Mastery

Initiae sapientiae timor domini.

        Fear of the Lord
dried out our wisdom;
fear of God, the bowed head,
the eyes averted, feet of clay.

        Reverence for
the mastery of things,
turned our hands to tasks,
making, shaping, moulding,
the ore of everything extracted,
mined, smelted, wrought into iron
by heat and ferocity, by our work
by our vanity.

Domus super petra aedificata.

        It was the house we built,
a house on bare stone; we of all trades,
architects of futures, not all of them our own.

© BH, 2021

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I keep notes. At least now and then. Scribbled paper, digital files, a litter of lines and words.

From this vast pile, percolating to the top, came my old school motto, Domus super petram aedificata, and another from my days in sunday school, Initiae sapientiae timor domini.

House built on a rock - the firm foundations of a good, Scots education - plus, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

And I wondered, in these troubled planetary times, in the face of pestilence and degeneration, just exactly where did all that get us after all?