Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Here’s a bit, more than a bit, of food for thought:

“In religious circles, rote memorization is the means of learning favored by some, but for others the search for wisdom, though beginning with scripture, opens itself to the full range of human experience and imaginings.”

Profound, don’t you think? Or, maybe it will become that. Just where am I going with this, anyway? You may ask.

Hold on. Let me continue with it:

“When rabbis are accused of answering every question with a question, they typically reply: ‘And why do you think that is?'” Gotta love that.

“In the Gospels, Jesus asks forty questions for every declarative statement he makes.”

Where did I get this? From a powerful book titled “Fascism – A Warning”, by Madeleine Albright. You remember her. Secretary of State, 1997-2001; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, plus positions at the White House, and on Capitol Hill.

That’s an impressive resume, for the distinguished lady, who, as a very young child born into a Jewish family, was placed with a Catholic family so she might survive the horrors of Hitler and the Nazis.

Let me pass along just a sliver of some of the thoughts, facts, found in her book, which was published in 2018.

“… consider that, of the people celebrating their sixteenth birthday this year, almost nine in the ten will do so in a country with a below-average standard of living.”

About fascism: “When we are disappointed, our response is to retreat into cynicism, then start thinking about whether there might be a quicker, easier, and less democratic way to satisfy our wants.”

That just seems like human nature, to me. The key words are “less democratic way” which should give us pause, though.

“Democracy is not only a form of state, it is not just something that is embodied in a constitution; democracy is a view of life, it requires a belief in human beings, in humanity … I have already said that democracy is a discussion. But the real discussion is possible only if people trust each other and if they try fairly to find the truth.”

Makes sense to me. So, who said this? Jan Masaryk. He was a Czechoslovakian. His body was found in the ministry’s courtyard below an open bathroom window. The communists made sure he was silenced. This took place

 

just a few years after WWII ended.

Well now, friends, I have put down on paper things that are diverse, one from the other. If this were a souffle, it probably would have fallen.

As I often say, too often I suspect, thanks for sticking with me.

Hug somebody this weekend.