Category: A New Dark Age

2.24.2025 – what Psalms do for me

what Psalms do for me
express same delight in God
which made David dance

The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express that same delight in God which made David dance.

I am not saying that this is so pure or so profound a thing as the love of God reached by the greatest Christian saints and mystics.

But I am not comparing it with that, I am comparing it with the merely dutiful “church-going” and laborious “saying our prayers” to which most of us are, thank God not always, but often, reduced.

Against that it stands out as something astonishingly robust, virile, and spontaneous; something we may regard with an innocent envy and may hope to be infected by as we read.

From Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis (Geoffrey Bles Ltd, London, 1958).

You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,

in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.

But the king will rejoice in God;
all who swear by God will glory in him,
while the mouths of liars will be silenced.

From Psalm 63.

2.22.2025 – acted lawlessly

acted lawlessly
attempted to mask this fact
semblance procedure

“Defendants have acted lawlessly, but have attempted, after the fact, to mask this fact with a semblance of following procedure,” city Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant wrote in a complaint filed in federal court.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams filed a lawsuit Friday against President Donald Trump and others in his administration over $80 million the White House removed from a city bank account without permission, after Elon Musk threatened the withdrawal on X.

From the article, Eric Adams sues Trump over missing $80M by Joe Anuta in Politico.

Happy George Washington’s Birthday to you too.

2.21.2025 – you might think we had

you might think we had
won a major victory
instead … betraying

While the returning Prime Minister’s car was surging through hysterical crowds, a French window opened beside me and the Deputy Under Secretary, Sir Orme Sargent, stepped on to the balcony. He surveyed the scene below with dislike and disdain. “You might think’, he said to me, ‘that we had won a major victory instead of betraying a minor country’. Then, after a pause, as the window opposite opened and it was clear that Chamberlain was expected to say a few words, Sargent added: ‘I can bear almost anything provided he doesn’t say it is Peace with Honour’.

Meanwhile, as I subsequently learned, Chamberlain was greeted by his loyal and elated staff at the end of the long red-carpeted passage which runs from the front door of No. 10 to the Cabinet Room, and he said that in response to the clamour outside he must go up to the first floor window — Dizzy’s bedroom — and say a few words. It was then that Mrs. Chamberlain put the words into his mouth : ‘Tell them’, she said, ‘that you have brought back peace, but not just peace — peace with honour’. Tell them he did, and as the crowd roared in applause Sir Orme Sargent turned on his heel, closed the French window behind him and left me alone on the balcony.

Two years passed and I was myself a Private Secretary at No. 10. Disliking the unfresh air of the Central War Room, where a bedroom deep under ground was available to me, I contrived to have a bed provided in the large and now empty room from which first Disraeli and then Neville Chamberlain had sent their words echoing round the country and the world. Honour we still had, in abundance ; but Peace was only a memory and night after night the bombs in their hundreds devastated London. Early in 1941 the blast from one of them shattered the famous window as I pushed my head under the bed clothes to avoid the shower of glass.

2.20.2025 – cars went past, paused

cars went past, paused
obedient to traffic lights
suspended lidless

Based on the passage, “Again in brilliant sunlight he walked westward down the main street of the town. Cars went past or paused at intersections, obedient to the traffic lights suspended between poles, the lidless glare of red and green, the momentary blink of amber, relaying the orders of some central brain, peremptory, electric, and unthinking.”

In the novel, Jordan County, by Shelby Foote (Dial Press, New York, 1954).

You can see it can’t you.

Cars stopping, pausing.

Obedient to the lights suspended between poles.

The orders of some central brain, peremptory, electric, and unthinking.

I have long thought that the first signs of the revolution would be when folks started to just ignore traffic signs, stoplights, four way stops.

The basic part of everyday, that requires cooperation, playing by the rules.

I always thought it would start at the bottom and work its way up.

Never ever did I think that the rot would start at the top and work its way down.

Another lesson from nature and our own version of acid rain.