Very difficult to develop the kind of excitement about it that it deserves. The world is in turmoil, the powers that be in the US are a bunch of shitheels, the new Pope may or may not be a lunatic.

Every Christian hopes and prays to see peace and prosperity in his time, to see a world free of this kind of strife, but Easter reminds us that it is not to be in this world. The Jews in Christ’s time were hoping for a savior- but they wanted an earthly King, and Jesus just wasn’t it.

It is a part of the history of all Judeo Christian theologies that the faith increases with stress, the Jews and Christians have always been strongest while being persecuted- when times are good, they’re more interested in everything else.

Most of my life, I have heard stories of how it was better when we were poor, how we didn’t have toys as kids and were happy, how we were excited just to have enough to eat, and so forth.

The truth of those things comes through to me. The truth of the fact that individual privation generally leads to a more spirit filled existence, the fire that bakes the common clay into something as hard as stone.

My parent’s generation strove to build a life for their families that was better than the life they had. I want to see my child have half the freedoms and abilities I have experienced, but I will not. I want a better world for her, and I will not see it. Maybe she will. Paine wrote “These are the times that try men’s souls”, and he was as right then as he is right now. We have no great leader to lead us because anyone who comes forth will immediately be destroyed by the media. We have no unifying cause, because no matter how liberty minded two individuals are they have been taught (Again, by the media) to fight tooth and claw over bullshit and errata, thus dividing those who love freedom against one another so effectively as to create millions of parties of one.

Poverty and adversity are great unifiers. Oppression tends to squeeze lots of individuals into a unified mass. I hate to think of it, but I see a lot of this heading our way. As worn as I am, I’m still capable of more toughness than I let on, and I know a lot of people who are very similar. If it comes to shortages of food, I will be able to grow and kill my own. If it comes to the unavailability of work, I am capable of turning my hand to many things. If it comes to eliminating hazards to myself and my family, I am unequipped with what most people consider a conscience.

When I get in conversations with ignorant boors like Brooks and his “Brother” who have rejected all notion of an awareness behind creation in favor of their new God of “Science” without even a middling understanding of what Science is, it concerns me- these are the Judasgoats of the coming Oppression. It behooves those of us who are prepared to act as sheepdogs for those too ignorant to do so; as painful as it is, we may be forced to rescue the idiots from themselves. It is specifically this which brought people out of the darkness and into the light so many times.

It seems the human condition is doomed to this. No matter how many times you break their shackles and tell them they are free, they forge new shackles out of whatever material is to hand, be it ever so mean and mortal.

Faith in a Creator, far from being a hindrance or a bondage, is really the most freedom a human can obtain. Sometimes we need to be reminded that the freedom is within us and not without, that the King is not of this world, that the peace must be inside us, especially when there is so much unrest without.

He is risen, and right now the only way to know that is to look into the hearts of the faithful. Still, the best storage place there is.