I'm in Germany right now, with German national flags flying from every window. Our host Werner says this is the first time since the war that it's been possible to be a patriotic German. It's a massive party. Not a hint of violence anywhere.
Not entirely unconnected, a quotation I discovered this morning from W Churchill ... can't you just hear him saying it?
What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to
make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we
are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the
great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I
avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not
be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand
high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the
sun.
1 comment:
I was wondering when I would be able to bring in a prayer I came across in Brittany last week, but, if we're offering relative unknowns of some value, this certainly fits the bill.
Unknown to me - but the prayer itself is, so I was told, well known to lawyers.
They arrive in the small town in May to mark the saint's day at the cathedral. It's quite a sight to see so many flocks of lawyers, all in their best pin stripes.
The saint in question is St Yves, the patron saint of lawyers. He didn't perform miracles but he was saintly by nature and by deed. He offered to represent all those who needed justice but couldn't afford it, he gave his money to the deserving, and he was, so I was told, the effective founder of legal aid.
I won't quote the prayer to St Yves in full - not least because my French is not up to it (and yours may not be either!).
But there was one phrase which struck me - 'justice soit rendue dans l'amour'.
Now isn't that what we would all wish? For everyone? A justice tempered by love.
It's not quite what Portia pleaded in her famous speech on mercy in The Merchant of Venice - but it has the same root.
A noble cause indeed.
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