Theology, criminal law, and an old flannel shirt

March 26, 2015
I resemble that 

            Theology isn’t so very different from criminal law. Both rest on a complicated system of 
            philosophical thought which hasn’t much to do with reality.

                                                                                  - from P.D. James’ A Certain Justice,

in which a character is described as speaking “apparently without resentment,” but only apparently: there was something in her voice, a harsh “note of suppressed anger . . . .”

     From the same novel, another of the characters exclaims to Detective Adam Dalgliesh: “Surely there as to be a limit to hypocrisy.” To which he replies, “I’ve never found one.”

I haven’t either, or to resentment.

     Consider how often – how almost always – when we act out of resentment we claim other motives. “That’s not why I did it – because I resented his success. I may have done, but what I really wanted, what was really needed, was that the truth come out.”

There’s nothing more comforting than long-held resentments and prejudices. They are 
the soft, easy fit of an increasingly well-worn flannel shirt.

                                                                                  - Uncle Albert