Gobsmacked Again

2011-06-05T08:06:00.000-05:00

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent

2010-12-15T17:53:00.000-06:00

Walking the Razor's Edge

2010-12-13T14:39:00.001-06:00

Soros: I Can’t Stop a Republican ‘Avalanche’

2010-10-11T18:31:00.000-05:00

Got that right, hoss."

Not Even Close To Apocalyptic Enough

2010-07-16T06:03:00.002-05:00

Conversion may come under many shapes, and it may be brought about in many ways. With some men it needs a cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water.

Photo source: NOAA

According to NOAA, there are approximately 5.7 million recreational fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico region and 25 million fishing trips took place in the region in 2008. Commercial fishermen in the Gulf harvested more than one billion pounds of fish and shellfish in 2008.

On July 12, NOAA expanded the closed fishing area in the Gulf of Mexico to include portions of the oil slick moving beyond the area’s current northwestern boundary, off the Louisiana federal-state waterline. This boundary was moved westward of Holly Beach, La., and is approximately 17 statute miles from the Louisiana-Texas border. The closed area represents 83,927 square miles, which is approximately 35 percent of Gulf of Mexico federal waters.

While many are anxiously waiting to learn if BP's latest efforts to cap its broken Deep Horizon well are successful, Sabin and others, at the Front Porch Republic, see cataclysm.

The Triumph of Decency

2010-06-07T15:38:00.001-05:00

Helen Thomas has "retired." Truth be told, she was effectively dishonorably discharged. Good riddance.

A HUGE BIT OF WISDOM . . .

2010-06-05T11:10:00.001-05:00

from Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club:

Click on image to enlarge

Video: Fr. Barron comments on "Agora"

2010-06-05T10:12:00.001-05:00

Fr Robert Barron comments on the new film, "Agora". Note well that Fr Barron portends that the wave of anti-Christian sentiments has, as evidenced in this film filled with misinformation, now moved into popular culture and may, in fact, bring on active persecution of Christians.

His normative? "Stand fast" and "set the record straight." ~ Althos

Ride the Bronc

2010-05-29T12:38:00.002-05:00

Click to enlarge

Connie Reeves taught me to ride a horse when I was 10 years old. Her motto was, "Always saddle your own horse."

The summer Connie taught me ride is also the summer I learned to fence, canoe, and shoot a bow & arrow. Two years later I earned my NRA Sharpshooter medal.

Sarah Palin, who seems to be an expert bronc rider, reminds me an awful lot of Connie Reeves.

Whip, crack - Morgan take it away!

Stewards of Reality Practice Gratitude

2010-05-27T09:35:00.002-05:00

It is an old saying, and one of fearful and fathomless import, that we are forming characters for eternity. Forming characters! Whose? our own or others? Both--and in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence. Who is sufficient for the thought? ~Elihu Burritt

Gratitude, properly conceived, implies action. To be sure, it is a disposition, but the disposition of gratitude creates a sense of responsibility toward one’s benefactor. If one receives a gift, for instance, gratitude would include taking care of that which has been given. If the receiver of a gift carelessly discards it, we would accuse him of ingratitude. To be a steward is to be a caretaker of that which has been entrusted to us. This may be a piece of property, an idea or a concept, or a way of life. Stewards hold something “in trust,” and to be a good steward is to faithfully fulfill that trust.

If gratitude, properly conceived, entails stewardship of that which has been entrusted, then ingratitude implies a failure to steward the gifts one has received. How is ingratitude manifested today? Let’s consider four objects of gratitude that have steadily eroded in our modern world, leaving four debts of gratitude unattended, four aspects of reality unstewarded.

Excerpt from an essay published in the newly released book, New Threats to Freedom.

Full essay continued here.

A government of disordered souls who only increase political disorder is actually a real evil

2010-05-24T09:38:00.006-05:00

“Unlovely as they are, the Greek rioters are the logical end point of the advanced social democratic state: not an oppressed underclass, but a pampered overclass, rioting in defence of its privileges and insisting on more subsidy, more benefits, more featherbedding, more government.” ~ Mark Steyn

Exhibit A

Backstory on la foto

So Who's Left to Fight for Freedom?

2010-05-20T08:19:00.005-05:00

Nations rise and fall. We are no exception. And the rise and fall usually have rather much to do with the internal moral condition of the souls of the citizens.

Melanie Phillips on a World Gone Mad

The British author on Princess Diana, Barack Obama, Israel, and pathological projection.

The Art of Living: It's not for the faint of heart

2010-05-19T08:54:00.003-05:00

The Anchoress has posted a wonderful essay, "The Wussification of the Workplace." It addresses The Reason why I retired early from teaching art in public school.

Click image to enlarge.

Reason #11 Why I'm Glad I Left Austin, Texas

2010-05-16T16:41:00.005-05:00

Meanwhile, the majority of Texas is still home to some men with brains and spine.

Judge Daniel Burken in Limestone County responds with wit and wisdom to a complaint from The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Great exit question: ". . . sneaking over the border and peeing on endangered flora should be on the level of an oil spill or something, doncha think?

Letter from Joe: There ain't no escape from collapse

2010-05-14T09:07:00.005-05:00

(Reuters) - The United States posted an $82.69 billion deficit in April, nearly four times the $20.91 billion shortfall registered in April 2009 and the largest on record for that month, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.

April 21, 2010

[...]

Thanks to technology and layers upon layers of mediation by TV, movies, the Internet, etc., gadgets and manufactured imagery, we all live many steps removed from reality. Collapse is symbolized to each of us in different ways. To some it would be the sustained malfunction and lack of access of the Internet, which is surely coming.

Incidentally, this will be capitalized upon by privatizing the net and selling access at a much higher price, just as with oil. Of course they will experience it as "the consumers" they have been reduced to. So they will see it as bad guys charging money for things that used to be free. Given that their consciousness is a product of technology and its false promise of solutions and endless plentitude, they can never understand that everything is a finite resource and that technology itself can reach such a point of complexity as to be unsustainable. Even your laptop and router is made of petroleum and both eat oil or coal.

Others might perceive collapse as banking failure, given their absolute belief that money is the blood of society -- a capitalist hallucination if ever there was one. My point is that many will not even understand that collapse is going on because capitalism will provide excuses and more fake solutions at ever higher prices -- mainly at the expense of the world's poor and defenseless of course -- until it can no longer extract from them through banking, military force, or other means. This slows down the inevitable and helps the western world maintain its disastrous belief systems. None of which answers your question, but I just had to say it.

There is really no "safe place" to run. For instance, the banking system may utterly fail; actually, it already has, yet no one is calling for an entirely new system. This shows you both the thoroughness of indoctrination of the American people, and the astuteness of the overlords who profit from the masses. Gasoline for cars can become nearly unavailable, and energy prices can become exorbitant, as they are becoming in the UK. And again, people will slowly learn to suck it up, and the system will roll on for a while longer. The more perceptive among them will dream, and are now dreaming, of escape.

Escape as they conceive it does not exist. The ongoing collapse manifests itself in the least developed world too, and even harsher terms: hunger, lack of water, warfare, government corruption, infrastructure collapse, crime. It's a planetary problem and no one escapes that. They just experience it in different ways.

The question is not so much where to do it as how to do it. The question is not "Where can I run to to escape?" It is "What sorts of problems can I best deal with?" To my mind, you cannot deal with them alone, despite the romantic imagery of being "off the grid" on some homestead growing your own food. Yes, there are people doing that successfully. But it has been my experience that they are people who've wanted to do that for a long time, and that they are the kind of people suited to deal with the problems that come with that life. I've done it and believe me, it's not for the average American, who is, quite frankly speaking, incompetent in the ways of the earth. It's a very long learning curve, even if you grew up on a farm. You don't just stick seeds in the ground and wait for your food. Every spot on the earth is unique and you have to come to understand the place you are, which takes time, error and dedication.

Not to be a smart ass or snide, but let me ask: How much do you love your fellow man? Or do you merely want to save your own ass? By now you must know the answer. From what I've seen, a person can be honest with himself on this matter, then pursue either route more effectively.

If you have the temperament and character to readily love other people around you, and the willingness to labor solely for sustenance, community and friendship, then there are countless options. Because that's what most of the rest of world's people do every day, if allowed to. So you could do that in any number of places on the planet, especially here in the New World south of the US. You can do it in literally thousands of places, some of which are in the US. I get emails from all over. But I don't give out contacts anymore because I learned the hard way in Belize that human chemistry is a complex thing. And most Americans do not come into approximately sustainable situations with either the social skills or the willingness to sacrifice for the group. Hell, some Americans starting up such communities don't have those qualities.

Yet, believe me, just being in a place where life is more fundamental and simple, if hard, goes a long way toward peace of mind and discovering human normalcy. It's the learning ground. And usually one learns that people who escape at least some of the ravages of our slow collapse, always seem to do it in cooperation with a community of some sort. Either an already existing one, or an intentional one they create between themselves.

There's nothing new in this, of course. Latin America and the world have countless communities hundreds of year old. Governments come and go, rivers dry up, but the people always have tortillas, one way or another. Americans and Europeans usually see these people as poor, thanks to our heavy social conditioning, industrialization and commoditized consciousness -- not to mention the denial of the effects of colonialism by Euro-American culture. We see no connection between our iPods, high speed wireless, and, say, the present condition of the Haitian or Dominican people.

Anyway, to me, this is the bottom line:

There is no escape in the sense Americans and European culture thinks of escape. Which is mainly running away to a place where you will get something for nothing in a new and different way -- in this case, security and safety from the storm -- and also keep some or most of the stuff and gadgetry and ease that has come to represent "quality of life."

Unless you are rich, this is impossible. And rich these days, including here in Mexico, means so fucking well heeled that even a 90% devaluation cannot hurt you. Oh, there are retirees still living down here on the last shreds of the glory days of the empire. They will tell you there is nothing wrong up there, because they are still getting their checks. But I'm not seeing many newcomers join their ranks. Not at that level. Beyond that, the empire never goes away. It always claims you as its "citizen," which is to say its property. And lately the empire has been extending its tentacles toward expats, in order to extract new money for its failed system.

The rest of us, the non-rich who would prefer to take a shot at some different life -- and just about anything will do in the dark of the night when it is gnawing at your guts -- must choose another way to cross the border (the "gringo wetbacks"). But always we run up against the same barrier, the same closed gateway to what we suspect is greater satisfaction and peace of mind, but increasingly cannot afford the price of admission, if we play the same old brainwashed money game.

I have come to think the price of admission anywhere in the world, (except in America and Europe, where enough dough will get your ass kissed in any circles) is service to others. We have been indoctrinated by an earth devouring capitalist system to believe otherwise. Believe that giving only depletes. And that mankind and civilization came about through kings and warriors and "great men." But the essential glue of man the social animal has always been on cooperation and sharing. That an endless stream of elite thieves have always managed to steal the fruits of that cooperation does not matter. And the best that is in man still rests on the same fundamentals -- cooperation for the greater good of all.

So I would suggest that in planning for the future, you first spend many days pondering the question: How can I best go about giving up the world as I have known it -- which, after all, is the root of our pain and of our catastrophe -- and serve others every day and in as many ways large and small as possible. In other words, sacrifice. In truth, the sacrifice will not be sacrifice, but liberation, because Americans are buried under so much material shit and petty notions as to entitlement, that shedding such things is a blessing. A gift.

From that vantage point you can "watch the collapse" while you help put up a pole barn in Oregon or make love in a Patagonian mountain shack after a hard day of well digging, or smoke a joint in utter relaxation after rescuing orphans from the streets of Guadalajara. And chances are that the collapse of the empire will not much cross your mind.

There is no escape, but there is freedom. And if our fellow Americans long ago forgot that, well, one can still get there alone.

But it's not for the faint of heart.

In art and labor,

Joe

Mad Hatter Tea Party

2010-05-09T09:50:00.009-05:00

"What is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?'

♨ ♨ ♨

Nobody was unkind

Nobody was unfriendly

Nobody was off their rocker -

Truly it was a very pleasant tea party.

Deep Down Things

2010-05-06T07:48:00.000-05:00

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went,

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and ah! bright wings.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), Poems

"Folks Don't Like Oily Shrimp"

2010-05-03T07:22:00.002-05:00

Click to enlarge

I have a very eery feeling about this.

Noonan Gets It! UPDATED

2010-04-30T17:28:00.002-05:00

"[Both] political parties, and the media, are full of people who think concern about illegal immigration is a mark of racism. If you were Freud you might say, "How odd that's where their minds so quickly go, how strange they're so eager to point an accusing finger. Could they be projecting onto others their own, heavily defended-against inner emotions?"

"The Big Alienation", Peggy Noonan, WSJ.com

UPDATE: Better than Noonan!

This week's syndicated column from Diana West. "Arizona's Fight for America".

In the Merry, Merry Month of May . . .

2010-04-30T11:04:00.003-05:00

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

and Through the Looking Glass, 1946, © Mervyn Peake, artist

Mervyn Peake was one of the most multi-talented artists of the twentieth century. Best known for his Gormenghast trilogy of novels, one of the most sustained flights of imaginative writing ever attempted, Peake was also an author of children's books and nonsense verse, a painter, war artist and poet. He illustrated such classic works as Treasure Island, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The Ancient Mariner, Grimm's Household Tales and Bleak House. A man of extraordinary vision and imagination, his illustrations, paintings and writings are unforgettable.

-o.o-

The Paradox of Courage

2010-04-30T09:19:00.005-05:00

Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.

"He that will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book.

This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage.

A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it.

A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape.

He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the [Oriental] courage, which is a disdain of life.

~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Our Woeful State

2010-04-26T07:30:00.002-05:00

"I’m sort of looking at this whole crisis as an opportunity for the church to renew itself, be washed clean" wrote The Anchoress, "It won’t be an overnight cleansing, but I think it will be thorough."

