Without Internet all day!

Wednesday was more penitential than planned. Something went wrong with one of the local switching station and our ASDL connection crapped out early this morning. Thirty minutes later the basic phone service went.

It's amazing how helpless that can leave you feeling. You can't check to see what is causing the problem. You get paranoid thoughts about whether you paid the bill. Or is the whole woprld coming apart.

And then this—I'm not making this up—when I went looking for help, our phone service provider tells us that when there is no dial tone we should dial 611!

Anyway, I've been thinking about Psalm 36 all day. The Serpentine One and I were saying Lauds this morning and today's liturgy includes Psalm 36 and it features this rather chilling stanza:

He so flatters himself in his mind
that he knows not his guilt.
In his mouth are mischief and deceit.
All wisdom is gone.

Here is the thing: How do I know that isn't me that stanza is describing? We always imagine these things to be describing someone else but the Psalm says the sinner doesn't know he is a sinner! It could be me. I might be so depraved by my sin that I have no idea how depraved I am.