have is a society galvanised by self interest we have no society.

By 17.00 the rain had come, the day had gone cold and I was in need of a mug of tea and an easy book where bad men are beaten by good men. I am a romantic. Somehow the promises of Christ give me hope and hope gives me stamina and stamina gives me the desire to be loving and of service to others. I go back to St Paul...we are all responsible to all for all. Without that outside reality there is no place for hope.