The Visitor

Recently I said that my old blogstead only had one visitor, mostly because we were way out in the country. That was not a correct observation. My daughter said that if she were to read my blog and did not know me, she doubts whether she would leave a note. She reads it now and leaves no notes anyway. I said that an anonymous little scrap that said “brilliant stuff.” might be in order. I believe she made a noise that sounded like “harrumph!” – and not in a pleasant sense. I gathered that she thought my blog was like being in a dream by the painter Henry Fuseli; one never knows when something may jump out at you. And, she said, if you think I’m going to sit there reading the blog with another window open to Google so I can catch some glimpse of what your meaning is, you are seriously mistaken. And this from the young lady with whom I sat for 3 hours on a hot, late summer’s day waiting for a vehicle inspection in our nation’s capitol! (Yes, 3 hours. If you’re a resident of D.C., you’re saying “Only 3 hours…?!” It was a new car she had and we were rear-ended by a cabbie who had fallen asleep in the line. Since he was going at a creeping speed, the contretemps was actually looked upon as great fun, breaking the intolerably hot boredom. Oh, and the credit card machine was not working that day, a fact they informed us of only when we had actually secured a spot and started the inspection process. Everyone was going across the street to the US Post Office to get money orders. Another young lady observed that she had heard from a friend that the machine had not been working for six months. And so on. It’s a tough situation when the activities of stray dogs are your only entertainment for three hours. I dreamt of Cujo and Atticus Finch.) The main purpose of the blog is to leave a testimony of my beliefs for my daughter. I may have mentioned that once returning from a trip to Toronto, she sandbagged me by turning to me and asking me what my beliefs about God were. This was and is important. We love our children and try to protect them from a world often more monstrous than our imaginations can conjure up. We strive to teach Values and Morality and then they go away and we hope something of the teaching will stick. However, what I’ve just described seems to be a process fit for a more rural and bucolic age. The world in which we live – and I include here our own society, our own country: no way do I believe that this country is God’s Little Acre surrounded by a sea of perversity – has become so pernicious that I fear it will chew my babies up and spit out their bones. Do not you yourselves feel in this age of Globalization…the contradictions between “Family Values” and forcing both parents to work, thereby achieving the Brave New World concept of the State raising the children …the absolute love of power…the uncontrolled lack of civility in political discourse…the enthronement of Greed and Constant Consumption... Do you not feel that future monster lumbering toward us? Do you not see the irresolvable darkness of the Watcher on the Plain waiting in mountainous solitude for the last drop of Godliness to drip from our redoubt? I will not go into that night without bearing witness. If I can leave her nothing else, I will try to tell her how the Holy reveals itself to me throughout my own personal history. I hope this will help her make sense of how the Holy reveals itself to her. Organized Religion alone has proven itself not entirely capable of doing so. How could they? They are not her Father. A Dream of a Cross