Rootlessness

     First, some thematic music:

Now it's been 25 years or more
I've roamed this land from shore to shore
From Tyne to Tamar, Severn to Thames
From moor to vale, from peak to fen
Played in cafes and pubs and bars
I've stood in the street with my old guitar
But I'd be richer than all the rest
If I had a pound for each request
For "Dueling Banjos," "American Pie"
It's enough to make you cry
"Rule Britannia" or "Swing Low"
Are they the only songs the English know?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
They're never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots
They need roots

After the speeches when the cake's been cut
The disco's over and the bar is shut
At christening, birthday, wedding or wake
What can we sing until the morning breaks?
When the Indian, Asian, Afro, Celt
It's in their blood below the belt
They're playing and dancing all night long
So what have they got right that we've got wrong?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots
We need roots

And haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England
Haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England

We need roots
We need roots

Now the minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells
Well I've got a vision of urban sprawl
It's pubs where no one ever sings at all
And everyone stares at a great big screen
Overpaid soccer stars, prancing teams
Australian soap, American rap
Estuary English, baseball caps
And we'd all be ashamed before we'd walk
Of the way we look and the way we talk
Without our stories or our songs
How will we know where we come from?
I've lost St. George and the Union Jack
That's my flag too and I want it back

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots
We need roots

And haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England
Haul away boys, let them go...

     [With thanks to Tom Kratman, who first exposed me to this quintessentially English song.]

     I’d guess that most people alive today don’t think much about their roots. Indeed, they might reject the concept, at least if it applies to anything beyond their own families. But there was a time when the traditional concept of roots as including one’s neighborhood, its institutions, and the ethnocultural commonalities that dominated there was widely recognized and honored. That time, in these United States, ended with World War II, if not earlier.

     Several questions arise at this point:

• Did that concept have value?
• Did it have religious or occupational facets?
• What baggage did it carry that we’re better off without?
• Can one remain “faithful” to one’s roots after moving a significant distance away?
• What influences other than geographic displacement can weaken one’s attachment to his roots?

     Those are difficult questions for a Twenty-First Century American to face. They demand a sober look at ourselves and what made us who we are. Europeans face them somewhat more equably, because of the obvious differences among the nations of the Old World, even those near to one another. There’s specific ethnocultural meaning in claims such as “I’m English, “I’m French,” or “I’m German.”

     The song above says strongly that an Englishman should know and honor his roots. That comes close to blasphemy today, with the U.K. having filled up with persons no one would associate with the England of 1940. The multiculturalist gospel condemns such allegiances.

     But what if we need them? Is rootlessness a special kind of vulnerability? Something that attracts predators, perhaps? What if one cannot live a decent life – one that satisfies levels two and three of Maslow’s Hierarchy — without an awareness of one’s roots and their value?

     I need to ponder this awhile before I can continue. However, you, Gentle Reader, are invited to post your thoughts as comments here. When I return to this topic, I’ll make use of them, with proper attributions.

One Lemon Leads To Another Dept.

     There are many things I could say about foreign aid, but the great majority of them are obscene. If we start from the premise that using the tax funds of the nation – i.e., the money already stolen from working Americans – to benefit the denizens of foreign hellholes lands is somehow legitimate, you can rationalize any number of subsequent offenses against the laws of God and Man. But unless my Gentle Readers would like me to start foaming at the mouth this early in the day, I’d better pass from that subject right now.

     Sarah Anderson comments thus on Marco Rubio’s “reformed” foreign aid plan:

     [W]e're no longer just tossing money out the door; there's an end goal. We're partnering with these countries to help them stabilize and eventually take care of themselves with less and less of our help. As a part of the plan, the countries' governments themselves must also increase their domestic health spending. A State Department fact sheet promises that "U.S. government financial support will be linked to countries’ ability to meet or exceed key health metrics with financial incentives for countries who exceed those metrics."
     It's a model that Rubio has been pushing from day one since he took over the State Department, and it's the most logical one for foreign involvement.

     No, Sarah. I like you and I think you write reasonably well, but the “most logical [model] for foreign involvement” is warfare. That’s what comes of laying big prizes before a gaggle of rapacious Third Worlders: they fight over it until one manages to get away with the lion’s share of the booty.

