The empires of France, Spain and Portugal, along with the dour and messianic Protestant sects that settled New England, acted swiftly to create their own native hagiography and to record miracles to establish that they, too, were working under divine providence and were building a new Jerusalem.
And when the rescued Joey in 1918 is saved from slaughter only by a jammed pistol it seems providence is working overtime.
Read's characters have been doing this for upwards of 40 years, and to complain about it on aesthetic grounds – a work of realism suddenly shifting on to a different plain – is to invite the age-old Catholic novelist's riposte that this is a book about the working out of divine providence and that, whatever the scepticism of the non-believer, is how it operates.
It's chief virtue and attraction in the post-enlightenment era was its naturalization of divine providence as progressively working its way over time in the world.
Philipp Melanchthon (1497 1560) reconciled the distinction between religion and science of nature by arguing that nature was creation of God and everything in it had to be seen as the work of providence.
"Hurricanes and earthquakes are the work of providence," Alejandro Hope, a former member of the Mexican intelligence service and political analyst, commented Thursday.
Dr. Joe Gifford, CEO of the Providence-Swedish ACO, told me his organization is working with Blue Cross of Illinois for that work.
Moreover, Philosophy insists that the causal chain of providence, as worked out in fate, embraces all that happens.
I've been working on my temper during this Nativity fast season, on trusting God's providence in difficult situations and on learning how to see God in everyone.
An aging queen with a working knowledge of poison plays a major role in the jockeying for the throne, but even she must bow to the dictates of providence.
If, by chance (and understandably), you're not up to speed on the dozens of art, writing, acting, and video projects the hardest working man in show business has in the works, Daddy is Franco's musical project that he formed last year with his Providence-based art school BFF Tim O'Keefe.
