Essays in Idleness

A lady in Canada’s far east, who shares my taste in Spanish mystics, writes something so apposite to and summarizing of my recent apocalyptic effusions (here and at the Catholic Thing), that I will just quote her:

“As far as signs and portents, … it is once again St John of the Cross who grounded me  as I was finding my way back to the Church. He said God gave us our intelligence for a reason, and we should not be petitioning Him for signs and wonders, not that God does not sometimes give them, but we can so easily misinterpret them. So it is best to leave them alone or take them to a spiritual adviser or let God clarify them in His way and time. …

“One other good thing St John taught me is that faith is not feeling.”

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Our difficulty begins with failing to perceive that even as things stand, there is nothing mundane. Nature herself is consistently miraculous, to eyes not jaded or gauzed; and the student of history should also be aware that no human chronicle develops along predictable lines. Were it not for Grace, we would all long since have been annihilated. Or rather, we would never have been.

Our task is to work with what we have; with what God has given us, already. We have enough to be getting on with. Even when what we face is death, we have enough to be getting on with; death is something to get on with.

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My apologies to gentle reader for silence prolonged these last few days. Just as I was getting into stride for some new quotidian irruption of my blather, some (figurative) truck hit me. Nothing to be concerned about; I’ll live. Routine, routine is important. We cannot have idleness without routine.

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And yes, if anyone noticed, after three months’ experiment, I dropped my Twitter feed.