Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.
For those who may not recognize those words, they were the original "handwriting on the wall," traced by a ghostly hand on a palace wall in Babylon. For Belshazzar, their unfortunate addressee, they meant:
Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign, and brought them to an end.
Tekel: You have been weighed in the balance, and have been found wanting.
Upharsin: Your kingdom will be divided among [your enemies] the Medes and Persians.
I don't know where, but on some wall in America this morning, that same hand is scrawling a modern take on the old verdict...
Mene: America, God will soon bring the days of your world dominance to an end. Your people are now too foolish, too carelessly evil, to be trusted with such power as their nation now wields.
Tekel: You've been given two hundred years of freedom without precedent, and you've just used it to re-elect a mendacious tyrant to rule over you.
Upharsin: Your power will be divided up among your enemies -- China, Russia, the rising Islamic Caliphate. Your lands? We'll see.
In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote "Dover Beach", a haunting poem evoking the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. As a boomer who finished Catholic elementary school in 1964 and then watched my Church falter, I've found the roar all too audible. So here I wait, listening for the whispers of that Sea's invincible return.