simple things
Remember that old Wham! T-Shirt? The one that said, very simply, in huge Black Block Capital Letters on a plain white background, “Choose Life“?
Well, who knew the slogan was a biblical one?
I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live
– Deuteronomy 30:19 KJV
Whether you believe in God or are comfortable with Religion, per se, I still say that words - the simple act of someone somewhere sitting down and making marks on paper or papyrus, on parchment or on pottery, has the most unbelievable ability to transfer abstract ideas, complicated concepts, impossible ideas, perhaps, even, universal truths, to people who will never even meet the writer, and that, in all the great books on the earth - be they the Bible, the Koran, the Gatakamala, the poems of Yeats or Kavanagh, the works of Beckett or of Wilde, or, indeed, in “The Time Travellers Wife”; even in a good Lawrence Block, or a very good Jackie Collins, there are tiny simple pieces of unspeakably perfect and beautiful truth. (OK, maybe I’m pushing it with the Collins, but I still say that what the clever people refer to as ‘Trash’ can still have the ability to be beautiful. Witness the inspiration for this blog).
Some people, apparently, are taking this passage as an exhortation to stop abortion, to protect human life (until the ‘protected’ human breaches the ‘laws of man,’ at which point it’s OK to strap him into a chair and shoot him full of poison chemicals / electricity), as an instruction to carry out Christian Fatwahs on the doctors who carry out such procedures.
I prefer to take a more positive view. That’s what the piece says to me: It’s about making positive choices. Life versus Death. Blessings versus Curses. Light over Dark.
I’m choosing the Blessings, the light.
I choose Life.
