“1984” or “Brave New World?” These are two dystopic visions of the future by two distinctive British authors that came up this morning - but I’m not going there.  No, not for now anyway.  The Quiet Voice has been too dark lately, and we must always let the sunshine in.  It is always out there somewhere, is it not?   
 
Maybe for next time, then, but for right now let’s think about something as light and fluffy as grandma’s angel food cake: Covid 19; Corona; The Wuhan Flu; The Pangola Pandemic; The Ventilator Virus.  By any name, still as sweet.  Yes, let’s turn our minds towards it, but not towards the symptoms or deaths or politics or Dr. Fauci or Brix or the vaccines or any of that ugly stuff.  Rather, let’s look at how it has changed certain habits of life – particularly of my life.  Even more to the point, let’s look at how it has changed me from a common loud mouth to an idiot.  Let me explain as well as I still can:
 
Too much TV.  Yes, I know it was called the “Great Wasteland” back in the 1950’s, and that disdain for television has been the effete intellectuals’ way of showing the unwashed masses how superior they are, but really, I have proof as to its dark subterfuge: a current personal IQ hovering at “moron” level (on the old scale that included “idiot” and “imbecile,” now thought to be insensitive.  They should have added “dumb ass”).  Smarter people would demand a real test, but I don’t need one.  Like most of us living at the animal level, I can sense my low IQ, just as your favorite dog can sense the hostility of the murderer, without need for words or thought or scientific verification.  Yes, I have gotten even stupitter and dumbitter than I was just a few months ago; to be exact, since April of 2020; to be explicit, since after the first “flatten the curve” phase of the global Corona Crisis cluster fudge.  And to be precise and absolutely to the point, since I started watching TV every night, instead of reading “Fun with Dick and Tiffany” (current version, with Dick and Tiffany interchangeable) or other deep volumes pursuant to my intellectual capabilities. 
 
Like the drunk who wakes up in an alley covered in his own vomit, I discovered just how low I had sunk this last weekend, in my living room, aka TV room, no less.   There was no vomit or evidence of rats, but there was the blinking tube before me that had just finished beaming another no-holds-barred violent movie with lots of drugs and soft-porn nudity.  I had chosen it all by myself, and that is the avenue through which I discovered my fallen state: being by myself.  Before, my wife would have censored such garbage, but she had gone with my son for a four-day visit with her mother in Mississippi in the nursing home, she another victim of ‘Da Covid.’  Such freedom as I had of the house once allowed the young Tom Cruise to throw a massive party for the ‘hood, and who knows what kind of things and situations other men thus freed might do, but I chose to watch TV ‘my way.’  Yes, nothing but my way, all my fault.  It was then, after the credits of that trashy movie were fading into oblivion, when I woke up to the degradation I had allowed to enter my life.  It is a fortunate thing that God forgives even the worst of sinners or my discovery would have thrown me into the depths of despair, if not into the depths of Hell itself. 
 
I now sit contritely, properly chastened.   It is said: “Reprove not an arrogant man, lest he hate you; reprove a wise man and he will love you” (Proverbs, 9: 8), and we have all learned from the movie “Being There” that even a dimwit like Chauncey Gardiner can not only become wise, but walk on water.  So, if being un-arrogant can open the door of reason for even a stupid man, then I have hope for improvement.  OK, not to walk on water, but maybe to become a little less stupider. 
 
So it is that I paid heed to those words of wisdom and now give thanks to what is left of my mind, that deep inner place beyond my poor capabilities, which can still think so clearly.  “Cast from the couch that clicker!” it demanded, “and do as you did before!  Remember?” I could not, so clouded was my walnut-sized mind, so it reminded me, “Read!  If you must, read a coloring book with a handful of pretty crayons, but read!  You are being filled with the fevered dreams of old drunken Hollywood writers and the propaganda of recent know-it-all college grads, both guided by the shrewd manipulations of money-making producers.  They give you first want you want, then what they want, and then take from you what we all want (money and power, for those who also watch too much TV). Covid has allowed them, those who want something from you, to lead you around by a nose ring made of TV sitcoms, news casts, late night talk shows, and cable series.  You have become afraid, disconnected, depressed, and, by God, you are getting fatter by the day from a vast excess of beer and snacks” (that last hurt). “Heed me, stupid [that word again] child!” 
 
