Sunday/Mount

A shadowy Army unit secretly spied on British citizens who criticised the Government's Covid lockdown policies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Military operatives in the UK's 'information warfare' brigade were part of a sinister operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response.
They compiled dossiers on public figures such as ex-Minister David Davis, who questioned the modelling behind alarming death toll predictions, as well as journalists such as Peter Hitchens and Toby Young. Their dissenting views were then reported back to No 10.--Daily Mail

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A Rhode Island school encouraged teachers to donate money to help pay off a cartel “coyote” who brought one of its students to the US, according to leaked emails.
Emails shared to Twitter on Friday showed Mount Pleasant High School Assistant Principal Stefani Harvey asking her colleagues to give money to help an unnamed student pay off a $5,000 debt to the cartel member.
The assistant principal said that the boy was $2,000 short of his goal at the time the email was sent.
“We have a student who came to America with ‘Coyote’ which is a group that helps people,” Harvey wrote in the email. “This group gives you a time frame to make a payment of $5000 dollars to those, who bring them to the states.”--nypost
I hope this is untrue

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"The fictitious email referred to a presumably equally fictitious conversation between the Clinton campaign’s Amanda Renteria and Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch about making sure the Clinton server investigation didn’t “go too far.” The words found their way into a Russian intelligence document, which found its way to the FBI, becoming the justification for FBI chief James Comey’s chaotic actions in the 2016 election, which likely elected Mr. Trump."--from WSJ article on fraud and disinformation in American politics and the eagerness of Federal agencies to participate

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Sunday/Mount

Today is the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. Christ's description of the Good in the Beatitudes includes meekness, the poor in spirit, and those who mourn--they are not limited to the dramatic apostles, their dramatic lives and deaths.

In many respects, these qualities are in the everyday.

Saint Irenaeus was a man of the Second Century, a man who campaigned against the Gnostics. He has a famous quote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” This has been debated for years; does it imply the value of self-fulfillment, without God? In fairness, he answers this himself in the next phrase: “The life of a man is the vision of God.” But it implies that spiritual fulfillment is possible for humans in their daily interactions.

The author Alan Furst gave an interview once on his writings, a collection of WWII spy stories that describe the heroism of everyday men during the time before the war. He says that his readings of the period have led him to believe that evil, a true evil life, requires full-time application. That it was simply too hard to be devoted to evil without eliminating all other elements of your life. (Or perhaps evil eventually fills the moral space?) So the caricatures of Evil are true.

Goodness, on the other hand, emerged as a by-product of living a normal thoughtful life inspired, as Irenaeus would say, by God.
Not at all tooth and claw. And achievable by all.

Here are two minority reports:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
--Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 75–77 

PERHAPS too far in these considerate days
Has patience carried her submissive ways;
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek,
To take one blow, and turn the other cheek;
It is not written what a man shall do,
If the rude caitiff smite the other too!

Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need
God help thee, guarded by the passive creed!
As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl,
When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl;
As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow
When the black corsair slants athwart her bow;
As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien,
Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green,
When the dark plumage with the crimson beak
Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak,--
So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would charm
The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm,
Thy torches ready for the answering peal
From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted keel!                          
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

And Blake's summary of unresolved conflict:

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears; 
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole; 
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.                          
--William Blake