Trilemma

Leave a Comment / By Paul Hughes / April 30, 2016

Bear no malice nor ill-will to any man living, for either the man is good, or naught:

if he be good, and I hate him, then am I naught;
if he be naught, either he shall amend, and die good, and go to God;
or abide naught, and die naught, and so be lost.

2 … If he be saved, he shall not fail, if I be saved too, as I trust to be, to love me very heartily, and I shall then love him likewise. And why, then, should I now hate one, who shall hereafter love me for evermore? and why should I now be an enemy to him, with whom I shall, in time coming, be coupled in eternal friendship? —

3 … On the other side, if he shall continue naught and be lost, that is so terrible and eternal a sorrow to him, that I should think myself a cruel wretch, if I did not now rather pity his pain, than malign his person.

— Sir Thomas More, 1534

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.] One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Covidomatic Libs

Dear _____ , (supporter, donor, customer, friend, co-afflicted) In these _____ (unprecedented, challenging, dangerous, difficult) times, we know you’re _____ (standing strong, bearing up well, getting ripe, fingering the edge of the cleaver and gazing at your partner’s neck) and miss our _____ (plums, belly dancers, unmatched selection of fine wines, engine repair tutorials)

Make No Mistake

When I played baseball in 10th grade, our coach was forever admonishing us to Give 110% — often prefaced by a forlorn C’mon fellas … [In 11th grade, the coach would line us up against the chain link fence in front of the dugout and hit baseballs at us. He said this was to train our

Christ on a Postage Stamp

Got to thinking on postage stamps today bec hadda mail a book to a friend and when you go in you hafta say to the guy, no matter what your actual business is that day, and of course you’re already saying it if you went in for this purpose — ‘What first class stamps d’ya have?’ It’s

If You Were Stranded On A Desert Island

What song would you sing?

Hey Babe, Wanna Increase My Downline?

This wouldn’t be the first time someone “posted” a “blog” on their “website” while having nothing to say. Well, not nothing exactly, but certainly not being sure exactly what he wants to say. But then that’s part of what a blog is, or was. Or maybe that’s just the bad kind; definitely it’s the old

Time, Treasure

Saw an episode ages ago of one of the Twilight Zone reboots which, I’m pretty sure, starred Mark Hamill as this weird kid who collected toys. All this kitschy stuff from the ‘50s and grew up collecting them — and thus stayed weird and for the most part apparently lonely for his life entire. Of course

Greater Love Blah Blah Blah

Do we doubt locals thanked them for their service? I’m not equating the two. They were wrong; glad we crushed them. Only noting it’s likely they thought as much about such things as we do, which is to say not much. German citizens who believed their leaders, loved their country, watched their sons get on

Sign Posts

The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm. The art consists in three things — the disease, the patient, and the physician. The physician

Don’t talk steer