A sleepless interlude.
“Here we do not conceded one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion…” – Anthony Esolen
I’ve met Esolen, follow him, admire him. It is the middle of the night and I’ve opened commercial mail in which his is among the blurbs promoting a prescription to a particular Christian magazine (Touchstone)
I don’t need anymore magazines. But I do need to read statements like that, defining the rancid culture — in which sentimentality and brutality reign conterminously — in which we now live and breath and will wind up having to have our beings if we don’t fight ourselves free of the muck.
It is 1:44 a.m. as I begin this, May 19. The month is speeding past, the windchime is tinkling in the carport, for we are experiencing, these days, very strong breezes that are part of a weather system warding off the inevitable Florida humidity.
May. Mary’s month. Spring. But in Florida, it is just another month happening to begin with “M” in this seamless place of hot traffic.
My car was damaged trying to squeak by the moving truck that partially blocked my driveway as a new person moved in next door. She is a nice person who wound up locking herself out, twice, through no fault of her own but due to a faulty lock. I sat with her while she waited for the locksmith.
All this happened day before yesterday. My car probably sustained thousands of dollars in damage in the blink of an eye. I can’t afford to fix it.
It is an interlude. I’m in turmoil. Why? Why not? Failing to appreciate life, which is a sin.
It ain’t about the car. It’s about being in prison.
Chose not to go to the Wednesday “meeting” — stayed up in Palm Harbo at a friends, having dinner and reading my magazines.
I shouldn’t have missed that meeting. Grace is happening there.
As the 20th Century was drawing to a close, novelist, philosopher literary hero Walker Percy, from his Louisiana literary duck blind, evaluated that last century as follows:
“It is the most scientifically advanced, savage, democratic, inhuman, sentimental, murderous century in human history.”
It was the gateway to THIS century, now well-advanced, in which the savagery, some semblance of democracy, inhumanity, sentimentality and murder continue.
I wait for the deliverance of sleep. I ask God’s forgiveness for my angry, lazy, savage inhumanity.
These fragments I shore against my ruins…………
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the heart (and mind) of this faithless one.
It’s Thursday
19 Cent Notebook 