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This report is taken from PN Review 205, Volume 38 Number 5, May - June 2012.

Why Not Just Tell Us? Frank Kuppner
With it getting near the time to send in something else, and no other candidate quite coming to the boil, it crosses my mind to just take the risk. Yes. Just say it all as clearly as possible. Go on. And why not split some infinitives while you're about it?

It's still only just over a week ago that, while going through the morning paper, I was so struck by something I read there that I wrote a (somewhat) poetic response to it down on the spot - (as immediately follows) - before I had even turned the page. (Good Heavens! So, such things do still happen!)

So here it is again. Yet another example -
as if another were needed. A Christian organisation
runs a coachload of children down to the Alps
from Flanders - a much anticipated skiing holiday -
and, on the way back, the coach crashes
at speed, into a wall, somewhat mysteriously,
killing the two drivers, the other adults on board,
and at least twenty children aged 11 and 12. So, could -

Could anyone anywhere even begin to give a reason
why such a thing must happen in a Universe constructed
and run by a good God? Oh, it's easy to say
'There must be a reason. Yes. There just must be a reason.'
Certainly one has heard those words so very often by now.
But ...


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