Readers of this blog will know that I am not one of those people who bemoan the passing of some kind of golden moral Christian age, when all was in its godly place.
Neither do I believe that our churches are the last repository of goodness within our sinful planet- the last means of the planets salvation.
But just sometimes, the zeitgeist gets me down;
The feeling that the beautiful creature, made a little lower than the angels, is busy shopping.
Is busy watching TV, obsessing about royal babies, caught up in rolling news bulletins showing the same clips of disasters in photogenic parts of the world.
Is concerned only with the next car, the next orgasm, the next holiday.
And I start to wonder again about the old Evangelical cliche about a God-shaped hole in the middle of us all.
I was thinking about this word recently;
ni·hil·ism (n
-l
z
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n.1. Philosophya. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.b. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.2. Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.3. The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.4. also Nihilism A diffuse, revolutionary movement of mid 19th-century Russia that scorned authority and tradition and believed in reason, materialism, and radical change in society and government through terrorism and assassination.5. Psychiatry A delusion, experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one’s mind, body, or self does not exist.
Nihilist creed
Blessed are the neurotic
But skin them under a cold cloak of positivity
For who wants to see their damaged flesh?
Blessed are those who have loved and lost
For this life has few survivors
We will all too soon be dust
Blessed are the kind, the shy, the meek
Though their fortune fails and their labours are ignored
While the go-getters steal away the earth
Blessed are the God-botherers, the long-skirt-wearers, those frozen-chosen
Let them gather in their holy huddles, to ward off
The must and draft of their empty buildings
Blessed may be the charitable, but beware
For friends offering favours will always want something in return
And their helping hands only serve to show the weakness of your own
Blessed are those with no dirty secrets, with nothing to keep out the light
Let them shine for a while because we are watching and waiting
Nothing falls further than a second rate saint
Blessed are the community-makers, village hall re-painters, singers of the songs of peace
But Rome did not rise without war
So let them march and wave their banners while we sharpen our steel
Blessed are those who still have something to believe in
Fools that they are
For we will construct meaning only from what we can buy and sell
There is nothing more
this fragile tent 