Fight the good fight! Pray! Love! And be Christ's men - and women - all.

Gloriosa Señora

2010-04-24T09:02:00.002-05:00

Religion is of the heart, not of the head; and as long as all our hearts are full of hatred for everything that our fathers loved, we can go on flatly contradicting each other for ever about what there is to be hated.

G. K. Chesterton

A heart full of love sings.

Proscenium Arch

2010-04-20T18:21:00.001-05:00

Click image to enlarge

-o.o-

Corneal Ulcer

2010-04-15T08:22:00.002-05:00

It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this I-know-better-than-you mentality again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your own part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.

Coming-out

2010-04-08T08:45:00.001-05:00

"I think young people have insight," Robert Frost once wrote, "They have a flash here and a flash there. It is like stars coming out in the sky in the early evening. They have flashes of light. They have that sort of thing which belong to youth. It is later in the dark of life that you see forms, constellations. And it is the constellations that are philosophy. It is like forcing a too early mathematics on a child, to bring him to philosophy too young. We have system and we have plan all too soon now. You know too well and have convictions too well by the time you are forty. The flashing is done, the coming out of the stars. It is all constellations."

Sixth of April

2010-04-06T08:07:00.001-05:00

Click image to enlarge

The Way Is Hidden By Its Obviousness

2009-04-03T12:55:00.008-05:00

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Acres of Raccoons,
and to the den for which it stands,
one masked nation,
impenetrable,
secure under Slack,
with truth, beauty and goodness for all.

MOO!

2008-03-26T20:47:00.016-05:00

the sound of the no bovine unringing cowbell

Amigos, The cows and I have come home long enough to write this message:

During the Lenten blogfast the GA blog quietly passed the one year anniversary mark, and now the time has come for me to officially announce its closing. Wuz up, you ask? Well, for one, this summer I'll be coming out of retirement to assume duties of part-time art teacher at a small Christian primary school just 8 blocks from the cottage. I feel like I'm being thrown into the briar patch. Truly, I'm very honored to have this marvelous opportunity to cultivate a few more little peeps' aesthetic sensibilities.

Thanks to all my visitors, especially all seven regulars, for making the Gobsmacked Again experience so educational and so much fun. You've been really wonderful!

P. S. Below is a peek at Springtime in Mayberry and the little church school where I'll be slackin'. Enjoy!

Snow fell on the cottage on March 6th

A week later the Bradford Pear trees burst into bloom

-o.o-

2008-02-06T13:00:00.000-06:00

This retrospective, revolving exhibit of 40 photographs will hang here until Easter.

[ Lent 'still' album link.]

May we live in an auspicious state resulting in favorable outcomes.

-o.o-

Shrove Tuesday

2008-02-05T18:32:00.000-06:00

Alas, we but chase feathers flying in the air, and tire our own spirits, for the froth and over-gilded clay of a dying life. One sight of what my Lord hath let me see within this short time, is worth a world of worlds.

Samuel Rutherford

-o.o-

CIVICS 101

2008-02-05T08:00:00.000-06:00

KATY, Texas
Nottingham Elementary School
Grade 4

James Lileks is our guest lecturer today. He's going to talk about the Liberal Democrat position and the Conservative Republican position.

It’s interesting that personal freedom and economic freedom are seen as competing values. You could argue that economic freedom makes personal freedom possible. Go ahead; I won’t stop you. It seems to set up a false dichotomy: if your economic life is completely controlled by the state but you can film yourself sawing wombats in a legal brothel with your six wives watching, you’re personally free. Even if 95% of your income has been taken out of your clumsy little hands and placed in general public trust.

Hands up.

Yes Aidan, what's your question?

Are the Democrats like the UK Labor Party? I heard my Nanny telling my Dad last night that the British government is giving money to a man with lots of wives. I don't want more than one Mommy and I already have a Nanny. Does that make me a Conservative?

Yes, Aidan it does.

Bell rings.

Class dismissed.

-o.o-

One More Time

2008-02-04T11:27:00.001-06:00

“America will not be conquered by the sword, but by da’wa.”
Muslim Brotherhood founder, Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, 1995

Unpacking Da'wa inside America one • more • time.

-o.o-

∞ Cloud Cuckoo Land ∞

2008-02-04T10:38:00.000-06:00

Where's that and who are its inhabitants? I'll let one of my favorite free women, Joan of Argghh explain.

If you don't get it, then read this.

If you still don't get it, then you inhabit Cloud Cuckoo Land and Dr. Phil can not help you.

-o.o-

Between Super Bowl and Super Tuesday

2008-02-04T09:44:00.001-06:00

Saturday, sunny and 75º: Broke in my new MBT walking shoes. After rocking, but mostly rolling around 2 blocks in the hood, underused muscles were talking to me, so I gave them a rest and drove to Target, cause it's less crowded than Wal Mart on Saturday afternoon. Rolling errands is better than running errands.

Saturday night: Watched Bruce Willis survive death dealing attacks from a mad, jilted, gov bureaucrat and his hirelings. Bruce rocks.

Sunday: As part of my plan to avoid sinking any further into fogey reclusiveness , I went to a live theater production with Sis, BnL and their new friend Ray. I sat next to Ray and felt no chemistry, but noticed we both laughed at the same poetic ironies in On Golden Pond.

Sunday night Sis emailed me a story about a Texas mayor 'gone bad'. Background story here. The Alice mayor resigned Friday night, but this story is far from over. A hearing is set to decide who gets custody of the dog at the center of this Shih Tzu storm.

If Sandra was Buena Gente, she'd give "Puddles" back to his rightful owners. Hey Bruce?

-o.o-

Remembering Each Other

2008-02-02T13:00:00.001-06:00

"Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long accustomed to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe . . . They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish . . . They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy." Lee Harris, Civilization and Its Enemies : The Next Stage of History, published 2004

Belgian journalist Paul Belien, one of Europe's most insightful commentators reminds us who The Enemy is:

In Europe a secularized post-Christian culture is facing a Muslim one. The secularized culture is hedonist and values only its present life, because it does not believe in an afterlife. This is why it will surrender when threatened with death because life is the only thing it has to lose. This is why it will accept submission without fighting for its freedom. Nobody fights for the flag of hedonism, not even the hedonists themselves.

So who's left to fight for freedom? A thought provoking recollection at American Thinker.

UPDATE: Don't miss this excellent comment by kindle at Ezra Levant's website about the Harris article I linked at The Weekly Standard.

-o.o-

Camouflaged

2008-02-01T19:45:00.004-06:00

You know sometimes
I can smell something cooking,

I can tell there's going to be a feast.

You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

He got a sweet gift of gab, he got a harmonious tongue,

He knows every song of love that ever has been sung.

Good intentions can be evil,

Both hands can be full of grease.

You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.

Bob Dylan

Mizz E's Mystic Vittle Refectory Meditation

2008-01-31T14:20:00.000-06:00

Since we can still get rice, let's put some country gravy made with milk on it, with a side of skillet pork chops, buttered baby lima beans and be eternally grateful for country, family, food and friends. Amen.

-o.o-

Every Suitcase Tells a Story

2008-01-29T20:35:00.000-06:00

Unpacking Catholic Cargo

No man desires anything so eagerly as God desires to bring men to the knowledge of Himself. God is always ready, but we are very unready. God is near us, but we are far from Him. God is within, and we are without. God is friendly; we are estranged.

- Meister Eckhart

Avery Cardinal Dulles

-o.o-

Best and Worst of the Best

2008-01-26T13:58:00.001-06:00

WARNING: This list will undermine my credibility as a film critic.

WORST ACTORS

5th place: Lee Marvin - Great Marine; bad actor. No breadth; no depth.

4th place: William Hurt - BORING BORING BORING

3rd place: Ernest Borgnine - Ever since his first film role as Fatzo in From Here to Eternity it's been down hill.

2nd place: Marlon Brando - Boorish, mumbling oaf.

1st place: Sean Penn - What a no nothing talent. If you saw his performance of Willie Stark in All the Kings Men, you know what I'm talking about. Broderick Crawford he's not. (Best Actor 1949: Broderick Crawford for All the King's Men)

BEST ACTORS

I've been in a snit, brought on by the constraint of having to choose from The List of previous Best Actor winners and the fact that my first choice is not on the list. It ain't right. What we have here is a huge culture failure.

Here's the Baker's Dozen and notes to myself I started with to help me work through my despair.

1934: Clark Gable - Nothing effete about Clark Gable, baby.

1937: Spencer Tracy - It's been said "actors have noted that Tracy's work in 1930s films sometimes looks like a modern actor interacting with the more stylized and dated performances of everyone around him." Amazing, that was my exact reaction last week while watching Captains Courageous, for the first time.

1940: James Stewart - After viewing It's a Wonderful Life, President Harry S. Truman concluded, “If Bess and I had a son, we'd want him to be just like Jimmy Stewart.“ Well, there you go.

1941: Gary Cooper - "...What we done in France we had to do. And some as done it, didn't come back. And that kind of thing ain't for buying and selling."
Sargeant York, American hero.

1951: Humphrey Bogart - "Well, I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble..." Maltese Falcon

1953: William Holden: Could make you believe in the infinite possibilities of love and getting out of a POW camp.

1960: Burt Lancaster - "Brave, vigorous, handsome, and an actor of great range, Lancaster never yielded in his immaculate splendor, proud to be a movie actor. He was one of the great stars. Perhaps the last." — David Thomson

1964: Rex Harrison - A civilized man.

Professor Henry Higgins: Mother!
Mrs. Higgins: What is it, Henry? What's happened?
Professor Henry Higgins: [quietly] She's gone.
Mrs. Higgins: Well, of course, dear, what did you expect?
Professor Henry Higgins: What... what am I to do?
Mrs. Higgins: Do without, I suppose.
[pause]
Professor Henry Higgins: And so I shall! If the Higgins oxygen burns up her little lungs, let her seek some stuffiness that suits her. She's an owl sickened by a few days of my sunshine. Let her go, I can do without her. I can do without anyone. I have my own soul! My own spark of divine fire!
[storms outs]

1969: John Wayne - Imagine American film without John Wayne. Impossible. Neither complains nor seeks to be pitied; he will speak simply and truly of his trouble, without exaggerating its weight or bemoaning himself. If others pity him, he will accept their compassion patiently, unless they pity him for some ill he is not enduring, in which case he will say so with meekness, and abide in patience and truthfulness, combating his grief and not complaining of it. [a de Sales quote]

1983: Robert Duvall - I'll feel like I'm betraying Gus if I don't pick him.

1986: Paul Newman - remember Chance Wayne? Hud? Luke? The right stuff.

1989: Daniel Day-Lewis - "Hawkeye" - huge liquidating the enemy, coming to a woman's aid and hubba-hubba factor.

2000: Russell Crowe - only actor who ever showed up in one of my dreams. Yes, I surrendered completely to Capt. Jack Aubrey.
###

How I made my final selection

I imagined a film, an epic for our time, and asked myself who could deliver these lines, make it relevant to the audience and inspire hope in humanity. The working title: "Tourbillon"; tagline - Banality of Evil

"No six-foot brownshirt, no police cell at midnight. Just Shirlene McGovern, an amiable enough bureaucrat, casually asking me about my political thoughts on behalf of the government. And she'll write up a report about it, and recommend that the government do this or that to me. Just going through checklists, you see ... a limp clerk who was just punching the clock. She had done it dozens of times before and will do it dozens of times again. In a way, that's more terrifying." **

Placed No. 5 - Russell Crowe

No. 4 - Burt Lancaster

No. 3 - Paul Newman

No. 2 - Spencer Tracy

No. 1 - Humphrey Bogart

-o.o-

Up Around the Bend

2008-01-24T16:06:00.000-06:00

I've lined up some projects that, thankfully, will take my focus off the run-up cacophony.

Sal and I are participating in this poll she found at The Sheila Variations. You might wanna play too, so check it out.

I'm also going to take a break from the GA blog for a while - I'm feeling a bit drained and uninventive. My next post, [sometime between now and February 1st] will be my list of the 5 Best/5 Worst.

Here's one thought I've had about the actors worthy of my forthcoming list:

A lot of sharp peeps think Marlon Brando is the No. 1 Best Actor of all time, but I can't agree. I don't go in for the brooding, alienating, intense, out of control or firmly in control kinds of men that he portrayed, however so well.

Anyway, while I'm away from the helm, I won't be away, away, just up around the bend.

-o.o-

A Snippety Age

2008-01-24T00:00:00.002-06:00

If people gathered to a political meeting, and the chief speaker spoke to them only for some quarter of an hour, they would be annoyed, would feel with some resentment that he had not taken them seriously, had dealt much too cavalierly with the question of the hour, an Ulster boundary, or such like. But the things of the soul are far more momentous, and to be asked to deal with huge, unfathomable facts like the Cross in a few minutes, means that people are not really interested in these things. This is, of course, a snippety age, with a snippety press, and snippety novels. But must we preachers follow and be snippety, too?  

A. J. Gossip, In Christ's Stead (1925)

Who's Your Favorite Heretic?

2008-01-23T00:00:00.002-06:00

Updated

MizzE says "(k) is so not O"

Fred Thompson dropped out of the race yesterday, so I'm looking for a new driver.

Dennis Prager makes The Case for Rudy Gulliani - good one too.

The Anchoress gives us a must-read pep talk, which goes something like this:

"He doesn't have to be spectacular, we just want him to drive the car" 
- OC Greg Davis on quarterback Major Applewhite's first career start

As for Obama, I'm with Neo: "Somebody get that idiot off the goalpost!" 
- Wally Pryor, Texas vs UH, 1990

-o.o-

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin shows us McCain is a copperhead in the bedclothes - avoid him with all the energy you can muster.

