on absent Ys

 Fascinating.

The two most inspirational orations I've heard in recent years have been by young women.

Amanda Gorman at Biden's kick-off.

Taylor Swift and NYU's Class of 2022 send-off.

(I haven't hear much oratory from Greta Thunberg, but she's inspirational too).

There's some great role models out there, especially for young women, and often in unexpected places.

On one of my granddaughters' birthday, and ...

despite ...

    toxic ocean sludge,

        equally toxic orange buffoon presidential candidates,

                balding and lethal dictators,

                    climate, ecological (and sociological) emergency,

                                you name it ...

there is great hope.

(Other sheep, not of my flock, comes to mind, and that's important too).

Here's to my daughters and granddaughters and the world they can midwife. (Hey, those with Ys are great too, but they must catalyze a different sub-plot)

the universe screams

 when the universe screams 

There are  no words  when faced  with horrors  like  those perpetrated by Lucy Letby in England. I somewhat wish that, like the mosque killer in Christchurch, her name were now being wiped from history. Such names are searchable, but why bother? No words can bring those infants back, nor erase the grief from those who loved them.

How do we speak of God in such a context? Extremely cautiously. Evil and holiness continue to coexist, and not one of us is immunized from the former. As with natural  disasters  or  accidents we can  improve our odds, but  the parents  of those infants  in the Countess of Chester Hospital took no risks beyond the risk of love.

God did not stop the evil machinations of Letby’s twisted mind. God will be present, named or not, as tears are wiped away, nightmares recede, as those who are grieving are held physically and emotionally by those who stand with them in their sorrow. God will be present eventually even in the aching void of those who have loved and lost (including Letby’s parents).  But the word “God” might not. Ever.

Yet  we who are Christ-bearers  must  speak  that  word, still. 

How?  How  after  any  brutal  tragedy? Natural or human-made. 

How?

I am a “Christian universalist.” I believe that no one ultimately stands outside the realms of the salvation won in the Christ-event. But Letby? Or Hitler? Sexual abusers and mass murderers (and any murder is one too many)? Where is God when Lucy Letby …? Where is God for the babies who cannot legally be named, where is God for their loved ones?

God?

Ultimately if there is a God (I happen to think there is) then that God must provide answers. In moments of sorrow I hope Letby will spend the rest of her life (a far better punishment than death) listening to the victim impact statements of those whose children she has killed, the statements she refused to  hear in court. Then,  post-life, post death, my  theology tells me, she must spend whatever “eternity” is, facing the horrors  she  has  perpetrated,  until at last she sees, acknowledges, cries “mercy” for those horrors, and looks into the infants’ and their loved ones’ eyes. Looks, and knows, and seeks at last the mercy only her victims can permit and God-in-Christ bestow.

 

Self evaluation blah blah blah

THOUGHTS ON A TUESDAY AFTERNOON (AFTER A TUESDAY MORNING)
 

So in one of those wallowing moments saturated with First World Problems that threaten to overwhelm one’s sense of self-worth I decided to do a little self-evaluation. Quite simple. Even for one mathematically challenged.

 

A. What am I good at?

B. What am I bad at?

Just a few representative examples, perhaps.

 

So, (A)

Walking, (metaphorical and literal)

driving

reading

researching

comprehension

writing

public speaking

liturgy

listening

caring

 

(B)?

 

IT

Admin

Heights

Proofreading too, perhaps – but so were Shakespeare and Defoe …

 

I checked the ordinal … the document that governs what my job is supposed to entail.

Some of  (A) featured.

None of (B) featured.

Oh well. Back to the day job I guess.

Bloody Phylacteries

BLOODY PHYLACTERIES

It all started when I was asked to write a report on an induction (installation of a new priest in charge of a parish, what used to be delightfully if quaintly called “induction to a cure of souls”).

I tend to look at these things very much as if I were an outsider. What did this or that event look like in the eyes of someone who had just dropped in from Betelgeuse, or the 17^th century, or downtown Poorsville or Hungersville, or anywhere where my tribe and its rites are as foreign to the outsider as the carpet on the Mariana Trench is to me.

So I wrote, and faeces hit the fan.

I here reproduce what I wrote – albeit with names and locations altered because I’ve explored and posted all that.[1] That specific is dusted, and I’d like to move on. But the ramifications of the faeces need a touch of house-keeping.

