By now, most of you (all 26 of you) who have been reading this blog will have almost given up in despair; it's been so long. I feel that about prayer sometimes... I pray before I blog and I pray too seldom...
In any case, here be St. K & BB together again! I will be writing soon on some truths my Hopkinsian friend Beth, over at Inscapes, has been thinking about. Very compelling, and I promised her I would put up some of my own prayers and aspiring thoughts in reply. Now, but not yet...
Tonight, the father of a dear friend has passed. I'm heading to the funeral tomorrow where I will carry on dreaming in God with James and his wife, Dana, and family.
Her father-in-law, friend James's dad, has finally passed through things temporal so as not to lose the things eternal -- to quote the Collect from the Fourth bleedin' Sunday after Trinity... He's George Kerr - at the end 83 years old, and 22 of those a member of Ontario's governing legislature. And all of Canada's first environment mininster, among other achievements. The man gave himself away.
George, if you will allow me, and with respect, here's what we're thinking. I found this years ago; it's from Joseph Addison, writing in The Spectator,
I have left the repository of our English kings for the contemplation of another day, when I shall find my mind disposed for so serious an amusement. I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy imaginations; but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her delightful ones.
When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits place side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
Tonight, I raise a small glass of port to the day when all of us shall be contemporaries...