-o.o-

UPDATE: Speaking of copperheads, Ed Lasky, news editor of American Thinker, pulls back the covers on the Soros/Obama liaison.

-o.o-

UPDATE:

A Closer Look at Barak Obama's Ties to Kenya
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

[...]

Barack Obama has a good chance of securing his party's nomination for president and winning the general election. And this is disturbing because like [Ron]Paul, he enjoys the support of hateful bigots. And like Paul and Huckabee, he holds foreign policy positions which are based on the notion that the global jihad is not a serious threat.

Although the rumors that Obama - whose father and step-father were Muslims and who was educated in Muslim schools in Indonesia - is a Muslim are demonstrably false, his Christian affiliations are a cause for alarm in and of themselves.

Obama belongs to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Its minister and Obama's spiritual adviser is Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

In an investigative report on Obama published last week by the American Thinker Web site, Ed Lasky documented multiple examples of Wright's anti-Jewish and anti-white animus. Wright has called for divestment from Israel and refers to Israel as a "racist" state. Theologically, he believes that the true "Chosen People" are the blacks. Indeed, he is a black supremacist. He believes that black values are superior to middle class American values and that blacks should isolate themselves from the wider American society.

Wright is a long-time friend of the virulently anti-Semitic head of the Nation of Islam - fellow Chicagoan Louis Farrakhan. The two traveled together to Libya some years ago to pay homage to Muammar Gaddafi. Last year Wright presented Farrakhan with a "Lifetime Achievement" award.

Although last week Obama issued a statement condemning Farrakhan for his anti-Semitism, he did not disavow Wright - who married him and baptized his daughters. Obama has taken no steps to moderate his church's anti-Israel invective.

OBAMA'S affiliation with Wright aligns with his choice of financial backers and foreign policy advisors. To varying degrees, all of them exhibit hostility towards Israel and support for appeasing jihadists.

As Lasky notes, Obama has received generous support from billionaire George Soros. In recent years, Soros has devoted himself to replacing politicians who support fighting the forces of global terror and supporting Israel with politicians who support appeasing jihadists and dumping Israel.

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama opposed defining Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group. He calls for the US to withdraw from Iraq - only to return if genocide is being carried out and then, only as part of an international force. He also supports opening negotiations with Iran even if the Iranians continue to enrich uranium. In forming these views, he is assisted by his foreign policy team which includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, Mark Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, Susan Rice and Robert Malley.

All of these people are known either for their anti-Israel views or their pro-Arab views - or both. Malley, a Palestinian apologist invented and propagated the false claim that the 2000 Camp David summit between the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then prime minister Ehud Barak failed because Israel wasn't serious about giving the Palestinians a state. This view is disputed by Barak and Clinton.

For her part, as chief foreign policy advisor to Senator John Kerry during the 2004 presidential elections, Susan Rice reportedly convinced Kerry to announce that if elected he would appoint Jimmy Carter and James Baker to serve as his envoys for Middle East peace.

Mark Brzezinski has openly called for unconditional negotiations with Iran. For more than 30 years, Zbigniew Brzezinski has distinguished himself as one of Israel's greatest foes in Washington.

UNFORTUNATELY, in the anti-war frenzy now gripping much of the Democratic Party, one could say that there is nothing notable about the fact that Obama has hired anti-Israel foreign policy advisors, attends an anti-Israel church, and receives financial backing from anti-Israel billionaires. But even in this atmosphere Obama stands out - for not only does he theoretically support appeasement, he is actively advancing the interests of Islamists seeking to take control over a state allied with the US.

Kenya currently teeters at the edge of political chaos and civil war in the wake of the disputed Dec. 27 presidential elections. Those elections pitted incumbent President Mwai Kibaki against Raila Odinga who leads the Orange Democratic Movement. While the polls showed the public favoring Odinga, Kibaki was declared the winner. Odinga rejected the results and his supporters have gone on rampages throughout the country that have killed some 700 people so far. Fifty people were murdered when a pro-Odinga mob set ablaze a church in which they were hiding.

Kibaki is close ally of the US in the war against Islamic terror. In stark contrast, Odinga is an ally of Islamic extremists. On August 29 Odinga wrote a letter to Kenya's pro-jihadist National Muslim Leaders Forum. There he pledged that if elected he would establish Sharia courts throughout the country; enact Islamic dress codes for women; ban alcohol and pork; indoctrinate schoolchildren in the tenets of Islam; ban Christian missionary activities, and dismiss the police commissioner, "Who has allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists."

Although Odinga is an Anglican, he referred to Islam as the "one true religion" and scorned Christians as "worshipers of the cross." Obama strongly supports Odinga who claims to be his cousin. As Daniel Johnson reported recently in the New York Sun, during his 2006 visit to Kenya, Obama was so outspoken in his support for Odinga that the Kenyan government complained to the State Department that Obama was interfering with the internal politics of the country. After the Dec. 27 elections Obama interrupted a campaign appearance in New Hampshire to take a call from Odinga. ###

-o.o-

José Can You See?

2008-01-22T00:00:00.007-06:00

don't take a fence down

until you know the reason

why it was put up

Inspired 99% by G. K. Chesterton, 1905, Heretics

Doom and Gloom Monday

2008-01-21T08:50:00.000-06:00

or how many famines does it take to wake a sleeping giant and keep him alert at the helm?

Bobby Dylan says - Everything Is Broken.

Prof. Patrick Deneen says - Everything Must Go.

Mencius Moldbug proposes how to do it.

And until science can save us, this quote is going to come in handy:

The letter of the law must not in supreme emergency obstruct those who are charged with its protection and enforcement. It would not be right or rational that the aggressor Power should gain one set of advantages by tearing up all laws, and another set by sheltering behind the innate respect for law of its opponents. Humanity, rather than legality must be our guide.

Last paragraph of The Gathering Storm, Winston Churchill

And until we can get the miracle that was America back, my advice is learn to plant a seed, while wearing a burqa, in your own backyard.

The Light of the World is Dimming

©MizzE 2008

-o.o-

Forsooth, MizzE bringeth prizes and food to yower tables - Let's Eat!

2008-01-20T08:15:00.000-06:00

Yf ye wonder, faire folk, wher MizzE hath been synce yesterday, the answer is: in a verray purgatorie of busynesse.

My lord Kyng Walter is a man of muchel ymaginacioun and many needes.

To be contined . . .

Skullery Maid Passeth a Note

I'll Get Right On That

-o.o-

~ I dided it - Let's Eat! ~

But as Kynge Walter is fond of reciting:

Our Tale Requires Some Background Context

Inspired by Robinstarfish's haiku:

first there is a bull
and then there is no bovine
unringing cowbell

Kynge Walter, also known to be the station manager of Radio Walt'z KROK, quickly set up an impromptu joust:

"What is the sound of the no bovine unringing cowbell?"  
The one who answers kee-rectly wins a free meal at Mizz E's Mystic Vittle Refectory ... uh, at her convenience, of course!

Within a few brief hours came the winning response from my sifu, Robinstarfish,"Oom" and MizzE henceforth has been ever so busy putting together a divine Daube de Bovine, befitting this joyous occasion.

So without further wordiness from The Quiet Pot:

Daube de Bovine

with a variation, which actually makes it Daube de Bovine a la Provencale.

At the near end of a four hour cooking in the oven, a paste is made using the pictured ingredients below and added to the pot of vittles that include: beef doused in flour, blanched smoked bacon pieces, sliced carrots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, garlic, thyme, garlic, pepper, olive oil and red wine. Prior to cooking, those ingredients, sans flour, were marinated together overnight in the frig.

And to thank you for your patience Robinstarfish, I am serving dessert. It may appear to be a souffle, but it's not.

A Brown Bovine

made with Dulce de Leche ice cream.

¡Buen Provecho!
12:45 CST - Just in time for Lunch!

Celebrity Cooking

2008-01-18T18:42:00.000-06:00

The glass with blue ice cubes is my libation - V8 and Vodka.

I use plastic ice, because real ice melts and dilutes my spirits.

From the righteous domi of Mayberry, MizzE presents a delectable and comfortable meal in a casserole that even Aunt Bee would compliment.

14 oz. Creamy Portobello Mushroom Soup
(like Campbell's "Select ") is the Liaison
1/4 t. cracked pepper
1/4 c. Parmesan cheese
1 c. mixed vegetables
2 c. diced chicken
2 c. egg noodles or Farfalle "bowties", cook & drain

Combine ingredients and pour into a casserole.
Bake at 400º for 20 minutes or until hot.
During the last 3 minutes top off the casserole with
1/2 c. grated Cheddar cheese.

For this particular casserole, I used a mixture of vegetables I had on hand: green beans, carrots and Oregon kohlrabi.

If I could write as well as I can cook, I'd be famous.

-o.o-

Diana West Tosses Out a Ball: The New Blasphemy

2008-01-18T10:02:00.000-06:00

Western blindness
January 18, 2008
by Diana West

Mazir-i-sharif. Ring a bell? In 2001, a 32-year-old Marine captain and CIA officer named John Micheal Spann was killed there in a prison riot, thus becoming the first American combat death in Afghanistan. Not incidentally, Spann, before violence broke out, had interrogated an uncooperative John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban. This all took place before the United States military completely toppled Afghanistan's Taliban oppressors.

Nearly seven years later, American-liberated Mazir-i-sharif has again made headlines — well, one or two — as the site of the prison where a 23-year-old Afghan journalist has been detained for three months (and counting) on blasphemy charges. These charges derive, Reuters reports, from Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh "distributing an article which said Prophet Mohammed had ignored the rights of women." As President Bush might say... well, what might President Bush say: Let freedom reign?

Then there's Halabja.

Remember Halabja? The name is notorious for being the town where in 1988, 15 years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurdish civilians to death. This month, American-liberated Halabja made headlines as the site of the court that sentenced a Kurdish author in absentia to six months in prison for blasphemy: namely, for writing in a book that Mohammed had 19 wives, married a nine-year-old when he was 54, and took part in murder and rape. (These points, Robert Spencer notes at jihadwatch.com, "can be readily established from early texts written by pious Muslims.") The author, Mariwan Halabjaee, who has asylum in Norway, says there's also a fatwa calling for his death unless he asks forgiveness.

Think about it. Where Americans have died, not just to de-fang jihadist threats but to "democratize" Islamic populations, freedom of speech is against the law. And not the law according to "militants," or "extremists," but the law as enforced by democratically elected governments that we, as a nation, support with everything we've got. What would Mr. Bush say to that?

I doubt he'd know what to say. Neither, for that matter, would anyone in his cabinet, starting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Nor, I doubt, would the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen. Nor — to open things up — would the presidential candidates, the Fox News All-Stars or Simon Cowell. The fact is, to discuss blasphemy laws in Afghanistan and Iraq (Kurdistan, even) is to discuss Islam — specifically, its laws and doctrines. And we, as a politically correct people, don't know how to do that. Instead, we act as though they don't exist.

And not just blasphemy laws. Jihad doctrine; Shariah (Islamic law); designs for a global caliphate through jihad (terrorism) and the spread of Shariah (Islamization): We pretend they are not factors in the free world's experience with Islam. We certainly don't discuss their implications for the freeness of the world. Look at what passes for "debate" among our presidential candidates: Republicans argue over who supported "the surge" first; Democrats argue over who will withdraw troops first.

Such resolute blindness on Islam probably explains the institutional apathy — including (with few exceptions) conservative apathy — on the termination of Pentagon analyst Maj. Stephen Coughlin, which I wrote about last week. The military's primary expert on Islamic law, Mr. Coughlin was reportedly fired at the behest of a highly placed Pentagon aide named Hesham Islam whom Steven Emerson has since thumb-nailed as "an Islamist with a pro-Muslim Brotherhood bent." Thankfully, Rep. Sue Myrick of the bipartisan House Anti-Terrorism Caucus is considering action, but there is little public sense that this outrage of a story is happening to us as a nation.

But it's something that should deeply concern Americans, particularly as a nation with soldiers under arms. Mr. Coughlin's meticulously researched legal brief not only links Islamic law to Islamic terrorism, but also demonstrates the professional negligence involved in ignoring Islamic law when devising strategies against Islamic terrorism.

Of course, that right there may explain the silence, particularly among many conservatives. The kind of negligence Mr. Coughlin is talking about, deriving from a PC ignorance of Islamic law, is quite evident in the strategies and tactics of the so-called war on terror that conservatives have widely championed — up to and including "the surge" in Iraq, which, for example, presupposes that American-won security will trigger a set of cultural behaviors and aspirations in Iraqi society best described as non-Islamic.

In other words, we seem to have arrived at a strange junction where neither jihadist apologists nor surge enthusiasts want to hear the facts about Islamic law. You might say it's become the new blasphemy. ###

-o.o-

How Deep Is A Raccoon Den?

2008-01-18T00:00:00.000-06:00

The Prophesy Board

43.98% of the peeps who land here used these keywords to find my website:

sonata for a good man

BTW, GA is still hanging in there at numero uno, although I agree with AskMen.com:
Unless the intellectuals turn out to be crazy step dancers,

this movie probably won’t do much in this country.

That's one reason Rumi probably invented the whirling dervishes.

The remainder of the peeps are lookin' for stuff like:

- tiny baby kittens scruff
- lol cat pies
- goth cake tops

- image of a gobsmacked woman
- python salad days
- how can i buy polish pork

- mother goose gobsmacked productions
- where can i get lucky in vegas
- good orange lipstick

- do jewish orthodox women wear flip flops
- navy dittys
- fluttering sound when i start my hyundai sonata

AND

- How deep is a raccoon den?

-o.o-

AutoSaved at 3:41 PM

2008-01-17T00:00:00.000-06:00

©MizzE 2008

Click image to enlarge

You will search, babe,
At any cost.
But how long, babe,
Can you search for what's not lost?