And so I have, or at least have tried my pathetic best, reducing my TV to only one news show (Fox – why not?) a night and one cable series – “The Expanse” – a week.  I have picked up an old mystery novel, and although the plot seems beyond my mental prowess, all those words hitting my aching head all at once, I already do not hate myself quite as much as I did – and this since only Sunday!  Even more: I am beginning to understand something else of what Wisdom told me, although only dimly as it squishes around in the damp recesses of my skull like the cube in the Magic Eight Ball.   Yes, I am beginning to see that those TV people are kinda like all those other people who like money and power - you know, like politicians and newspaper owners and all of those bigshots behind our computer screens.  Like a dim light flickering far off in the fog, I am beginning to get the sense that we are all being sub-programmed, taken down from our lofty average IQ’s of 100 to something a little more manageable, where everything is based on immediate gratification and fleeting sparks of emotion that give us no time for reflection.  Oh, these ideas hurt my head, and I’m afraid I might be punished by those smarter than me, but those troublesome thoughts won’t let up.  
 
It might be that I am getting smarter.  I have almost turned off the tube and am now beginning to ponder thoughts, as the reader can see.  The change makes me feel like I’m spilling forth from the womb, or more precisely, tumbling out of a large animal’s behind, dropping with a resounding “plop” onto solid ground again.  It is an unpleasant experience, but I now realize it must be done, or, to extend the metaphor more than a smart person would, the animal will swell up and die (we being both animal and turd.  Yes, that hurts my head too).  
 
Never before had I thought that wisdom might work something like an enema, but that is apparently what we need – a deep inner cleansing that will allow the light to shine in, or, more in line with our cramped and contorted metaphor, to at least prevent us from further bloating.  It is a long course of correction, and the great forces of evil – our information and entertainment dispensers – are continually sweetening the candy and cranking up the butter at the concession stand.  The diet is getting worse and worse, and the bloating will continue until we go outside, cast off our masks, and take a hike with a friend or spouse and notice the weather, the birds, the snow, the movement of clouds across the moon, all those things greater than anything even the smart people among us can create, or take away.  Yes, we must go out and take a walk, to see and ponder and talk about those things around us that are not subject to the plots and schemes of those who want so much –and then everything – from us.  
 
“Go, then, beyond even trusted tomes” says that great inner voice, “and increase your diet of real-life companionship and real-life experiences and then see what happens.”  I know, I know, we probably won’t be able to walk on water, but we will get back a sense not only of Being There but of being here, now, alive, thinking and engaged as we were born to do.  And - not to dwell on it too much – I am assured by the Great Voice that by so doing, we most certainly will lose our problem bloating and feel “regular” again. 

​ 
I think it was Monday when I turned on the TV first thing, as I always do to get the weather, and the weather guy was warming up with his “what happened on this date in history” shtick.  He mentioned famous dead people and wars and such, but then got to the high point: on this date in history, the Beatles got their first #1 hit on US radio, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”  Oh yeah, I remembered that week and once wrote an essay about it, which can be read by those who go to Amazon and buy my book of essays, Beneath the Turning Stars.  Besides this chance for a shameless plug, in recalling that time I also remembered the forever-used phrase, “Those were simpler times.”  And yes, they sure seemed to be.  We had teeny - bopper girls fainting in the audience as the Beatles sang about, good Lord, only wanting to hold someone’s hand; we had hula hoops and the British Invasion in general, bringing other songs like “I’m Henry the 8th” by Herman’s Hermits; we had silly James Bond movies where good always prevailed; we were sure that we would cure cancer “In our lifetime” and that we, the kids, would be zooming around in flying cars and living the good life until age 140 or more; and we in America knew that the Good Life was the American life, and that soon everyone in the world would join us, and we would evolve as a race of freedom-loving techno-angels, living exciting lives on other planets, made safe from ugly aliens through our ray-guns and true grit.  Ah yes, simpler times, sweet even, our dreams child-like in their pure optimism.
 
Of course, I was a child, kept apart from the real world of the grown-ups, where nuclear war was ever imminent and financial disasters were always possibilities just around the corner.  More to the point, in the grown-up world, people had not really evolved that much since the days of the ‘wrath of Genghis Khan,’ and had not lost their already-evolved Machiavellian genius for manipulating others, even whole societies, in their lust for sex, wealth, and power.  Simpler times?  Was the rape of Nanking simple?  Was Jim Crow childlike?  Did Jimmy Hoffa disappear forever due to a puckish joke by The Mob? 
 
