Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

so that you may be able to prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable

and perfect.

Romans 12. 2.

This is resistance and reformation on the Fight, laugh, feast network.

Any number of commentators have suggested that the last 10 years or so may well go down in history as a decade a diem oriables, a Latin phrase meaning a horrible decade. To be sure, we have had more

than our customary allotment of woes. Pandemics, wars, social disruption, moral confusion. The mainstream media and social media

alike have responded with apocalyptic lamentations and mournful Jeremiahads. A Jeremiah is usually

defined as a long and doleful complaint. It's a tale of sorrow, disappointment,

and grief. It's a dolorous declaration of doom. It is passed into the English from the

French, first used in 1762 to describe the lamentations of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. It was a clever

etymological construction intended to call to mine Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid.

In literature, it is typically used as a term of ridicule or mockery,

implying either that the lamentations are exaggerated or that their proclamations are overwrought

and tediously self-righteous.

Your Jeremiah's, let me tell you, won't recover two farthings of the money lost,

wrote Honoré de Balzac.

She was of a complaining bent, having indeed only two good cause in finding in such Jeremiahids

a salve for her grieves, declared Anatol France.

The slothful conduct of his friend and his eternal Jeremiahads appeared to him simply stupid,

wrote Gustav Lobert. Robert Louis Stevenson opined, "'Trust me or leave me alone and find someone else. But let us have an end for God's sake of your Jeremiah's.'"

And the inimitable Ambrose Beers, bidingly observed,

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