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| In the year of grace, 2007 |
| 2008-01-01 |
| David Warren, Sunday Spectator It is not possible to predict what happened in the year of grace, 2007. For that is the sort of thing for which we must always wait. The most important events generally escape the contemporary notice not only of journalists, but of everyone else. To take the obvious example, we will not know, for many years yet, what person of world-wide significance may have been born this year. Some president or prime minister who becomes a household name; some missionary or pope to be venerated in centuries to come; some artist who will change the way everyone sees; some scientist who changes everything we know; some philosopher who changes the way we know it. Some monster on the scale of Hitler or Mao, whose henchmen will slaughter millions. Or some historian who may come to show how the unlikely year, 2007 -- the year of his own birth, by some embarrassing coincidence -- was in fact a hinge-point in the history of the planet. We have no idea, and yet, that little baby is living and breathing as I write, and the road lies open before him. Or, her. We do not even have a reliable record of the important people who died this year. For many of the most impressive men and women of history were unknown when they died, except to a small circle, if even to them. They lived “before their time” -- if the life of fame is any life at all. Had there been newspapers many centuries ago, we would consult their archived pages in vain for their obituaries. We may often consult the archived pages of existing newspapers to find little or nothing about the events remembered in history -- as almost anyone presented with a copy of a newspaper printed on the day of his own birth can attest. The life of Christ Himself passed by, without anyone in Rome noticing. In Rome, mind: a city that would be Christ's for many centuries. . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 I feel like I have been drowned in aspartame. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2008-01-01 11:11 |