Simpler, no; different, yes.  What is all too apparent in history is that old ways, from fashion to espionage, are figured out sooner or later, which then sparks the need for a new approach.  Once old notions are more thoroughly examined, they seem childish: picture little Billy lying about eating the chocolate chip cookies while failing to wipe away the chocolate from his mouth.  If we continue to observe the comings and goings of fashion and culture, then, we begin to realize that much of what we assumed to be true or chic was a lie, or at least a subterfuge.  From that we can abstract that those things that we have not yet figured out are not more complex or evolved; rather, they simply have not been examined enough to expose the same old tired and simple motivations behind their making.  Platform heel shoes?  How stupid; why not be cool and cover yourself with tattoos!  Political opponent got you down and the old methods of political assassination don’t seem to work?  Well, why not call him and all his supporters racists! Yes, regardless: agendas are pushed forward for the same old reasons, only masked by different approaches. 
 
So it is, then, that life is and must always be constantly refashioned and seemingly made more complex by those who desire some selfish or ignoble goal.  It is only after time and with hindsight that such subterfuges come to light, at which point they seem simple.  Would McCarthy’s Red Scare work today?  Will the scream of “racism” work tomorrow?  The shifting tactics of those in power cause much of the movement of history and culture.   Such movement will be with us for as long as the seven deadly sins tantalize us.  That is why we need, as Jesus said, “new wineskins for new wine.”
 
What the heck does that mean?  I was bothered by that metaphor at first until I realized that the ancients actually used the wineskins as containers to ferment the juice.  Wine skins were made of leather, and leather gets stiff and inflexible with age.  When wine ferments, it produces carbon dioxide; this gas then expands anything that encloses it like a balloon.  If whatever is holding it is old and stiff, it bursts, ruining both the wine and the skin. 
 
And so it is with a truly new agenda.  If it is packaged in the old container – let us say, the old cultural model – it will burst both the old cultural order as well as its message or desired effect.  Jesus knew (knows) this, as do revolutionaries, especially Marxists.  That is why the latter are actively attempting to thoroughly change Western culture by altering the familial base.  Gender has now become negotiable and natural parents are told that they no longer need to stay together, or even know each other, for the good of the child; rather, the ‘village’ will take care of them.  In his days on Earth, Jesus also tirelessly tried to change the world’s view of justice – to change it from an “eye for an eye” perspective to one of limitless forgiveness.  To get close to God, Jesus knew, we the people had to become more like God, who, according to belief, is an infinitely loving and forgiving being.   While we could never fully achieve this goal on our own, it was, and is, incumbent on us to try; that is, we have to willfully try to replace our old habits – our old wineskins – for this new one, or we will burst on the day that we stand before the Infinite. 
 
So what of innocence?  Yes, innocence in adults and in society at large truly is possible.  Many of those who listened to the Beatles’ early love songs did not know that the lads were having their way with groupies from Liverpool to Berlin; rather, they thought only of innocent first love.  They were new wineskins, even though the wine they were being given was in most ways as old as the hills.  So it is that true innocence in the person and in the culture can exist, if one or many people in aggregate have open – soft - hearts.  But innocence can only be maintained if the “new wine” that is given does not have a usurious agenda. 
 
That is always the rub: the agenda.  Marxist believe that they are making new wineskins for their new wine, but they are still using trickery to get their way.  To make new wine skins, they believe they must throw out not only the corrupt in society, but also the good and the natural.  In so doing, they antagonize the very people they wish to help – the more innocent and purer of heart.  They then must resort to force, and then to outright violence to achieve their goals.  This causes resentment and counter-violence, destroying the very innocence - hardening the wine skins – that they came to fill.   The new wine then bursts the skin, destroying both the skin and the wine.       
 
That is not The Way.  Rather, the heart must be made supple to contain the new wine, and for that, people have to be put at ease.  To that end, both we and our enemies must lay down our arms, and the only way that this will happen is if we forgive each other our transgressions.  The need for retaliation and for suspicion are then ended, and we are enabled to become innocents again, no longer fearful that we will be taken advantage of.  The need for complexity will end, and we will be able to see the world more clearly, our vision free from the layers of lies that history has given us.  We will still sin, but we will be sorry for it, we will try not to do it again, and we will no longer need to hide our transgressions from our forgiving neighbors behind more lies.   
 
