The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.
… The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name written on her forehead was a mystery: Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes, and of the abominations of the earth.
– Revelation 17:1-5
I had been emotionally involved a few times with women with enough of a record of promiscuity to make me vaguely uneasy. It is difficult to put much value on something the lady has distributed all too generously. I have the feeling there is some mysterious quota, which varies with each woman. And whether she gives herself or sells herself, once she reaches her own number, once X pairs of hungry hands have been clamped rightly upon her rounded undersides, she suffers a sea change wherein her juices alter from honey to acid, her eyes change to glass, her heart becomes a stone, and her mouth a windy cave from whence, with each moisturous gasping, comes a tiny stink of death.
― MacDonald, John D. (1966). “Darker Than Amber”, Travis McGee series, Random House LLC, 2013, pgs 56-57
We live in an age of wizards and whores where souls are sold in the pursuit of material pleasures. Time-honored principles have been traded for profit and power as lawlessness intensifies.
The word “mystery” is defined as “something not understood or beyond understanding” or, in a religious sense: “truth that one can know only by revelation and cannot fully understand”. This would imply more than simply not knowing. A mystery can be that which exceeds human understanding.
There is a saying I’ve heard over and over in my life that has… for the most part… been stated by older men with whom I’ve been related and/or acquainted: “The older I get, the less I know”.
Continue reading “Gladness and Silence amid Chaos and Violence”
