Stanley Hauerwas on Bonhoeffer, Truth, and Politics

H/T: inhabitatiodei

58 MINUTES, YOUTUBE

Bill Buckley: Romantic Reactionary [AFTERTHEFUTURE]

FROM AFTERTHEFUTURE

...If there is one overarching emotion that characterizes Romanticism, it's nostalgia. The Romantic poets from Blake to Wordsworth hate modernity and long for something lost, a lost age (or a lost childhood) when one did not feel so estranged, when men were men and women were women, where nobility and grace and chivlary were the rule, where the world was full of mystery and enchantments that the Romantic feels as a kind of memory but no longer possesses....

...I think that this important to understand because for the kind of romantic reactionary Buckley was, American liberalism was just a watered-down version of Marxism. The spirit of modern liberalism was the same as the spirit of communism-- its materialism, its naive optimism, its rejection of tradition and religion, its rational mechanistic solutions to social problems, its top-downism, its Jacobin hubris. His life's purpose was to wage war against the mindset that characterized secular liberalism which for him was a disease that eviscerated the soul and made humans into gutless, dependent, children--"men without chests," as C.S. Lewis described moderns in his Abolition of Man. This is important to understand if you're to understand the animus of Buckley's kind of conservatism against what for most sensible people seems the benign common sense of liberal welfarism. For such romantics Liberal programs are not common-sense solutions to practical social problems; they are the emanations of a spiritually crippling social disease.

And so for all of his elan, Buckley in the end was an irrelevancy. It's the problem of all reactionaries who refuse modernity rather than embrace it in order to live through it. I would contrast him with another kind of traditionalism--the kind, for instance, that the radical social critic Ivan Illich represents. Illich was a Catholic priest with deep family roots in old Europe. Anybody who knows his work knows that for him tradition was not something into which he retreated nostalgically, but was the source for his radical and energetic critique and imagination of solutions. From Cayley's Conversations with Ivan Illich:

Illich has often drawn attention to how traditional his views are and to how novel such views can seem in the context of contemporary cultural amnesia. As early as 1959 he introduced an essay called "The Vanishing Clergyman" by saying that he was not writing "anything theologically new, daring, or controversial." "Only spelling out of social consequences," he went on, "can make a thesis as orthodox as mine sufficiently controversial to be discussed." In these pages, he remarks that today "it's very difficult to speak about . . . things which seem to have been obvious and unquestioned during a thousand years of Western tradition." " I often have the impression, he says, "that the more traditionally I speak, the more radically alien I become."

No kidding. Anybody who has been reading this blog over time knows that I am sympathetic with the conservative critique of modernity while at the same time refusing conservative solutions for the problems of modernity. So I understand where Buckley is coming from, but I completely reject his politics and his imagination for a cure. People like Illich are fecund with future possibility, while Buckley's vision in the end is barren.

I wonder if Illich ever appeared on "Firing Line". That would have been a very interesting conversation.

A Feast of great posts at InhabitatioDei

e.g. :

Žižek on Reflexive Racism

Metz, Žižek, and the Politics of Apocalyptic History

More on Balthasar, Metz, and Conceptual Neatness

Poem

"...Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

...

...From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

W.H.Auden, "SEPTEMBER 1, 1939"

Archbishop Willams' Sharia Controversy...

by Becky Garrison
[some good comments after the article]

LentenPrayer

Fast from judging others; feast on the Christ dwelling within them.
Fast from emphasis on differences; feast on the unity of all life.
Fast from apparent darkness; feast on the reality of light.
Fast from words that pollute; feast on phrases that purify.
Fast from discontent; feast on gratitude.
Fast from anger; feast on patience.
Fast from pessimism; feast on optimism.
Fast from worry; feast on trust.
Fast from complaining; feast on appreciation.
Fast from negatives; feast on affirmatives.
Fast from unrelenting pressures; feast on unceasing prayer.
Fast from hostility; feast on nonviolence.
Fast from bitterness; feast on forgiveness.
Fast from self-concern; feast on compassion for others.
Fast from personal anxiety; feast on eternal truth.
Fast from discouragement; feast on hope.
Fast from facts that depress; feast on truths that uplift.
Fast from lethargy; feast on enthusiasm.
Fast from suspicion; feast on truth.
Fast from thoughts that weaken; feast on promises that inspire.
Fast from idle gossip; feast on purposeful silence.

Gentle God, during this season of fasting and feasting, gift us with Your Presence, so we can be gift to others in carrying out your work. Amen.

Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop [NTWright]

"...And in almost all cases, when I've explained this to people, there's a sense of excitement and a sense of, "Why haven't we been told this before?"

Faith & Politics-After the Religious Right

E. J. Dionne Jr. [Commonweal]

"...Religion is, necessarily, both conservative and progressive. Religion is rooted in tradition and survives through development and change within tradition. It applies old truths to new circumstances. It also reexamines old truths in light of new circumstances. The conservative insists that the tradition not be distorted merely to accommodate passing fads and fashions. The progressive insists on purifying and clarifying the tradition by freeing it from the cultural encrustations of the past. The conservative keeps the tradition alive by honoring it. The progressive keeps the tradition alive by adapting it, and sometimes by challenging it. The history of American democracy shows that religious conservatives and progressives need each other more than they know. The election of 2008, coming after a long period of profound division in our politics and within our religious communities, will mark the moment when we finally come to understand that truth."

Clinton the Hawk and Her Advisors

[More astute analysis from Jack at AfterTheFuture]

Clinton the Hawk and Her Advisors

Again, in case you needed reminding about one of the most important differences between Obama and Clinton:

It should come as no surprise that during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Obama spoke at a Chicago anti-war rally while Clinton went as far as falsely claiming that Iraq was actively supporting al-Qaeda. And during the recent State of the Union address, when Bush proclaimed that the Iraqi surge was working, Clinton stood and cheered while Obama remained seated and silent.

Clinton's advisors are similarly confident in the ability of the United States to impose its will through force. This is reflected to this day in the strong support for President Bush's troop surge among such Clinton advisors (and original invasion advocates) as Jack Keane, Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon.

Clinton's top foreign policy advisor -- and her likely pick for Secretary of State -- Richard Holbrooke, insisted that Iraq remained "a clear and present danger at all times." He rejected the broad international legal consensus against such offensive wars and insisted European governments and anti-war demonstrators who opposed a U.S. invasion of Iraq "undoubtedly encouraged" Saddam Hussein.

Clinton advisor Sandy Berger, who served as her husband's national security advisor, insisted that "even a contained Saddam" was "harmful to stability and to positive change in the region" and insisted on the necessity of "regime change." Other top Clinton advisors -- such as former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright -- confidently predicted that American military power could easily suppress any opposition to a U.S. takeover of Iraq.

By contrast, during the lead-up to the war, Obama's advisors recognized as highly suspect the Bush administration's claims regarding Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and offensive delivery systems capable of threatening U.S. national security. Read more.

Obama's advisers include Zbigniew Brezinksi, Joseph Cirincione, Susan Rice, Larry Korb, Samantha Power, and Richard Clarke. This isn't the group Dennis Kucinich would likely pick, but they are people who have been much more clearheaded about the folly of our Middle Eastern adventurism.

These differences in the key circles of foreign policy specialists surrounding these two candidates are consistent with their diametrically opposing views in the lead-up to the war, with Clinton voting to let President Bush invade that oil-rich country at the time and circumstances of his choosing, while Obama was speaking out to oppose a U.S. invasion.

Hillary Clinton has a few advisors who did oppose the war, like Wesley Clark, but taken together, the kinds of key people she's surrounded herself with supports the likelihood that her administration, like Bush's, would be more likely to embrace exaggerated and alarmist reports regarding potential national security threats, to ignore international law and the advice of allies, and to launch offensive wars.

By contrast, as The Nation magazine noted, a Barack Obama administration would be more likely to examine the actual evidence of potential threats before reacting, to work more closely with America's allies to maintain peace and security, to respect the country's international legal obligations, and to use military force only as a last resort.

This late 20th Century foreign-policy mentality embraced by both Clinton and the Republicans should be mothballed ASAP. See also the article mentioned in The Nation for more details on Obama's people.

See also this Matt Yglesias post and comments on the meme that Obama doesn't have

Lourdes: 150 Years Ago Today

Lourdes: 150 Years Ago Today
Posted at: 2008-02-11 12:15:00.0
Author: James Martin, S.J.

Today marks the 150th Anniversary of the appearances of Our Lady to St. Bernadette Soubirous in the Grotto of Lourdes, the small town in Southern France that has become one of the church's main sites of pilgrimage.

It has become fashionable in recent years, especially after Vatican II, to downplay the miraculous, the supernatural or the otherworldly aspects of our Catholic faith--at least among a few Catholics. And so Lourdes can be a difficult thing for some Catholics to grasp. Apparitions? Voices? Miracles? Are these things, people ask me, consistent with a mature faith?

I've never had that problem. Or those questions. I consider myself a rational person, and a fairly well educated Catholic, who is also not a literalist in any way when it comes to things like, say, Scripture. But, in my theological worldview, I've always believed that we need to be exceedingly careful about saying what God can and cannot do, and how God does and does not act. Or, worse, how God should act or not act.

That's one of the things that landed the scribes and the Pharisees in so much trouble.

For me the story of the apparitions of Mary to St. Bernadette are easy to believe. If God can create the world and raise his son from the dead, then something like Lourdes is rather simple by comparison, I would think. And having visited Lourdes several times, I'm even more convinced.

If that type of logic doesn't appeal to you, then consider the sworn testimonies of the doctors who attest to the 67 miraculous cures of the pilgrims who have been travelling there since 1858. (Quite a few of these doctors are not Catholic, by the way.) Or read the story of Bernadette Soubirous, the unlettered girl who was chosen for these visions. (Franz Werfel's "The Song of Bernadette" is a good place to start. Father Rene Laurentin's biographies and collections of her letters are even better.) Wholly uninterested during her life in fame or even fortune (quite a feat for someone so poor), she simply told what she had seen in the Grotto. And she was forced to do so over and over, even after she entered the convent.

Or, better yet, go to Lourdes. See the pilgrims. Listen to their prayers. Plunge yourself into the cold clear spring water that still flows from the fountain that Bernadette uncovered, at the behest of "the beautiful lady."

And then see if you can convince yourself that something miraculous did not happen there.
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SomeNiceHurlingClips

Magic....JohnMoriarty

[Picture: John McManus - PictureOurLand Irish Photos]

Listen to this when you get a chance and you have time to absorb it. [click on the post heading above]

John Moriarty's "Invoking Ireland":

'Invoking Ireland is a miscellany of parables and aphorisms by which, as individuals, and not as a herd, we might find a way of living authentically on this island ... Moriarty writes a prose poetry in whose doorways we can discern the shades of William Yeats and Dylan Thomas, David Jones and Jack Yeats. Who else but Moriarty could combine in his palette the voices of Blathmac and Traherne? Moriarty's conversation is a dialogue between Christianity and pre-Celtic Ireland. If there is a saving evolutionary, environmental moment, it is what the painters of the Renaissance saw: that when, in Gethsemane, the disciples fall asleep, Christ stays awake. Invoking Ireland is an elucidation of Patrick Kavanagh's prayer: "We must be nothing/Nothing that God may make us something." Strange to surmise that in twenty years from now ... one will see in tcd under the severe, genial eye of Bishop Berkeley the new John Moriarty Chair of Wisdom Literature.'
- Paul Durcan, The Irish Times

'Moriarty's work is written with a glorious innocence and a knowing wisdom, ranging between superb storytelling and rhetorical flourishes, and it would be my dream that everyone would read this book, take its truths to heart, and take from Irish society the harshness of the legacy we are currently bequeathing to a sorry future.'
- John F. Deane, Irish Independent

'Invoking Ireland is a collection of commentaries on various folktales and mythic stories which have had relevance for Irish people over the centuries É It is a whirlwind of powerful imaginative prose. Moriarty is a writer who, over a number of significant works, has been trying to tell us that we are capable of being awake in a deeper, more visceral and more potent way than merely by thinking thoughts. As we gaze into the misty realms of Irish mythology, he wants to undress our mind of its reason, and plunge it into a sense of being which transcends ego-ic parameters. He wants us to share his exploration of Irish myth at this deep psychological level, so that we can find new meaning in the old stories, and so that the old stories can bring a new perception to the way we live out our lives. And he succeeds so well that something new emerges. The thin line between commentary and creative expression vanishes, and the pages of this book deliver up extraordinary poetic thought.'
- Michael Harding, The Sunday Tribune

Invoking Ireland takes us on a "safari of stories" around Irish mythology, and Moriarty recreates them in a way that we have never experienced them before. There is an attempt here to prod us into feeling what it was like when Aimhairghin and his pards sailed up the Kerry shore. The original old or middle Irish poetry and tales, he quotes accurately. His translations are new and pristine and inventive. They are the kind that scholars should do if they entered into the spirit of their literature. Because it is the spirit that always inspires him, and the wrestling to make imaginative sense of what our country has said. We meet Manann‡n, Crom Dubh and Lugh, Christ, the Buddha and D.H. Lawrence. Dylan Thomas and Orpheus and Ted Hughes light our path or lead us into the sidings. This is a wild shaggy-haired ride along the mountains of the moon, it is a Catherine wheel of imagery, it is a great belch of the goodness of life. Moriarty's Birdreign will never come about because we can never fly with feathered wings. We are the metallic Iron people clomping around the earth that he rails about. Life may refuse definition, but we are busy building the stockades around us. What he does magnificently is, however, to reach out and touch what it must have been like before tame philosophy, before plodding discourse, before our teeming brains straightened themselves out. This book can only be read as mythic poetry with all its beauty and with all its roughness and with all its artlessness. It is not a book to be compromised with. It can only be embraced with fervour.'
- Alan Titley, The Irish Book Review

'The Ireland offered here is at once an image which subsists behind its physical appearances and an impress of all nations as inscribed in their key mythologies. Taking a line through Orphean legend, Hindu cosmology, Blake's Prophetic Books and Greek and Nordic mythology, Moriarty offers a reading of the great ongoing war between matter and spirit É In his view, that ancient Ireland of Spirit, coherent with Nature prior to its conquest by the "cormorant tongues" of "Fomorian" man is still, potentially, realizable. His quest, as an earlier poet put it - for Moriarty is as much poet as novelist - is to "feel back along the ancient lines of advance". But not only so. He would like to make us feel, and hear as we read, the rhythms of those ancient tongues. John Moriarty is, I believe, a genius. If our civilization manages to survive in a form which is still capable of recognizing genius when it is pushed under its nose, it is possible, in due course, that he will be acknowledged as such.'
- Robert Lumsden, Adelaide Review


-------------------------------------

I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

WBYeats, "The Song of Wandering Aengus"

People get ready?

"People get ready, there's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

People get ready for the train to Jordan
It's picking up passengers from coast to coast
Faith is the key, open the doors and board 'em
There's hope for all among those loved the most..."


---------------------------

To: Anon

cc: Jack

(Jack, this could be a separate ATF entry given its spiritual and moral tone...)

I'll give you this, Anon:

The way Obama and, frankly, all other politicians use words like "unity" is generally hollow, saccharine, and devoid of heft/substantiality.

Underneath the surface, though, the need for real unity--the need for an urgent and deeply spiritual uniting of persons on some core, foundational levels--is profound.

For me, the supreme tragedy of this election season--the heartbreaking and devastating revelation that really has me sad and sorrowful about the country--is the extent to which a solid third of Americans (perhaps as many as 40 percent) are, as a matter of plain, sober and cerebral analysis, NUTJOBS.

I say that without malice or resentment (up until very recently, I couldn't say so honestly, but now I can). I say it as a political analyst, not as a moral and spiritual being.

As a moral and spiritual being, my heart is wounded and crushed that 1/3 of Americans are so fully for the continuation of war, for the automatic long-term enshrinement of tax cuts, and for harsh treatment of immigrants who have not followed the letter of the law in coming to this country.

I am and have been taken aback this week by the ugly way in which the poster boys and girls of the right wing--Coulter, Limbaugh, DeLay, Ingraham, Dobson, and many, many others--are repudiating McCain and calling him "not a true conservative."

As someone who treated Al Gore in 2000 the way right-wingers are treating McCain now, I feel personally shamed by the level of anger and resentment I carried toward Gore in 2000 (and to Kerry in 2004 after he beat Howard Dean, my guy; Gore was persona non grata inside my heart after he played gutter politics to beat back my candidate, Bill Bradley, in 2000).

I have come to the startling and stunning yet completely undeniable realization that these right-wingers--people whom I have intensely disliked for years, and whose failures have been greatly relished by me and my liberal friends & family members--are, in terms of the patterns and contours of their political (election-based) thinking, are much closer to me than I ever could have appreciated.

Much as I felt the Al Gore of 2000 and the John Kerry of 2004 were betrayers of liberalism (ditto Bill Clinton after the 1994 Republican Revolution), right-wingers now feel that McCain is a traitor to the conservative cause.

So to bring this full circle, unity--REAL unity, the unity that can never be adequately expressed by even a gifted stump orator such as Obama--is about having a heart of compassion for the other, especially the other who stands in entrenched opposition to oneself.

Such a heart and mindset of empathy and compassion--loving your neighbor as yourself, doing for others as they would do unto you--are the cornerstones of good humanity. Accordingly, they lead us to agree on certain fundamentals that were always at the heart of the American ideal, the things that made this country great: equality, universality, freedom, unlimited opportunity, basic civil rights, unfettered self expression as long as it doesn't encroach upon the rights of others.

Unity is a deeply needed value/virtue in America and, for that matter, the world. One simply needs to realize that it's up to us, as Americans, to do the soul searching necessary to bring that about. Politicians will not do it for us.

That's why the right-wing attacks on McCain are so saddening. They reflect a solid third of the country (the solid third that still approves of Bush's job performance) that will demonize a person if s/he strays from marching orders to the slightest extent, including/especially in the defense of illegal immigrants, Iraqis suffering from war, or anyone else who represents THE OTHER.

We need to be unified with all persons, so that THE OTHER ceases to be a part of our vocabularly and, for that matter, our mindset.

That is, ironically, the changing of mythos that Jack has spoken about, and which Obama (albeit on a superficial level that most people can't appreciate) is trying to articulate on the hustings.

Posted by: Matt Zemek | February 08, 2008 at 09:31 AM

Crossing the Threshold of Hope

...."Israel's methodical actions make it clear that it is systematically grinding down and now actually starving people for whose welfare it is legally accountable simply because it regards Gaza's 1.5 million men, women and children as a surplus population it would, quite simply, like to get rid of one way or the other: a sentiment made quite clear when Israel's chief Ashkenazi rabbi proposed, shortly after the current crisis began, that the entire Palestinian population of Gaza should just be removed and transferred to the Egyptian desert. 'They will have a nice country, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace,'"- "The Strangulation of Gaza", The Nation, Feb. 18, 2008.

Such a peace was well known to the Roman empire: "They made a desert and called it peace." - Tacitus.

Christians, of course, need not fear that that they will be forced to look at the starving faces which our government's unceasing support for Israel has procured. Nor will their pastors intrude any unwelcome pleas for justice, but we will all continue to enjoy the "Gospel of Prosperity" until the Rapture takes us to eternal Disneyland. How pleased God must be with us.

posted by Boyd at 12:51 PM

Resistance to Death

MoreSustenaceFromNonviolentJesusBlog

Which Side of History Are You On?

LTJohnson on Sobrino, CDF, Christology...

Great post From dotCommonweal

Posted by Robert P. Imbelli


In the current Commonweal, Luke Timothy Johnson revisits the notification of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on aspects of the Christology of Jon Sobrino, S.J.

Johnson’s article, “Human and Divine: Did Jesus Have Faith?”, is a typical example of Johnson’s informed scholarship and openness to dialogue. In many ways his tone and the principles he enunciates remind me of those espoused by the Catholic Common Ground Initiative. He seeks to understand the legitimate concerns that animate different positions.

Such sympathetic reading does not prevent Johnson from taking a stand where he things the positions he discusses are inadequate. Thus, with regard the CDF, he doesn’t hesitate to state:

The CDF places itself in self-conscious continuity with the theological heritage of earlier centuries. It thinks of “faith” primarily in terms of “belief”-that is, as a cognitive more than a volitional response. It privileges ontological categories for expressing Christian confession. It favors traditional formulas that can be treated as axioms from which one can argue deductively. Its understanding of truth tends toward the propositional, and it is suspicious of theological wording that does not replicate the accepted propositions precisely. And although it pays lip service to the critical study of Scripture, its use of the Gospels is resolutely precritical. It reads the New Testament exclusively through the lens of developed doctrine, and uses the New Testament exclusively as a repository of support for doctrinal propositions. In a word, it continues as if nothing in the theological world had changed.

And, with regard Sobrino’s view, he writes:

the CDF can find a legitimate (if minor) complaint at Sobrino’s description of Jesus as “a believer like ourselves,” for Paul makes clear that it is through Jesus’ “yes” that we are empowered to say “yes” in obedient faith to God: “therefore, the Amen from us goes through him to God for glory” (2 Cor 1:20). For Paul and for Hebrews, it is not that Jesus “has faith just like ours,” but rather that, through the power of his spirit, we can “have faith like that of Jesus” (Rom 3:26). Jesus is the model of faith, but more than that, he is the “pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Heb 12:2), the unique Son who accomplished what we could not on our own, because he was fully defined by the words with which he came into the world: “I have come to do your will, O God” (Heb 10:7).

On one point, however, I think Johnson nods. Regarding the (admittedly) challenging dogmatic principle of the “communicatio idiomatum,” he says:

The residual power of monophysitism is found in the peculiar principle called communicatio idiomatum (“exchange of characteristics”), which serves to compromise the “unmixedness” of the two natures in Christ by asserting the legitimacy of ascribing the characteristics of one nature to the other. But while all would recognize the value of asserting that Mary is the “Mother of God”-the first and most important instance of the principle-it is, in fact, a principle that can be dangerous when used carelessly, as it would be, for example, if one asserted, without careful qualification, that God was born in Nazareth or that Jesus created heaven and earth. Is such language appropriate to the exuberance of prayer and piety? Yes. But sober theological discourse requires greater circumspection.

Though one may hear in various quarters that the principle asserts that one may ascribe “the characteristics of one nature to the other” (in Johnson’s words), this is a faulty understanding of the principle. Rather, it contends that one may ascribe the properties of each nature to the one ontological person who is both divine and human. But the natures remain distinct even in their hypostatic union — as Chalcedon insists.

There is much more matter for considered reflection in this fine article: the latest occasion for gratitude to the judicious Johnson.