Recently I had my big toenails removed, so I started the day daubing hydrogen peroxide on the wounds. Then, letting my toes air out, I brewed some coffee. I experimented, for 15 seconds on High nuking a square of Dove dark chocolate in a third of a cup of coffee. Then I read a few psalms, 11-14, and John 6, “I am the Bread of Life.”
I’ve divided my NT & Pss into sections: gospels, epistles, psalms, ps 119. Three or four times a day (ideally) I read first a psalm or two, then either a gospel or epistle chapter. Each time I finish ten psalms, I read a page of ps 119. (This system doesn’t do justice to the Hebrew Bible as a whole.)
To a degree I put my brain in neutral as I read. Trained in the critical method, I have all the tools for vivisecting the Word at the ready. But this isn’t that. This is simply soaking in the Word, letting words and phrases I’ve known all my life wash over me—being still that I might know.
I check on day’s events through msnbc.com, mostly, reading at random for a few minutes. What’s happening I don’t understand, unless it’s as simple as it seems: the Selfishness at the heart of Capitalism run amok. How else could you explain a man who thinks making $500 million reasonable while his company vanishes in debt?
Can you afford Hope in such a time?
Or do we now have proof that both Communism and Capitalism are unworkable economic models, and there isn’t a good one out there?
I’m not a good enough economist even to know how to ask the question.
Nor do I know enough about political science to know what to make of recent events. We’ve elected an eloquent, informed, idealistic man to be President. (Oh, yeah, and that other thing.)
Will we let him govern?
Or will we play the game so popular in Washington D.C.: in rare event something good occurs, take credit for it; spend most of your time and energy in negative mode, blaming everything on everybody else. The bibble babble of Democracy grinding to a sound byte, while Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee point fingers and say “‘Twas he.”
Or, amazing things may happen.
Maybe it’s the chocolate.
Maybe it’s eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Christ.
Maybe it’s Hope.
Photo by Mary Fran