Advent 2015 December 23


Despite my post of yesterday, I admit with William Wordsworth that the world is too much with us.  I am reading Winston Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples.  What a bloody history on that island, at least in the Roman conquest, since the Britons did not want to be subjugated (a theme of Churchill’s, I would imagine, although the Britons of 43 A.D. were not exactly the same people of those of WWII).

Tens of thousands were killed, according to the Roman historians he quotes.  Why is there such slaughter in human history?  How does the birth of Christ affect this centuries-long holocaust? I do not know.  But Isaiah called him the Prince of Peace, and I don’t think is just meant to be internal peace, some Buddhist mindfulness type of inner tranquility.  In fact, Christ said he brought a sword, too.  Peace is not won by encouraging people to eat tofu and sit under a tree.  That doesn’t deal with the deep longing and the deep intransigence of the human soul.

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