Patty Cake

I only ever once had the misfortune of hearing a priest air dirty laundry about other priests. In this case he was conversing with a seminarian. I was the quiet guy in between. It was at the table during dessert.

Once was more than enough. What a stench.

Why then should one heed the same from priests or laymen online concerning bishops and cardinals I wonder? Who am I? Who are you? What is your place? Does Pippin have Gandalf all figured out from head to toe? Was that clericalism I just uttered? Does it mean I'm condoning corrupt priests and bishops if I don't write an open letter? What good does any of this way-up-in-the-echelons hierarchy inside talk wannabe insider talk hashed out online do? I find it hard to believe that it does more good than harm.

Do I have an opinion about Scotland? Do I care? Everything has become so utterly meaningless. B.C. teachers on strike? Where do the teachers get the energy to care about the stupid stuff they're willing to go on strike for? The energy to sit there in front of the schools with their stupid sandwich board signs? It isn't the pay. They make decently on that front.

How in the bloody Dickens do tattoo parlors stay in business, and tanning salons?

It seems like everything is up for grabs, and anything you grab must be milked, and nothing you grab matters. Of course, it all matters very much, but it's like people are being hustled along. Waiting is the great sin. Waiting and watching are the unpardonable sins. You remember that passage in G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man in which he is describing the state of the world when Christ came into it?

Go and read it if you can and tell me that's not something eerily similar to the state of the world right now. I say that with joy, not fear and loathing.

Everything is passing away. We're building sand castles online. The grown-ups post-graduates ruin all the fun by holding retarded sand castle competitions and then photograph themselves standing beside their structures about to be washed away by the incoming tide.

There's a meme for you out there whoever you are who makes memes: a picture of some guy standing proudly beside his mind-boggling, professionally perfect sand sculpture with the caption, "Grown-ups: effing things up since post-graduate school."

Or something to that effect.

Here's a phrase I hope catches on: "Selfied to death." You heard it here first. Here's another: "Meta-retarded". I'm hoping later it will simply become, "Metatarded".

Oh, and I think I may have come up with a poetic term: Jump rhyme. It is for an end-line rhyme that has anything from five to six, seven, eight or more lines between the two rhyming words. Barely registered, an unconscious echo. Jump rhyme.

Why is everyone leaving the Patheos Catholic portal? Dawn Eden, Max, Barnes - vamoosed! Back to individual blogs! Tally ho! Makes me smile. What with all those pornified ads they can't do anything about. Well, except you can leave Patheos. Ha!




"You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid."

--T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding