More Auden

I thought that one more line from Auden at this point in our History would be helpful. We're coming up on the Inauguration, and I have such high hopes...and I'm trying to remember that it's most helpful to put my hope in God. And yet it's so easy to hope that our government can do good!

Our government, though, is made of fallible people facing difficult problems. I doubt that there has been a government ever which hasn't been made up of fallible people facing difficult problems. Yet the people in this one I like more than I like others (oh, may I not be fallible!) and they are facing more difficult problems than many governments have faced at the beginning of a term.

But back to Auden. When I remember that it is people who are in charge...and people of whom they are in charge, I remember this line, said by Simeon, the man whom God promised would not die until he saw the salvation of God:

"for the course of History is predictable in the degree to which all men love themselves, and spontaneous in the degree to which each man loves God and through Him his neighbour."

What is predictable scares me...what is spontaneous and somehow the working of the Spirit delights me. My hopes and prayers for this country are that we don't let predictability work its insidious machinations...but instead a fresh Wind might blow. And leave all of us more loving.