THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD….

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming.

The centre I speak of here is religion: each year, the voices raised in its defense grow more shrill, more strident, battling for that worn tapesty that becomes ever more frayed, more unravelled, more discordant.
Each year, science dispels the shadows, dispels the fear, vanquishes the boogeymen of our species’ infancy, inexorably disproves each phantasm, shows them to be lacking in substance or proof.

And so, the cacophony of voices grows in a choir chaotic.

They whine. They slander. They cry “persecution!”, or “liar!”, or “conspiracy!” or defame those who endeavor to show them that the shadows of fear have no claim on us. A chorus, a tsunami of adolescent outrage, that their ‘warm fuzzy feelings’ are null and void, and so they revert to type – an infantile acrimony at best.

Tantaene animis coelestibus irae? - Virgil. “In heavenly minds can such resentments dwell?”

Apparently so. For those who claim a higher moral ground, they show little fortitude in that matter.

"When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff." – Clarence Darrow.

Their centre cannot hold. Their house of cards topples, despite the best efforts and papier-mache apologetics. The iron fist within the velvet glove has rusted, for civilization has forbidden its use, and thus has fallen into disrepair.

"One by one the instruments of torture have been wrenched from the cruel clutch of the Church, until within the armory of orthodoxy there remains but one weapon -- Slander." – Ingersoll

It is slow: the final threads of the tapestry of travesty will be worn to the nub, but perhaps not in our lifetime. Too many stilted weavers have embroidered upon.

But, to borrow a phrase from their book of fables: “This too, shall pass.”

A rough beast slouches towards Bethelehem, with love on its lips and cold steel in its fist.

Till the next post, then.