Sunday Morning Lesson

Superbia et Ira

We take our text this morning from the writings of newly-appointed Human Services Commissioner, Saint Homer the Butch. Pastor Henderson wrote in yesterday's Courier:

Claremont has an ideal opportunity to create a well-planned housing community for seniors and families on the former COURIER site.

By bringing together folks across the generations, this small community within our larger community will add to the vitality of Claremont. It will offer an affordable housing opportunity for many who already work in Claremont and enable them to live in the community where they are employed.

Families with younger children will have convenient access to Oakmont School, where there is plenty of room for new students [He's right on this one if Helaine Goldwater was to be believed at last Tuesday's council meeting. She stated that 50% of Oakmont's students were "interdistrict transfers", meaning they came from outside of Claremont. See the video here at 2:13:00 ff.] The location is also conveniently situated near Claremont’s downtown business centers. We have a developer with an excellent track record and with viable, appealing communities in place around Southern California.

No location or plan will ever be perfect nor meet the objections of those who find fault with every affordable housing proposal. Now is the time to continue building quality of life sustainability in Claremont by seizing the opportunity.

Butch and Rosemary Henderson

As we read the first three paragraphs of this letter, our bosom swelled with welling pride to be a member of a community so obviously willing to do the Right Thing. Pastor Henderson's sermons have always had that effect on people, and we'll be attending the Human Services Commission meetings faithfully for more moral instruction from here on out.

It was something of a wrong note though to hear him refer in the last paragraph to "those who find fault with every affordable housing proposal". We thought we detected more than a hint of anger so some of his fellow men there, indicting--though not by name--a segment of our community apparently worthy of his remark.

We have in this letter pride in his community and his place in it and thinly-veiled anger at what must be a substantial portion of it--at least substantial enough to get into his head. It sounded kinda judgmental to us.

Then we remembered that "pride" and "anger" were two of the seven deadly sins. So take this lesson.