Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III’s private, now public, battle with prostate cancer raises some interesting questions about how we process disease — ours and others’.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III’s failure to disclose his hospitalization for complications from prostate cancer at a particularly sensitive moment when we are fighting proxy wars in Ukraine and the Middle East has raised the expected political hackles as well as some fascinating philosophical questions.
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Read MoreSandro Botticelli’s interpretation of the Nativity (1473-75, oil on canvas. Columbia Museum of Art.
Today — Monday, Dec. 25 — is, as virtually everyone knows, Christmas Day, an occasion that has not always been about “peace on earth, good will to men.” Perhaps it was always thus, but it has become particularly more so in our politically divisive times.
There are those who resent what they see as their holy day being coopted by the commercial holiday. And then there are those who don’t want secular culture subsumed by what is essentially a religious tradition. What both groups have in common is that they see Christmas as an either/or proposition. In reality, it has always been a mix of the sacred and profane, as it were.
Read MoreJohn Hassall’s 1899 lithograph of John Martin-Harvey as Sydney Carton in “A Tale of Two Cities. Courtesy the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon.
Last summer on a very bad day, I attended the funeral of an affable, older relative whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. Distracted by problems at work, I made a wrong turn and arrived just as the priest was finishing the Gospel that is usually read at funeral Masses. In it, Jesus says, “I am the Resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me. though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whoever so lives and believes in me shall never die” — complementary, mirror-image phrases, like so many throughout the New Testament, that Charles Dickens uses to brilliant effect in the denouement of his French Revolutionary novel of dissipation and redemption, “A Tale of Two Cities.”
Read MoreThe way the ball bounces: Novak Djokovic on his way to being the No.1-ranked men’s player in the world at Wimbledon in 2011. Still number one, Djokovic was bounced from the US Open last Sunday when he accidentally hit a lineswoman.
What kind of year has it been for you, for our global community? For many, it has been an “annus horribilis,” to borrow from what Queen Elizabeth II said of 1992. (Chuck and Di divorced. Windsor Castle burned. Your Majesty, we felt your pain.) People have lost loved ones, jobs, homes and their health to the coronavirus. Their loss and grief are incalculable, as are our feelings of inadequacy in trying to help them.
For others, it’s been “the best of times, the worst of times,” to quote another Briton, Charles Dickens. They have not lost their health, loved ones, jobs and homes. Instead they are working from and on their homes, using their extra time to acquire new skills, take up a language, a sport or an art, exercising and losing weight and generally getting their lives in order. They’ve made money in the market, as tech and pharma stocks help buoy the Dow, and have even earned honors. Or maybe they haven’t endured any losses but they’re struggling with a number of challenges, like the kids’ schooling.
In any event, it’s hard for them to take much pleasure and pride in their accomplishments and blessings with so much suffering around them — and with the occasional curve ball thrown their way. They’re having what we might call a Novak Djokovic kind of year.
Read MoreWe hear a lot at this time of year about putting the Christ back in Christmas – or, more recently, putting the Christmas back in Christmas. Indeed, one of President Donald J. Trump’s campaign promises was that we would say “Merry Christmas” again – as if we ever stopped.
This used to be a religious campaign against the commercialization of the season. With the, um, advent of Trump, it has become less about the materialism of the season – it’s hard to believe that he and his administration object to anything that makes money – and more about reclaiming a Christian identity that, they think, has been co-opted by multiculturalism and political correctness. It is factionalism versus globalism and, inevitably, us versus them, whoever they are.
And you have to wonder: Why? ...
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When I was a child, one of my favorite books was Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” set against the backdrop of revolutionary Paris and its archrival, London.
It’s a story about many different kinds of rivals and doubles, chiefly Charles Darnay, who’s noble in every sense of the word but finds himself paying for the aristocratic sins of his family, and Sydney Carton, the ne’er-do-well English barrister who nonetheless is capable of great courage and love.
Both men are in love with Lucie Manette, the daughter of a doctor whose mind has been ravaged by his imprisonment in Paris. Darnay wins her but Carton, who could be his twin, remains devoted. And when Darnay is unjustly imprisoned by revolutionaries and condemned to the guillotine, Carton hits on a plan to change places with him. But first he undergoes some soul-searching, wandering the streets of Paris. He takes comfort in the biblical words he once heard at a funeral:
“I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoever so liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
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