Essays in Idleness

I tend to make my pointless little resolutions at Christmas, and at other memorable dates. That way, if I forget the resolution, I may still remember when it was made. This year, for at least the hundredth time, I have resolved to give up paying attention to politics, or expecting anything to come from that source. Nothing is ever achieved by politics, except mild disappointment, or sometimes major disappointment and catastrophe. The man who takes his politics seriously deserves this result. If one has acquired any idea about oneself, and one’s fellow human creatures, one knows that every human project will end in disaster. Sanctity offers the only strange exceptions. But without sanctity, democracy is merely a means to speed the disaster along.

This does not mean there is not good and evil.

But curiously, Christ changes everything. It is impossible to look hopelessly upon the future, once one has begun to accept Christ, even as a little child in a manger at Bethlehem. He has arrived to show us that God is. We needn’t trust in ourselves to make things bigger and better, we need only become holier.