I have bleated, shrunk but finally moved. I am now pushing a snitched shopping trolley with troubling wheels bearing the local supermarket’s imprimateur
loaded with water stained copies of the Bishop of Berkeley’s tar water recipe (oh for Cervantes horse whose dear name escapes me) down the front path pass the swollen green yellow grapefuit tree, the glorious white hibiscus and Mayr’s nascent blakean red rose and out on to the peopleless streets of surburbia to resume my crusade.
I being this new season of crusading (shameless but quivering) addressing the mottled bricks, the concreted drive ways, the Libyan date palm opposite. However even they I fear are perplexed. The insensate things I mean. In crusading matters one takes a risk. One travels blind and the world as our patches and scars and embedded slivers of gun shot remind us is full of pot holes, eye gouging birds and the remanence of Colonel Gadaffi’s mercenary vipers. Let me at least try. My lungs swell barely. This will be a shamefully inadequate account but its the best (I feebly tell myself) I can do. So dear phantom listener. I have taken it upon myself to acquaint the world with the unfamiliar creeds and axioms of my exceptionally distant ancestor – the most distinguished former bishop of county Cloyne Bishop George Berkeley of Ireland. But let me say more (my feelings often get out of hand as yu’ll see). There is prologue to my mission. We have archived the creeds of Comrade Marx (only the exceptionally bright sons and daughters of Parisian bakers study him in any depth) we have arranged the execution of monsieur Trotsky; and the lord has been turned into a virtual salesmen. In South Dakota, they sell God’s miracles to the highest bidder. Such losses and violations are beyond comprehension. Supplies of modest salvation I fear are more meagre than water and breathable air.
Without confidence I offer the Bishop’s thoughts and guidance. It is salvation without guarantees. It offers minimal relief and its curative powers are untested. I am convinced however that a daily reading – the taking in and rumination of – a sentence or two of the Berkeley’s elegant thoughts will have far ranging and significant curative and enlivening effects. Although the global pharamaceutical committee (made up of representatives of all faiths and scientific persuasions) have yet to publish their findings on the efficacy of the Bishop’s nostrums. However many testimonies testify to their inestimable value. Take my My dear neighbour, Rosa Marcello. Ever since she borrowed her daughter’s unread extracts of the Bishop’s works – which she had been given by her one and only protestant and very short lived boy friend, Harold Cain of Northcote South -and began reading them daily at the average rate of two sentences a day , she tells me her gains in virtually all aspects of her life have been exponential. Her weight height ratio has dropped and then remain steady. Her respiratory inhalations and expulsions are likewise. She reports a measurable increase in her powers of retention, her willingness and capacity to listen and interact with her daughter in law and in a refreshing gain in the vividness and novelty of her nightly dreams. And much more.
I am now panting. If yu will excuse me – dear cat or phantom reader – my salvationist energies are fading. Can I just say. Although not receiving the recognition they deserve, salvationist are amongst the hardest working members of our community. So let me offer a brief reminder, a glimpse perhaps, of what the Bishop has to offer, a reason or two why yu should place yr life’s salvation problems in his hands.
I quote from point 2, The Principles of Human Knowledge, the Cambridge edition based on the original Dublin College text.
“…the mind of man being infinite, when it treats of things which partake of infinity, it is not to be wondered at, if it runs into absurdities and contraditions, out of which it is impossible it should ever extricate it self, it being of the nature of infinite not to be comprehended by that which is infinite’.
This is an extremely useful text. We see examples of such absurdities and contradictions daily. We who are finite attempt to grapple with (penetrate. imagine, dictate to) that which is infinite and fall into ‘absurdities. Take the terrible Mr Gaddafi, a very finite human. As the Bishop goes on to say with his usual perspicacity ‘we who…raise a dust, then complain, we cannot see”.
So refrain from raising dust.
My angina is squelching painfully. I just remind yu two sentences a day – plus a sip or two of the Bishop’s refined Dublin tar water and avoid raising dust – and your salvation I think (I can reassure yu at least of this) will be extended a further day.
your humble salvationist, impersonator and custodian of the wisdom of long expired Bishop of Cloyne.
more scraps and crumbs will follow
the reserve BishopBerkely of Thornbury formerly of Sorrento
March 7, 2011 at 11:37 am |
Rocinante. Comment to follow.
March 9, 2011 at 3:28 pm |
Apologies are in order for the delay, yet if belatedness is a sin then few are without guilt; if the Bishop needs time to get his house in order, so too do we laymen. At two sentences a day, a reasonable pace, there might be hope of furnishing an apt prologemena to the above remarks by Christmas. But the world spins faster daily, as so many pundits tell us; in order not to fly off into the space between the planets we must cling to whatever we can. Having posted my resignation from the world on Twitter, I too find enough occupation in cultivating my own garden, though not a literal one, since potted herbs perish whenever I breathe nearby. As an experiment, I am more than willing to try Rosa’s treatment, though I note that the dose supplied above of the Bishop’s original thoughts is a mere half-sentence: enough to inoculate, perhaps, but not to cure. Better still might be the homeopathic method, which would require the good BB’s writings to be stirred in with the common reservoir of language, diluted 1000 times over until perhaps a single word remained. “Infinity”, say, might be enough to ponder. However far we progress with the infinite, we get no nearer the end than when we began; equally, those who have not yet begun the journey cannot be said to have fallen behind. If these excuses for my sloth suffice, then the Bishop has already proved his worth. I would suggest starting a charitable fund, aimed at hiring some former sportsman to promote the Bishop’s brand of highly digestible and consolatory snake oil on late-night digital TV; cheaper than exercise equipment, and less delusive than a strand-by-strand hair replacement scheme. Perhaps Rosa will supply an on-camera testimonial now her glandular problem has abated. Incidentally, will we some day hear the story of Harold’s betrayal?