Strategy

Despair is a strategy. Optimism is a strategy. Anger is a strategy. Even fear is a strategy.

I once believed those were affects, aspects of human personality that we couldn't choose because they were involuntary. We don't control them.

I also once had contempt for my clergy colleagues who had chosen their vocation rather than, as I perceived myself, having been chosen for it.

I now know my contempt was a form of fear, fear of my own mixed motives.

I still think we are largely in the dark about our motives, not because they are so remote, but because, like spider veins, they have so many facets it is impossible to choose one and call it the central one.

Acknowledging my own mixed motives, about everything, has made me less judging about other's motives. And it has made me understand that I, too, am driven by so many hopes, fears, passions, appetites, that trying to pose as virtuous or sinister is just that, a pose.

So I salute you in whatever strategy you have chosen to make this day work for you.