necessary that the Executive Magistrate be peoples’ guardian
It is necessary then that the Executive Magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, agst. Legislative tyranny, against the Great & the wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily compose the Legislative body. Wealth tends to corrupt the mind and to nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression.*
So said Gouverneur Morris on July 19, 1787 during the debate on the powers of the Executive during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Let’s look at what Mr. Morris said one more time.
The Executive Magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes against Legislative tyranny …
Against the Great & the wealthy who in the course of things will necessarily compose the Legislative body …
Wealth tends to corrupt the mind and to nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression.
Mr. Morris, it should be noted, was one of the richest men on the Colonies but he was also that feller that championed the concept that “While most Americans still thought of themselves as citizens of their respective states, Morris advanced the idea of being a citizen of a single union of states.” (Wikipedia).
Mr. Morris is also credited with writing out the Preamble to the Constituition of the United States.
The part that reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I can see why there are those in the news today who feel this piece of writing is out of date.
know enough to spoil enjoyment – not enough to feel happy themselves
D.M. Lloyd-Jones has a fascinating sermon about this group — an exposition of Mark 8 called “Men as Trees, Walking.” In that sermon (now a chapter in the book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures) there is an account of Jesus touching a blind man to heal him. When Jesus asks him if he can see now, the man replies “I see men as trees, walking” (verse 24, KJV). In other words, he could make out moving forms, but he still could not see clearly. Jesus touched him a second time and his sight was healed completely (verse 25). Lloyd-Jones then argued that the account can serve as a picture of many who seem to have been touched by Christian faith and yet still struggle with it. As a pastor, Lloyd-Jones had talked to many in this spiritual condition. It was hard for him to be sure if they were Christians or not and it was hard for them to say themselves.
“They seem to know enough about Christianity to spoil their enjoyment of the world, and yet they do not know enough to feel happy about themselves … They see and yet they do not see. I think you will agree that I am describing the condition, alas, of large numbers of people.”*
From Reconstructing Faith: Christianity in a New World By Tim Keller (Fall 2022: Gospel-Changed Minds).
The joke I grew up with was that Calvinism was the fear that somewhere, someone was having a good time.
Lots to admire about Mr. Calvin but wasn’t the message of salvation, the message of salvation, the message of Christianity called Good News for a reason?
I would be willing to bet that almost anyone American of a center age can recite, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,” just like Linus did in the Charlie Brown Christmas special.
Good Tidings.
Great Joy.
To ALL People.
A simple message.
A message to be separated from all the noise about being a Christian today.
Good News.
Glad tidings.
Great Joy!
To all people.
Come what may.
*D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure, Eerdmans, 1965, 40.
with holiday pomp autumn Saturdays present a vivid pageant
In the third week in October, the football season opens with the pomp of a major holiday. On these autumn Saturdays the population is sometimes trebled, and the town presents a vivid pageant.”
A description of Ann Arbor from The WPA Guide to Michigan Federal Writers’ Project, 1941.
During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors—many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures—were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison are among the more than 6,000 writers, editors, historians, and researchers who documented this celebration of local histories. Photographs, drawings, driving tours, detailed descriptions of towns, and rich cultural details exhibit each state’s unique flavor.
Alistair Cooke would later write in the preface the companion book to his 13 part TV series, America, that:
“On all my trips, from the late 1930s on, I packed in an orange crate in the trunk of my car the federal guides to all the states I was likely to drive through. These had been written by penurious writers and local historians enlisted under the Writers Program of the government’s Works Projects Administration during the Depression. America, which had had no guidebooks worth the name, suddenly had a library of the best; and it was these unsung historians who put me on to hundreds of places along the road that few tourists had ever heard about.”
there’s thought and no thought paleness and bloom and bustle and pleasure and gloom
A Character by William Wordsworth, 1800.
I marvel how Nature could ever find space For so many strange contrasts in one human face: There’s thought and no thought, and there’s paleness and bloom And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.
There’s weakness, and strength both redundant and vain; Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain Could pierce through a temper that’s soft to disease, Would be rational peace—a philosopher’s ease.
There’s indifference, alike when he fails or succeeds, And attention full ten times as much as there needs; Pride where there’s no envy, there’s so much of joy; And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy.
There’s freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she’s there, There’s virtue, the title it surely may claim, Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name.
This picture from nature may seem to depart, Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart; And I for five centuries right gladly would be Such an odd such a kind happy creature as he.
As printed in The complete poetical works of William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850 Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1904.
I was walking through the Mall of Georgia a few years ago and this young woman came out of a store and told me she had something to show me.
I was with some time on my hands so I went along and she had me sit in a chair and held a mirror in front of me and asked wouldn’t I want to look 10 years youngers.
It was funny as she had asked me to take my glasses off and I had to ask her to hold the mirror in front of my nose so I could see myself.
That was how I always saw myself without glasses.
If I wanted to look at myself in a mirror and if I took my glasses I became an impressionistic painting.
Old man in mall could have been the title of the painting.
Either that way or as an extreme closeup so I no idea really of what I look like without glasses.
I looked at myself in the mirror and said to the young woman that I was pretty much at home with my age and my face so no, I didn’t want to look 10 years younger.
She screwed up her face like no one had every told her what to do if someone said no or that they were at home with their face.
But she played a good game and asked if I wanted to see what I would look like.
I shrugged having nothing better to do.
She picked up a tube and squeezed a dab of this cream onto her finger and the she rubbed that stuff all around my right eye.
She said to wait and all the wrinkles would be gone so we waited and she kept looking at my face.
The stuff burned a little bit and I said I wasn’t that thrilled with the process, especially when she got a little more and rubbed it under my eye.
She stood back and grabbed the mirror for me to see myself and again I couldn’t see without my glasses.
“Sir”, she said, “almost all your wrinkles are gone.”
Then she look hard at under my eye.
“Except for this one here, I don’t get it,” she said.
Oh that, I said.
“That’s not a wrinkle. That’s a scar.“
She jumped back and looked at me.
“A scar?”
“Really?”
“Really.“
That took even more off her game but she came back and tried to tell me how much better I looked but I wasn’t buying it.
Especially something at $300 a tube and wore off in a couple of hours.
But I quoted the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson that when a person gets old, they get the face they deserve.
She thought about that and looked at me and look at my scar and kind shook her head.
“You really aren’t interested are you?” she asked.
And we chatted for a few minutes.
She was a recent immigrant from Russia and she loved America and Americans and now she had met someone who was a little bit different.
But she had other people to grab out of the mall and I had to be some where and I got up andI was walking out of the store when she called me back.
“Sir“, she said, holding out the tube of stuff and pointing at my other eye.
“Don’t you at least want to match?”
I marvel how Nature could ever find space For so many strange contrasts in one human face:
No Haiku For You 