Ora Pro Nobis

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We had the the boys and Irene over for afternoon supper to celebrate Irene's upcoming birthday this week, and some of the wide-ranging conversation [as is our usual wont] and the variety of music we were listening to made me think about our collective family relationship with, and attitude to, the utterly dysfunctional world we inhabit alongside the rest of humanity. We as a family, by whatever means or happenstance, have always found our many and various paths in life without straying from some pretty core values, either politically or philosophically; religion not usually scoring very highly on our need-to-address board. 

We try to be fair and kind where appropriate; fierce and excoriating of injustices committed by others, and as generous as personal limitations permit with those less fortunate. Our natural instinct is toward basic decency, but eschewing dogma and orthodoxy. I truly believe that this is the natural mindset of the vast majority of the human race. We are all, after all on one path, and one path alone, from birth to death: no other is available. There are no optional extras that can offset one from the sole outcome of that journey; no first class upgrade, no business lounge perks, nothing. The journey is substantially the same for everyone: it begins and ends identically for all of us - we are not, we are, and we are not once again.

What you make of the in-between times is up to you alone, and unfortunately most suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune flung at us from all angles by those who by dint of birth or wealth are thought born to lord it over the rest of us to their temporary, temporal and usually pecuniary benefit - O tempora! O mores! - when they themselves have the same feet of clay as do we all. Trust the trustworthy and root out and fight cant and hypocrisy; seek solace in religion if you must, but stay true to your kind; the whole human race, which is divided solely by ideas of division seeded by a few, is inherently good and true to itself; the root of its ultimate survival is cooperation, not conflict: more true today than at any time in our history...

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