Happy Birthday Pratibha!

Today is Pratibha Patil's birthday.

Pratibha was India's President and to date the only woman to have held that office.

As our Parliament - of which we are supposed to be so proud - mires itself ever more deeply in the swampy jungle of Brexit two of her comments (about the Parliament of India) are poignant, to say the least:

It is important that the decorum and dignity of the House is upheld at all times.  The image of Parliament in the public mind should be one where proceedings, debates and discussions take place with a view to resolve issues through a constructive and co-operative approach.

Parliament of the country is the repository of the sovereign will of the people and its successful functioning is the responsibility of both the Government and Opposition.

Quite.

Happy Birthday, Maurice White

Maurice White, founding father and general genius of Earth, Wind and Fire (EWF) would have been celebrating his 75th birthday today.  Sadly for his loved ones and many fans he died back in February. 

EWF formed part of my musical growing up background.  I was never a huge fan mainly, I think, because I was not into the relentless Californian feel-goodness that characterised their undoubtedly skillful music.     

This feel-good song is the more remarkable because its subject matter is the opposite - 

Somethin' happened along the way
Yesterday was all we had
Somethin' happened along the way
What used to be happy is sad
Somethin' happened along the way
What used to be was all we had

Perhaps on a birthday it is worth thinking about that Love which cannot die, does not die, the Love that is stronger than death.  The advantage of a birthday near Christmas is that such a Love is relatively easy to locate.

If you look in the hay.

A December 6th Moment

Thomas was certainly clever.

Very few preachers, theologians or philosophers will have failed to mention him a few times.  But even if they choose to leave him in what they think is medieval history he will find them anyway if they are engaged with the Western world at all for his writings are that foundational to the history of thought.

 

 

 

Yet Thomas Aquinas's masterwork, his epic summary of theology, was never really completed.  Though it has shaped so much directly or indirectly it was put into best perspective by its author himself.

 

In early December of the year before he died he was in worship (a Mass of course, it being the medieval era) when he suddenly said that he would write no more.  His personal experience of God in that place on that day had left him lost for words.  All his writings, he estimated (in a way that even the militant atheists might hesitate to concede) were as straw.

 

As I watch a thousand texts being texted and blogs blogged and 'friends' messaged I cannot help thinking that every Christmas and every Advent is another opportunity to be lost in wonder that is lost in writing.

 

We can only ever know God when we stop and realise how little we have grasped of Him so far and how beyond words he and his love is.