New Lights…

The new lights that break in on us are not always the lanterns of burglars.

Quoted by Hugh Schonfield, The Lost “Book of the Nativity of John” Edinburgh: T&T Clark 1929 and attributed to Rev. S. Baring-Gould

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times…

What is the state of things on planet earth? As Dylan said in his “Song to Woody” 
Seems sick and it’s hungry, it’s tired and it’s torn
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ and it’s hardly been born 
Oh planet earth, so tired and old from blood and death, torture and injustice, waste and poverty, ignorance and oppression. Yet I believe things infinitely BETTER in our time than at any other time in history. All the indices one could point to are slowly arching toward truth, justice, and a more kind and equitable world of peace and goodness. It seems slow but if you could somehow gauge any other time in the past you would be stunned at the progress. The 100 years War. The Thirty Years War for that matter. And wars through the ages beyond calculation. The Inquisition. Crusades. Slavery. Child abuse. Denigration of women. Rich over poor. Genghis Khan…I am being random here, jumping from this to that, traversing millennia. No one could possible take it all in. Not to mention the tragedies of “Nature,” with millions starved, frozen, crushed, drowned, or otherwise wiped out with this or that disaster, plague, or disease. We historians know this. That does not diminish in the least the personal tragedies, injustice, waste, and evil, that happen close to us and all around us and touch our lives. We mourn and hurt and cry and try to turn back to our individual lives, trying to make this world a “better place” in some way large or small. Sounds trite but as one gets older–and yes, I am beyond your three-score and ten–one realizes what Dylan expresses in his incomparable song, both lyrics, music and his uniquely haunting voice, “Every Grain of Sand.” Listen and feel the message. Short of a decent sized astroid hitting, a nuclear winter, or our climate going into complete chaos, we can have hope. 
In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

The One Christian Doctrine with Empirical Proof…

Today is both Holocaust Remembrance Day and National Prayer Day. What a month we have had as April passes into May. What a decade. What a Century. For all of us on this Pale Blue Dot, far and near, both in time and space…Only images from El Bosco could possibly capture things. No appropriate images for this. One of my colleagues reminded me of Reinhold Niebuhr’s sage observation that total depravity is the only Christian theological doctrine for which we have empirical evidence. Sad but true. Homo Sapiens is only one designation for our species. There are others. All in Latin.