Murder in the Cathedral

Where Cathedral = Super Dome and Murdered = Colt Brennan...

Not really. I read T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral over my vacation. And, yes, stuff like this is why my friends all make fun of me.

But there was plenty of wisdom to be found:

The peace of the world is always uncertain unless men keep the peace of God.

Every day is the day we should fear or hope from. One moment weighs like another. Only in retrospection, selection, we say, that was the day.

You think me reckless, desperate and mad. You argue by results, as this world does, to settle if an act be good or bad. You defer to fact. For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown. As in time results of many deeds are blended so good an evil in the end become confounded.

There's another Eliot stanza, from The Wasteland, that is one of my favorites:

The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed

That, I think, is pretty self-explanatory. I would say it is my favorite quote. Perhaps I will add it to my facebook page.

As for the passage about being "reckless, desperate and mad," I figure it like this: If a pretty sizeable portion of the population doesn't think you're at least a little bit $*^#ing crazy, then you're probably doing it wrong. In fact, I don't think I've convinced enough people that I'm crazy, so that's my New Year's resolution: Stop not doing things that people tell me are crazy.

Clear enough? Excellent. I'll close with Martin Luther King Jr., who has a birthday coming up. He was writing as if he were the apostle Paul addressing Americans in the 1960s:

American Christians, I must say to you what I wrote to the Roman Christians years ago: "Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and eternity. Your highest loyalty is to God, and not to the mores or the folkways, the state or the nation, or any man-made institution. ... In a time where men are surrendering the high values of the faith you must cling to them, and despite the pressure of an alien generation reserve them for children yet unborn. You must be willing to challenge unjust mores, to champion unpopular causes, and to buck the status quo. You are called to be the salt of the earth. You are to be the light of the world.