     But let’s leave that highly predictable outcome to the side for a moment. When the fighting is slight and quickly resolved – usually because the most powerful bureaucrats of the recipient government get their claws into the money immediately – the consequences are almost never the ones hoped for:

1. There’s a charade of “bidding” for contracts nominally aimed at the purpose of the aid money;
2. The money goes to the bureaucrats’ relatives or supporters;
3. A great show is made of the inception of the purposed effort;
4. Third World work ethics – steal as much and do as little work as you can – kick in;
5. The money is spent but the “work” is never more than substandard;
6. American Foreign Service representatives frown at the results;
7. The representatives report to the domestic hierarchy;
8. The aid is increased for the following year;
9. Return to Step 1.

     Am I being an old cynic? Why yes, I am – but it’s a cynicism built from observation over five decades. It’s powered by the dynamic that dominates diplomats and diplomacy. It’s protected by the utter unwillingness of politicians and their high-ranking appointees ever to admit to a mistake. And it’s as close to a law of Nature as any phenomenon that involves unequal categories of human beings.

     But supreme among the conceits of professional politicians is this one: We can do it. We can overrule all the rapacity and all the venality that have made the Third World what it is. We’re The US of A! Besides, I can’t admit that the whole deal is a scam, that foreign aid is a huge, unConstitutional mistake. The voters / my superiors would crucify me in public!

     And billions of dollars taken forcibly from American workers in taxes are poured into Third World ratholes year after year on that basis.

     Do you know a way to stop it without toppling the federal government in its entirety, Gentle Reader? I don’t.

For The Advent Season

     There are several hymns for the Advent season: "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus," "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," "People, Look East," and "Watchman, Tell Us of the Night" are some of the better-known ones. But none are as well-known, or as beloved, as this one beautifully rendered below by The Piano Guys:

     Be watchful, for He is coming.

A Vested Interest In Disorder

     It’s been said that one should infer the intent behind a system from the results it produces. There’s some validity to that, though it’s not an absolute. After all, we understand the Law of Unintended Consequences. We also understand that some consequences are beyond our ability to foresee. So we must make allowances for human fallibility, and for the limits of our reasoning powers.

     But there is this as well: A system that produces perverse or destructive consequences over a long period of time, when at any point in that sequence it was possible to pause or terminate the system and revisit the thinking behind it, is a near-to-irrefutable indicator of malevolence at work.

     Predators exploit our unwillingness to make that inference.

---

     There’s a lot of bilge slopped around about “systems,” “systems thinking,” and whatnot. Most of it isn’t worth the breath needed to say it. I’d rather not sound like an arrogant asshole – I don’t have the wardrobe for it – but I often find myself wondering how anyone could look at an obvious mess and not ask “Why do they tolerate this, when it’s so obviously malign?” Of course, they explicitly and most deliberately excludes your humble Curmudgeon Emeritus, whose inclination is always to fix what’s so plainly broken... or to discard it if it can’t be fixed.

     I could be thinking of any of a huge set of things, couldn’t I? Indeed, I am thinking and talking about a great many things, all at once. For we are surrounded by “systems” that perpetually produce perversities by the common understanding of things. When those “systems” are the fruit of planning, when they demand resources and human action to erect and operate, and when they require the ongoing acceptance of a great many people to continue as they are, it’s my job as a citizen to demand explanations, corrections, restitution for the maltreated, and retribution visited upon identifiable malefactors.

     It’s your job too, Gentle Reader. “The consent of the governed,” remember?

     We appear to have abdicated our responsibilities.

---

     It’s time for a couple of quotes. First, one from a very well-known source:

     "Senor d'Anconia," declared the woman with the earrings, "I don't agree with you!"
     "If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully."
     "Oh, I can't answer you. I don't have any answers, my mind doesn't work that way, but I don't feel that you're right, so I know that you're wrong."
     "How do you know it?"
     "I feel it. I don't go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you're heartless."
     "Madame, when we'll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won't be of any earthly use to save them. And I'm heartless enough to say that when you'll scream, 'But I didn't know it!'—you will not be forgiven."

