Getting old

“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”- Charles Bukowski

Old man Buk had it right: there’s not enough love — and I say that as someone born in the Summer of Love.

I wonder if we know how?

What?

To love, and be loved?

I demur, but let’s just say that my childhood was writ large with Victorian overtones, where “children should be seen and not heard”. (If this did one thing for me, it made me self-reliant from a very early age.)

Right now, and as I’ve written about on my blog (yes, I still maintain one of those), I’ve talked about my nascent leaning towards a theological enquiry. That’s code for saying: I’m reading the Bible. Of course, on one level, that’s inevitable, given my age (I’ve never been an atheist, and I sure ain’t looking for a foxhole), but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to the fact that I'm at a loss to explain “why now?” and not at any other time. Then again, sometimes you have to go with the felt sense that “this” feels right.

I don’t expect the Bible to offer any resolute answers, and I don’t expect a conversion (to what?) but there is, for the first time in a long time, the sense that love, the love I never had, might be the sine qua non of a Christian theology. That doesn’t mean I’m about to get all dewey-eyed on you, but if you notice a slight lessening of my misanthropic leanings, you might understand why.

Blessings.

PS. You’ll have noticed that I’ve departed from my rigid Sunday-only posting on Substack. I can’t explain why that didn’t work, but, to be clear, I’m not about to flood your inbox with a million and one unsolicited posts in the vain hope of (ye gads) “growing my audience”.

Photo by Ian on Unsplash