(with apologies to Ms. Austen)

Gilding our lilies.

I find it amusing when the professed enlightened among us exhibit the most obnoxious depths of intolerance and closed-minded behavior, particularly when they presume to be “among friends”.

When you find yourself a double-agent, the biggest dangers come from what you learn about both sides.

No one’s innocent!

Careening between bitterness and elation … a bi-polar carnival ride brought on by the curse of knowledge. Is ignorance bliss? Are our talents & abilities the gifts our culture says, or gifts more like Boromir’s misapprehension of the finding of The One Ring?

As Vyv once quoted on The Young Ones: “Who cares about life? Who cares about me? Not me, that’s for sure!” (Then he punches himself in the head.)

It’s not that I have developed a cynicism about humanity in general. People still perform the sublime daily.

One of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes reads thus:

“The fact that the ship is sinking is no reason for allowing her to be a floating hell while she still floats. Indeed, there is a certain fine irony in the idea of keeping the ship very punctiliously in good order up to the very moment at which she goes down.”

But the more formalized our effort, the less pure the result … or so it often would seem.

Voices carp about “organized religion” – and more and more I find it difficult to argue the point. Not that I advocate “forsaking the gathering of ourselves” in community, but how much bureaucracy can our faith handle? Does it necessarily follow that a large enough organization (of flawed individuals) will eventually devolve into legalism, group-think, and the like? Is the meta-model a joke?

Lewis also said that the educated person “is almost compelled to be aware that reality is very odd and that the ultimate truth, whatever it may be, must have the characteristics of strangeness.”

Indeed.

There is a delightful essay here which I find academically presents much of what the man himself artistically depicted in “The Pilgrims Regress.” (One of my all-time favorite books.)

The one intolerance which I find acceptable – even laudable – is a refusal to deceive oneself. Truth (big or small “T”) is the only pursuit that ultimately matters, and I cannot long abide those who willfully refuse to seek.

Honest error over willful ignorance any day.

So I raise my glass to all who gladly stand arm-in-arm and yet simultaneously refuse to conform. Who understand the need to separate love for their fellow man from the compulsion to agree with him merely to thereby receive love in return.

Such behavior kills grace.