Do water table/splash course in granite

Do we live in confusing times?

What does that even mean? It's such a tired banality piously repeated by the devout. It's right up there with "He/she is in a better place." If you see clearly enough to see that "we live in confusing times" then why do you have constant recourse to repeating the phrase? Why don't you live from the center of your clarity and own it?

I find it interesting how those who say "we live in confusing times", like reality was at their beck and call, have nothing coherent to offer that would actually show the reality of what's occurring in any present situation. They deny development to what is in a present state of slowly or quickly becoming, which is what all time is doing all the time. Their response to crisis is a gnostic cop out; their preemptive crystallization, which is manipulation, is highly annoying. Their premature safeguarding is destructive. This has the effect of both downplaying a crisis (leading to irresponsibility) and exaggerating it (leading to unresponsiveness). Anything that they aren't able to instantly categorize within their false sense of certainty they relegate to the "temporal realm".

Rigidity.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

This is good

Now take this

and sacramentalize it by reflecting on the incarnation, on the life of Jesus, on the Gospel.

What good can come out of Nazareth? If you are asleep to the ordinary, and not entering into it, in the sense of pouring yourself into it and equally receiving it and dwelling in it, you are not living the sacramental life. The sacramental life does not end in the sacraments. Indeed, the sacraments themselves have their form in ordinary matter. If you partake of the sacraments, then the sacramental life begins with the sacraments. And many, many people who do not partake of the sacraments are immersed in the sacramental life, and have much to teach Catholics. God is not bound by the sacraments. Indeed, if you partake of the sacraments, you should be all the more perceptive and sensitive to how other people are living a sacramental life who do not partake of the sacraments. Our awe of them should be like a mirror showing them the goodness, beauty, and truth in them that they might not see. Like Pope Francis said, receiving the sacraments is not like getting some kind of merit badge; it's not a reward for the perfect. Your repentance does not earn you them.

If you don't have the desire to do (which implies also enjoying) ordinary things extraordinarily well, as St. John Bosco would have it, (accepting that you will often fail, leading you to embrace more and more humbly the ordinary to the point of regarding with true awe all that is good in other cultures) then you are just not very Catholic, you are just not very universal. You are a specialist in the worst sense. Maybe you're looking to conquer the Catholic Family Thing like it was a merit badge. That's not doing it extraordinarily well. Because you're placing yourself outside of it. Or maybe you get cut off the vine through "apocalyptic fantasies"?

Maybe some of the above is how the nuclear family came about. Just think - the term extended family only came about with the term nuclear family. Extended family is not abnormal; the nuclear family is abnormal - that is, not the norm - irregular. I don't know much about history, but didn't the nuclear family come out of the second world war? I think that's where the legalization of abortion came from. It came from the forties and the fifties? The rupture between generations. The larger protective embrace of extended family was fractured and it caused a sick isolation resulting in the nuclear family, and this allowed abortion to become much more permissive; it made abortion that much more thinkable. Just remember, if abortion leads to war, then all the same, war leads to abortion.

Just think - Mary and Joseph migrating as refugees to all these places knowing their son (who they had no misconception of how special he was) was being hunted. Of all families they would be justified in being the nuclear family and totally stand offish. But they weren't. They thought Jesus was in the caravans behind when they were coming back from the Passover festival. Thousands of people. They just assumed he was with family. There was no nuclear family.

Anyways, I don't know how many times I've been to Mass in the Extraordinary Form when at some point I said to myself, "Man, this is just like the Ordinary Form!" The sense of joy that has given me is wonderful, deep, and enriching, just as Pope Emeritus Benedict would have it, not terminating in the form of the Mass, but in entering the prayer of the Church. It's totally in line with Church teaching: they are one and the same Mass.

Even in regards to talking about the liturgical forms alone, they are more alike than unlike. They are radically more alike than radically unlike, or even somewhat unlike. There is actually only likeness and complementarity to speak about them, and not difference. One comes out of the other, and that other came out of another. It's all in the safe embrace of the Church. The form of the Roman liturgy comes out of the engineering traction of ancient Rome. It's always been on the austere side, and it got caught up somewhat at a certain point with secular court theatrics, which was fine for what it was. The Ordinary Form is like a magnification. Attending the Extraordinary Form, I've been made to see the Ordinary Form within it, and to realize the movement of the Mass itself in a renewed way. So much so in fact that I'm satisfied and happy going exclusively to the Ordinary Form of the Mass. Not that I had any problems with it, which I didn't. The liturgy of the Word, and the liturgy of the Eucharist. One leads to the other, and both become more and more appreciated, loved.

