T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral. How fitting.
Thank you vanderleun for this astute -- and deeply saddening -- post.
Your evocation of Eliot prompted me to revisit Murder in the Cathedral, a sublime work of the human spirit. Some of its themes evoke aspects of what is happening down in Pinellas County, and Florida more generally, right now. Or so it seems to me. Here are the lines that resonate:
* * * * * * *
I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government,
But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation.
King rules or barons rule:
The strong man strongly and the weak man by caprice.
They have but one law, to seize the power and keep it,
And the steadfast can manipulate the greed and lust of others,
The feeble is devoured by his own. […]
What peace can be found
to grow between the hammer and the anvil? [Third Priest, Part I]
They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.
They know and do not know, that action is suffering
And suffering is action. Neither does the agent suffer
Nor the patient act. But both are fixed
In an eternal action, an eternal patience
To which all must consent that it may be willed
And which all must suffer that they may will it,
That the pattern may subsist, for the pattern is the action
And the suffering, that the wheel may turn and still
Be forever still. […]
We do not know very much of the future
Except that from generation to generation
The same things happen again and again.
Men learn little from others’ experience.
But in the life of one man, never
The same time returns. Sever
The cord, shed the scale. Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns. [Thomas, Part I]
A Christian martyrdom is never an accident, for the Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man’s will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. A martyrdom is always the design of God, for his love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr. [The Archbishop, Interlude]
* * * * * *
May the good Lord ever bless Terri and her family, and comfort them in their time of suffering. In all things, Lord, Thy will be done.