In the old days – that is to say more than a year or two ago – inductions were dominated by a coterie of clergy dressed in their various glad rags, a pot pourri of rumpled or ironed, dazzling or drab humanity, a Chaucerian crew “of sondry folk, by adventure yfalle / In fellaweshipe, and pilgrims were they alle.” In white robes. 

We don’t do that now – possibly because someone eventually realised it looked more like a gathering of the KKK than a show of ecclesiastical support by sister and brother clergy. Or possibly because the parading phylacteries dominated the gathering of the faithful congregants and fellow-pilgrims who are the heart and soul of a parish.

So no one paraded any phylacteries when the people of St Ultan's and assorted others gathered for an induction. No airs and graces, but a church full of those from the congregation, from the faith community, from the wider community, parishioners and clients and colleagues and whanau and perhaps even wayward strangers gathering because they have journeyed or will journey or are journeying with the Rev’d Illyana Intrepid.

And because they wanted to utter their amen or nod or smile as Bishop Thucydides Thunderbolt kicked off a new stanza in Illyana’s life and the congregation’s life and the life of a parish that is much, much older than a mere congregation.  

All this because one of the most historic faith communities of the diocese was kicking off a new phase. A new phase for St Ultan of Ardbracan’s, a new phase for Rev’d Illyana Intrepid. But not new for either. Illyana Intrepid, on and off, has been a part of the parish for, well, a year or two. 

Okay, to be honest she has been associated with St. Ultan’s on and off but more on than off since before she was born.

Until recently that journey culminated in a period in which Illyana, in conjunction with others, were effectively (and effective) sacramental ministers. But as a Beatle once said, “all things must pass,” and now the Rev’d Illyana Intrepid has been led, as her choice of songs reminded us, by the Spirit of God into the seat in which so many servants of God have sat since 1873.

So we gathered, sang, prayed, and of course ate, and Illyana Intrepid is now the priest in a long line of priests presiding over Word and Sacrament in a remarkable parish. She is surrounded by aroha and goodwill, proclaiming with the people of the Underworld the resurrection hope that dwells at the heart of the Trinity.

Kia kaha, Illyana Intrepid and your faith-filled parishioners!

 

It wasn’t a great piece of writing, but I was under pressure for time. Off it went, was duly pixelated and posted. I bumped into Rev’d Illyana in the cauliflower aisle the next day, and she was delighted. That was before the fan turned yellow-brown and sprayed.

I had, I was told, trivialized Anglican rites (I love them), offended anglo catholics (I am one), and spouted anti-semitic hate speech (I am not anti semitic, though I am no sycophant of the modern State of Israel, and let’s recall that Palestinians are Semites, too).

Actually there was some confusion about the alleged anti semitism; some doo-doo-despatchers seemingly forgot that the reference to phylacteries was from the mouth of Jesus, the Jew (Mt. 23:5). Others believed that “phylacteries” was a references to phalluses, and that I was promulgating some sort of public sexual deviance presumably involving foreheads and aforementioned organs.

Under duress I wrote what I wanted to say in response, then deleted it. 

Instead I wrote an explanation of what I had said instead … sort of an essay interpreting my own work. 

A recent piece I wrote as a reflection on the induction of the Rev’d Illyana to St Ultan’s has, according to correspondence received by the bishop, generated offence.

This offence appears to have been primarily concerned with my references to the Ku Klux Klan, always a blight on human history, and to phylacteries. These, as Jesus mentioned (Mt. 23:5), can represent not so much a desire to be close to the heart and will of God (as they were intended to), but a desire to be seen to be close to the heart and will of God, which can become a different matter. 

In responding I am somewhat hog-tied. Correspondence with the bishop cannot be reproduced here, so cannot be refuted. So let it be. I can only make two rather generic responses to the two foci of complaint.

In the first place my reference to the Klan was firmly past tense. Referring to the parades of clergy in white robes, parades which I note to have been “former times” (if not that long ago), I suggest that those looking at us without formation in liturgical practice wear a set of lenses different to ours. The gathering and parading of robed clergy can appear more akin to a gathering of a different, deeply demonic group of humans. They wore white robes, but were and are well-known for practicing unimaginable atrocity and evil. They were not a group of women and men recalling their baptism, rejoicing in the white-robed army of martyrs alluded to in Revelation 7:14.

