View from the Observatory
McDonald Observatory
June flowers in the Chihuahuan desert of West Texas
credit and debt
The Law not only prohibited interest on loans, but mandated that every seventh year should be a Sabbatical, a shmita, a fallow year, during which debts between Israelites were to be remitted; and then went even further in imposing the Sabbath of Sabbath-Years, the Year of Jubilee, in which all debts were excused and all slaves granted their liberty, so that everyone might begin again, as it were, with a clear ledger. In this way, the difference between creditors and debtors could be (at least, for a time) erased, and a kind of equitable balance restored. At the same time, needless to say, the unremitting denunciation of those who exploit the poor or ignore their plight is a radiant leitmotif running through the proclamations of the prophets of Israel (Isa 3:13-15; 5:8; 10:1-2; Jer 5:27-28: Amos 4:1; etc.).So it should be unsurprising to learn that a very great many of Christ’s teachings concerned debtors and creditors, and the legal coercion of the former by the latter, and the need for debt relief; but somehow we do find it surprising—when, of course, we notice. As a rule, however, it is rare that we do notice, in part because we often fail to recognize the social and legal practices to which his parables and moral exhortations so often referred, and in part because our traditions have so successfully “spiritualized” the texts—both through translation and through habits of interpretation—that the economic and political provocations they contain are scarcely imaginable to us at all.
the mission
“We men have an important but-as-yet-unknown mission." Can’t wait to find out what it is.
proportion
When a famous person commits suicide, there are roughly ten million words of sympathy and pity for that person to every one word of sympathy and pity for the family, friends, and lovers left behind. It would be nice if that proportion could be adjusted just a little. Even if you think (as I do not) that our lives are our own to dispose of as we wish, and even if you believe (as I do) that people who take their own lives are often in a state of horrific agony, suicide is very rarely a victimless act.
June in central Texas (St Alban’s Church)
I can never quite get over magnolias
