Yes, here it is folks: Price's Candle Factory, by Appointment, have graciously web-supplied a picture of a selection of their Church candles: Candles for the King from the Candlemakers to kings...
But the serious point here is, (and you may remember that there was a small note attached to my previous post: namely "This is an experiment"), did you genuinely want there to be a(nother) genuine "Royal scandal"? What were your feelings when you discovered the pun-chline? (for which my apologies! Terrible, I know.)
This is of course mitigated by the fact that you almost certainly didn't expect there to be a real Royal scandal lurking in this cul-de-sac of the e-thosphere... but would you have liked there to be? Was your feeling on discovering the cheat, disappointment or relief or somewhere between the two?
Have been thinking about malice and Original sin (which has tied in with the daily readings of Magnificat at the moment.) It's interesting the nasty things lurking in the woodshed of the heart sometimes: that part of us all, yes! you too, (well according to the teaching of the Catholic Church,) that takes some perverse delight in reading about Royal scandals, rubber-necking at car crashes, gossip, slander, dismissing and disdaining: all that sort of thing: the bon mot which lacks enough Goodness for anything but inflating our ego or enough kindness to genuinely help the lucky recipients of our motorway-through-the-village pronouncements from on high...
Someone I know has posted up by email a very enthusiastic response to the announcement that Christopher West is delivering a talk here in London on the 13th May about his new book "At the heart of the gospel".
Someone else I know rather less well, has posted up a link to a withering review of said book that they happened to put up on Amazon. A witty review. Pithy. Etc. It's 2 lines long.
Person 1, enthusiastic West supporter has recently been to America to hear West in person and take a course at his study centre. The enthusiasm then may be that of a zealot and convert but it is to some measure first hand (which the pithiness is to a measure not - or not to my knowledge). Neither zealot nor detractor are fools, nor do they know each other terribly well.
(I rather like the book which is not entirely by-the-by.)
Pithy reviewer seems to imply the desire to paint the book in the worst possible colours. Enthusiastic zealot seems to paint the work with wholesale primary colours of approbriation. Which is to be trusted?
I guess neither entirely. We are all tainted with some degree of participation in Original sin or indulgence of it. The enthusiasm could be the mark of seeking glory by association - we all do it to some measure - but certainly the withering review is not charitable and seems to delight in the condemnation it metes out.
BUT the Original sin is not the deepest thing in us!
The deepest thing in us is the Creator's mark - that participation in the blessing of being made by a good God, whose Creation is "Very good" and carries his fingerprints. We are noble ruins and becoming the Sons of the King: called to participate in forging our own destiny. We have a choice. We are made by and for Love and can delight in or reject him.
I suppose I'm a little bit cross at pithy reviewer: partly for dismissing a book I'm enjoying and my friends have enjoyed, and partly because I feel a bit dismissed myself for having enjoyed it so much. Speaking seriously, I don't think he's right to enjoy his bon mot so much - although it is clever, with the "cleverness" of cruelty mark you.
Oh well. As I've said several times on this website; "The highest form of wisdom is kindness".
We should be very beware of indulging the tendency to relish evil. Even if our pronouncements our true, it is the measure to which we enjoy making them which is the mark of our charity or otherwise. Even here and in this context, I have to be careful.
Hello! to any readers who may wish to leave comments.
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