     Now one from another, equally valuable if slightly less popular source:

     “[T]he time-tested method of instilling social virtue and respect for law in the minds of the young did not appeal to a pre-scientific pseudo-professional class who called themselves ‘social workers' or sometimes ‘child psychologists.' It was too simple for them, apparently, since anybody could do it, using only the patience and firmness needed in training a puppy. I have sometimes wondered if they cherished a vested interest in disorder -- but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious ‘highest motives' no matter what their behavior."

     In 1959, when Robert A. Heinlein published Starship Troopers, he was already in his fifties. He’d seen a great deal and had evaluated it with logic and precision. Yet note the extraordinary difference between then and now. Crime was known, but it was hardly a patch on what we endure today, particularly in our cities. Juvenile misbehavior? Racial disorder? General disrespect for law, public order, and social propriety? In comparison with today, in 1959 those things were negligible. If Heinlein is able to see our present from the afterlife, he must be shaking his head at our foolishness. “Didn’t they listen to me? Can’t they learn?”

     But then, at the time of Starship Troopers’ publication, Heinlein could credibly say that “a vested interest in disorder” was “unlikely” – that the motives of those who operated the justice system could be trusted. Would he say so today?

     In that regard, Rand’s penetration was the more accurate of the two. Our forebears will not forgive us. Our descendants, should we have any, won’t do so either.

---

     Our abdication of our responsibilities as citizens has many rationalizations. There’s no need to enumerate them. Suffice it to say that “the consent of the governed” is a real thing. The difficulty in exercising it lies in our lack of an overall consciousness. E pluribus unum may appear on our currency, but it has no application to our will.

     Yet we must rise to the occasion, especially in the matter of criminal justice. When we see serious crimes, especially crimes of violence, go unpunished for absurd reasons; when we see habitual criminals released from prison after trivially laughable confinements; when we see repeat offenders repeatedly released without bond to roam free after thirty, fifty, seventy felony arrests – it’s no longer possible to believe that those who maintain and operate the criminal justice system are acting from “highest motives.” We must indict those persons as deliberate, conscious perpetrators of disorder. We are morally and practically obligated to act.

     Yet we don’t. Whatever rationalization we apply, we don’t muster the will to rise up and compel justice be done to the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, the parole boards, and whoever else works to keep “the system” as it is.

     We have demarcated “the system” as something apart from us.

     I shan’t repeat my sentiments about vigilance committees and their application to our context. That’s a more specific point than the one I’ve set out to make. So it’s time to stop beating around the bush and make it. Whatever political or social malfunction may concern you most, hear and remember this:

We are part of “The System.”
We must function as such.

     More anon.

A Treasure That Must Be Shared

     I could not take the smallest chance that my Gentle Readers might miss out on this gem:

This is the greatest description ever, from a bootleg video in China. pic.twitter.com/yCHzeYu3Mq

— Sandy Petersen 🪔 (@SandyofCthulhu) December 3, 2025

     The movie, for any whippersnappers in this old Curmudgeon’s readership, is of course Alien.

Carta Obsoleta

     It’s difficult to deal with the news coming out of the United Kingdom these days.

     My Gentle Readers already know about some of the things beleaguering the Sceptered Isle. There are the increasingly restive and assertive Muslims, the theft and street chaos, the “grooming” of white girls by immigrants, the sinking economy, the rash of dependency, the use of the police to suppress dissent, and more.

     But can you believe that the Labour government wants to scrap the trial by jury?

'So judges are just better at finding facts?'
'They're experienced at it.'

Sir Brian Leveson, who led the criminal courts inquiry, explains why he thinks Lammy is absolutely right to scrap jury trials. pic.twitter.com/qDTQFw7acY

— LBC (@LBC) December 2, 2025

     Trial by jury is guaranteed by Magna Carta, which serves Britain as a partial constitution. You would think that a man knighted by the Crown would have at least a passing acquaintance with that document. Perhaps he does... yet he’s perfectly ready to violate that guarantee for “efficiency.”

     If Britain’s courts are “clogged,” what’s the nature of the cases that clog them? Might a great many of them be the fruits of luxuriant law and the overextension of government power? How many are free-expression cases, in which the State has striven to punish “misinformation,” or “hate speech,” or sentiments it simply disapproves? How many arise from regulatory overreach, whether via the State or one of the ubiquitous QUANGOs?

