Roomin' House Blues

I have been studying aspects of communitarian and distributist thought, but I have not thought to explore roots of them in the Bible. Then Monday night at a Bible study someone referred to subsidiarity in the advice of Jethro to Moses. In the 18th Chapter of Exodus Moses's father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, seeks him out in the desert near Mt Sinai.  Moses greets him by bowing before him and kissing him, showing the respect he has for Jethro. Jethro praises and blesses Yahweh for the good he has done Israel and brings a holocaust to God. The next day Moses sits as the judge for all the disputes of Israel and the wait for judgement is from morning to evening.  Jethro instantly sees the foolishness of this and asks Moses why he sits alone while making people wait for judgement. Moses says all these people come to him to consult God.  But Jethro says you will wear yourself out and also these people. Jethro says that Moses should be the peoples repres...

Yesterday I was waiting for the bus and saw graffiti on the curb.  It's author, perhaps in despair or in bitterness had written, "Love is not real" in twisted black letters. I began to think of the state of mind of this unpoet (by which I mean he had no poetry, he was a rejector,  not a maker of beauty). I speculated on his history and his intent. Was he unlucky in love, or had he been unlucky enough to confuse desire with love? Was he rejecting Eros, playful love alone, or was he rejecting the entire moral code of society and God in one single scrawl. Pope Benedict wrote in a letter to mankind, a papal encyclical of how love can begin with the erotic love and as a couple grows more deeply into that love, raising children and becoming friends and life partners, that love can grow into a generalized love for all mankind and for God.  So if Benedict is right, and I believe him to be so, then it does not matter at what point in the contin...