“2 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. The New Commandment 7 Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. 8 At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. 9 Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. 10 Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. 11 But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. 12  I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. 13  I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. 14  I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.” (1 Jn 2:1–14 ESV)

The walls may be creaking, the Unseen may be front and center in the mind’s eye; Somehow, in Some Wise, the present state of distress is Answered by a Judge who Sees, who Listens, who harbors the hopes and dreams of a generation, of forefather and foremothers, who lives on a Brink most Alert and Doomsday-defying.

To the patient Purveyors of the faith, educating others becomes the mantra, the cause du jour, the Hope; our dying breath is nonetheless a Hope-Filled illustration of just how and why Denizens of a Higher Cloth, a Higher Guild, a National Interest, a People-Group Sublime, Benign, strategically-placed, Plaintive and Earnest, do Act in such fashion and not in that other fashion.

Because the sober assessment is that no amount of pleading from a posture of Willing Submission to the tutee, will ever Break through the laughing hyena’s mockery of the same us the tutor. So the Doctrine of War is invented anew, is renewed in the national pantheon of Creed and Custom, even though we the Patient Ones do hold out Hope for a Breakthrough. Because there are seasoned Ways and Means that clergy do operate within, notions of confronting the sinner, of refusing to gossip, of holding in the heart—in pectoram—the Charges and refusing to go the bombastic Route of stale rumor-mill and shock factor. Our eagerness to Gossip, to see someone humbled… really, this needs a Clergy-person’s Teaching as to how rightly to be the hands and the feet, the heart and the mind of Christ.

We are working around the clock on Coming Together in the name of the Silent Observer, the ones on faith taken as Real though we bumble and forget, our patience of Imagination never quite sufficient alone to bide the time fully; God is in the eaves and in the attic, in the basement and in the solemn house across the street. God is in our present distress, at the other end of the global ethernet and cabling. And who knows but that a Loving Response, to One Sinner, may soften and inspire the Heart, to do acts of gentle Persuasion right back unto the Body who Forgave. That is each of our Efforts to Educate, to divulge Experiences, form Experiences, in patient hope a doctrine of War is not the only answer.

War, or let us call it hegemony, the act of submitting a wild horse unto the Body, unto the Heavenly Ones, unto the Agency that claims all Lordship and Power in God’s Name of His Church, but in ways approachable to each and every one of us: stop listening to the world, to sinful lust and desire, to the devil, and Start: listen to the church’s gentle bleating, childlike Patient Restoration from so much that we Lost, that together we were Denied, that Educated us as to Holistic Recovery of a Beauteous End in and of itself, minus so much we had clamped on to.