Layers upon layers.  We must learn to forgive.  That is what I wish that I had heard in the latest inauguration of our president, so that the wineskins might be made new and supple again, ready for a new and better vintage.  Instead, I believe I heard more complexities and power plays.  Instead, I believe I saw an old, hardened wineskin being filled with old, bitter wine. 
 
May it be that we quickly turn from the book of Machiavelli to another book whose words restore our innocence and return us to a simpler time.  
 
 
 
   

​ 
I got into an argument with a cop last weekend, over a speeding stop – on the way to church no less.  I had been going 54 in a 55 and I told him so, whining with such phrases as, “You’ve got to be kidding!”  He said that he had clocked me at 56 just before going into a curve a half mile back.  There, the posted sign changes to “45,” so technically I had been speeding for a few yards.  I didn’t care.  I had had it with ham-handed cops and government and regulations and, although I didn’t threaten or even swear, in my heart I didn’t give a damn what happened to me.  Cuff me, tazze me, what the hell difference did it make anymore?
 
He didn’t give me a ticket, which, I finally understood, he wasn’t going to from the start.  I might also add that, some five minutes later, I didn’t feel the perfect Christian, or even the kind pagan, as I sat down with all those holier-than-me people in the dim light of evening mass.  But I did begin to think.  This was not my normal behavior.  I do not argue with cops.  They represent the law and, besides, it only makes things worse.  I was not then hung-over or in the middle of a divorce or anything else in the normal world that might put me on edge.  This mood was the real deal and it was both troubling to me personally and revealing generally of what is now going on in this country – and perhaps in many people’s soul. 
 
My blood still simmering, truth began to roll out as the mass progressed.  I had, indeed, lost a lot of respect for the law and society in general over the last several years, especially this last year.  I had seen top law-enforcement officials get away with lying and spying; I had seen the end of any sort of objective journalism on the “mainstream” media; I had seen cities and courthouses and police stations burned with impunity throughout the summer, and then a total condemnation of half the country after one three-hour riot in the after- burn of a Trump rally; and I had seen governors and mayors force useless prohibitions and lockdowns and requirements that have  ruined the lives of million, caused an upsurge in addiction and suicide, and subjected our young to isolation and misery even though they are almost entirely immune to the “plague.”  Yes, I had not been aware of it, but I have been affected by it all: something inside me has simply had it.
 
Anger, however, never stands alone, and its usual companion is fear.  The cop had stopped me only a few miles from my home in rural Wisconsin, a place that I now understand had been my “safe space.”  His stop had violated that sense of isolation and security.  And so it continued to affect me beyond reason, even in church, giving me thoughts of disappearing into the Canadian Rockies or, more realistically, fleeing to Costa Rica.  Given the current weather here, that might not be such a bad idea, but I digress.  So, there it was: it seemed to me that the long arm of the corrupt state had finally intruded on my personal life, where I had once felt immune to the terrors and tremors shaking our nation and society at large. 
 
It, that safety, was an illusion, not for the traffic stop which was nothing, but for the fact that all things large eventually influence things small.  For instance, even in the small city where my mail goes through and in which I go shopping, the influences of Big Society are everywhere.  In a town of just 12,000 mostly blue-collar people surrounded by corn fields, the opioid epidemic surges on, everyone knowing at least one family disturbed or ruined by it; the animosity of the “maskers” vs the “non-maskers,” from where we buy our groceries to where we go to church, is present daily; and male/female dysphoria is on surprising (shocking to me) display, with many young people’s bodies made sexless by hormones that might cause cancer or early mortality but almost never fulfilment and happiness.   Of course there is more, much more, but I have blocked it out.  Is any young person aware of, say, the Monroe Doctrine?  Have they been shown the fantastical mechanics of dialectical materialism?  Can they not watch porn on their I Phones for just a few hours a day?
 
The thoughts went deeper and then hit me like a brick: there never has been a safe space, either in actual space or in the space of human ideas and politics.  All things human-made are flawed and, with that, all things and ideas are eventually fatal to its users and believers, at the very least to their sense of well-being.  Everyone is hoisted on their (his or her) own petard, that is, skewered by their world views, sooner or later.   
 
There is absolutely nothing original in this realization.  In the Old Testament, Israel is constantly admonished to not go back to worshipping the regional idols that were simply objects made from human hands, yet that is what they did and what I, we all do, every day.  We trust in government, in police, in our army, in employment, in our self-important ideas that are all secondary to transcendent truth, and subject to, and eventually always succumbing to, deterioration and collapse. 
 