Ev'rybody will help you,
Some people are very kind.
But if I can save you any time,
Come on, give it to me,
I'll keep it with mine.

Bob Dylan, 1965, I'll Keep It With Mine

-o.o-

We'll Be Alright

2008-01-16T00:00:00.000-06:00

We'll be alright as long as we don't get abducted.

We'll be alright as long as we stand on principle.

We'll be alright as long as God's standards don't change the Constitution.

We'll be alright as long as we labor to protect our natural rights.

 And though we well know that this assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act to be irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act shall be an infringement of natural right. ~Last paragraph of The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson January 16, 1786 which was the basis for the Religion Clauses in the Constitution's Bill of Rights.

We'll be alright if Fred Thompson becomes the next President.

-o.o-

Old Fossils, New Exhibition

2008-01-15T07:23:00.000-06:00

Photo swiped from The Irritable Elephant

Describing the central role she plays in the lives of all living creatures in the universe, Clinton said Sunday, on Meet the Press: “The Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say.”

-o.o-

Saturday Blues

2008-01-13T18:21:00.000-06:00

©MizzE 2008

Click image to enlarge

"Due to circumstances beyond our control,

we will not be serving coffee

after 2 PM on Saturday.

Sorry for any incontinence this may cause."

-o.o-

Not To Be Missed

2008-01-13T00:00:00.000-06:00

Four Items: Chesterton, Liberal Fascism, "Lionheart" update and an update on the hot button topic: The firing of the jihad intelligence officer at the Pentagon.

G. K. CHESTERTON: THE APOSTLE OF COMMON SENSE is a series now running on

EWTN
Eternal Word Television Network
Sundays  9 PM Eastern/8 PM Central

I watched the 30 minute program for the first time last Sunday and it's a charming introduction to this compelling giant.

C-Span2 "Book TV"

Author Jonah Goldberg will be discussing his book, which is now No. 9 on the bestsellers list at Amazon. The book is titled: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

Upcoming Schedule

Saturday, January 12, at 10:00 PM

Sunday, January 13, at 3:30 AM

Sunday, January 13, at 10:00 AM

Monday, January 14, at 1:00 AM

About the Program
Jonah Goldberg explores the political theories of fascism and contends that there are several colloaries between the politics of the left and fascist ideology. Jonah Goldberg presents his book at The Heritage Foundation in Washington DC.

About the Author
Jonah Goldberg is contributing editor for the National Review and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Goldberg's writing has appeared in several publications, including "The New Yorker," "Wall Street Journal" and "USA Today."

In case you're not exactly sure of what fascism is here's a good description, which I found at The Anchoress:

The fascist is whoever is trying to shut you up, shut you down, dis-employ you, silence you, cripple you or marginalize you for the crime of daring to fall out of step with the party and the conventional wisdom.

Where have we seen that sort of behavior recently?

Well, I linked to a Pentagon firing story when it broke last Saturday in an Update here. BTW, that's the post in which I highlighted the plight of English blogger "Lionheart" who has evidently either come out of the closet or has finally become unhinged. He's still an anti-jihadist, but he's aligned with the Euro White Trash Supremacists.

More on fascism. I'm deeply concerned about the recent dismissal of Mr. Stephen Coughlin, a contractor on the Joint Staff, J-2 (Intelligence) for the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. This firing is huge. I highly recommend you read it all.

-o.o-

Morning Morse Code

2008-01-12T07:53:00.000-06:00

Click image to enlarge

©MizzE 2008

Make me Silent, that I may eloquently converse with Thee.

I wandered through forests of incessant searchings, and arrived at the mystery door of Thy presence. On the doors of silence I knocked loudly with my persistent blows of faith, and the doors of space opened. There, on the altar of glorious visions, I beheld Thee, resting.

I stood, with restless eyes, waiting for Thee to speak. I heard not Thy creation-making voice.

At last the spell of stillness stole upon me, and in whispers taught me the language of angels.

With the lisping voice of new-born freedom, I tried to speak, and the lights of Thy temple assumed sudden brilliancy and wrote letters of light.

In my little chamber of quietness, I am always resting:

I never speak but with the voice of my silence.

Through my silence, eloquently converse with me.

~ Paramhansa Yogananda, Whispers from Eternity

...-.-/88

-o.o-

Winter Night Music

2008-01-10T19:26:00.001-06:00

For a time when there's no more work to be done, no more "doing."

It feels like hand-hewn music -- you feel the hand in it, the tools that made their mark, the beauty of something so carefully made, a lifetime of craft and honing attention, and then the beauty of the organic thing that's made. You feel it all. The kind of thoughts that human beings have made for tens of thousands of years (if not more), and the simple beauty of it -- the profound, sacred sense of how we are connected. Thoughtful readers of Job know this. And always there has been music -- accompanying our thoughts, our aspirations, our despair, providing outlet and inlet.

from a comment at Amazon

Silence, Night & Dreams by Zbigniew Preisner

The Agent of Change

2008-01-09T10:57:00.000-06:00

Yesterday the Workman and the Dame dropped by during an afternoon nap. They urgently instructed us to move out of the house ASAP. We were not told where we were going and before we left home we were instructed to leave all of the windows in the house OPEN. I seemed a bit concerned that looters would find the house easy pickins, but apparently we weren't coming back; nevertheless, we calmly boarded a ferryboat and headed out to sea, uncertain of our destination.

Shortly after embarking, we were standing on deck and a ferryman approached us. He told us we would make a short stop in Wichita (which is inland?), but we would not have to go through customs. Then the ferry, which seemed to be heading dangerously close toward some massive pilings, abruptly turned to the left, and I was tilted and thrown backwards and headed straight for the water. But the laws of trajectory and gravity were suspended. I lightly brushed up against an invisible powerful pillow of air at ferry's edge and was again steady as she goes. I awoke feeling very loved and safe. Could my little ferryboat, be our Ship of State? [That's probably a projection] I do know a mere mortal is not the supreme Master and Commander.

During my nap, a friend was writing to me and I found these words after waking up:

He's the only Agent of Change we need to concern ourselves with. The rest is noise, mostly hissing and spitting sounds. I tend to forget sometimes that virtually all of the important course changes in human history were not man-made.

I do have some cool friends and dreams, but none nearly approaching those of Joan of Arc, who on this day, the 9th of January, in 1431 went on trial.

-o.o-

Presenting:
Off-Loading Karma and Wiggin' Out from Mind Parasites, The Movie

This Thing is Anyone’s to Win

2008-01-09T09:38:00.000-06:00

Well, not quite anyone.

As Vanderleun says:

"At least two people need to take the next bus home. John Edwards, just on general principles, and Ron Paul who has been exposed for what reasonable people of all political persuasions sensed he was all along -- a bigoted, twisted whacko."

And like the WSJ says: McCain is going to need more than character to win the nomination, and especially to prevail in November. He is going to need a domestic reform agenda. One suggestion: He could help himself now among economic conservatives if he said that while he may have opposed the Bush tax cuts out of concern for overspending, he now believes they have been a resounding success, and that he wants to extend them with a major tax reform.

Captain Renault: We musn't underestimate American blundering.

I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918.

-o.o-

The Big Picture

2008-01-08T06:48:00.000-06:00

Click image to enlarge

©MizzE 2008

ruminate on this

periodic floods break drought

law of averages

-o.o-

You fear socialism? We're already there

2008-01-07T04:14:00.000-06:00

"In my lifetime, Republicans have run on platforms of reducing government and being more faithful to the original intent of the Constitution. Why should we believe them any more?

In this election year, the Republican candidates barely even pay lip service to such notions. Now each one has a government program for every problem, just like the Democrats. Huckabee is ready to remove "conservative" from "compassionate conservative". Romney introduced universal health care in Massachusetts. McCain believes in global warming and gave us Campaign Finance Reform. Thompson agreed with McCain on CFR and went to bat for the plaintiff's bar when tort reform came up. Ron Paul thinks jihadis will just go away if we ignore them. Giuliani's highest elected office was mayor.

The Republican field is like a Frankenstein monster in reverse. We took the perfect Republican, Ronald Reagan, and split his good parts among five or ten hideous cadavers."

©MizzE 2008

Click image to enlarge

What would be so bad about a President Obama?

-o.o-

Feast of the Epiphany

2008-01-06T11:07:00.000-06:00

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” Mt 2:1-12

Magi III

Della Conroy

Who were these gift-bearing kings, these Wise Men of the East and what do the Magi and their work tell us today?

G. K. Chesterton tells us:

...they came out of orient lands, crowned with the majesty of kings and clothed with something of the mystery of magicians. That truth that is tradition has wisely remembered them almost as unknown quantities, as mysterious as their mysterious and melodious names: Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar. But there came with them all that world of wisdom that had watched the stars in Chaldea and the sun in Persia; and we shall not be wrong if we see in them the same curiosity that moves all the sages. They would stand for the same human ideal if their names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were those who sought not tales but the truth of things; and since their thirst for truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had their reward. [cf. Jn 7:37] But even in order to understand that reward, we must understand that for philosophy as much as mythology, that reward was the completion of the incomplete. Such learned men would doubtless have come, as these learned men did come, to find themselves confirmed in much that was true in their own traditions and right in their own reasoning. Confucius would have found a new foundation for the family in the very reversal of the Holy Family; Buddha would have looked upon a new renunciation, of stars rather than jewels and divinity than royalty. These learned men would still have the right to say, or rather a new right to say, that there was truth in their old teaching. But, after all, these learned men would have come to learn. They would have come to complete their conceptions with something they had not yet conceived; even to balance their imperfect universe with something they might once have contradicted. Buddha would have come from his impersonal paradise to worship a person. Confucius would have come from his temples of ancestor-worship to worship a child. ... Here it is the important point that the Magi, who stand for mysticism and philosophy, are truly conceived as seeking something new and even as finding something unexpected. That tense sense of crisis which still tingles in the Christmas story, and even in every Christmas celebration, accentuates the idea of a search and a discovery. The discovery is, in this case, truly a scientific discovery. For the other mystical figures in the miracle play, for the angel and the mother, the shepherds and the soldiers of Herod, there may be aspects both simpler and more supernatural, more elemental or more emotional. But the Wise Men must be seeking wisdom; and for them there must be a light also in the intellect. And this is the light: that the Catholic creed is catholic and that nothing else is catholic. [note: The Greek word “catholic” means “universal”].

The philosophy of the Church is universal. The philosophy of the philosophers was not universal. Had Plato and Pythagoras and Aristotle stood for an instant in the light that came out of that little cave, they would have known that their own light was not universal. It is far from certain, indeed, that they did not know it already. Philosophy also, like mythology, had very much the air of a search. It is the realisation of this truth that gives its traditional majesty and mystery to the figures of the Three Kings; the discovery that religion is broader than philosophy and that this is the broadest of religions, contained within this narrow space. The Magicians were gazing at the strange pentacle with the human triangle reversed; and they have never come to the end of their calculations about it. For it is the paradox of that group in the cave, that while our emotions about it are of childish simplicity, our thoughts about it can branch with a never-ending complexity. And we can never reach the end even of our own ideas about the child who was a father and the mother who was a child.

Excerpt from "The God In The Cave", The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton

-o.o-

Some Peeps You Just Can't Reach

2008-01-05T12:03:00.000-06:00

or to put it more precisely, "you got to turn up the heat under the arses of decent peaceable people to get them in the mood." comment from eatyourbeans

First They Came for the English Bloggers

I have said a number of times that what I do here would be illegal in some countries in Europe, and that a European citizen doing what I do can be arrested there.

Britain is such a country. Its recent laws concerning the incitement of racial and religious hatred have made illegal much of what is published in the Counterjihad blogosphere.

And now the first British blogger is about to face the Multicultural perp-walk.

Lionheart is a well-known patriotic blogger in England, and is on our blogroll. He is currently outside the UK, and has been informed that he will be arrested for [suspicion of] stirring up racial hatred as soon as he returns home. Baron Bodissey, Gates of Vienna

Read it all, including the comments; particularly the one by Zenster.

Europe and the world, is under direct threat of being islamized, on one hand because of constant muslim pressure, and on the other hand by our own government's dhimmitude.

When no one will answer freedom’s call we will hear instead the call to prayer five times a day. It's that simple.

-o.o-

UPDATE:

" . . . I can go on but let me be frank.

This failure of intellectual preparation is a leadership failure, and it is as the 9-11 Commission warned, a failure of vision."

~ LTC Joseph C. Myers, Army Advisor to the Air Command and Staff College, speaking out about the firing of Stephen Coughlin on the Joint Staff. Read it all.

-o.o-

Raptures Will Rupture

2008-01-04T10:01:00.000-06:00

Out With the Old, In With the New

Obama and Huckabee Rise; Mrs. Clinton Falls

Peggy Noonan takes us on a ride through the wild side of last night's political process.

Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, d-o.o-, doo, doo
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo

How Well Would Each Potential Prez PROTECT Workers, Communities and Taxpayers FROM OVER-IMMIGRATION?

2008-01-03T15:25:00.000-06:00

Americans for Better Immigration rates Presidential Candidates on Immigration Issues

(SEE BELOW FOR HOW POINTS WERE ASSIGNED ON 36-POINT SCALE.)  

EXCELLENT 

34 points:
DUNCAN HUNTER  GOOD 

28 points:
FRED THOMPSON

22 points:
MITT ROMNEY  

Fair 

20 points:
RON PAUL
 
18 points:
MIKE HUCKABEE  

Poor 

8 points:
RUDY GIULIANI  

Bad 

7 points:
CHRIS DODD
JOHN McCAIN

 5 points! :
JOE BIDEN
JOHN EDWARDS
DENNIS KUCINICH
BILL RICHARDSON

4 points:
HILLARY CLINTON
BARACK OBAMA

HOW POINTS WERE ASSESSED:   Points are based on candidate promises as of Jan 02/08 on  (a) amnesty,  (b) stoppping future illegal immigration and (c) reducing importation of foreign labor competition, plus  (d) rating of past immigration actions in political office.  