I believe the term used today is a “metric.” What metric are we using to interpret elements in any given context? As one who used joyfully to parade in white robes, even black robes, I am critiquing myself as much as anyone else. What impression did I convey? What impression do I now convey? Which is closer to gospel truth in the streets of the suburb where I live, in 2023? Is there a difference between the clothes I wear in liturgy and the clothes I wear in the street? Do the clothes I wear or any other action I take in Christ convey oneness with or separation from those with whom I rub shoulders in the street?

I believe there was also criticism of my reference to phylacteries. Jesus is recorded by Matthew, that most Hebrew of New Testament writers, as noting a group of religious leaders, Jesus’ own people, Matthew’s own people, who “make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” Consensus amongst scholars and other bible readers is that this was not some sort of anti-Semitic rant from Jesus the Jewish teacher, but a metaphorical, generic description of those who like to draw attention to themselves in contexts where it is inappropriate to do so. If, incidentally, I had been wishing to offend my Jewish neighbours (and I wouldn't), I would have denigrated the wearers of tfillin, but that subtlety evaded my critics.

I was not criticizing Jewish people today. I was criticizing Anglican Christian people of yesteryear - and their contemprary imitators. This chronology I emphasized in my article by noting, “no one paraded any phylacteries, no airs and graces,” adding “but a church full of those from the congregation, from the faith community, from the wider community, parishioners and clients and colleagues and whanau and perhaps even wayward strangers gathering because they have journeyed or will journey or are journeying with the Rev’d Illyana” (emphasis now added). It was a joyous and unpretentious occasion celebrating a new phase in the life of a priest. A new phase too in the community in which she has been invited to serve God in new ways.

I added an apology, avoiding the lame “sorry (if) you feel offended,” but trying to avoid compromising my view, and my right to it.

That view remains. Coteries of clergy dressed up in esoteric finery and/or white sheets (often with hoods, subtly understated), ensuring they stand out from “mere” hoi polloi amongst whom they walk or sit, do the crucified outsider god few favours. They appear through the lens of a post-Churchianity society to resemble the Ku Klux Klan far more closely than they resemble the saints and martyrs of faith that the paraders think they’re recollecting, representing.

I’m not championing Baptist liturgy. In the enactment that Anglican liturgy is, wear costume if it helps convey the sacred. I do. What we do in the specifics of a liturgical role, when we have one, is up to us. The bishop and the inductee were dressed appropriately in ways that expressed thir roles in the liturgy. Otherwise, basically, if you don’t want to make an ass of yourself (and the gospel) don’t dress up as a donkey.

Oh … and if the metaphorical properties of phylacteries and donkeys and fans and faeces elude you enjoy your day without them.

In the end I published the apology unadorned. I figured those deeply immersed in their own institutional esoterism were probably not going to see themselves through the eyes of outsiders, and Anglican Christianity would be pushed further and further to the fringes of society.  

 

---

[1] I have removed one paragraph that would serve no purpose here beyond identifying St. Ultan’s and its Illyana. 

bricks and walls

 

ANOTHER BRICK IN … SOMETHING

It was an epiphany of sorts, and about as unsettling as they usually are. There I was, driving along, somewhere south of the last town, and Pink Floyd shuffled their way into my consciousness. I never really got into The Wall. Perhaps there comes a time when angsty anti-establishmentism becomes a bit sort of pubescent, really. Maybe. 

Unless you’re Roger Waters. He stayed angsty, writing songs against the establishment. Good songs, too. But for most of us the fire goes out, somewhere around that moment when our first child comes along, and well, mouths to feed, houses to roof.

Still, “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” is one of those songs I couldn’t ignore, even if like most people I ignored the album. Dark Side of the Moon, yeah. The Wall? Yeah nah. Life’s too short. But the song? Margaret Thatcher hated it, so that sold it to me. I’ve loved it ever since.

On this occasion it broke through something of a dwaal. That’s a lovely Afrikaans word that will have to be translated by the weaker “daydream” I guess.  But you know … as the kids from Islington Green School chanted the chorus, “Hey, teacher, leave us kids alone” I came back from my dwaal and heard the tail of the song as if for the first time, somewhere south of the last town.