As I did in the car that night, I can still conjure the anger and resentment, the feeling that I have been betrayed, even though the little machine on the cop’s radar clearly said that I had gone over the limit a half mile back before the curb.  Of course, we all violate traffic laws now and then, from not coming to a complete stop at a sign, to speeding past the posted limit, to not being completely through the intersection on a yellow before it turns red.  We are all guilty, whether we are caught or not, just as we are all guilty of our own forms of idolatry, trusting or believing in things and ideas of human making.  In the later offenses, however, we will all be caught.  I have already, many times.  As a young man I thought I could live the fast life without consequences.  I was wrong.  As an old man, I thought I could live beyond the tumult and chaos of “the system;” boy, was I wrong.  And more, boy was I stupid to be surprised by that fact. 
 
People of the Old Testament thought that God’s favor was shown by how well someone did on earth.  Job was a thoughtful digression from that, the beginning of a new wisdom.  In the New Testament, the futility of the idea that this world was our final judgment and jury was illustrated many times in many, if not all, of the Gospels and epistles.  The Apostles would all suffer for Jesus, and all but one would be martyred.  To suffer in my name, He said, was to be blessed, and most would suffer in one way or another.  This world is not only not the final judge of our righteousness, but an eternal obstacle to it.  The truth, Jesus said, would bring father against son, mother against daughter, meaning that the cultural values of the past or the present or of any time would never suffice or satisfy.  There is no final justice in this world; more, there is little truth, little validity to our own versions of ‘dialectical materialism;’ and there is no safe space, at least not for long, for anyone “out there.”
 
These are useful things to know.  The flashing lights of the cop car and exposed deeds of a decadent government are warning signs, good teaching devices that bring us to understand that this world and the things of it are not our final home or part of it.   As a commentator on our recent troubles said, ‘this is a great time to be Catholic’ (and Christian).  ‘The religion was made for this, not good times, but for bad.  It makes us see that it is only in God that we can trust.’ 
 
And so it is.  Should we thank the liars and the schemers and cheats, the vulgar culture makers and greed- heads for these opportunities to grow in wisdom and holiness?  I don’t think so.  Nor should we simply let such things pass without comment or judgement.  But we are told that we must beware, that we must not fall into the trap that they have not only made, but have fallen into themselves.  That is how we are made miserable.  However, such misery is also how we are brought to awareness.   Our safe space, along with justice and truth, lie elsewhere.  To remain in good cheer, we must never forget that.    
 
 

​ 
I’ve been dreaming lately.  It is not something new – for years now, since my 50’s, I have been waking up with my dreams and so remember them, but these of the past week have been different.  My readings in the Old Testament have arrived at the prophets, Isaiah now mostly finished.  For the most part, he is not a happy camper, so one would think that my new, “different” dreams would be dire and dark.  Surprisingly, they are not.  It is that which makes them so different.  They DO have a prophetic tilt, laden with portent, but it is GOOD portent.   Since my rational mind believes 2021 will make 2020 look like a picnic, I have to wonder how these good dreams could be.  Who has spoken of good things to come?  Who might have influenced those misty imaginings? 
 
It can’t be from my readings and video-viewings beyond the Bible.  I was recently sent a U Tube video of an interview with Catherine Austin Fitts about her “Solaris Report.” In it, she discusses our “magical illness” (as she calls it), the Corona virus, and how it is being used to manage us.  Her thesis, in a nut shell, is this: we are being turned into working ‘bots, slaves really, for big tech, big business, and world government, through tracking tech, massive and destabilizing immigration, and robot workers.  We are about to receive social credit scores like the Chinese have, but from lending institutions that, along with information control, will funnel us into behavioral slots like sheep going to slaughter.  All this is being planned, but, she says, in democracies this has to somehow be hidden.  How oh how, asks ‘Mr. Global,’ can we do that? 
 
Then, the magic virus shows up, giving those dark institutions the cover to implement their plans.  Beyond forcing us to accept behavior controls “for our own good,” she claims that the vaccine is probably laden with Nano-technology, so that all our movements and habits can be collated and used for various forms of manipulation and blackmail.  This she calls “trans-humanism,” merging humanity with machines.  Further, she holds out the possibility that this vaccine might make millions of people sterile, for in a world of robots, who needs a large population?  The elite, she claims, want their resources to enjoy, and too many peasants need too many things, including space, putting a dent in the aesthetic pleasures of Mr. and Mrs. (Ms.) Global.  Smog and endless buildings and starving children do not a happy vacation make.
 