View the full ratings in 16 categories at Presidential Candidate Ratings website.  

-o.o-

Texas Cabbie from Egypt Murders Daughters

2008-01-03T07:49:00.000-06:00

From get-the-facts anti-jihad warrior Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch.org.,
the go-to news source.

Honor Killing in Dallas?

More evidence that the Dallas murders were honor killings

Mainstream media largely silent about possible honor killings in Dallas

8:00 PM Update from Jihad Watch linked in comments.

-o.o-

The Tip of the Green Iceberg

2008-01-02T09:57:00.000-06:00

U.S. Congress Excitin' My Atoms

The thoughts of worldly men are for ever regulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth. The bright glory of day, and the silent wonders of a starlit night, appeal to their minds in vain. There are no signs in the sun, or in the moon, or in the stars, for their reading. They are like some wise men, who, learning to know each planet by its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance, Universal Love, and Mercy, although they shine by night and day so brightly that the blind may see them; and who, looking upward at the spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflection of their own great wisdom and book- learning.

It is curious to imagine these people of the world, busy in thought, turning their eyes towards the countless spheres that shine above us, and making them reflect the only images their minds contain. The man who lives but in the breath of princes, has nothing in his sight but stars for courtiers' breasts. The envious man beholds his neighbours' honours even in the sky; to the money-hoarder, and the mass of worldly folk, the whole great universe above glitters with sterling coin--fresh from the mint--stamped with the sovereign's head--coming always between them and heaven, turn where they may.

Charles Dickens, BARNABY RUDGE & HARD TIMES

Birth Announcement

2008-01-01T00:00:00.000-06:00

-o.o-

What An Excellent Idea*

2007-12-31T00:06:00.002-06:00

Pazuzu: What an excellent day for an exorcism.

Father Damien Karras: You would like that?

Pazuzu: Intensely.

Father Damien Karras: But wouldn't that drive you out of Regan?

Pazuzu: It would bring us together.

Father Damien Karras: You and Regan?

Pazuzu: You and us.

-o.o-

[F]ree will is not an either/or proposition, but a lengthy process of acquisition or realization that goes hand in hand and head in heart with what we call spiritual growth. It's like when liberals say "everyone's a racist." If they could just say "I and my fellow liberals are all racists," we'd agree with them wholeheadedly. Likewise, when someone says "free will doesn't exist," I want to say "in your case, I couldn't agree more."

Now, the question is, what is the main thing that interferes with freedom, and how do we eliminate the former and illuminate the ladder? I know what I think, but does anyone else in the world agree with me? I think I've found one. According to Bolton, the process of realizing freedom consists "in a progressive elimination, or at least subordination, of the alien causes which commonly manipulate the will, and a corresponding ascendency of what is owing to the will alone" (italics mytalics).

"Alien causes which commonly manipulate the will. That sounds an awful lot like MIND PARASITES, those foreign agents and sinister minsters of propa' and impropaganda that we have internalized and mistake for ourSelves. You know, all of those agenda-driven hostile forces that hijack the machinery of the host or hostess -- that would be you -- and use it to crank out their own dysfunctional and anti-evolutionary thoughts, emotions and actions. You could say that the personification of the sum total of these parasites is what folks call Satan, and you wouldn't be wide of the mark."

Robert "Gagdad Bob" Godwin, Trippin' and Clueless

*Take that Pazuzu!

tw: The Anchoress

†††

In this Twittering World

2007-12-30T08:18:00.000-06:00

Who has not marveled at the might of kings
When voyaging down the river of dead years?
What deeds of death to still an hour of fears,
What waste of wealth to gild a moth's frail wings!
A Caesar to the breeze his banner flings,
An Alexander with his bloody spears,
A Herod heedless of his people's tears!
And Rome in ruin while Nero laughs and sings:
Ye actors of a drama, cruel and cold,
Your names are by-words in Love's temple now,
Your pomp and glory but a winding-sheet;
Then Christ came scorning regal power and gold
To wear warm blood-drops on a willing brow,
And we, in love, forever kiss His feet.

~ John Richard Moreland (1880-1947)

-o.o-

By Popular Demand: Pedestrianism

2007-12-29T17:46:00.000-06:00

"Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility."
- Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

MizzE en Mexico

You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven today and we don't know where the hell she is. - Ellen Degeneres

-o.o-

Teotitlan Walkers

©MizzE 2007

Click image to enlarge

When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with  the essential relations between one's physical powers and  the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do. Then every man one meets is an individual.  

- Aleister Crowley

-o.o-

Going out, I have found, is really going in.

Hey Dojo, Gecko, Ben and Walt?

-o.o-

Wuz zup?

2007-12-28T18:31:00.001-06:00

I'm in the 41.57% group of Slackers
WTH are 25.03% up to?

-o.o-

Haute Monde

2007-12-27T07:00:00.000-06:00

©MizzE 2007
Click image to enlarge

realm of ecstasy
embraces spy seated in
kingdom of reason
-o.o-

Christmas Remembered

2007-12-26T17:40:00.001-06:00

Mother and child
enchanted by the telling of Christ's birth

Dad beams with love for his son . . .

Scooter Boy

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh my what a wonderful day!
Plenty of sunshine heading my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay

Mister Bluebird on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's actch'll
Ev'rything is satisfactch'll
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Wonderful feeling,

wonderful day!
-o.o-

Best Gift Ever - John 4:10

2007-12-25T00:00:00.000-06:00

"Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord."
Luke 2:8-11(NIV)

Welcome! all Wonders in one sight!

Eternity shut in a span.

Summer in winter, day in night,

Heaven in earth, and God in man.

Great little one! whose all-embracing birth

Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav'n to earth!

Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)

thus ends Advent-ure
time to get drunk on his love
enjoy the partay

-o.o-

Christmas Eve

2007-12-24T00:00:00.000-06:00

Kings College Choir - "Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols"

Since 1919, the King's College Chapel at Camdridge has begun their Christmas Eve service, Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, with "Once in Royal David's City" as the processional. The first verse is sung by a member of the Choir of King's Chapel as a solo. The second verse is sung by the choir, and in the third verse the congregation joins. Excluding the first verse, the hymn is accompanied by the organ. It is estimated that there are millions of listeners worldwide who tune in to this service.

Once In Royal David's City was published in 1848 in Miss Cecil Humphreys' hymnbook Hymns for Little Children. A year later, H.J. Gauntlett discovered the poem and set it to music. This is my favorite Christmas hymn and I find this rendition especially moving. If you're not familiar with the lyrics, they are here.

-o.o-

Las Posadas

2007-12-23T00:00:00.001-06:00

Day 22 of Advent

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. Luke 2:1-5 (NIV)

Images from Las Posadas in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

©MizzE 2007

Las Posadas represents the difficulties that Joseph and Mary, the mother of Jesus, faced in finding a room when traveling to Bethlehem. In it, groups of children and adults go from house to house singing a traditional song requesting lodging (posada). In each house, the owner responds with refusal (also in song), until they reach the designated site for the party, where the owner recognizes Mary and Joseph and allows them to come in. Central and Latin American countries have continued to celebrate this holiday to this day, with very few changes to the tradition.

Typically, each family in a neighborhood will schedule a night for the Posada to be held at their home, starting on the 16th of December and finishing on the 24th.

Every home will have a Nativity scene, and the hosts of the Posada act as the innkeepers. The neighborhood children and adults are the pilgrims (Peregrinos), who have to request lodging by singing a traditional song about the pilgrims. All the pilgrims carry small lit candles in their hands, and four people carry small statues of Joseph leading a donkey, on which Mary is riding. The head of the procession will have a candle inside a paper lamp shade, or "farolito".

The pilgrims will symbolically ask for lodging at three different houses, but only the third one will allow them in. That will be the house where the Posada will be held for that evening. Once the "innkeepers" let them in, the group of guests come into the home and kneel around the Nativity scene to pray (typically, the Rosary). This is followed by the singing of traditional Christmas songs and a party for the children, including a piñata.

En nombre del cielo (In the name of heaven)
Os pido posada (I request you grant us shelter)
Pues no puede andar (Given that she cannot walk)
Mi esposa amada (She my beloved wife)
No seas inhumano (Please do not be inhumane)
Tennos caridad (grant us charity)
Que el Rey de los cielos (Since the God of heavens)
Te lo premiará (Will prize you for that)
Venimos rendidos (We come very tired)
Desde Nazaret (From Nazareth)
Yo soy carpintero (I am a carpenter)
De nombre José (Named Joseph)
Posada te pido (I ask you shelter)
Amado casero (Dear innkeeper)
Por sólo una noche (for just one night)
La reina del cielo (the queen of heaven)
Mi esposa es María (My wife is Mary)
Es reina del cielo (She's the Heavenly Queen)
Y madre va a ser (And she'll be mother)

-o.o-

Good News

2007-12-22T07:53:00.000-06:00

Day 21 0f Advent

Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.

Revelation 1:7 (NIV)

©MizzE 2007

Click image to enlarge

I was confirmed in my conviction that when all the best scholarship is taken into account we can know Christ as He was in the days of His flesh. Although I became familiar with the contemporary and recent studies of honest, competent scholars who questioned them, I was convinced that the historical evidence confirms the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Christ. Increasingly, I believed that the nearest verbal approach that we human beings can come to the great mystery is to affirm that Christ is both fully man and fully God. Although now we see Him not, yet believing, we can "rejoice with joy unspeakable" in what the Triune God has done and is doing through Him. This Good News, so rich that it is stated in a variety of ways, but always consistently, in the New Testament, is what we always imperfect children, but children [yet], are privileged--and commanded--to make known and to demonstrate to all mankind.

Kenneth Scott Latourette (1884-1968), Beyond the Ranges

Lord, You are our hope.

†††

Give a Christmas gift to those in need

2007-12-21T16:24:00.000-06:00

Christmas is right upon us. If you want to give a Christmas gift to those in need, let me recommend this ministry: Gospel For Asia. On their web page you will find some very special Christmas gifts—ways you can bless a Dalit or low-caste family with a tangible expression of Jesus' love this Christmas season.

The primary aim of Gospel for Asia is to plant churches among the unreached, those who have never heard the Gospel. Gospel for Asia trains and sends native missionaries because they have proven extremely effective. They are already familiar with the language and culture, and they live at the level of the people they serve, thus removing many social barriers. Gospel for Asia uses 100 percent of contributions for work on the mission field. Nothing is taken out for administrative expenses.

-o.o-

You've Got Mail!

2007-12-21T09:30:00.000-06:00

Day 20 of Advent-ure

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14 [NIV]

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oh expectant heart

waiting for Immanuel

-o.o-

We live [..] in the blessed "fulness of time"; we are not deprived, like the Patriarchs, of seeing the reign of the Messias. If we are not of those who looked upon Christ in person and heard His words, those who beheld Him going about doing good everywhere, we have the signal happiness of belonging to those nations of which David sang that they should be Christ's inheritance.

And yet the Holy Spirit, Who governs the Church and is the first author of our sanctification, wills that each year the Church should consecrate four weeks in recalling to memory the long duration of the divine preparations, and that she should strive to place our souls in the interior dispositions in which the faithful Jews lived whilst awaiting the coming of the Messias.

You will perhaps immediately say: This preparation for Christ's coming, these longings, these expectations, all that was excellent for those living under the Old Covenant; but now that Christ has come, why this attitude which does not seem to be in accordance with the truth?

The reason for it is manifold.

To begin with, God wills to be praised and blessed in all His works.

All, indeed, are marked with His infinite wisdom: "Omnia in sapientia fecisti" (Ps 53:24); all are admirable both in their preparation and their realisation. This is above all true of those which have the glory of His Son for their direct end, for it is the will of the Father that this Son should be for ever exalted (Cf. Jn 12:25). God wills that we should admire His works, that we should return thanks to Him for having thus prepared, with so much wisdom and power, the kingdom of His Son amongst us: we enter into the divine thoughts when we recollect the prophecies and promises of the Old Covenant.

God wills also that in these preparations we should find confirmation of our faith.

If God gave so many different and precise signs, such numerous and clear prophecies, it was in order that we might recognise as His Son the One Who has fulfilled them in His person.

See how in the Gospel Our Lord Himself invited His disciples to this contemplation. "Scrutamini Scripturas", "Search the Scriptures" (Jn 5:39), He said to them--"the Scriptures," which then consisted of the books of the Old Testament:--search them, you will find them full of My name; for "all things must need be fulfilled which are written... in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me": "Necesse est impleri omnia quae scripta sunt in prophetic et psalmis de me" (Lk 24:44). Again we hear Him on the day after His Resurrection explaining to the disciples of Emmaus, so as to strengthen their faith, and dissipate their sadness, all that concerned Him throughout the Scriptures, "beginning at Moses and all the prophets": "Et incipiens a Moyse et omnibus prophetic, interpretabatur illis in omnibus scripturis quae de ipso erant" (Ibid. 27).

When, therefore, we read the prophecies that the Church proposes to us during Advent, let us in the fulness of our faith, say like the first disciples of Jesus: "We have found Him of Whom... the prophets did write" (Jn 1:45). Let us repeat to Christ Jesus Himself: Thou art truly the One Who is to come; we believe it, and we adore Thee Who to save the world didst deign to become incarnate and to be born of a Virgin: "Tu ad liberandum suscepturus hominem non horruisti virginis uterum" (Hymn Te Deum).

This profession of faith is extremely pleasing to God. Never let us weary of reiterating it. Our Lord will be able to say to us as to His Apostles: "The Father Himself loveth you, because you... have believed that I came forth from God" (Jn 16:28).

