Be of Good Cheer!

Sometimes I think that I'm really a downer as I look over this blog. I suppose it's because I'm having some difficulty in figuring out what I should be cheerful about. By disposition I'm a very cheerful person. I believe in the absolute Divine Providence of God and the counsel received by Julian of Norwich that "All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." I don't suppose that means all the time though or that there won't be travails between now and eternity.

I'm currently reading C.S. Lewis's The Allegory of Love which is not his most approachable book since it is one of those written in his capacity as a scholar of Medieval Literature, especially the 16th century. It's fun to read Lewis because he has such a clear mind and in everything he writes that clarity of thought seems to come through.

Today the stock market bounced 379 points on the DOW and that's nice. The pundits are always explaining why the market moves the way it does, but in general they really don't know. It goes up when more buyers show up than sellers and goes down for the opposite reason. There are lots of reasons to be depressed about the economy and the state of the nation. For me the biggest reason to be depressed about the nation is the lack of coherence.

I like clarity which is why I like Lewis. I like principles that hew to what Plato might call The Good and not the merely convenient or current advantage. I want my country to be good and principled and sound and a great many other things that I think it is not. The older I get the more I become convinced that most people vote only their selfish personal advantage. 40% pay no taxes but can vote. That's a travesty which will shorty end the American experiment if it continues. When the majority can just vote to take the goods of the minority which we're already doing to a large extent then it is over. It killed all the societies of the past and will kill ours too. A lack of wisdom is one of our besetting sins as a nation. We have no principles any more. It is all empty rhetoric and we have a rhetorician at the helm whose rhetoric is emptier than most.

But that brings me to my faith in Divine Providence. God will not be mocked, nor does a sparrow fall that He does not attend. He loves all of His creation and brings good out of evil. My confidence in that makes me an eternal optimist. "For all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."