     But let’s look a bit deeper yet. What are the foreseeable consequences of a “justice system” that lacks the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers?

1. A trial judge not restrained by a jury verdict can rule on his understanding of the law alone, which eliminates the possibility of jury nullification of a bad or unconstitutional law.
2. The trial judge has authority over what evidence may be introduced; thus a trial judge can pre-justify any verdict whatsoever merely by excluding evidence that leans in the opposite direction. Thus, as appellate judges are not permitted to assess the evidence, the probability of a successful appeal is greatly reduced.
3. The State can ensure the imprisonment of any British subject, merely by lodging an accusation against him and bringing him to trial before a government-owned judge. Given the British government’s notorious hostility toward freedom of expression, that would effectively establish a censorship regime.
4. Inversely, the State can ensure the acquittal of any subject, by routing his trial to that selfsame government-owned judge. That would allow it to create classes of subjects who are guaranteed immunity from penalty for their crimes.
5. All the above make the “justice system” a weapon the State can use against anyone it pleases: to coerce compliance in whatever direction it pleases.

     That is completely opposite to the conception of the process for ensuring justice that the United States inherited from Britain two and a half centuries ago.

     But David Lammy, Britain’s “Secretary of State for Justice,” insists that there’s no other way to “unclog” Britain’s courts. Notably, he claims that his “reform” is victim-oriented: i.e., that the elimination of the jury will result in the “right” verdicts more often, faster, and with appropriate relief to the victimized. Never mind the other consequences I’ve delineated here. The judges can be trusted to get it right.

     If Parliament allows Lammy to get away with this abridgement of Britons’ rights, it’s all over for the denizens of the Sceptered Isle. Having their right to bear arms taken from them, the British State can now ride roughshod over them. However many pitchforks Britons still possess, they would not suffice to bring down that all-powerful edifice.

Trends In Speculative Fiction: Grimdark

     The morning email brought me to this interview, by the lovely and talented Abigail Lakewood a.k.a. “Strange Girl,” of fantasy writer P. J. Ashton:

     💜: You view yourself as a grimdark fantasy writer. What does that mean exactly?
     A: Grimdark means I don’t put the training wheels on. Some fantasy wants you to believe everyone’s basically good, villains politely monologue instead of killing you, and true love fixes war crimes. Charming, but not remotely true to life.

     Let’s leave aside the haughtiness of Ashton’s response. Has he defined grimdark adequately for you to grasp it? I must admit that I’m groping a bit.

     I get a picture of stories replete with predation and brutality, that end un-heroically, perhaps even tragically. The villain gets what he seeks; the hero – if there is one – either gets the dirty end of the stick or gapes uncomprehending at the way things turned out. Not my sort of story, to be sure. Perhaps George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire would qualify, despite its ending. But I didn’t like that series either.

     Let’s have a bit more from the interview:

     For characters like Henna, a woman shaped by years of abuse, violence became her language. She hides her trauma behind swagger and cruelty, and in every man she kills, she still sees Thorne. Henna isn’t hopeless; she’s surviving the only way she knows how. And there’s a strange, tragic beauty in that.
     Grimdark doesn’t smother hope, it forces it to earn its place. When kindness appears, it feels miraculous. When someone chooses loyalty over self-preservation, it matters.
     And if a reader finishes a chapter feeling shaken or breathless… good. It means the story meant something.
     [...]
     The market practically hands out gold stars for playing it safe. But comfort eventually dulls a genre, and readers are far sharper than publishers give them credit for.

     I do agree with that last part. It’s the aim to portray a world in which cruelty and brutality are the rule that baffles me.

     Well, as I said in a comment at Miss Lakewood’s place, I suppose that given my quite different orientation I shouldn’t expect to understand it, nor to find it appealing. And I must admit that there are readers who prefer settings and themes diametrically at odds with mine. Tastes do vary.

---

     C. S. Lewis once said that the tragic disillusionment of his youth was the discovery that the things he most loved – the heroes, the fantastic creatures, the magic, the quests, and so forth of the great works of fantasy – were imaginary. The prevailing sentiment was that kids should be shown a darker, more tragic view of existence. “Realists” exhorted the adoption of that approach. Lewis’s conviction was that children’s literature should prefer a different course:

     Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the…atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.