Finally, there is a third reason, one deeper and more intimate. Christ did not come only for the inhabitants of Judea, His contemporaries, but for us all, for all men of every nation and century. Do we not sing in the Credo: "Propter NOS et propter NOSTRAM salutem descendit de caelis?" The "fulness of time" is not yet ended; it will endure as long as there shall be souls to save.

But it is to the Church that Christ, since His Ascension, has left the mission of bringing Him forth in souls. "My little children," said St. Paul, the Apostle of Christ Jesus among nations," of whom I am in labour again, until Christ be formed in you" (Gal 4:19). The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, Who is the Spirit of Jesus, labours at this work by making us contemplate every year the mystery of her Divine Bridegroom. For, as I said at the beginning of these conferences, all Christ's mysteries are living mysteries; they are not merely historical realities of which we recall the remembrance, but the celebration of each mystery brings a proper grace, a special virtue intended to make us share in the life and states of Christ Whose members we are.

Now, at Christmas, the Church celebrates the Birthday of her Divine Bridegroom: "tamquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo" (Ps 18:6); and she wills to prepare us, by the weeks of Advent, for the grace of the coming of Christ within us. It is an altogether inward, mysterious advent which is wrought in faith, but brings forth much fruit.

Christ is already within us by the sanctifying grace which makes us children of God. That is true, but the Church wills that this grace should be renewed, that we should live a new life more exempt from sin and imperfection, more free from all attachment to ourselves and creatures: "Ut nos Unigeniti tui nova per carnem nativitas liberet quos sub peccati jugo vetusta servitus" tenet (Collect for the Feast of Christmas.)

She wills above all to make us understand that Christ, in exchange for the humanity which He takes from us, will make us partakers of His Divinity, and will take a more complete, more entire, more perfect possession of us. This will be like the grace of a new divine birth in us: "Ut tua gratia largiente, per haec sacrosancta commercia, in illius inveniamur forma, in quo tecum est nostra substantia" (Secret for the Midnight Mass).

It is this grace of a new birth that the Incarnate Word merited for us by His Birth at Bethlehem.

However, we should remember that if Christ was born, and lived and died for us all: Pro omnibus mortuus est Christus (2 Cor 5:15), the application of His merits and the distribution of His graces are made according to the measure of the dispositions of each soul.

Consequently we shall only share in the abundant graces that Christ's Nativity should bring to us in proportion to our dispositions. The Church knows this perfectly, and therefore she neglects nothing that can produce in our souls that inward attitude required by the coming of Christ within us. Not only does the Church say by the mouth of the Precursor: "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," for "He is near," "prope est Dominus" (Invitatory of Matins for the 3rd Sunday in Advent); but she herself, like a Bride attentive to the wishes of her Bridegroom, like a mother careful for her children's good, suggests to us and gives us the means of making this necessary preparation. She carries us back as it were under the Old Covenant so that we may appropriate to ourselves, although in an altogether supernatural sense, the thoughts and feelings of the faithful who longed for the coming of the Messias.

If we allow ourselves to be guided by her, our dispositions will be perfect, and the solemnity of the Birth of Jesus will produce within us all its fruits of grace, of light and life.

What are these dispositions?

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From Christ in His Mysteries, Abbot Marmion, O.S.B.

†††

"This is to Mother You"

2007-12-20T12:45:00.000-06:00

Day 19 of Advent

Cynthia Clawson is an American gospel singer. She has been called "The most awesome voice in gospel music" by Billboard Magazine, and has received five Dove Awards, 15 Dove Award nominations, and a Grammy for her work.

This is my first video - do not expect to be visually delighted - It's about the music. Cynthia sings this song like no one else can - I think Emmylou Harris said that. So close your eyes and let it mother you.

"This is to Mother You"
lyrics by Sinead O'Connor
Christmas at the Carillon 1999 - Live
The Conspirare Choir, Austin, Texas
Arranged and conducted by Craig Hella Johnson
with soloist Cynthia Clawson

-o.o-

Past the Boundaries of Knowing

2007-12-19T00:00:00.002-06:00

Day 18 of Advent-ure

A must-read Poem by Spanish mystic and poet,
St. John of the Cross (1541-1591),
translated by Rhina P. Espaillot

I went in, I knew not where
and stayed, not knowing, but going
past the boundaries of knowing.

I knew not the place around me,
how I came there or where from,
but seeing where then I found me,
I sensed great things, and grew dumb-
since no words for them would come-
lacking all knowledge, but going
past the boundaries of knowing.

Of piety and of peace
I had perfect comprehension;
solitude without surcease
showed the straight way, whose intention-
too secret for me to mention-
left me stammering, but going
past the boundaries of knowing.

So wholly rapt, so astonished
was I, from myself divided,
that my very senses vanished
and left me there unprovided
with knowledge, my spirit guided
by learning unlearned, and going
past the boundaries of knowing.

He who reaches that place truly
wills himself from self to perish;
all he lately knew, seen newly,
seems trifles unfit to cherish;
his new knowledge grows to flourish
so that he lingers there, going
past the boundaries of knowing.

The higher up one is lifted,
the less one perceives by sight
how the darkest cloud has drifted
to elucidate the night;
He who knows the dark aright
endures forever, by going
past the boundaries of knowing.

This wisdom, wise by unknowing,
wields a power so complete
that the learn'd wise men throwing
wisdom against it compete
with a force none can defeat,
since their wisdom makes no showing
past the boundaries of knowing.

There is virtue so commanding
in this high knowledge that wit,
human skill and understanding
cannot hope to rival it
in one who knows how to pit
against self his selfless going
past the boundaries of knowing.

And if you should care to learn
what this mode of being wise is,
it is yearnings that discern
the Divine in all its guises,
whose merciful gift and prize is
to confound all knowledge, going
past the boundaries of knowing.

†††

I Could Have Danced All Night

2007-12-18T00:00:00.001-06:00

Day 17 of Advent

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, /When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, /Must give us pause."

2007-12-17T07:14:00.000-06:00

Day 16 of Advent

Moses: Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

- Deuteronomy 8:11-14 (NIV)

____________

What makes some theological works like sawdust to me is the way the authors can go on discussing how far certain positions are adjustable to contemporary thought, or beneficial in relation to social problems, or "have a future" before them, but never squarely ask what grounds we have for supposing them to be true accounts of any objective reality. As if we were trying to make rather than to learn. Have we no Other to reckon with?

C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963

Lord, grant me a mind that seeks only Your truth.

†††

There Was A Time

2007-12-16T08:00:00.000-06:00

Day 15 of Advent

Holy Mother and the Child of Korea

Korean Paper and Korean Color Ink
by Korean artist O-Sek Bang

There was a time when there was no time,
When darkness reigned as king,
When a formless void was all that there was in the nothingness of eternity,
When it was night.

But over the void and over the night Love watched.
There was a time when time began.
It began when Love spoke.

Time began for light and life, for splendor and grandeur.
Time began for seas and mountains, for flowers and birds.
Time began for the valleys to ring with the songs of life,
and for the wilderness to echo with the wailing of wind and howling of animals.
And over the earth, Love watched.

There was a time when time began to be recorded.
A time when Love breathed and a new creature came to life.
A new creature so special that it was in the image and likeness of Love
Of Love who is God.

And so man was born and the dawn of a new day shone on the world.
And over man, Love watched.

But there came a time when the new day faded.
A time when man who was like God tried to be God.
A time when the creature challenged the creator.
A time when man preferred death to life and darkness to light.
And so the new day settled into twilight.
And over the darkness, Love watched.

There was a time of waiting in the darkness.
A time when man waited in the shadows,
And all creation groaned in sadness.
There was waiting for Love to speak again--for Love to breathe again.
And kings and nations and empires rose and faded in the shadows.
And Love waited and watched.

Finally, there came a time when Love spoke again. A Word from eternity--a Word Spoken to a girl who belonged to a people not known by the world
Spoken to a girl who belonged to a family not known by her people
To a girl named Mary.
And all creation waited in hushed silence for the girl's answer.
And Mary spoke her yes.
And Love watched over Mary.

And so there came a time when Love breathed again
When Love breathed new life into Mary's yes.
And a new day dawned for the World
A day when light returned to darkness, when life returned to dispel death
And so a day came when Love became man--a mother bore a child.
And Love watched over Love--a Father watched His Son.
And, lastly, there came a time when you and I became a part of time.

Now is the time that you and I wait. Now we wait to celebrate what the world waited for.
And as we wait to celebrate what was at one time,
we become a part of that time
A time when a new dawn and a new dream and a new creation began for man.
And as a part of time, Love waits and Love watches over us.

Father Joseph Breighner
The Catholic Review, November 28, 1980

-0.0-

Advent Meditation

2007-12-15T07:53:00.002-06:00

Day 14 of Advent

La Madre Santissima del Lume, 1722,
Anonymous Sicilian painter,
Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico, Cathedral.

At the time I took this photograph in the cathedral (June 2004) I had no knowledge of how it came to be and only a basic understanding of the symbols.

Just this morning, I googled the title of the painting and found this wonderful history and description at the San Diego Historical Society.

Do click on the painting to enlarge and explore
Photograph of the painting is copyrighted by MizzE

†††

Divine Preparations, Part V

2007-12-14T04:41:00.002-06:00

Day 13 of Advent

ake straight the way of the Lord.

We have marvelled at the profound ways of Divine Wisdom in the preparations for the mystery of the coming of the God-Man. And yet this is not all.

During this long period of several centuries God, Who holds the hearts of kings in His hand (Cf. Prov 21:2), and Whose power equals His wisdom, establishes and destroys the most vast empires one after the other. To the empire of Ninive, reaching as far as Egypt, follows that of Babylon; then, as Isaias had foretold, God "calls His servant Cyrus" (Isa 45:1), king of the Persians, and places the sceptre of Nabuchodonosor within his hands; after Cyrus, He makes Alexander the master of the nations, until He gives the world's empire to Rome, an empire of which the unity and peace will serve the mysterious designs of the spread of the Gospel.
Now the "fulness of time" (Gal 4:4) has come: the world is flooded with sin and error; man at length realizes the weakness in which pride kept him; all peoples stretch out their arms towards this Liberator so often promised, so long awaited: "Et veniet desideratus cunctis gentibus" (Hag 2:8).

When this fulness of time comes, God crowns all his preparations by the sending of St. John the Baptist, the last of the prophets. Because God wills to make St. John the Baptist His herald above all others, the very Precursor of His beloved Son: "Propheta altissimi vocaberis" (Lk 1:76).. so as to enhance still further the glory of this Son Whom He is about to introduce into the world, after having so many times promised Him, God is pleased to reveal the dignity of the Precursor who is to bear witness that the Light and the Truth have at length appeared upon earth: "Ut testimonium perhiberet de lumine" (Jn 1:8).

God wills him to be great because his mission is great, because he has been chosen to precede so closely the One Who is to come. In God's sight, the greatness of the saints is measured according to their nearness to His Son Jesus.

John's holiness appears so great that the Jews come to ask him if he is the looked-for Christ. But he, forestalled as he is with divine favours, protests that he is but " the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord" (Jn 1:23).

The other prophets only saw the Messias afar off; he points Him out in person and in terms so clear that all sincere hearts understand them: " Behold the Lamb of God " behold the One Who is the object of all the desires of the human race, because He "taketh away the sins of the world": "Ecce Agnus Dei" (Jn 1:29). You do not yet know Him, although He is in the midst of you: "Medius vestrum stetit quem vos nescitis"; He is greater than I, for He was before me; He is so great that I am not even worthy to loose the latchet of His shoe; so great, that "I saw the Spirit coming down, as a dove from heaven, and He remained upon Him... and I saw, and I gave testimony that this is the Son of God" (Jn 1:26-27, 3-34). What more has he yet to say? "He that cometh from above, is above all. And what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth ;... He Whom God hath sent, speaketh the words of God; for God cloth not give the Spirit by measure. The Father loveth the Son; and He hath given all things into His hand. He that believed in the Son, hath life everlasting; but He that believeth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on Him" (Jn 3:31f.).

These are the last words of the Precursor. By them he achieves his work of preparing souls to receive the Messias. Indeed, when the Incarnate Word, Who alone can speak the words from on high because He is ever in sinu Patris (Jn 1:18), begins His public mission as the Saviour, John will disappear; he will no longer bear testimony to the Truth save with the shedding of his blood.

The Christ, Whom he announced, has come at last; He is that Light unto which John bore testimony, and all those who believe in that Light have life everlasting. It is to Him alone to Whom it must be said: "Lord, to Whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal Life " (Jn 6:69).

Northern Lights

We ourselves have the happiness of believing in this Light "which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world" (Jn 1:9). We live, moreover, in the blessed "fulness of time"; we are not deprived, like the Patriarchs, of seeing the reign of the Messias. If we are not of those who looked upon Christ in person and heard His words, those who beheld Him going about doing good everywhere, we have the signal happiness of belonging to those nations of which David sang that they should be Christ's inheritance.

Now, at Christmas, the Church celebrates the Birthday of her Divine Bridegroom: "tamquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo" (Ps 18:6); and she wills to prepare us, by the weeks of Advent, for the grace of the coming of Christ within us. It is an altogether inward, mysterious advent which is wrought in faith, but brings forth much fruit.

It is this grace of a new birth that the Incarnate Word merited for us by His Birth at Bethlehem.

From Christ in His Mysteries, Abbot Marmion, O.S.B.

†††

Divine Preparations, Part IV

2007-12-13T06:58:00.002-06:00

Day 12 0f Advent

All the Old Testament is a prolonged Advent

"If, while reading

you feel yourself moved to speak to God,

stop for a moment and speak."

