Like many 80 year old’s I am each day feeling more that I am losing my grip on life…I mean, not in the physical sense about the body, but rather by forgetfulness, etc., that I no longer have a firm grip on daily life things.
I got a good image in prayer: “Losing your grip on life; grab onto the hand of Jesus.”
I got a good image in prayer: “Losing your grip on life; grab onto the hand of Jesus.”
“Dementia” as liberation?
I Mean the type of semi-dementia or incipient dementia that gave me the idea for this phase of my Blog –
“Ruminations of a Demented Pseudo-Nun.”
In any case the liberation part came when signing over access to my
Checking Account and Debit Card to my granddaughter, Jenny,
with whom I am living now in Hot Springs!
“Ah,” I thought “I will never absolutely have to sign a check again!”
“The Romanticism” of Utopianism and also Zealotry?
In the course of desultory reading of books that happen to be around my granddaughter’s home, I came upon an autobiography of a famous woman union leader of the early 20th century: Mother Jones. The industrial conditions she describes I had known about only as generalities, not as eye-witness descriptions of children of 4-6 years old’s trained to crawl under dangerous machines to fix things to avoid danger for the parental generation! Mother Jones paraded the mutilated children on the stage at rallies to solicit new members for the unions.
Of course, I could see why union leaders risked and often lost their lives protesting such realities!
But, then, I thought, Mother Jones could never have imagined how anti-capitalist followers of Marx would wind up creating totalitarian states far worse all over the world!
Because we know how horrible Communism is in practice, does that mean that the evils of industrialism didn’t exist? No!
Of course, I could see why union leaders risked and often lost their lives protesting such realities!
But, then, I thought, Mother Jones could never have imagined how anti-capitalist followers of Marx would wind up creating totalitarian states far worse all over the world!
Because we know how horrible Communism is in practice, does that mean that the evils of industrialism didn’t exist? No!
Is this why Jesus didn’t become a Zealot against the terrible injustices of Roman conquest? Because He knew that no matter what would replace the Roman Empire, it, also, would have terrible evils of injustice?
Is that why we pro-lifers decided to follow the example of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. in passive resistance vs. all out violent war against abortionists?
So, underlying all of this, I am thinking: Even though fighting violently against injustice can sometimes be right and be part of the vocation God has for some of us – as in the motives for war against Hitler, etc. – still we cannot exalt hatred of injustice to the raison-d’etre of our lives.
I went to confession for years of hatred of the enemies, without and within of our Church. The priest, a serene Asian Indian pastor, suggested that even if we can be right we cannot know the deepest intent of those whose ideas and actions we deplore, so we need mostly to pray and lean on God’s mercy.
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