March 4th. Yesterday morning I was speaking with a friend over the phone about his work in Westman Island, that is, arranging early manuscripts from that area with a view to publishing them. He had plenty of experience in this field and with time, will be recognized as a leading authority. The key to his success? Not just the ability to `lift` the original text into meaningful form for others to read but his spending time to get a sense of what the text actually says. That involves lectio divina as he readily admitted. However, to do this in a secular setting invites trouble. By that I mean he won`t get fired but is under indirect pressure to produce, to crank it out. This sad state of affairs applies to any endeavor which requires time and leisure to grasp deeper realities, and that is in short supply. All this rushing around, going no place. It`s a type of insanity, repeating the same behavior while expecting different results.

The Iraq war is tragic, no doubt about that. Though I`m familiar with the daily dose of bombings, a particularly gruesome event happened the other day when a group of Sunnis was murdered for participating in a fellowship meeting with Shiites.

On Sunday morning I was listening in the car radio to a sermon by a Lutheran priest broadcast live. Icelandic clergy can be very wordy and blab on, more so than if English were used. This made me reflect on a phenomenon, of how people take joy in citing religious texts (Bible, first and foremost) as authoritative and content themselves with that. Hiding behind it is a sense of joy at participating in the text’s authority and usurping it, albeit indirectly. Quoting such texts also imparts a sense of balance which you wouldn’t find through a spirit of inquiry, and inquiry doesn’t have to equal criticism.