My focus here recently has been reality, as in “reality.”  My emphasis is the vulnerability that “reality” faces, as it is something other than the basic assumptions that we take for granted.  Here, I am putting on the table something that cannot actually be put “on the table.”  For “reality” is subtle to the point that we can never fully grasp it with our feeble, pea-sized brain but only with a discerning heart that can understand these subtleties, or at least understand that they can only be inferred.  In this effort I make it very complicated…because it is complicated, infinitely so…but it can be simply presented by borrowing from the Apostle Paul, “We see through a glass darkly.”

It is this “darkliness” that is imperiled with the term I employed days ago, “the judgement of God.”  Psychologist Carl Jung used the word “einfall” to describe this irruption into our consciousness, an intrusion which often rattles our cage beyond our comfort zone.  Another term I’d like to introduce here is the “black swan” popularized several years ago by Nassim Nicholas Tasseb with his book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.”  Tasseb uses the aberration of a swan being black rather than white to introduce the shock of cognitive dissonance, the “catastrophe” of realizing that things are not as we see them.  According to Wikipedia, Tasseb’s metaphor “lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought.  A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved.”

Our world is now being shaken to the core, with many “fundamental postulates” jeopardized.  Any country worth its salt will have leaders who will avoid blaming anyone, will focus on the problem as it applies to its own people, and offer a well thought out strategy for this perilous moment in history.  The image of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, confined to a wheelchair, calmly guiding us through the Great Depression and into the 2nd World War came to my mind.  What courage, fortitude, and faith.  He knew it was not all about him.