Post by ronprice on Oct 21, 2010 16:00:57 GMT 3
The history of the Crusades evokes sorrow at the witness that they bear to the limitations of human nature. It was a Holy War, a long act of intolerance in the name of God. Our civilization has grown out of the long interaction and fusion between the Orient and the Occident during this period. -Steven Runciman, The History of the Crusades, Vol. 3: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, Cambridge University Press,, 1966.
And so it was holy war that sent
that knight of Chaucer:1 tender,
gentle, simple, perfect--off to
find human nature’s limitation
and the inevitable sorrow it brought;
as we, in this latter age, to battle
against a different infidel on our way
to another Canterbury, in a world
besmirched with cruelty and greed,
with enterprise and endurance
blackened by the dust of blind sin.
And so our civilization, grown out of a
fusion of orient and occident, is learning
that faith without wisdom is a dangerous
thing, as those knights half-learned, as we
half-learn that devotion is a lean provision
without understanding: even if the spirits are
adventurous, the combat mortal and a different
Mongol, a different plague3, lurks at our gates to
consume us yet again, yet again, yet again.
This1 movement establishing, as it is, a new
Order in which a more harmonious society
will endure into the future; its host of knights
are laying down their lives in quiet ways and
moving civilization’s centre through this global
crusade back to one of its ancient homes after the
long journey of history as we make our pilgrimage again.
Ron Price
25 October 1996
1 Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: written in the 1390s, after the Crusades.
2 global crusiade beginning in 1937 for the extension of the Cause around the planet.
3 The Black Death, a plague, infected and infllicted Europe in 1348.
And so it was holy war that sent
that knight of Chaucer:1 tender,
gentle, simple, perfect--off to
find human nature’s limitation
and the inevitable sorrow it brought;
as we, in this latter age, to battle
against a different infidel on our way
to another Canterbury, in a world
besmirched with cruelty and greed,
with enterprise and endurance
blackened by the dust of blind sin.
And so our civilization, grown out of a
fusion of orient and occident, is learning
that faith without wisdom is a dangerous
thing, as those knights half-learned, as we
half-learn that devotion is a lean provision
without understanding: even if the spirits are
adventurous, the combat mortal and a different
Mongol, a different plague3, lurks at our gates to
consume us yet again, yet again, yet again.
This1 movement establishing, as it is, a new
Order in which a more harmonious society
will endure into the future; its host of knights
are laying down their lives in quiet ways and
moving civilization’s centre through this global
crusade back to one of its ancient homes after the
long journey of history as we make our pilgrimage again.
Ron Price
25 October 1996
1 Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales: written in the 1390s, after the Crusades.
2 global crusiade beginning in 1937 for the extension of the Cause around the planet.
3 The Black Death, a plague, infected and infllicted Europe in 1348.