Coming Clean

Imagine my surprise and horror when I learned that some of the readers of my last article on the many appearances of the Christ mistook my writing to suggest that I am frustrated with God’s work in that area. Far from it. God does what God does.

Like many others of my spiritual cohort, I believe that showing up for this particular life was a long reach. We were all rather frustrated and upset about that. As in, whatever were humans thinking at the time of the late Italian Renaissance (the Italian Renaissance began in Florence around 1240 and lasted until approximately 1450)? What transformed humans’ character during the late Renaissance to bring about the spiritual horrors of the Reformation and Enlightenment and beyond? In spiritual terms that period drained much of Europe’s, and later the rest of the world’s, spirituality as European hegemony spread around the world.

By the 1880’s the world had reached a point where it began to turn in on itself in a deadlier manner than ever before as new and bigger weapons of war were developed. The new and useless, ridiculous wars that began then and continue in various fashion almost one hundred fifty years later are frustrating. My cohort has so often found that people are not honestly paying attention to the ramifications of what they are doing and that is frustrating.

It’s easy to listen to preachers and teachers and screeds of all manner. Rather than persuading themselves that it is best to be led astray by such errant nonsense, how often do people simply sit down, keep quiet and keep their…