Now faith is communicated to us by the Holy Spirit's inward action which accompanies the statement of the divine truths made by prophets and preachers: Fides ex auditu (Rom 10:7).

In so often recalling the ancient promises, in revealing, little by little through the mouths of the prophets, the traits of the Redeemer Who was to come, God willed to produce in the hearts of the just of the Old Covenant the requisite conditions whereby the coming of the Messias should be salutary for them. Besides the more the just of the Old Covenant were filled with faith and confidence in the promises announced by their prophets, the more they would burn with the desire to see them realized, and the more they would be ready to receive the abundance of graces that the Saviour was to bring to the world. It was thus that the Virgin Mary, Zachary and Elisabeth, Simeon, Anna, and the other faithful souls who lived at the time of Christ's coming, at once recognised Him and were inundated with His favours.

Patzcuaro Madonna of the Mercado, Mexico

You see how God was pleased to prepare mankind for the coming of His Son upon earth. St. Peter could truly say to the Jews that they were "the children of the prophets" (Acts 3:25). St. Paul could write to the Hebrews that before God spoke to them in person, He "at sundry times, and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets": "Multifariam multisque modis" (Heb 1:1).

The faithful Jews were, moreover, constantly in expectation of the Messias. Their faith discerned in the person of this Redeemer one sent by God, a King, a God Who was to put an end to their miseries, and deliver them from the burden of their sins. They have but one longing: "Send, O Lord, Him Who is to come." They have but one desire: to behold with their eyes the countenance of the Saviour of Israel. The promised Messias was the object towards which converged all the hopes, all the worship, all the religion of the Old Covenant. All the Old Testament is a prolonged Advent the prayers of which are summed up in this prayer of Isaias: "Emitte Agnum, Domine, Dominatorem terrae" (Is 16:1). "Send forth, O Lord, the Lamb, the Ruler of the earth." "Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just": "Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant justum"; "Let the earth be opened, and bud forth a Saviour": "A periatur terra et germinet Salvatorem" (Is 45:8).

From Christ in His Mysteries, Abbot Marmion, O.S.B.

____________

Almighty and most merciful Father, by Whose providence my life has been prolonged, and Who has granted me now to begin another year of probation, vouchsafe me such assistance of Thy Holy Spirit, that the continuance of my life may not add to the measure of my guilt, but that I may so repent of the days and years passed in neglect of the duties which Thou hast set before me, in vain thoughts, in sloth, and in folly, that I may apply my heart to true wisdom, by diligence redeem the time lost, and by repentance, obtain pardon, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

~ Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Lord, I rely on Your promises.

†††

~ Divine Preparations, Part III ~

2007-12-12T00:01:00.001-06:00

Day 11 of Advent

The Era of the Prophets

You know that it was just after the sin of our first parents in the very cradle of the already rebellious human race that God began to reveal the mystery of the Incarnation. Adam and Eve, prostrate before the Creator, in the shame and despair of their fall, dare not raise their eyes to heaven. And behold, even before pronouncing the sentence of their banishment from the terrestrial paradise, God speaks to them the first words of forgiveness and hope.

Instead of being cursed and driven out for ever from the presence of their God, as were the rebel angels, they were to have a Redeemer; He it was Who should break the power won over them by the devil. And as their fall began by the prevarication of the woman, it was to be by the son of a woman that this redemption should be wrought: "Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum" (Gen 3:15).

This is what is called the "Protogospel," the first word of salvation. It is the first promise of redemption, the dawn of divine mercy to the sinful earth, the first ray of that light which was one day to vivify the world, the first manifestation of the mystery hidden in God from all eternity.

After this promise, all the religion of the human race, and, later, all the religion of the chosen people is concentrated around this "seed of the woman," this "semen mulieris" which is to deliver mankind.

Throughout the years as they pass by, and as the centuries advance, God makes His promise more precise; He repeats it with more solemnity. He assures the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that it is from their race that the blessed seed shall come forth: "Et benedicentur in semine tuo omnes gentes terrae" (Gen 22:18; cf. Gal 3:16); to the dying Jacob, He shows that it is in the tribe of Juda that shall arise the One Who is to come, the desire of all peoples: "Donec veniat qui nittendus est, et ipse erit exspectatio gentium" (Ibid. 49:10).

Parroquia de Santa Brisca

And now behold how the nations, forgetful of the primeval revelations, sink insensibly into error. God then chooses for Himself a people that shall be the guardian of His promises. To this people, throughout the centuries, God will recall His promises, renew them, render them clearer and more abundant: this will be the era of the prophets.

If you listen to the sacred oracles of the prophets of Israel, you will remark that the traits whereby God depicts the Person of the future Messias and specifies the character of His mission, are at times so opposed that it seems as if they could not be encountered in the same person. Sometimes the prophets attribute to the Redeemer prerogatives such as could only befit a God, sometimes, they predict for this Messias a sum of humiliations, contradictions, infirmities and sufferings with which the last of men could scarcely deserve to be overwhelmed.

You will constantly be coming across this striking contrast.

For example, there is David, the king dear to God's Hears; the Lord swore to confirm his race for ever: the Messias was to be of the royal family of David. God reveals Him to David as "his son and his Lord" (Ps 59:1; cf. Mt 22:41-45): his son by reason of the humanity that He was one day to take from a Virgin of his family, his Lord, by reason of His divinity. David contemplates Him "in the brightness of the saints," begotten eternally before the rising of the day star; a supreme High Priest "according to the order of Melchisedech" (Ps 59:3-4), anointed to reign over us because of His " truth and meekness and justice" (Ps. 44:5); in a word, the Son of God Himself to Whom all nations are to be given as an inheritance: "Dominus dixit ad me: Filius meus es tu, ego hodie genui te: postula a me et dabo tibi gentes haereditatem tuam" (Ps. 2:7-8). St. Paul says to the Hebrews that these are prerogatives wherein a God alone can glory (Heb 1:13).

But David contemplates too the pierced Hands and Feet, the garments divided among the soldiers who cast lots upon His coat (Ps 22:17-19); He beholds Him given gall and vinegar to drink (Ps 68:22). Then again see the Divine attributes: He will not be touched by the corruption of the tomb, but, victorious over death, He will sit down at the right hand of God (Ps 15:10).

This contrast is not less striking in Isaias, the great Seer; so precise and full of detail is he that he might be called the fifth Evangelist. One would say that he was relating accomplished facts rather than foretelling future events.

The prophet, transported up to heaven, says of the Messias: "Who shall declare His generation": "Generationem ejus quis enarrabit" (Is 53:8)? He gives Him names such as no man has ever borne: "His name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, God the mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace" (Is 9:6). Born of a Virgin, "His name shall be called Emmanuel" (7:14), God with us. Isaias describes Him "come forth as brightness," and "lighted as a lamp" (62:1); he sees Him opening the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf, loosing the tongue of the dumb and making the lame to walk (35:5-6); he shows Him as "a Leader and a Master to the Gentiles" (55:4); he sees the idols utterly destroyed before Him (2:14-18); and he hears God promise by oath that before this Saviour "every knee shall be bowed" and every tongue shall confess His power (Is 45:23).

Parroquia de Santa Brisca

And yet this Redeemer, Whose glory the prophet thus exalts, is to be overwhelmed with such sufferings, and such humiliations are to crush Him that He will be looked upon as "the most abject of men... as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted;... led as a sheep to the slaughter... reputed with the wicked... because the Lord was pleased to bruise Him in infinity" (Is 53, 3 seq.).

In most of the prophets you can see this opposition of traits with which they describe the greatness and the abasements, the power and the weakness, the sufferings and the glory of the Messias. You will see with what condescending wisdom God prepared the minds of His people to receive the revelation of the ineffable mystery of a God-Man, at once the supreme Lord Whom all nations adore, and the Victim for the sins of the world.

From Christ in His Mysteries, Abbot Marmion, O.S.B.

______________________________

At that time many will turn away from the faith and will
betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear
and deceive many people.Because of the increase of wickedness,
the love of most will grow cold,
but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.
- Matthew 24:10-13 (NIV)

______________________________

Institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static, whereas its parent movement has been dynamic; it confines men within its limits, while the movement had liberated them from the bondage of institutions; it looks to the past, [although] the movement had pointed forward. Though in content the institution resembles the dynamic epoch whence it proceeded, in spirit it is like the [state] before the revolution.

So the Christian church, after the early period, often seemed more closely related in attitude to the Jewish synagogue and the Roman state than to the age of Christ and his apostles; its creed was often more like a system of philosophy than like the
living gospel.

~ H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), The Kingdom of God in America [1959]

Lord, continue to breathe life into Your church.

†††

Divine Preparations, Part II

2007-12-11T00:00:00.001-06:00

Day 10 of Advent

In the twentieth century, the secularists, still living off the spiritual capital of Christianity, often pretended to chide Christians for having invented the term "secularist," a term which, they said, was devoid of meaning. Their leaders knew very well, however, that secularism, like any other parasite, derives its sustenance from the object on which it feeds, and so they were rather pleased when milquetoast Christians timidly offered, as a definition of secularism, "living as though God did not exist."

What Christians should have called it was, rather, "a contemptibly fraudulent way of living on the cheap, by reaping the maximum fruits of Christian effort, while contributing the minimum effort of your own." When secularists accused Christians of "living in the past," the Christians ought to have retaliated by pointing out that secularists were "living off the past." By the time they got around to doing so, however, the majority of secularists had become morally incapable of seeing the point.

- Geddes MacGregor (1909-1998), Christian Ghetto

[Lord, bring your Light]

-o.o-

Appreciating continuity is one the the few legitimate ways of transcending ideology. ~ Robert Grudin

It was fitting that men, having sinned by pride, "Eritis sicut dii" (Gen 3:5) should be obliged, by the prolonged experience of their weakness and the extent of their misery, to confess the absolute need they had of a Redeemer and to aspire after His coming with all the fibres of their nature (Cf. S. Thom. III, q.I, a.5).

The idea of this future Redeemer fills all the Ancient Law; all the symbols, all the rites and sacrifices prefigure Him: "Haec omnia in figura contigebant illis" (1 Cor 10:2); all desires converge towards Him. According to the beautiful expression of an author of the first centuries, the Old Testament bore Christ in its loins: "Lex Christo gravida erat" (Appendix to the works of S. Augustine, Sermon 196). The religion of Israel was the expectation of the Messias.

Moreover, the greatness of the mystery of the Incarnation and the majesty of the Redeemer demanded that the revelation of Him to the human race should only be made by degrees. Man, on the morrow of his fall, was neither worthy of receiving nor capable of welcoming the full manifestation of the God-Man. It was by a dispensation at once full of wisdom and mercy, that God disclosed this ineffable mystery only little by little, by the mouth of the prophets; when the human race should be sufficiently prepared, the Word, so many times announced, so often promised, would Himself appear here below to instruct us: "Multifariam multisque modis olim loquens patribus in prophetis... novissime locutus est nobis in Filio" (Heb 1:1).

From Christ in His Mysteries, Abbot Marmion, O.S.B.

†††

MLE
1921 - 1994

SALutations

2007-12-10T08:03:00.000-06:00

"Salutations is my fancy way of saying hello."

MizzE interrupts our irregularly scheduled Advent series for this special announcement:

While most of you were out ridding the world of injustice Saturday afternoon, I was at a matinee watching a spider save a pig, with the help of a rat, three lambs, seven goslings and a charming, but gullible group of folks.

Oh I do hope everyone reading this has read E. B. White's beloved classic, Charlotte's Web.

Wilbur, the pig: I think you're beautiful.
Charlotte, the spider: Well, I am pretty. Nearly all spiders are good looking. I'm not as flashy as some, but I'll do.

Charlotte reminds me of my friend, a friend I met for the first time right after that matinee. Her name was printed inside the program, next to her title, Costume Designer. She's not as flashy as some, but she does do, quite exceptionally.

I know of no one who in less than a month could conceive, design and execute costumes singlehandedly for 40 plus characters, much less make them so outstandingly fabulous quite like Sal. I wish I could have taken photos, but the production manager's rules don't allow. Now chin ... Charlotte: Chin up, chin up / Everybody loves a happy face / Wear it, share it / It'll brighten up the darkest place / Twinkle, sparkle / Let a little sunshine in / You'll be on the right side, looking at the bright side / Up with your chinny-chin-chin.

Thank you Charlotte, now where was I? When the authorized production photos are posted to the community theater's web site, I will get the word out. In the meantime, I can say that transforming a human being into a spider has got to be a much greater challenge than transforming say a human into a cat - It's the legs. Can you imagine the discipline and fortitude? And the fun along the way?

Charlotte: Humble. Humble has two meanings. It means "not proud" and "close to the ground." That's Wilbur all over.

Yes Charlotte and that's my friend Sal all over. Here's a photo* of us, after the show, on stage, in the barn, beaming with gratitude that two like-minded souls found their way to one another through a world wide web.

Charlotte: You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.

-o.o-

*No image represented in two small dimensions can ever capture an experience experienced live in three large dimensions. Same goes for words.

Divine Preparations, Part I

2007-12-10T00:00:00.001-06:00

Day 9 of Advent

The views of God are not our views; all His thoughts are higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth; but it is especially in the work of the Incarnation and Redemption that the sublimity and greatness of the Divine ways shine forth. This work is so high, so closely united to the very life of the Most Holy Trinity, that it remained throughout long ages hidden in the depths of the divine secrets: "Sacramentum absconditum a saeculis in Deo" (Eph 3:9).

©MizzE 2007

As you know, God willed to prepare the human race for the revelation of this mystery during some thousands of years. Why did God chose to delay the coming of His Son amongst us for so many centuries? Why such a long period? We cannot, mere creatures as we are, fathom the depths of the reasons why God accomplishes His works under such or such conditions. He is the Infinitely Sovereign Being Who has no need of a counsellor (Cf. Rom 11:34). But, as He is likewise Wisdom itself that reacheth "from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly", we may yet humbly seek to learn something of the appropriateness of the conditions of His mysteries.

