Herbert and QHL: a study in contrasts

began this morning early with the desire to look at the poetry of George Herbert. A beautiful soul, he wrote poetry of amazing sensitivity and clarity. He knew what mattered, although he lived only thirty years and died at his vicarage. It's worth looking up his life. 1602-1632.
Herbert lived in the age where the Renaissance, with its pleasure focus, its humanism, had bloomed quite fully, if rather more shyly than it does today.
Herbert addressed these "independent tendencies" and the disastrous nature of the distractions of a life at which "the great, perpendicular 'I AM'" at the center. He had once aspired to court life, but his patrons died within a year of each other and then James died as well. Herbert took this as a confirmation from God that his life was not to go in that direction. On the day he was convinced that his calling was the ministry, he was gowned and enchapeled in one day!
It didn't bother Herbert that he was in an obscure parish overseeing country people (he had been born in a castle). He had made his choice and the course of his life was one of joyful, peaceful service in which he was such a light that his flock was transformed.

enter this afternoon's reading: an alarmist piece, several pages long, issued by a legal firm and those who have retained one of its members in counsel for themselves to "fight" the firm which went BK two weeks ago, taking the money of its investors down with it (of which my 401k ws one small part).

Now a little cadre of investors is soliciting the rest of us losers in the most florid terms possible, to act now, donate now, before it's too late and by the way, if you don't pony up for this lawyer to act in your behalf along with the rest of us, you'll never know what became of your dough and you'll never hear from us again, we who will fight for our long-gone dollars.

not only does it smack of financial ambulance-chasing but it also carries that little caveat at the end that makes it clear that if you don't pony up, you're an idiot. the best kind of alarmist writing...damnation to those of you who don't join the posse.

contrasts between Herbert and the injured investors of QHL, inc?

contentment versus cavil,
peace versus panic,
a nobleman delighted among the common versus commoners who believe they are noble by their weight of investment (just ask them!),
a soul clear-focused on what matters and living in that vision versus focus on not only what is lost but also what never mattered anyway--(and of course, focus on that self-serving "justice" that comes with financing the legal eagle who will get it back for us wild-eyed investors)!

it's not a contrast in ages, but in attitudes. (Herbert spent much of his own inherited money on the repair of the little chapel where he ministered. think he would have thrown in to hire the lawyer to get back HIS 401k? somehow i doubt it. He understood the passing nature of such silliness.)

as a 19-th century poet wrote,

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus;
look full in His wonderful face
and the things of earth
will grow strangely dim
in the light of His glory and grace."