     In the above, Lewis was speaking of stories for the young. Yet optimism pervades his adult-oriented fiction as well – and by “adult-oriented” I most emphatically do not mean sexual. The Space Trilogy, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and Till We Have Faces demonstrate this perfectly – and they were plainly not written for children.

     I think a case could be made that even mature adults, immersed in the real world and all that it demands of us, need reinforcement for the conviction that we who people existence are basically good, and that good will triumph over evil, given effort and time. That’s why I write what I write. If even my typical reader occasionally veers to the dark side, perhaps out of a need for variety, he can surely be forgiven. For the world does demand a lot of us. To stay staunch requires that we remain aware that all things, including the ascension of goodness over cruelty and brutality, have a price we must pay.

     But do remember not to eat the cookies:

Loneliness

     There’s been some back-and-forth over this subject recently: men asserting that women have become impossible to please; women countering that men have very little to offer; and so forth. Meanwhile men seek women with perfect bodies who’ll cook, clean, and meet them at the door in lingerie and heels at the end of the workday. The women, of course, seek Adonises of chiseled perfection who earn seven figure incomes and never ask them to wash a dish. It’s all very sad, especially as I’m no longer on the market and neither is the C.S.O.

     Life is like that. The higher your standards for a mate, the fewer the people who’ll meet them. But I’m not here to tell you stuff you already know.

     Loneliness is also prevalent within marriages. Yes, I said prevalent. After they’ve been together for a while, romantic partners don’t provide one another with a lot of companionship. (Never mind sex.) If you’re married or in a long-term / live-together relationship:

• How long has it been since you and the Significant Other had a conversation about anything but the week’s shopping list or Junior’s problems with school?
• What percentage of the day do the two of you spend in the same room?
• When you’re in the same room, what’s your focus? The food? The TV? Making the bed?

     Don’t be alarmed by those questions or by your answers to them. More to the point, don’t think of your situation as a “problem” to be “solved.” Because the terrifying truth of the matter is that after the intoxication of romance begins to diminish, a space will naturally grow between the two of you. It always has. You won’t be exceptions.

     It won’t matter if John finds a Miss America contestant who loves housework and sex, or if Jane finds a Musk / Bezos-level entrepreneur with the physique of Michelangelo’s David (except in flesh rather than marble). Life is composed of many desires, needs, and challenges, especially in these United States. All of them demand attention. Alternately, as put by an old friend: You can’t spend your whole life in bed. Trust me on that; I’ve tried.

     Yes, anything can be overdone; that’s why we have the word obsession. The goal is to find a satisfactory blend. If that involves spending a large fraction of your time alone, what of it? If you genuinely wanted some other proportion of activities that would involve you more often with your S.O., you’d be working on it. Wouldn’t you, you highly adaptable problem-solving demon, you?

     Time was, you would call your partner “needy” if he strove to have more of your attention than you wanted to give him. So the loneliness condition has an inverse: a lack of sufficient privacy, or in the happenin’-right-now argot of the cell phone generation, “no me-time.” And yes, I know of people who complain about exactly that. They talk about their S.O.s as if they were leeches they yearned to detach... when their S.O.s can be induced to be elsewhere, of course.

     This is on my mind for a simple reason: these past two weeks, interleaved with all the usual burdens the Fortress of Crankitude lays on me, I’ve been compelled to adjust to the near-constant presence of the C.S.O. in my office, where I write the crap my Gentle Readers come here to savor. Owing to a siege of intense sciatic pain, she tested every seat in the house and discovered that my office recliner is ideal. Sitting in it relieves her sciatica so completely that she’s fallen in love with it. So she’s camped out in my office for two unending weeks. That might not have been so hard to take, except that she brought the dogs, the cats, her cell phone, her laptop, her Kindle, her water bottle and her Salty Snack Of The Day, and Big Fuzzy, her enormous nappy blanket which I bought for her, not forseeing that it would take over her life. It’s made my day’s usual activities much more difficult, and not because she’s always looking over my shoulder.

     I used to sit in that recliner myself, now and then. I’d read, or nap, or jot down notes about some novel I’d probably never write. Ah, those halcyon days of yore. Right up there with the lingerie-and-heels days, I tell you.

     So there can be too much togetherness in a relationship. But you already knew that, didn’t you? Enough of that, for I too am a highly adaptable problem-solving demon. I’ve ordered a duplicate of my recliner for her office. I’m also researching colorless chemical repellants that will keep Joy the Newf and Sophie the German Shepherd / Husky mix on the other side of the house. And can anyone introduce me to music that makes the listener want to be alone? Nothing too coarse or whiny, please. Thanks in advance.

Some Advent Thoughts

     [This piece first appeared at the old Eternity Road blogsite on December 4, 2005 – FWP]

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1. The Haunting

     Via the worthy Lane Core -- welcome to the Eternity Road blogroll, Lane -- comes this inspiring take on the conversion of C. S. Lewis to Christian faith:

"Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless." With these words C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, described the early years of his life. The story of his pre-conversion self, however, is much more than the autobiography of one 20th-century Englishman. It depicts the spiritual torpor of modern man, namely post-Christian man.

     For the first time in the history of humanity, man does not believe in the supernatural. The supernatural was natural to the pre-Christian age. The sun and the stars, trees and rivers, everything that surrounded them was inhabited by dryads and nymphs and all sorts of mythological creatures. Everything bore the trace of the divine. Modern man may smile at the primitiveness of their beliefs. In the best case, he will admit that it would make a good fairy tale for children.

     Lewis did not think so; to him it was the twentieth century that was regressive. By reducing the world to the material reality which one can experience with one’s senses, man has turned the world into a vacuum in which men spend their time, as T.S. Eliot would say, "dodging [their] emptiness." Surprisingly enough, it was pagan mythological literature, permeated as it was with the intuitive belief in the supernatural, which set Lewis searching for God. He became a theist and his conversion to Christ followed later. Pagan literature–Greek myths, the sagas and eddas of Norse mythology and the epics of classical antiquity–acted upon him as a preparatio evangelica. His imagination and his sensibility were "baptised" first, which proved to be a pre-requisite for the conversion of his heart. The material reality around him was the same but his gaze had been converted. Like the post-conversion T.S. Eliot, he ended up revisiting the ordinary experiences of his daily life and saw a transfigured reality:

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

     I doubt there remains a reader of this site who doesn't know of my admiration for Lewis, by far the greatest of the modern polemicists for Christianity. But it becomes deeper as I acquaint myself with the details of his journey out of the darkness.

     Lewis was not merely a persuasive writer and promulgator of the teachings of others; he was also the possessor of a mighty intelligence and a fertile imagination. Among other things, he conceived the central need of the modern mind -- accurately, in my judgment -- as a fusion of the spiritual yearning naturally inborn in all of us with a revived, freshly vivid vision of what lies beyond the mundane realm through which we plod. For this reason above all others, his Ransom and Narnia books are among the most powerful of all tools for the opening of the weary, battered, spiritually malnourished human heart. He'd "been there," and had divined what it takes to get from "there" to "here."

     But where is "here"? Perhaps it was put best by Father Andrew Greeley when he said that "Catholics live in a haunted world." (Substitute "Christians" for "Catholics" for, uh, best catholicity.) We are perpetually mindful of a realm beyond the one that's evident to our senses. Our choices are formed as much, if not more, by our consciousness of that realm as by their probable consequences in this one. For us as for no materialist of any stripe, the world is alive and immanent with promise.

     With the help of another great genius, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (upon whom Lewis's hero Dr. Elwin Ransom was based), Lewis found his way, and then his voice. Then he bestowed it upon us.

    

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2. Our Pride And Our Burden.

     Curt at North Western Winds presents an interesting citation today from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's (Pope Benedict XVI) Introduction to Christianity:

The fact that when the perfectly just man appeared he was crucified, delivered up by justice to death, tells us pitilessly who man is: Thou art such, man, that thou canst not bear the just man - that he who simply loves becomes a fool, a scourged criminal, an outcast. Thou art such because, unjust thyself, thou dost always need the injustice of the next man in order to feel excused and thus cannot tolerate the just man who seems to rob thee of this excuse. Such art thou. St John summarized all this in the Ecce Homo ("Look, this is [the] man!" of Pilate, which means quite fundamentally: this is how it is with man; this is man. The truth of man is his complete lack of truth. The sayings in the Pslam that every man is a liar (Ps 116 [115]: 11) and lives in some way or other against the truth already reveals how it really is with man. The truth about man is that he is continually assailing the truth; the just man crucified is thus a mirror held up to man in which he sees himself unadorned. But the Cross does not reveal only man; it also reveals God. God is such that he identifies himself with man right down into the abyss and that he judges him and saves him. In the abyss of human failure is revealed the still more inexhaustible abyss of divine love. The Cross is thus truly the center of revelation, a revelation that does not reveal any previously unknown principle but reveals us to ourselves by revealing us before God and God in our midst.

