graveside panegyric

I stroll through the graveyard in August sunshine.
It is located in the heart of the west of Ireland in idyllic countryside.
The firstlings of Autumn are in the air.
The delicate yet ever splendid regality of nature brings me to thoughts of the creator.
I am thinking of the son of the Hebrew God.
Him and his commandments.
Between the jigs and the reels I've broken them all.
Adultery... hundreds of times in my heart.
Lying... it never ends.
Thou Shalt Not Kill... again in the heart, all the time.
Cruelty to the foreigner... well I've certainly had reservations about the behaviour of some of the adherents of a certain peaceloving religion of Islam.
Hmmm.
And for each unfounded word I must answer on judgement day.
Why on earth then do I rejoice?
Why do I dare to be happy with the sins of a lifetime on my soul.
Why!
Because he's real.
The son of the Hebrew God is real.
The God that set the stars in the heavens and wrote the law on my heart.
He's the real deal.
The God who is the only reason I actually know when I've done something wrong.
He's real.
The joy of the truth of his reality trumps my guilt every time.
Though all of the sins of eternity were on my soul, I would still be thrilled to know that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Through no merit of my own I know this.
And so I rejoice.
The fronded chestnut tree rears over long grass.
Presently I am beside the grave of Bill Baines.
A young man.
Forty years old.
I'd envied him.
The first one in his family to go to university.
He got married only last year.
Then he inherited a few hundred grand as did his relatives after the sale of a farm that had been in the family for generations.
Bill was the only one in the family with any book learning.
He took advice from his bank manager on what to do with the money.
Regarding Bill as the expert, his family came to him for advice and he referred them all to the same bank manager.
The bank manager told them to put their money in bank shares on the stock exchange.
They lost everything.
So it seemed to them.
They didn't have time to realise that in reality they had lost nothing.
Really.
All they lost was some money that they didn't have a few weeks previously anyway.
But Bill was blaming himself.
And some of the family members almost seemed to half blame him too maybe without meaning to.
And then he was dead.
I stand at the grave.
Today I read that Richie Boucher Hayes who styles himself Chief Executive of an organisation known as the Bank Of Ireland, has awarded himself an annual salary of two and a half million dollars.
Bank Of Ireland lost two thousand five hundred million dollars last year.