I have also been reading about the Virgin of Akita, Japan.  I will discuss the literature on this in more depth at another time, but for now, be assured that the Virgin is overflowing with warnings about our behavior, desperately imploring us to return to a greater spirituality -  and then to greatly exceed what we once had.  Her presence came through a statue made in her honor for a chapel in Akita.  Formed from wood, in 1973 it began to shed tears, and then blood, both identified by scientists as human.  She spoke through a certain Sister Agnes, who, she would readily admit, is otherwise a ‘nobody.’  Using this poor nun as her instrument, the Virgin went on to tell us that a punishment greater than the deluge would come if we did not change, and that is the reason for her tears.  The catastrophe would come in the form of “fire falling from the sky,” and the faithful and non-faithful would be killed alike, without differentiation.  Very few would be allowed to live, and those who did would be, to take a turn on an old phrase, “the unlucky ones.”
 
Do you see the world becoming more spiritual, chaste, and devout?  Neither do I, and the warnings of the Virgin of Akita have been matched by many other apparitions of the Holy Mother since the 18th century, Medjugorje (Bosnia-Herzegovina), which I visited recently, being one of them.  And yes, I can sense an oncoming creepy weirdness.  I believe most of us can.  Something bizarre is happening, something beyond even the control of politicians and the mega-techs, and it does not feel good.  So from where come these happy prophetic-like dreams?
 
I wish I could remember the dream that spoke of great things that swelled in the heart, but it will not reveal itself to me.  Instead, the remarkable account of the Jewish concentration camp survivor comes to mind.  In this, as he was being transported in a jam-packed cattle car to another camp, he was able to see through the slats in the wall to beautiful mountains rising up from distant snowfields.  He was then overwhelmed with love and awe in spite of these most terrible circumstances.  He claims this memory remains with him as one of his greatest epiphanies, not only in spite of, but perhaps because of the horror that surrounded him.
 
Also, there are these words of the apostle John, where he says, “There is no fear in love/but perfect love drives out fear/because fear has to do with punishment/and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.”  Is that the wisdom that was being given me in the dream?  If it is, how deep must it go, for I would be despondent in the death camps and tremble with fear before the gladiators and lions?  “Perfect love” does not define my nature by a long shot. 
 
Yet the dreams continue, washing over worries and ominous shadows even as I see the tactics of Big Tech bear fruit, and the evils against Biblical teachings proliferate, so common now that they seem to be with us as truth and forever, part of the rising tide of a new world civilization.   Am I being told that this life is only a testing?  Are the dark forces there, like the concentration camps for our prisoner, to shake us from complacency so that we might see the depth of the beauty and love that abound within us and throughout the world, even as they seem so deeply and permanently buried?
 
Certainly that must be it, for there it is, joy and peace manifesting in my dumb unconscious in the midst of increasing turmoil and uncertain change.
 
And here I can add more, this sentence being written the day after the riot in the DC capital building.  We should not be surprised by the increase in hate and violence.   From Hosea (8:7): “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”  Evil has been sown, and in that, it shall be returned 70 fold.  As Catholic talk show host Patrick Madrid said this morning, only God can help us now.  We can no longer talk across the isles, and political science wisdom tells us that war is the next step after diplomacy has failed.  The blame is so general, so broad, that we find our beliefs beyond discussion.  We simply are where we are, unmovable, planted like pillars of salt.  Only God can save us…
 
He can and will.  That is what the dreams say.  Peace is always there, even when the lion is loosed from its cage.  We suffer evil, illness, death and vicious turmoil and have since the snake first lied to Eve, but He is always there.  I cannot understand the half of it: I cringe at the thought of the death trains, am appalled at the suffering of the martyrs, find it beyond belief that we can be so cruel and know that we will continue to be so; but still there is peace and joy that is born from some depth within, like green grass sprouting after a fire.  The force of good always returns, unconquerable, and that is what can be for us in the end.  As Pope Francis has said “By your faith, He will resound around the world.” Be of good cheer, then, for the good dreams will overcome the bad, forever and forever.  But what a time we are living in.