St. Sophrony: Of faith, and faithfulness

Been reading ”We Shall See Him as He is,” the spiritual autobiography of St. Sophrony. This quotation touched me like trumpet of truth:

“Oh, what a paradoxical mixture is man — on the one hand he inspires delight and wonder; on the other, sad bewilderment at his cruelty and savagery. The soul decides to pray for the world but such prayer never attains its ultimate purpose, since no one and nothing can deprive people of freedom to yield to evil, to prefer darkness to light.”

The struggle, he says, must begin within, the weapons being humility and repentance— in the sense not only of recognition of the evil within us, but reformation… hence the “miracle” of both accepting and giving grace to others.

And even at age 69, that’s still a daunting and almost incomprehensible task.

So, Faith and faithfulness.

Click here for More about the saint

Watch Russia, Ukraine . . . and our own disintegrating civil, political, moral and spiritual decline

 This op-ed seems to equally offend left, right, woke, progressives, crony capitalism and the black-and-white political and social "discourse" we've fallen prey to in the past decades.

So, of course, I find it intriguing in its assessment of the gray areas not just in Ukraine, but the decline of liberalism writ large. And it has the benefit of being delivered in a Scottish brogue!

Thought provoking, at least. And worth listening to in its entirety, rather than nitpicking individual assertions piecemeal without having considered the whole.

The Russia-Ukraine propaganda war: Putin and Biden have common ground -- deceit

 So, about Ukraine. Let's not fall for the propaganda -- whether from Putin or the Biden administration.

Not Putin talk about 150,000 "peacekeepers" being mobilized for what inarguably amounts to the second round of annexation of Ukrainian territory. (In 2014, it was the Crimea).

His use of the old trope of just protecting ethnic Russian regions in Crimea, and now the Donbas, recalls the arguments once used by Nazi Germany to gobble up Czechoslovakia and Austria.

Meanwhile, Biden -- in a seeming echo of Neville Chamberlain's disastrous policy of appeasement 70 years ago with Hitler -- stumbles over calling Putin's actions a "minor incursion," or the "beginning of an invasion," or an fullblooded "invasion."

Biden's administration now tries to trot out the idea that this is brave DEMOCRATIC Ukraine fighting off a neo-Soviet juggernaut . . . but this is the Ukraine where he and his family have made millions from a corrupt government with its own autocratic ways (arrests of political opponents, stifling of news outlets not toting the Kyiv line, ethnically based seizures of churches and monasteries, etc., etc.)

Ukraine has its own oligarchs; they just aren't as "effective" as those governing their bigger, more powerful neighbor.

And we've been down this road before, with the call to faux righteous crusades to defend (or in more recent Middle East wars, create) "democratic" nations that were truly led by warlords and corrupt, opportunistic politicians themselves unafraid of ruling with iron fists.

Let's not get fooled again.

Huntsman's Trib OpEd response: Disingenuous at best, deliberate obfuscation at worse

 Today, my former boss, Paul Huntsman, sort of responded to the criticism of the Salt Lake Tribune's recent controversial OpEd.

He completely (it seems to me) ignored the salient statement in that OpEd that Utahns who are unvaccinated should be imprisoned in their homes under guard by the Utah National Guard, i.e. home arrest.

In his response today (https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2022/01/24/huntsman-utah-hospitals/) he makes many good points . . . but what is not there is acknowledgement of the batcrap craziness of the previous call. To remind the reader, that previous OpEd stated this: "Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor’s next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere."

Today's response was just plain disingenuous. In what had seemed a reasonable expression of opinion otherwise, the ignorance of constitutionally recognized civil rights and stench of authoritarianism policies implied was mind-boggling.ds to the criticism of the Salt Lake Tribune's recent controversial OpEd, completely (it seems to me) ignoring the salient statement in that OpEd that Utahns who are unvaccinated should be imprisoned in their homes under guard by the Utah National Guard, i.e. home arrest. Once again, in his response today (https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2022/01/24/huntsman-utah-hospitals/) he makes many good points . . . but what is not there is acknowledgement of the batcrap craziness of the previous call. To remind the reader, that previous OpEd stated this: "Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor’s next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere."

Today's response was just plain disingenuous. In what had seemed a reasonable expression of opinion otherwise, the ignorance of constitutionally recognized civil rights and stench of authoritarianism policies implied was mind-boggling.

A horrible idea: Using National Guard to imprison the unvaxxed in their homes

 "Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor’s next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere."

Up until this point in the OpEd I read today in The Salt Lake Tribune (my employer for 20 years up to the mass layoffs of 2018) I was occasionally nodding with respect for points being made about the pandemic mess we find ourselves in.

But the idea of armed soldiers putting citizens under house arrest, in effect imprisoning them? Really? That is just bat-crap crazy, and certainly unconstitutional.

We can mask publicly, and privately businesses can impose whatever restrictions they wish. Vaccinations can be encouraged, even to the point where -- like when I was a kid with the smallpox and mumps-rubella/etc vaccinations -- attendance requires them, except for valid exemptions on medical and religious grounds.

But National Guard imprisoning people? What precedence does that set?

Next up, in such an authoritarian state, maybe armbands identifying and shaming the non-compliant?

Some re-education facilities (of course, with guard towers and fencing to "protect" these poor, uneducated souls?) Perhaps just cuff 'em and vax 'em by force?

Shades of historically bankrupt concept of revolutionary ("progressive?") worldviews make the suspension or even eradication of truly liberal, pro-civil rights justified. In times past, it was hailed as the "dictatorship of the proletariat," which inevitably became autocratic and embodied in a leader or junta and led to so much of the oppression and persecution of millions in the USSR, Communist China, Cuba, Cambodia, Eastern Europe, etc. . . . not to forget the fear and concentration camp mentality of Nazi Germany itself.

You say, with some justification, that hey, we aren't there yet; but it is stunningly unbelievable to hear such a "remedy" proposed by a newspaper that for so long has been devoted to civil rights of ALL Americans, even those we may disagree with on such divisive issues.

*Update: After much thought, I have thanked my editor (a decent, fair career journalist at the Tribune) for the past year of contracted writing assignments on the faith beat but will, for the present, be looking for different venues for future freelance work.