“The shape of sadness is universal:
Christ represents it in his affliction and shouldering of the world’s sin and pain…
Each of your pains, however seemingly inconsequential to others, is part of a
fractal pattern with Christ’s pain; you suffer in him, he suffers in you and with you.
In prayer, your pains are raised from your shoulders.
They rise to God and say: The world needs to be closer to you.”
Sally Read
from Annunciation
(blossoming St John’s Wort / Julie Cook / 2019)
Time has certainly been getting away from me as of late…
for a million and one crazy reasons…
All good reasons mind you, of which I will share at a later date…
But blessedly I actually found a few spare moments, day before yesterday,
in order to read that day’s latest from one of our two favorites…
those two across the pond clerics.
The latest post–
“In Defence of Freedom of Speech”
Freedom of speech seems to be so much the talk these days does it not…
However, I fear that the current notion of freedom of speech is a far cry from, dare we say,
from what was meant in our Constitution or by our founding fathers.
(ode to those white men of old…)
Yet sadly, or perhaps blessedly, we know that misery loves company…
And so it should come as no surprise to those of us here in the US that we are not the
only ones who are contending with the idea of freedom of speech…
As freedom of speech is pretty much at the cornerstone foundation for all democracies.
And therefore are we surprised that the United Kingdom is also wrestling with
the new cultural definition of ‘freedom of speech?’
So much so that it has warranted a direct response from our favorite
rouge Anglican Bishop.
Our dear bishop begins his post by recounting that two individuals who he has often
greatly enjoyed listening to over the years, whether he agreed with their views or not,
have recently been banned from speaking on college campuses in the UK.
One being the renowned feminist Germaine Greer.
Banned not because she is a feminist mind you, but banned because she has differing views
regarding transsexuality then what our culture’s current universities and colleges now hold
as gospel.
And because Ms. Greer does not condone this particular lifestyle, she is now persona non grata
on the progressive liberal campuses of higher learning.
It seems that many of the ardent founders of ‘feminism’ argue that such lifestyle choices
are actually detrimental to the feminist movement, yet try telling the new culture police
that such thinking is actually truthful.
So, I suppose we shouldn’t be shocked that the 21st-century culture police are speaking from
both sides of their mouths…
They chant ‘freedom of speech’ as long as your speech or mine matches their speech.
If not…menaing if our speech is indeed different from their own,
then our “freedom” is revoked.
Because you see, to them, these culture gods of the 21st centruy, there is but one freedom of speech
and that is their speech and their speech alone.
The good bishop asks “so what is happening in our society that free speech
is being closed down.
We need to know who the enemy of free speech is.”
Well, what they are trying to do is to create a society that is a far cry from what our nation,
or any democracy for that matter was founded upon.
Bishop Ashenden notes “I hate the fact that Charlie Hebdo published ghastly cartoons of
the Virgin Mary on their cover. But no Christian threatened to murder them to silence them.
Because Christians are dedicated to an idea of ‘God’ that is rooted in the quest for truth.
If you believe that ultimate reality grows out of Truth
(it grows out of Love as well, of course) you can never afford to stifle speech.
Instead you have to weigh and sift it and let it tell you what its true character is.
It’s a great regret that there have been times when Christians, having gained power,
lost their confidence in the truth and shut others up.
But it usually happened when the Church got muddled up with the state.”
And so the good bishop asks again,
“so who are the enemies today of free speech, and what are they trying to do?”
And we only have to look back to Karl Marx to begin to understand our answers…
“It is no longer about the haves and the have-nots;
it’s about the oppressors and the oppressed.
It’s about making them ‘equal’.
It’s all about the redistribution of power.
So to do that you have to take power away from those who have it.
Generally this is mainly white men.
Whenever you hear someone railing against white men, you know the cultural
Marxist has broken cover.
But the oppressor can change in the blink of an eye –
because power relations are all relative.”
Please find the good bishop’s full post, his most insightful observation about a dear commodity
that we now find in jeopardy, here:
In defence of Freedom of Speech. Gavin Ashenden
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