     Now, the Holy Father's emphasis on God's identification with Man is quite important. Still, there's more here: a fundamental insight of the sort we overlook until we've stumbled over it...after which, we call it "obvious."

     Rational consciousness, the defining characteristic of Man, is the ability to form abstractions and to use them in reasoning. But every abstraction is an incomplete rendition of the reality it seeks to model. In other words, no matter how sincerely we try to make our conceptions accurate representations of the world, they will always lie, if only by omission.

     But the human mind is unsatisfied by the incomplete. It yearns toward fullness; toward transcendence; toward God. So we tend to take such things and "fill in the blanks," sometimes arbitrarily, and sometimes willfully. But even the best of us is incomplete himself, particularly in his knowledge. And even the best of us is inclined to see the world not as it is, but as we would like it to be.

     This is Man's glory and his cross. Being creatures made in God's image and destined to be reunited with God, we are conscious, yet partial. Conjoined, these characteristics compel us to fantasize...and some of the fantasies are wrong.

    

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3. Certainties.

     The word "if" has received quite a bit of, ah, critical attention. (Myself, I think that most of it should go to "should," but that's a subject for another screed.) In his novel An Odor Of Sanctity, Frank Yerby called it "the saddest word in any language." In Godel, Escher, Bach, his exposition on the roots of consciousness, computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter called it "the push into fantasy." Our constant need for "if," the indication of a condition upon which other propositions might be found true, is a potent expression of the uncertainty in which we live.

     It's difficult, this job of living. What make it difficult are uncertainty and change.

     Uncertainty keeps us tense. Change wears us out. In combination, they leave us gasping for breath and ever more desperate for surcease.

     The hell of it is that there's so much uncertainty. Indeed, it seems to be everywhere. Even the propositions upon which ordinary people rely in the course of the most ordinary of their days are uncertain. Wait! Stop! How do you know that floor will bear your weight? Yes, yes, you've walked across it before, but things do change. Mightn't it have weakened fatally since the last time you tested it -- at the risk of your life, one might add?

     Uncertainty rules the physical world. Uncertainty is the ruling principle of the fundamental insights of physics. If the quantum physicists can be believed, Heraclitus was essentially correct: everything is fire, and nothing is truly stable. Heisenberg said it, I believe it, and that settles it.

     But we hunger for certainty and stability. So we create them in our heads.

     Create them? Excuse me. Do we really? We don't create anything else! Everything we make is a blend of pre-existent stuffs with the labor of our bodies and minds. Rather, we extrapolate from the order and persistence we can see to wider, deeper degrees of order and persistence, beneath the bottom-most of which lies a Will that governs all?

     Men being partial and limited, we cannot grasp the whole of Creation. Therefore we cannot be certain that there are any truly immutable truths, or any permanence even to the laws our best minds have deduced from what they can see and touch. This recognition has turned many a man to despair.

     Nevertheless, certainty and stability are available, as and where they've always been:

For I know that my Redeemer liveth,
    And that he shall stand,
        at the latter day, upon the Earth. [Job, 19:25]

     We can't be certain of what we believe, but we can be certain that we believe it. The Advent season, which opens the liturgical year, reminds us that the coming of Christ was foretold by the prophesies of Isaiah and others who came before him, and heralded at last by "the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord'":

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." [Mark, 1:4-8]

     Job could not be certain of what he foresaw. Neither could Isaiah, and neither could John. They were men, like us, and certainty about factual things is not available to men. But they trusted the visions they had been given. They were firm in their belief -- and they were right.

     For the next three weeks, Christians everywhere will prepare for the arrival of their Certainty, from whose Will flows the inexhaustible stability of all-healing grace.

     May God bless and keep you all.