“Wrong, do it again!” yells a teacher, exemplifying, with the slight sneer in his voice, the “dark sarcasm” berated in the body of the song. I winced a little. I didn’t hear those sneers too often, but they were there in the psyches of the Masters of my childhood. “Wrong. Do it again,” and the thwack of whatever weapon came to hand across my butt remains a sound indelibly etched in my consciousness. Wrong. Do it again. Thwack. Hockey stick, sandal, slipper, coal shovel, whatever.

But it was as the voice started expanding its owner’s logic in naked fury that I realized my own footprints in the story. “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding.” It was an order I recalled from those hard days in a bleak boarding school – though it was more likely to be the limp, dead silver beet that I was being forced to eat. “If you don’t eat your vegetables you can’t eat your pudding” doesn’t scan so well, and I don’t recall the abbreviation “veggies” doing the rounds back then. Not proper, you know.

But the harsh cry of the dislocated, spaceless, timeless voice doesn’t stop there. “How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”

It is the cry of a man whose universe is crumbling. For him there was an indisputable logic in his summation of the situation. No meat, no pud. How could it be otherwise? No water, no swim. No air, no breathe.

But to the kids his frantic cry was nonsense. He was just another brick in the wall, holding them captive, incarcerated in old dreams that had died a long overdue death. “Screw your meat” – or veggies, whatever. And I had been one of them (not in Islington, admittedly). I had hated what I saw to be the phony values of the generation before me. No marriage no sex. No military service no citizenship. No bombs no peace. How can you have any peace if you don’t manufacture your bombs?

The man’s voice faded away. His eternal truths were crumbling. If the song had been Lord of the Flies the kids would have overthrown him, torn him limb from limb. And I was a shit of a kid. I would have mocked him mercilessly as the crowd advanced and the wall began to crumble. All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

It was wrong and it was right. Perhaps now I’d try to find the compassion to love the poor man whose world was crumbling. But I doubt it. I fear I would have been a part of the fickle, angry, hate-fuelled crowd. I still recall with horror a geography teacher fleeing our class in tears. Another brick in the wall.

Perhaps I might even have been Alt-Right. I hope not. But I wonder: my psyche dwelt in furious places. I was never brave; even now when I hope I’ve found something like compassion I’m not sure I would exercise it when push came to shove, and the realities of yesterday’s hero began to crumble. All have sinned and fall short. Welcome to Lent.

'twixt already and not yet - in minor key

 THOUGHTS ON INTERREGNA (written during one, years ago) 

Over my 40 years of involvement in Mother Cantuar (have I mentioned that’s my nickname for the Anglican Church?) I have journeyed through a number of parish and diocesan interregnums (yeah, or interregna). I remember well my first experience of the process. I was a parishioner at my (first) “church of origin,” All Saints’, Palmerston North. The vicar announced his resignation, and the priest (he wouldn’t like the word) who was on the parish team as a sort of senior assistant, took over. I was particularly cranky: I happened to be going out with the out-going vicar’s daughter, but that’s another story.

I was no great fan of the interim priest. He represented the tradition that felt that to preach a sermon under 30 minutes duration was to insult God. The departed vicar was a fine preacher, with a better sense of the balance of liturgy and “word.” The interim not so much. To compensate for his interminably long sermons (often followed by interminably long intercessions) he raced through the communion like a race commentator: “this time, and they’re …” Oh, whoops, sorry, wrong script. (Someone else will have to take care of Daggy Boy). The holiness of the Eucharist (though I didn’t know the word back then) was stolen from me. To get it back I started sneaking off to Mass at a nearby Roman Catholic parish, where the priest was as fine a liturgist and preacher as I ever encountered in any church before or since. Sadly he was later felled by a stroke, and never preached or presided again.

But, back at the Anglican parish, I shared the apprehension felt by many. What lay ahead? The dynamism of the departed vicar was never likely to be met, I feared, and the momentum that he had initiated would all dwindle to nothing. We were a fairly passionate bunch, I guess, in that parish, and hearts were in mouths for a while. Eventually a new vicar came, and I did my best not to fall into the trap of comparisons. Several months later I left for Australia, where as it happens I would experience the process again in my next three parishes (Flemington, North Melbourne, East Bentleigh). Eventually I became a parish priest, doing the complex dance of coming and going. Added to that a handful of episcopal electoral processes (Melbourne, Grafton, Auckland, Waiapu) and I began to get a complex: did I frighten all my spiritual leaders away?

The outcomes were not always – perhaps not ever! – indication that God agreed with my choices. I won’t tell tales but I was to see the good, the bad and the ugly over the change processes that followed (no, I won’t say which was which). Yet through all the changes and chances I have continued to see the fingerprints of the God who generates space for us to change and grow as human beings, made in divine image. Somehow the rumour of resurrection, sung in various keys, has gone on in all those places.

That commission, to rumour resurrection hope, must be our primary concern in every time of interregnum (and every time is a time of interregnum!).

Serendipitous journeys

A VIRUS, WIDE OPEN SPACES, SERENDIPITOUS JOURNEYS; 

REFLECTIONS FROM A TRAVELLER

As Anne van Gend (to whom I’m married!) and I sat down at our dining room table last night, too tired to eat but thankful to be home, we rejoiced in life’s rich tapestry. Let’s not trivialize coronavirus here: the world is in a serious wobble. But sometimes the cosmic experience is incomprehensible, and we can relate only to the personal. We had somehow escaped the dark sides of potential calamity, and against shortening odds had made it home.

Forgive, please, my personal account. As a writer and a speaker I have long emphasized God’s footprints in apocalyptic times. I have long emphasized that faith is not an insurance policy against tough times. Believers suffer, survive, fail to survive. Lunatic fringes of faith see God as some kind of magician who will flick the faithful out of times of trial and leave the rest to misery. Such a God is not the God of the Cross. The God of the Cross is bigger than our suffering, but is not a magician flicking some out of and some into the trials of being. 

I’m not sure of the words to describe God’s methodology. In the last two weeks, as Anne and I traipsed on the edge of what will be calamitous times for some, I was painfully aware that most of God’s world is experiencing or will be experiencing suffering far greater than the inconveniences that were closing in on us. These, I kept saying to those around me, are strange times.

Let me explain. Before Christmas Anne and I had booked to attend a conference in Johannesburg. We had decided to give ourselves a few days holiday as well as the work (conference and other) commitments. As it happens the conference was cancelled, not because of a thing called coronavirus, but because of the crisis in the key speaker’s own life. But insurances did not apply, our tickets were un-refundable, and we elected to keep going, using the time to network and conference with representatives of South African Anglican schools and dioceses, to learn what we could from their post-apartheid world. We learned much, but that’s not my story here.

As the time approached the news became more and more saturated with information of this spreading virus. Its gravity became more and more serious. But there were no indications that matters would escalate in the way they did. Precautions about hygiene and personal space protections were issued, and our plans fitted well enough within the changing parameters. Wash carefully, cough carefully, change a few personal and liturgical practices to ensure safety. As we boarded our flights, Dunedin, Auckland, Singapore, Johannesburg, there was a little more chatting about these issues, a few extra notices, perhaps a few more masks worn. Pretty much on a par with SARS and swine ’flu (remember that?). We winced when someone on a nearby seat coughed too much, but that was about all. Oh, and sanitizer, sanitizer, sanitizer. More important, soap, soap, soap. Two Lord’s Prayers for each handwash.

On arrival in Johannesburg little had changed. Meetings went ahead, handshakes (remember them?) still happened. Sanitizer, sanitizer, sanitizer, soap, soap, soap. After two days of meetings we flew south to Grahamstown, inland from Port Elizabeth. Tourist spots were emptying out, though. More meetings, fewer handshakes, more namaste. As it happens, I remember distinctly my last handshake, in the cathedral in Grahamstown, after praying the office with local clergy and youth. Suddenly it seemed wrong. Namaste and elbow bumps were the order of the day. Did I mention sanitizer? Soap?

We flew back to Johannesburg and down to Cape Town. More meetings. Namaste and elbow bumps. Work and family now. But suddenly the reference points were changing. Every conversation was an allusion to coronavirus. We were with family now, discussing our differing circumstances; some were in communal living, some were immuno-compromised, all were concerned. By and large Anne and I were buffered from risk now: a gated community, careful spatial awareness, hands strictly away from others’ hands, and from our own faces; the two-metre rule was beginning to dominate. But we were going bush, off grid. There were no travel warnings, and we were to be well away from humanity. I spent a day hiking on Table Mountain, and the next we headed up country, and, as it happens, off-grid. We spend three days travelling, far from communication towers, far from most human beings, immersed in rugged, ancient landscapes, baked by an African sun. Hundreds of kilometres of dirt roads: happy traveller!

