Can you tell the future? Are you blessed with foresight? Do you sometimes have intuition regarding some forthcoming event that turns out to be correct? Or a prophetic dream? Which well-known astrologer publicly predicted the outbreak of Covid-19, or Putin's invasion of Ukraine (clue: none). Someone is bound to find a quatrain written by Nostradamus that predicts both, by engaging in verbal backflips to make predictions made four and half centuries ago fit the facts.
Well, I certainly didn't predict (if anything, I was two days out) - but I did feel an encroaching air of unease towards the end of 2019, in an elegy to a passing decade that was a tipping point between an upward and downward arc of history. Unlike many in Western Europe who blithely dismissed the growing threat posed by Putin, I could see it coming, as past posts going back many years on this blog atest. But this is merely my assessment of information, based on history - politically, nothing good ever comes out of Russia. Fearing Putin isn't the result of my precognition or foresight, rather it's hindsight.
Though there may have been a general sense of mounting anxiety, other than having a vague feeling that things have been good too long, no definite prior knowledge that Russia would launch an all-out invasion of Ukraine on the morning of Thursday 24 February 2022.
Pinning down events and dates in the future is truly a paranormal power that few can actually prove to possess. Usually, clairvoyants are deft at using similar sleight-of-hand tricks that stage magicians deploy - good storytelling skills and selective use of facts. None have passed the test of repeatability and proof that science demands.
It's one thing to foretell the future, another thing to ward off personal misfortunes by precluding the possibility of them befalling you, and yet quite another to draw out of the future a positive outcome by force of will. Visualising peace and contentment in place of bloodshed and fear. Prayer, in effect.
Praying not for ego satisfaction. Tevye, in Fiddler on the Roof, sings "Lord, who made the lion and the lamb/You decreed I should be what I am/Would it spoil some vast eternal plan/If I were a wealthy man?" The answer is - yes, it would spoil some vast eternal plan. Tevye wants a big house in the centre of the town, and above all, for "the most important men in town would come to fawn on me!"
This is not how prayer works - the Lord does not heed such venal petitions. Prayers for peace is what the world needs right now; so let us pray...
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Photo round-up of the week
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A selfless faith
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Lent kicks off again, for the 20th year in a row for me
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Half way through Lent
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Spring much closer
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