Potpourri for a travel day . . .

I'm due in California tomorrow, but I'm having to get out of town ahead of a snow storm that is headed this way and which is predicted to stifle travel by land and air. So here are a few random and parting thoughts:

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The question is: How to avoid the errors of subjectivism without abandoning the essentially personal element in any authentic affirmation or espousal of truth? Truth, as distinct from facts, involves truth-telling and truthfulness. It requires a witness.

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A conscience which is not distinct from -- and on a regular basis averse to -- the promptings of one's impulses and desires is a fraud, a self-deluding trick, the devil at work.

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Speaking of which, this line leapt out at me from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "The Half-way House" included among the readings for today in the Magnificat: "My national old Egyptian reed gave way." What a felicitous evocation of of our fallen, stiff-necked, prideful condition and its essential insubstantiality.

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I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but just "having fun" doesn't sound like that much fun to me.

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"If you hand yourself over without reserve to the God who loves you he will be the one who gives you to others, enriching you with all the necessary power to put yourself at their service."

Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto