Posting to a blog for the first time is rather like standing behind the props on a stage or movie set. The first thing you want to do is to pay attention to all the stuff going on that you never see....
But this is not the time for such reflections. Perhaps I should start again (once the agog sensation has passed)
And now for something completely different....
John Dewey (per John Updike, whom I've been reading recently; his "Early Stories" collection, which is really quite good), said God is the marriage of the actual and the ideal. We've had a surfeit of the actual lately, and consequently we're despairing lately of the ideal. Leaving out the religious issues (is this truly the nature of God? Could such a God exist?), can we consider that our "god" (the political/social vision that "calls" us here together) can be seen again, in a marriage of the actual and the ideal? And what actual? and which ideal?'
One more word, from Updike, that might either set the tone or blur the distinctions beyond recognition; a general and genial observation on the American scene: "We have explored, on behalf of all mankind, this paradox: the more matter is outwardly mastered, the more it overwhelms us in our hearts." Are these things right, or wrong?
