Motto:
"The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me." 
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Good advice even for those of us less courageous than Solzhenitsyn. It should serve at least as a useful aspiration.

Paul E. Michelson is Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Huntington University, where he began teaching in 1974. He has been three times a Fulbright fellow in Romania (1971-1973, 1982-1983, 1989-1990). His book, Romanian Politics, 1859-1871: From Prince Cuza to Prince Carol (1998) was selected by CHOICE MAGAZINE of the American Library Association as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1998 and was awarded the 2000 Bălcescu Prize for History by the Romanian Academy. He wrote the lead article on Romania for The Encyclopedia of East Europe: From the Congress of Vienna to the Fall of Communism  (2000), edited by Rick Frucht, which was selected by CHOICE Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book for 2000. He is an honorary member of the Romanian Academy Institutes of History at Iași, București, and Cluj.

His areas of interest and expertise include historiography, Romanian history in the 19th-21st Centuries, Totalitarian and post-Totalitarian societies, the History of Venice, and the writings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Inklings.

He is past President (2006-2009) and Secretary (1977-2015) of the Society for Romanian Studies and served as the Secretary of the Conference on Faith and History from 2004 to 2014; and is currently a board member of the C. S. Lewis and Kindred Spirits Society of Central and Eastern Europe.

KIDNEY TRANSPLANT BLOG

I blogged my kidney transplant from the “event” itself on June 24, 2020, through the end of December 2022. For those with an insatiable or morbid curiosity, this blog can be perused here.

Since then I have done occasional updates. My four year check up was on June 24, 2024, and I am pleased to share that all my numbers are still better than normal and no changes were made in my meds. Soli Deo Gloria.

BTW: if and when I shuffle off this mortal coil, a notice of said event will be posted here, although—strangely—according to governmental actuaries, the older one gets the longer ones expected life expectancy is. Sort of like Zeno’s race between the tortoise (we sublunary beings) and the hare (the Grim Reaper). One wonders if Zeno was right. Let me know what you think.

PERIODIC AND RANDOM MEDITATIONS

II. Fall 2024: PARADOXES OF AUTUMN

The coming of the September’s Autumnal Equinox heralds the advent of more and more silver days and fewer and fewer of the golden days of summer. Gone are the days of the Summer Solstice as we head inexorably toward the Winter Solstice. Though autumn offers the advantage of avoiding both the oppressively hot days of summer and the dauntingly cold days of winter, we know that these coolish-warmish days will not last, and, except for a few surprising flaxen interludes, the downward floating of crystalline flakes will not be long in coming. All too soon, we realize, the days will tend toward cooler metals, still occasionally burnished, but more and more empty as the sun rises later and later, and retires from the sky earlier and earlier.

Thus we both welcome and dread the coming of autumn and its paradoxical sentiments. Despite the waning of the year, let us enjoy the autumnal equinox whose spectral colors and russet hues still warm our elegiac hearts even while our bodies begin to sense the deepening chill of sunrise and the failing warmth of sunset. And as we do, let us also be of cheer for winter is not the end. Soon we will welcome the Vernal Equinox and begin the cycle once more. In the meantime, let us heed the injunction: “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.” (The Message, Matthew 6:34)

I. Fall 2023: TOTTERING TOWARD HOPE or TEETERING BETWEEN HOPE & DESPAIR

A theme that emerged on my transplant journey was hope. There is no question that the events of the pandemic years have made hope an increasingly rare commodity. Though COVID19 seems to be moving toward normality, we still have plenty of reasons to be concerned: war in Ukraine, global inflation, escalating political polarization, and other issues, some imaginary or overblown or principally psychological in nature. We seem prone to teetering between hope and despair.

One of today's outstanding academic theologians, Paul S. Fiddes of Oxford University many years ago wrote a first rate essay entitled “The Signs of Hope,” which appeared in Keith W. Clements, et al., A Call to Mind. Baptist Essays Toward a Theology of Commitment (London: Baptist Union Press, 1981), pp. 33-45. In this essay, he called our attention to two kinds of hope: Secular hope and Christian hope. Secular hope is an extrapolation to the Future from the Present, a hope in what can reasonably be calculated in scientific terms from the Now derived from current trends. As financial analysts make certain to emphasize in their adverts, “past performance cannot guarantee future results.” And, also of course, logicians tell us that to to make straight line projections from the present to any point in the future is a classic fallacy. With secular hope frequently running off the cliff, it is no wonder that people alternate between doom and gloom and hope that proves vain.

Christian hope, on the other hand, is not a prediction of what the Future will be, but and anticipation of “the 'desirable future ' rather than the 'calculable future.'” This is what Jurgen Moltmann called the Theology of Hope, a “hope in a future which is radically different from the present, rather than merely being an extension of the conditions of the present.” However, “it is important to notice,” Fiddes writes, “that it is promise and not prediction….God always fulfills his promises, but he does so in unexpected ways.” This is the hope that the Apostle Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 13, promises based on our faith in God.

Christian hope is not, as is sometimes charged, an irrational hope. 1 Peter 3:18 tells us that the Christian “should always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” (ESV) This hope must be characterized by gentleness and respect. In short, it must be reflected in love for others.

Paul the Apostle, in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, further points out that what Christians have, or ought to have, is a discerning hope, testing everything and holding on to what is good. Lastly, as Peter goes on to tell us in 2 Peter 3:18, Christian hope is a product of what we might call “graceful knowledge.”

Reasonable. Gentle and respectful. Discerning. Expressing Graceful knowledge. These elements of Christian hope culminate, according to Fiddes, in the conviction that “God has a certain future in his purpose of reconciling all things with himself” and that “the content of that event depends upon the response of his creatures.” In the end, “It is an important perspective for the hope of the Church to know that God himself is hopeful.”

Thus, we should look for the signs of hope where ever we are, we should never despair, and we should share our hope with those around us.