From Christ in His Mysteries, Abbot Marmion, O.S.B.

†††

Are you bound by self-righteousness?

2007-12-09T07:01:00.000-06:00

Day 8 of Advent

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath." He answered, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread--which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven't you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. - Matthew 12:1-6 (NIV)

_______________†††_______________

We love orthodoxy. It is good. It is the best. It is the clean, clear cut teaching of God's Word, the trophies won by truth in its conflict with error, the levees which faith has raised against the desolating floods of honest or reckless misbelief or unbelief; but orthodoxy, clear and hard as crystal, suspicious and militant, may be but the letter well shaped, well named, and well learned, the letter which kills. Nothing is so dead as a dead orthodoxy--too dead to speculate, too dead to think, to study, or to pray.

~ E. M. Bounds (1835-1913), Power Through Prayer

-o.o-

What allures you?

2007-12-08T00:00:00.001-06:00

Day 7 of Advent

Law wants to save me from self-justication.

Puebla Catedral, Mexico

©MizzE 2007

Click image to enlarge

If I now want to add something of my own (i.e., inner assurances) to this faith, if this great and glorious faith is defective and saves me not till I can add my own sense and my own feeling to it at such a time or place, is not this saying in the plainest manner that faith alone cannot justify me? ...

All I would say of these inward delights and enjoyments is this: they are not holiness, they are not piety, they are not perfection, but they are God's gracious allurements and calls to seek after holiness and spiritual perfection.

William Law (1686-1761), Christian Regeneration

-o.o-

Can you keep silence?

2007-12-07T00:00:00.001-06:00

Day 6 of Advent

"Let All Mortal Earth Keep Silence" is derived from the "Prayer of the Cherubic Hymn" from the Litany of St. James, written during the 4th century. The Cherubic Hymn is to be used at the presentation of the bread and wine at the Offertory. It was incorporated into the Holy Week celebration of the Constantineopolitan Church at some point after the 8th century. It is used on St. James Day, October 23. Orthodox Christians in Jerusalem recite it on the Sunday after Christmas, or as part of the Christmas Eve service. The Greek original is also found in the Liturgy of St. Basil as the Troparion for Holy Saturday morning.

Although the hymn can be used as a communion hymn any time of the year, it is a beautiful advent hymn, pointing us to stand in awe as the King of kings and Lord of lords descends to earth to vanquish the powers of hell.

"Let All Mortal Earth Keep Silence" first appeared in Lyra Eucharistica and The English Hymnal in 1906, with the tune PICARDY, arranged by Ralph Vaughn Williams.

Listen Here

-o.o-

Do you have the patience to wait?

2007-12-06T00:00:00.001-06:00

Day 5 of Advent-ure

The ancient Masters were profound and subtle.
Their wisdom was unfathomable.
There is no way to describe it;
all we can describe is their appearance.

They were careful
as someone crossing an iced-over stream.
Alert as a warrior in enemy territory.
Courteous as a guest.
Fluid as melting ice.
Shapeable as a block of wood.
Receptive as a valley.
Clear as a glass of water.

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

The Master doesn't seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.

- Tao Te Ching

-o.o-

Where are you looking?

2007-12-05T08:50:00.000-06:00

Day 4 of Advent

"God has opened a door in the middle of creation, and this open door of the world towards God is man; this opening is God's invitation to look towards Him, to tend towards Him, to persevere with regard to Him, and to return to Him."

-- Frithjof Schuon

Click the image to enlarge

©MizzE 2007

Customarily in the Christian tradition, the focus has been on the two “comings” of Christ. However, St. Bernard in the 11th Century identified a “third coming” that Advent leads us to await—the coming of Christ in our own soul. While the birth of Christ and the second coming of Christ are important to Christians, we must all still move through this earthly life on a day-to-day basis.

Keeping a watchful Advent reminds us that we do not tread these days in isolation. We can live in expectation of the movement of Christ in and through every moment of those days. Even though we are frequently distracted and diverted from attention to this movement within us, the season of Advent reminds us to turn inward yet again and seek the God that is to be found within us. -from explorefaith.org

God of my quiet times, you know how difficult it is to be still when I am busy preparing to celebrate Your birth. Give me the will to create quiet spaces in the everyday, as my life gets busier.  Amen. ~American Bible Society

_________†__________

I stepped outside into the quiet, cool December morn and cut eight, beautiful roses growing on the corner of my little piece of Mayberry.

I brought them inside and gently set them afloat on water inside Mom's Waterford crystal bowl - a very befitting container for a piece of His Glory don't you think? Am I as befitting? Hmmm, hopefully I still have time to work on that project, with the help of my decorator, of course.

[Oh, I just had a delightful recollection. About 40 years ago, Mom and Dad threw a big party for me. All of the decorations were coral and pink - exact same colors as the roses]

-o.o-

This Season of Peace

2007-12-04T00:00:00.000-06:00

Day 3 of Advent

NEW, just in time for the holiday, GA is pleased to present the CAIR Bears.

This is Scare Bear - Scare Bear has many hats. Sympathizer, Talking Head and even Film Producer. Whether its phony protests, fighting cartoons, blaming Israel or filming atrocities for Allah, Scare Bear is ready to indulge the Western media.

So what does this ferocious bruin have to do with Advent and Christmas? Well, quite a lot actually. I'm using this new creation to illuminate and dispel

"The Unbearable Kitschness of Christmas."

THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE of America was up in arms in 2002 about an exhibition in Napa, California, which included the "caganer", a traditional Catalan figurine who is placed squatting in the corner of the Christmas crib, trousers around his ankles.

Perhaps predictably, the Catholic League was offended by the presence of a defecating peasant in the holy stable. What it didn't appreciate, however, is that the Christmas story is supposed to be offensive, and that the caganer is a reminder of the theological revolution that scandalized sophisticated opinion of the first few centuries of the Christian era: that God became human, that the sacred was no longer to be protected from the profane.

In his great masterpiece, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Czech novelist Milan Kundera develops an innovative moral vocabulary around the notion of kitsch. Kitsch, he argues, isn't primarily about bad taste or the vulgarities of popular devotional images: kitsch is "the absolute denial of shit". Kitsch is that vision of the world in which nothing unwholesome or indecent is allowed to come into view. It's the aesthetics of wanting to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. Kitsch excludes shit in order to paint a picture of perfection, a world of purity and moral decency.

THE PROBLEM WITH KITSCH is not readily apparent because (by definition) the treatment of what is considered unwholesome takes place off stage. Think of those Nazi propaganda films of beautiful, healthy children skiing down the Bavarian Alps. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Of course there is. For this is a world that has been purified, where everything nasty or troubling has been eliminated. The logical conclusion of kitsch, argues Kundera, is the ghetto and the concentration camp – the means by which totalitarian regimes dispose of their shit, variously construed.

Opening the infamous exhibition of degenerate art in the summer of 1937, Hitler gave notice that "from now on in we will wage a war of purification against the last elements of putrefaction in our culture". Kitsch turns out to be motivation to cleanse the world of pollution. It is the aesthetics of ethnic cleansing.

Kundera himself thinks theology to be the ultimate source of kitsch. He recounts how as a child an aimless thought experiment led him from God having a mouth to God having intestines – the implications of which struck the young Kundera as sacrilegious. This instant and visceral reaction against the association of the divine with the messiness of the human helps us appreciate something of the hostility of many early thinkers to the idea of the incarnation. God and the messiness of the world must be kept at the maximum possible distance. But what then of God become human? What of the word become flesh?

Even many who felt the attraction of the Christian story believed this was going too far. Convoluted ways were sought to mitigate the offence. Christ was not really human or Christ was not really divine. Others created a firewall between the sacred and the profane within the person of Jesus himself. For the second century Gnostic, Valentinius, Jesus "ate and drank but did not defecate".

The Jesus of Valentinius is thus the kitsch Jesus. And it's this same kitsch Jesus of sentimental benevolence that features in countless Christmas cards and community carol services. The baby in the manger now presides over a celebration of feel-good bonhomie that makes the true meaning of Christmas almost impossible to articulate. Boozed-up partygoers and proud grandparents demand the unreality of "O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie". Elsewhere Kundera writes of kitsch as "the need to gaze into the mirror and be moved to tears of gratification at one's own reflection". And it's this gratifying reflection that many want to see when they gaze into the Christmas crib. Christmas has become unbearably self-satisfied.

THE CAGANER IS A REMINDER of another Jesus and another story. From the perspective of official Christian doctrine, the story of Christmas is a full-scale attack upon the notion of kitsch. Valentinius's theology is declared heretical precisely because it denies the full reality of the incarnation. For Valentinius, Jesus only seemed human. "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see", as the equally heretical carol puts it. Orthodoxy turns out to be vastly more radical, not because it provides a way of squaring the circle of a God-man, but because it refuses to separate the divine from material reality. God is born in a stable. The divine is re-imagined, not as existing in some pristine isolation, but among the shittiness of the world.

The temptation to disassociate the divine from material reality marks the beginnings of kitsch. For, once unhitched from the divine, the complexity of the world can be too easily by-passed and ignored. The orthodox formulation of the incarnation allows no way of avoiding politics, food, sex or money. Nor, as the Christian story of God goes on to make horribly clear, does it offer a way of avoiding suffering and death.

The problem isn't that Christmas has become too materialistic – but rather that it isn't materialistic enough. Kitsch Christmas is another way of uncoupling the divine from the material, thus spiritualizing God into incapacity. I am not being a killjoy attacking the kitsch version of Christmas. Three years ago, my wife gave birth to a baby boy. The labour ward was no place to be coy about the human body and all its functions. The talcum-powdered unreality of kitsch childbirth cannot compare with the exhaustion, pain and joy of the real thing.

But perhaps the most important corruption of Christmas kitsch is how it shapes our understanding of peace. This is the season where the word "peace" is ubiquitous. Written out in fancy calligraphy everywhere, "peace and good will to all" is the subscript of the season. It's the peace of the sleeping child, peace as in "peace and quiet", peace as a certain sort of mood. But this is not what they need in Bethlehem today. They need peace as in people not killing each other.

This sort of peace requires a stubborn engagement with the brute facts of oppression and violence – which is the very reality that the kitsch peace of Christmas wants to take us on holiday away from. How ironic: we don't want the shittiness of the world pushed at us during this season of peace. This, then, is the debilitating consequence of kitsch. Kitsch peace is the unspoken desire that war takes place out of sight and mind – it's the absolute denial of shit. Political leaders who are preparing for yet more fighting will be happy to oblige. Christmas has become a cultural danger to us all, not just a danger to orthodox Christianity.

"The Unbearable Kitschness of Christmas", written in 2002 by Rev. Dr Giles Fraser, vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. This article was first published on Ship of Fools.

-o.o-

Who's Your Decorator?

2007-12-03T11:48:00.001-06:00

Day 2 of Advent

I love to decorate. I have to decorate. Thing is so does God, but there have been many times when we didn't see eye to eye. After a few disasters, I got around to inviting him for visits. Our consultations started producing pleasing results. Finally, I got to the point, where it seemed like moving in with him would have its advantages.

Let him live long enough in a heart, and that heart begins to change. Portraits of hurt will be replaced by landscapes of grace. Walls of anger will be demolished and shaky foundations restored. God can no more leave a life unchanged than Sis and I can leave hotel room furniture unmoved. Remodeling of the heart is not always pleasant. We don't object when the Carpenter adds a few shelves, but he's been known to gut the entire west wing. -paraphrase Max Lucado, Grace for the Moment.

In a vivid, technicolor dream I had about 25 years ago, I was invited to a friend's house who wanted my advice on decorating. The kitchen was an electrical nightmare. Extension cords were strung all over the place. Some plugs had broken prongs, and a few appliances were barely operating. Needless to say it was not an optimum environment for generating nourishment.

That was a very instructive dream, if you subscribe to dream theory, which I do. That kitchen represented the state of my inner core. I could see I had a huge task to perform. Where to begin? I was overwhelmed, so I called in professional help. She brought along a tool kit filled with wisdom gadgets and instruction booklets from several different manufacturers. We formed a working alliance that lasted five years.

After about two years, I had another dream. The setting was inside an old, abandoned farm house, but there was a doorway that led into a space as large as a ballroom. In the center were stacked trunks of various sizes. I only recall the contents of two now, but they had a powerful transformative effect. One was filled to overflowing with sparkling, faceted jewels. When I opened the other, out popped a dozen or so baby pigs* who immediately headed for the barnyard, where they played like kids in a schoolyard.

The sense of worth and freedom I had realized and was revealed in that dream convinced me that God has high aspirations and envisions my complete restoration. I have since those days in therapy, turned my decorating projects over The Source of Power. I trust he won't stop working with me 'til he thinks we're finished.

_____ -o.o- _____

* Friends started giving me pigs after they heard about my dream.

-o.o-

Where do you reside?

2007-12-02T00:00:00.001-06:00

In the ecclesiastical calendar today is Advent Sunday. Today, I begin a blogging counter balance to the inexorable business which is our lot as we prepare to celebrate God's Nativity.

Where do you reside?

God wants to be your dwelling place. He has no interest in being a weekend getaway or a Sunday casita or a summer cottage. Don't consider using God as a vacation cabin or an evening retirement home. He wants you under his roof now and always. He wants to be your mailing address, your point of reference; he wants to be your home. . . .

Many think of God as a diety to discuss, not a place to dwell. We think of God as a creator to call on, not a home to reside in. In fact, He wants to be the one in whom "we live and move and have our being." - paraphrase from Grace for the Moment, Vol. I, Max Lucado

-o.o-