We arrived back on grid and all hell broke loose.

South Africa was closing its borders. South African Airway had stopped its international operations. Our flights out were cancelled. We still had limited phone access, and in any case airlines were restricting access to those travelling in the next 48 hours. We weren’t, and we were still a couple of hundred kilometres from Cape Town and from contact with the outside world.

We made our way back, as planned, to Cape Town the following day. Eventually Anne was able to get through on the air line helplines. Yes, our flight was cancelled, or at least the South African Airways Johannesburg-Perth leg was. No there was no other flight available. We had no choice: Air New Zealand re-scheduled us to April 17^th. It would be a long stay in Cape Town.

The president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, made some powerful statements in an address to the national – far more rational than those that were being made by another president in a large northern hemisphere nation at the time (and since). But no presidential address to the nation could cover the fact that South Africa is a nation ill-equipped to fight a pandemic. And, should we get sick, we would be at the mercy of and a drain on a somewhat challenged health infrastructure. When the virus reached the townships, crowds of humanity without running water, with compromised sewerage, with limited education, the virulent genie would break loose – it still will. Could we in all conscience continue to be a drain either on our personal hosts’ grace or the grace of the nation we were travelling in? We elected to forfeit our Air New Zealand bookings, and rebooked with Singapore Airways.

Singapore closed its borders.

Suddenly the language of border closure was sounding deeply ominous. Shades of the language of wartimes – circumstances utterly beyond our control. We were assured Singapore would reimburse our fares … sometime. There remained only two airlines that could get us out of the country: Qantas and Emirates, and both were cancelling rapidly.

So we managed to get a flight out of Cape Town to Dubai, and another via Sydney to Christchurch. Bookings made, we made our way to Cape Town airport. We were amongst the first in the slow but generally well managed and behaved check-in queue (kudos, incidentally, to airline staff, who were utterly professional throughout).

When we reached our turn we learned that our flight, too was cancelled. While we were driving to the airport Jacinda had announced a lockdown, and Emirates had pulled the plug accordingly.

Urgent phone calls, pleas with our bank to facilitate credit extensions, phone cards running out, more borders closing. For two hours we wrestled with the odds. In the end we secured the last two seats on the last plane out of Dubai – and that only as far as Melbourne. Online, as we flew, we found a flight from Melbourne to Christchurch, likewise the last before the lockdown. In Melbourne authorities baulked at letting Anne re-enter New Zealand – she has Australian citizenship. I was not allowed into Australia for the same reason. Flurries of calls to the New Zealand consulate. And finally we made the flight – Qantas, as it happens, whose compassion for the New Zealanders on board – there were no other nationalities – was exemplary. Anne and I fist bumped as we touched down in Christchurch, and were collected by a son who drove 350 kms up from Dunedin to fetch us. We rotated driving all the way home; fatigue was otherwise going to wipe us or someone else out.

We were the lucky ones. Heavily out of pocket, but who cares? Our hearts went out to many: we left behind the masses in South Africa for whom the coming months will be a nightmare of crumbling infrastructure. We watched as our Emirates plane took off again heading back to Dubai, now a taxi flight with only crew on board, crew who would have no job once they land in Dubai. Many of them will not be able to get home, for Emirates crews hail from all around the world, and the UAE borders are closed. Many travellers had to spend far more thousands of dollars than we did to get home – or nearer home.
We listened to the plight of those at Melbourne who were transiting through New Zealand to the UK and USA who were told they could not board their flight because NZ transit was closed. We read of the plight of the Belgian tourists who were tramping (the name given to hiking in kiwiland) for several days in Central Otago and emerged to phone contact to learn the world had changed, and their travel plans deleted.

We’ve made it. Dunedin has turned on a beautiful day. As far as we know we have no virus – though time will tell. But across our lives and across the globe there are countless worse off than we are. I have as yet no words or theological insights. We’re here, and will take time to work it out. We have seen countless acts of kindness around us and to us in recent days. Perhaps for now that will be the theological insight. But these, like every apocalyptic time, are interesting times, and the onus is on us to find and affirm the God in whose footsteps we are placing ours, no matter what.