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This has become apparent over the past year, especially in Oxford. Oxford is a place I love to visit, and I unfailingly find being-there an inspiring and refreshing experience.
However, the people of Oxford University are among the worst in the whole world - they are a well-spring of corruption, dishonesty, status-grubbing - the origin and focus and powerhouse of much that I regard as worst in the modern world.
Therefore, I imbibe the real spirit of England from the stones of the colleges and churches and chapels and walls of Oxford; and I do my best to ignore the fact that they are inhabited by (in effect) demons and their minions.
In microcosm, an analogous mismatch can be experienced from many old English churches and cathedrals; the stones, the carved wood, the coloured glass - even the smells are a source of English holiness and real Christianity. But the self-styled Christians (Bishops, Priests and Priestesses, most of the congregation) who ply their trade within these walls are nearly-always shallow, materialistic, glib, spiteful, and only active in subversion of virtue, truth, and beauty.
I was up on top of the Yorkshire Dales last week - and the sense of the goodness, beauty and reality of England was so strong as to be palpable: you could have hefted it in your hand. But that was partly because there were no other people around except my family.
So: the spirit of England is strong, the memories are intact, the resources for renewal are all there in place; but the English people, en masse ignore, reject, and (intermittently) try to destroy them.
So when renewal comes, it will appear as if from nowhere, and with no person or institution as its visible source. That is because it will be coming from the stones and soil and water.
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5 comments:
Of course people built those cathedrals and in part made those landscapes. As did, for the latter, God and perhaps the angels. You are in communion with them through their works. too bad that so many moderns have apostasized and excommunicated themselves.
@Val - Thanks for the comment. Interesting, but OT.
What does this mean for Americans? Maybe we shouldn't have built our country on Indian burial grounds?
"Lebensraum" as originally used by Haushofer was an esoteric concept meaning "living space" in the sense of a space that lives.
Ahhh... This is what I feel about Southern California. The majesty is in the ocean and beaches, palm trees and mountains, sun sets and cool breezes. One can just ignore the people for many brief moments at a time if one desires to?
"Ignoring the people" is what everybody does every once in a while, even Jesus did not spend every waking moment with others (at an apparent opportunity cost to others that infinitely outweighs the opportunity cost to the people who do not get to spend time with me and you - a couple times in my life people have been disappointed not to have me around, imagine the more than astronomically greater disappointment when Jesus, having been expected at some humble place in ancient Israel, was not able to show up...). Anyway, there should not be a single acre on this earth that does not have someone feel about it the way Bruce feels about Yorkshire; if there is, someone should show up there and begin feeling that way immediately.
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