'A Blog Oasis' Week 4

“Love thy neighbour,” enjoined Christ the Lord –
A phrase we should roundly applaud:
We’d be saved so much grief
If we espoused that belief
And not think it one better ignored.
Gregory Dark




"Let everyone sweep in front of his or her own door, and the whole world will be clean."
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

So much great thought is expressed so simply. The first time I read this, I thought, “Well, of course. That’s so obvious it doesn’t need saying.” But the obvious sometimes does need saying. If you are a passenger in a car hurtling towards a precipice, you know the driver is aware of the situation – it’s quite obvious, for God’s sake. You may, however, still feel the need to say something like, “Excuse me, old chap. I don’t mean to be pushy or anything, but I was wondering whether you may have happened to notice that imminently we are going to be plunging to our death”!

When I started thinking about this advice of Goethe’s, I also started to realise how redolent it was of Christ’s invocations: that it should be he who is without sin who should cast the first stone and first to remove the mote from our own eye.

But Goethe’s words have got a wider application even than that. The world will not be a peaceful place until its inhabitants are at peace. And they will not be at peace until they are at peace with themselves. And they will not be at peace with themselves unless they allow others to be at peace with themselves.

Altruism is only a selfishness that works. A naked selfishness does not help you. It helps only those who seek to control you.

Let us make a commitment, sweetheart, you and I together, to look at something in ourselves or about ourselves that could make us better people.



Her fiancé was born close to Gloucester;
He was a roué, a cad, an impoucester;
He conned her and boucester,
And then double-croucester –
But, thank God, he finally loucester.
Gregory Dark