August 19, 2008
PDQ
Canon P D Quirk seems to come out of some sort of self-imposed hibernation from time to time. That is, I never hear from him until some hot button issue surfaces (at least, hot for him, if not for others). Then, for some reason unknown to me, here he comes. Why he always singles me out, I’m not sure. I know he must have a friend or a colleague somewhere in his pantheon with whom he could discuss the things that are on his mind. Needless to say, the current tempest in a ciborium (his delightful phrase) rattling the Anglican franchises fits rather precisely his quasispiritual patterns of mind.
Then, there’s our quadrennial electoral cycle for getting ourselves a president, an idea that really annoys him and his Anglophilia, as he says that if the results mean anything at all, it never seems to work all that well. If, indeed, he says, as we claim to be the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth, then how come we’re so up to our red, white, and blue wazoo in debt. And to the Chinese, of all people? If we insist on starting a war that we claim is for everybody’s best interest and rarely is, how come we can’t finish it one way or another? Or, as he said, one time, are wars the only way Americans can learn geography?
I never know what to tell him. Usually, anything I say just hammers him off on another tangent that is hard enough to follow, let alone answer. For the moment, though, he’s currently distracted from the Anglican two-step and back into the presidential wannabe spectrum.
He rang me up the other day and asked how come our greater satraps have all the time got evil on their minds. And why, when they talk about it, is it always somebody else who’s either doing evil or who is inherently evil or who is seesawing on an axis of evil, whatever that is. Why is it that the evil one is never ourselves or better, still, the satraps themselves.
What got next to him the most, was the question about whether or not if one were president would they defeat evil. For one thing, he said, it took Jesus to do that in the first place, and that made it a done deal. The cross put evil in its place once and for all, but that it’s people who keep leaving the door unlocked for evil to come and go as it pleases. All people! he bellowed through the phone. Beside that, God would take care of Satan and all his minions when the final role is called up yonder, as it were.
It’s probably not all that consistent with professional integrity for me to be telling you these things, but I know that somehow you’ll understand. I also hope that letting you in on Quirk and me once in a while might give you some further notions about evil for your own self-understanding and some appreciation for what I am occasionally up against.
No Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos