Nor hope nor dread attendA dying animal.
A walk in Sheffield, or the outskirts thereof, memories of the late eighties, bringing up children, and the unexpected heron, so primeval, what has it to do with Sheffield or any city, any human habitation, working before Sisyphus to stay alive, alive, alive until it dies, dies, nor hope nor dread ... no beating of spirit wings, moving out of life with slow and awkward grace.
If what I said about karma and Sharon Stone earlier is right, then surely we have exactly the same problem with talk of grace, as when someone says that such and such an event which had perhaps a significant effect on their lives, was a grace of God, or was the action of 
God's grace. Surely that won't do, either? We should have to say that the comment acknowledges something true, viz that it was not through my action that this happened and saved me from myself, but then tries to explain, which it cannot do, since all this belongs to a realm of unknowing, though even that turn of phrase is merely a kind of concession. All this sounds like D Z Phillips and yet is surely no less right for that,Dewi, who died last year, in the library at Swansea, in the middle of his projects, had been complaining of dizziness a few weeks before at the memorial for Bob Sharpe.
Talking of grace might provide someone with a general picture of what it is like to live in this world, a general truth about the multiple ways in which we are dependent in our moral lives on forces that we do not command and do not expect, but it can never then come down to particulars ... but of course, for religious people, it always does come down to particulars, a particular event seen as God's intervention, whether it is to save us from ourselves, or to punish us for our sin, and I cannot go there, nor have any inclination to do so, even though there have been many times that I have precisely felt that I was saved from myself by the course of events, by a grace of nature, as I should rather say. Others will talk here of their conviction or their faith that this was the hand of God .... but it is no more than Glenn Hoddle or Sharon Stone talking of karma or the fundamentalist talking of God's punishment of America or whatever it might be. I suppose someone might object here, that they are not on a level, that there are different theologies involved, that God is a God of love and intervenes with grace, but for that reason doesn't punish us in the way implied, and that is certainly true, but still, neither the good theology nor the bad brings us to something that we can establish or know or even have reason for believing.
God's grace. Surely that won't do, either? We should have to say that the comment acknowledges something true, viz that it was not through my action that this happened and saved me from myself, but then tries to explain, which it cannot do, since all this belongs to a realm of unknowing, though even that turn of phrase is merely a kind of concession. All this sounds like D Z Phillips and yet is surely no less right for that,Dewi, who died last year, in the library at Swansea, in the middle of his projects, had been complaining of dizziness a few weeks before at the memorial for Bob Sharpe. Talking of grace might provide someone with a general picture of what it is like to live in this world, a general truth about the multiple ways in which we are dependent in our moral lives on forces that we do not command and do not expect, but it can never then come down to particulars ... but of course, for religious people, it always does come down to particulars, a particular event seen as God's intervention, whether it is to save us from ourselves, or to punish us for our sin, and I cannot go there, nor have any inclination to do so, even though there have been many times that I have precisely felt that I was saved from myself by the course of events, by a grace of nature, as I should rather say. Others will talk here of their conviction or their faith that this was the hand of God .... but it is no more than Glenn Hoddle or Sharon Stone talking of karma or the fundamentalist talking of God's punishment of America or whatever it might be. I suppose someone might object here, that they are not on a level, that there are different theologies involved, that God is a God of love and intervenes with grace, but for that reason doesn't punish us in the way implied, and that is certainly true, but still, neither the good theology nor the bad brings us to something that we can establish or know or even have reason for believing.
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