strength and weakness

It's not always easy to tell the difference between strength and weakness.

Sometimes belligerence and a willingness to use force seem bold and courageous, when they're really not. Sometimes tolerance and forgiveness seem weak or wimpy when they're actually just the opposite.

It seems ironic to me at times that at the same time I gather strength with age, the society I find myself living in falls ever more deeply into irreversible and fatal weakness. The profound spiritual illness we've suffered as a people is nothing new, but it becomes more intense as the nation clings ever more tightly to bad habits and destructive behaviors, especially indulging in perpetual and pointless wars, and abandoning the national conversation to a professional commentariat employed by a mercenary and commercialized mass electronic media.

That latter group has taken over the function of thinking for us, so we don't have to.

I contrast this sad situation with my own, personal circumstances. My body is getting gradually stronger, even though I have a couple of degenerative conditions which will no doubt grow worse at some point. My breath is still troubled, but improved and progressing. My mind is clear; my spirit becoming aware of itself, and acquiring shape and substance.

This is strange and interesting, and it's hard telling what my long-range reaction to the combined set of circumstances will be, or what it should be.

Illustration: St. Michael the Archangel defeats the Devil and kicks him down to hell.

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