Our seed order for the garden arrived yesterday, leading to a few moments of daydreaming about how beautiful everything will look later in the year (I actually like the garden as it is now, freshly dug and full of potential rather than tatty at the edges, with a few spectacular mistakes illuminating the borders.) From seeds to St Thomas Aquinas may be something of a leap, but no one could deny that his work was seminal for the development of much that we cherish in the Church. Recently I have been revisiting his reflections on the nature of Christian society, itself a pregnant phrase, and wondering whether recession is going to make us all rethink our previous positions about how the state operates, the relationships between labour and capital, responsibility and authority, and so on. Pessimists have already begun mumbling about conditions being ripe for the emergence of dictatorships as the economic gloom darkens and we all look for a secular saviour (pity President Obama, cast in that role already). Sensationalist? Overstated? Perhaps, but good to remember that St Thomas had some quite liberal views on tyrannicide!