V, V, V — Day 31 : Faith, Hope & Charity
Over the past month there have been times where I’ve had initial problems finding something to write about in relation to some of the words.
However this time……. it is either because there are three words, or because the phrase is quite common, or because the initials are quite common……
Anyway :-
As I have mentioned once or twice (or a gajillion times) I am not a fan of organised religion. However I have a surprising amount of respect for people of faith. Well — some people of faith.
People who have faith — who believe in something, who are willing to devote their lives to it, even in the absence of proof, are worthy of respect. Of course there are people whose faith leads them to a bad place (“STRENGTH THROUGH UNITY! UNITY THROUGH FAITH!”) which can make faith a very bad thing when in the wrong hands.
However for the most part, my respect for people of faith cannot be overstated. It is just when that faith is turned against other people — when it is turned into a weapon to oppress others — that I lose my respect for the faith.
Hope — a belief that something’s coming, something good. Unfortunately it is also the name of the most evil child in the world of Xnea. Gabrielle’s daughter, who murders Xena’s son and goes on to try to take over the world. It is why the phrase “there is always Hope” cracks me up, or “you should always have Hope” makes me smirk. It was also another step down the path of me not being able to take anything — and I mean almost anything — seriously.
Charity — the desire to help others whether you get anything out of for yourself or not. I admit that my on the spur of the moment donations are less than they could be, but I have a number of regular donations set up. There is a reason for this — it’s the pandemic. (Everything in recent times is “the pandemic”). I don’t carry change any more. Almost everything I do is done by debit card, so I can’t drop a few coins in a collection box because I don’t have any coins and I am not going to drop my debit card in a collection box — that would be ridiculous. And there is also the case when a multi-million pound company asks me to donate £2 to their cause my initial response is “Why the fuck don’t you donate £2 you cheap bastards?”
Then there is the combination of the words — Faith, Hope & Charity are the names of three Catholic saints. And I can see the surprise on your face that I would know that, because you are thinking that a) I just had a bit of a rant against organised religion, and b) I am not Catholic.
Both of these facts are true, although I have been to a Catholic service once in my life (it was a surprise to me as well).
No — I do not know the names of three Catholic saints because I did a lot of religious studies as a child (or an adult). I learned them because of a book called “Ready Player One”, one of the greatest books of all time. The heroes discuss the three saints in a later chapter, and it is something that sticks in your mind. Well, it sticks in my mind.
(It turns out that my mind retains the oddest pieces of knowledge — I remembered the phrase “in the place where no shadows fall” came from “Confessions & Lamentations” because I knew they were face to face and that they were going to part, and maybe not see each other again. There were very few instances where that was the case that was the most obvious)
But to return to the saints, the discussion of the saints actually put them in the other order (Charity, Hope and Faith) and then it was reversed into the order I have them now, which lead to a discussion about a song I had never heard before (because growing up in the UK gives you very different cultural references to growing up in the USA) — it turns out that Schoolhouse Rock is not really a thing over here.
That lead me to thinking about The Power of Three, and Charmed — which, okay, had little to do with Faith, or Hope, or Charity because none of those is related to Charmed (at least the original series — haven’t watched the current one).
I almost had a desire to write about “Ready Player One” because it is just that good — for a book about a video game it covers a surprising amount of topics in an indirect manner. But if I get started now I will write twice as much as I have already.
And finally, when you reverse the words (Charity, Hope and Faith) you get the initials of the young woman who provided the idea for “May, Myself and I” in the first place — the redoubtable Ms Carrie Hope Fletcher.
“May, Myself and I” was originated in 2019, and I came across it then. I enjoy writing, and while I have repeatedly said that I have a desire to keep my privacy, writing about myself is something I started over twenty years ago on a site called Open Diary dot com.
It comes from a song called “What Do You Hear In These Sounds?” by Dar Williams
“When I talk about therapy I know what people think,
That it only makes you selfish and in love with your shrink,
But oh how I loved, everybody else,
When I finally got to talk so much about myself”
So when MMI arrived, the challenge of writing about myself based on a specific word was kind of fun. It made me think about myself and specific parts about myself.
It has been quite an entertaining five years — even last year when it was……… quite a complicated time in my life.
But I think this is the last year I am going to do it. Five years seems a reasonable amount of time for self-examination, at least specific self-examination.
So with grateful thanks to Ms Fletcher (who — according to wikipedia — got married this year so may not be Ms Fletcher any more) for creating this, I will say so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye (and then add that unfortunately my brain now supplies “how long, oh lord, before you let me die” because — you know — unable to take things seriously)
Because it is the end of May, and I can finally say Veni, Vidi, Vertias.
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