Now, what did I come upstairs for?

+As Mephistopheles said [Marlowe's Faustus version] ‘Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it.’ He was answering Faustus’s question ‘Where is Hell?’ Old Meph’s answer was very metaphysical and I have to say post-modernist. It broke albeit briefly (this was the 17th century) with all pre-conceived notions of what Hell was meant to be—i.e. that place so brilliantly captured in Gustave Dore’s illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy, a horrible place of physical torture. But Mephistopheles went on to say Hell was being ‘denied the face of God,’ which is to say to be outside of God’s grace, thus not a physical torture but a spiritual one. In other words, (to be aligned with the current state of our Established Church’s thinking) a metaphorically poor state of mind. It’s all metaphorical! Yet we are blighted by people who cannot recognise the metaphorical nature of their faith. This phenomenon doesn’t just manifest itself in the hands of Islamic so-called fundamentalists (for example) who seem incapable of thinking outside the narrowly defined box of their old fraudulent prophets, but pervades the ’public square’ all over the place. The Great Metaphor is given universal homage, more often than not by people of no actual faith whatsoever.  That’s what is so worrisome. For the enactment of life’s rituals, many people still pretend they believe. But we know they don’t, and census data shows an inexorable trend away from the religious conformity of the past. The horrid abyss of Hell long ago lost its power over the imagination. The questions is: what’s replaced it (if anything)? And when is the BBC’s Today programme going to drop its dreadful God-slot, Thought for the Day?
 
+It’s Good News for old timers everywhere, said news being the announcement by Joe Biden that he’s standing for election as US President next year, when he’ll be 81 years old. Students of British history all know that William Gladstone was 102 when he started his last term as Prime Minister. The Queen of course was a head of state at the age of 95 and didn’t do so badly, until she shook hands with Liz Truss. But the President’s duties are perhaps more onerous—or so we’re led to believe. A previous old timer, Ronald Reagan famously took afternoon naps. And Trump spent a good part of the day watching TV. The ultimate test of a President’s ability is his (always been a his) golfing skills. Nothing captures their well developed presidential profile better than a swing of the nine iron. I’m not sure such an image would benefit British PM hopefuls though. Seeing a UK PM at leisure never went down too well, least of all when they holiday with such hosts as Berlesconi (for example) or other noble pillars of wealth and privilege.