I am not fully here and now . . .

I am not fully in the 21st century which I think in large part explains my problem with passively tolerating usurped authority. Doubtlessly, as this blog demonstrates, a substantial part of me does resides in the 21st century as I am as “wired” as any and certainly have been longer than most. I soldered my first computer together in 1997 (a ProcessorTechnology Sol) and published an article on random disk access in Personal Computing Magazine in 1980. (Dear Diary). Yet, I see much of the world through a 17th Century prism . . .

Partly this is due to my study of History, which was my major at the University of Miami, Florida. Partly, this is due to the family milieu in which I was brought up which stressed knowledge of and respect for my ancestors which I can trace back, I was told, to Edward III.

However, I like to think it also is formed by a reason which springs from the knowledge and belief as articulated by George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights (an ancestor of mine and cribbed by one Thomas Jefferson) that: “All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights, of which they can not by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” 

If this blog conveys nothing else, let it convey this: Our government - by inaction of the judicial department – is alienating from us these inalienable rights and thereby we are permitting the unthinkable and unforgivable to occur on our watch: we are permanently “depriv[ing] or divest[ing]” our “posterity” of those “inalienable rights”.

Last, I regularly spend several days a week in a medieval 17th Century-styled building, the Washington National Cathedral.  I go to Evensong regularly which works wonders on a soul. That ancient service, which dates back to its formalization in the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer, cannot help but evoke a far different time and a far different place. Listen to what I mean for this could have been heard 350 years ago but was only recorded yesterday . . .

Maybe that explains it.