and in a way it is a very good day on which to begin it, bringing to mind St. Paul's statement, "we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles" (1 Corinthians 1:23). In Paul's world, as in ours, foolishness had a bad press. The great Roman Emperors and their generals did not tolerate failure, did not want to appear foolish before the world. The same can surely be said of the power-that-be in our own time.

   I am reminded of an old Eastern European story about  a person we  in Ireland would call a "duine le Dia":

This simpleton was sent each day to bring their dinners to his brothers who worked on the other side of a river from their home. He himself was only given a piece of bread a day to eat. One day he noticed a hole in the dam on the river which threatened to flood the valley where they lived, so he stopped it up with the piece of bread. The local King came along and, admiring his generosity, made him Crown Prince, since he had no children himself. When the old King died and he succeeded to the kingdom,  people called him "King Fool" and laughed at him; he even laughed at himself. But gradually his people noticed that with him as King there were no longer any wars, since he did not know how to take offence or revenge. Eventually, however, the generals of his kingdom grew impatient and killed him so that they could seize power and declare war on their neighbours. Then the dam on the river was blown up and the valley and all its people were destroyed. (See Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, London: Chatto and Windus, 2003, page 168)