The Ordinary Form is right there in the Extraordinary Form, you see it in the midst of the EF's sort of stick-on parts, the borrowings of the secular court stuff (if one wants to use the same anti-Catholic critical regard for that form as some people have for the Ordinary Form, to say stuff about the EF like "stick-on parts" etc. it can really work both ways) - not extraordinary in the sense that we typically use the word, but more like extracurricular. Enriched in our common communal prayer and worship, with the Ordinary Form being the norm, that is ordained.

Exactly

Haven't read any Cormac McCarthy novels because whenever I read excerpts from his books I'm kinda like,

Masters of the Apocalypse and their self-contradicting, hollow, incoherent, homespun, tinpot sectarian nuttery.

Fascistic manipulators of conscience and their shrill unreadable posts consisting of quote salad forced together in the most abusive fashion.

Cerebral and spiritual narcissists channeling the locution writing style that makes up the background noise for a certain number of Catholics (something quite easy for them to assimilate, both style and content) and claiming to receive messages.

No thanks.

The Church is not brittle. God is not remote.

The Church says we are brothers/sisters all, and says it to a world that does not recognize this, and so the Church is being sent, to practice it, to go into the world and love our brothers and sisters.

I stand with the Pope.

I stand with Pope Francis.

I'm a huge fan of Glen & Friends Cooking channel. They just do everything. More than that, they give you the method and understanding of what the recipe actually is at bottom. Which is to say: confidence. I love how he uses MSG and de-mythologizes its bad reputation - along with other long-word ingredients that people paint as villainous. I love the one where he makes processed cheese.

This youtube channel is so Canadian. I love it so much.

 

 

Three really good articles I have recently read

D.W. Lafferty does a thorough consolidation of the origins and history of LifeSiteNews. I very much agree with his conclusion:

"Practical efforts to make a real difference in the world by helping to protect unborn life would effectively be replaced by apocalyptic fantasies, dualistic thinking, and tactics that are meant to provoke antagonism. Such a movement would only function for the benefit of its adherents, rather than the benefit of the unborn."

Emmett O'Regan writes about the apocalypse streamlining service, Countdown to the Kingdom, how they attempt to wash themselves of their own millenarianism.

"The authors of Countdown to the Kingdom thus attempt to bypass the charge of millenarianism by confining the doctrinal error to the idea of Jesus physically returning in the Flesh, and assert that a spiritual version of Chiliasm is an acceptable teaching that was held by the Early Church Fathers."

Rebecca Bratten Weiss writes about the latent providentialism among Catholics that has been revealed by the pandemic.

"The wave of providentialist unrest in the face of these precautions betrays a perspective on divine will and human reason that is not theologically sound or helpful.

But this type of thinking has percolated in Catholic circles for a while."

What a glorious night! The windows are wide open. I came back from a walk and the September gusts, unusually warm for a coastal B.C. night, have brought indoors the fragrance of the first dead and dried leaves being scattered out there, everywhere. The place smells like freshly cured tobacco leaves. What a strange thing: freshly cured. 

Labour Day is not the end of summer. Because summer is not constituted of vacationing from labour (or schooling). This is probably my favourite time of year. The cottonwoods sing about something brilliantly alive behind the blue of the sky. Some people are all eager for pumpkin spice instead of bright blue death - the weirdos. The grass is still mostly gold, except for those weirdos who insist on keeping their patches green. Peaches are still coming in from the Okanagan. And the apples, the hoards of apples sending the brix meters off the charts. Those chojuro pears! What a strange thing: crisp and juicy.

My Wicksons are small this year because I didn't thin them, but goodness, they are the best apples I've ever tasted. How can one describe the Wickson? That malty champagne burst when you bite into it - how can one bitch about the size of the apple when it sends your salivary glands for such a wild trip? When you think salivary glands, you might think sour. It's not sour that does it. It's something else, and it's definitely full-on sweet, and if you can describe it, then you're a good writer.

If you're growing beefsteak tomatoes without cover in the Fraser Valley, this season is turning out to be the idyll. The Fraser Valley is a notoriously difficult climate to ripen a good amount of beefsteaks to perfection on the vine. People often opt for cherry types. You can set a huge crop of beefsteaks, no problem, but getting them to ripen is the challenge. This season is not offering a challenge. For this Surrey native, it's pure magic.

My Dad died on a sunny summer September morning, almost a decade ago. And it was like the summer died all on in one day - though it didn't. The last thing he built was a solid foursquare wood frame, stapled with plastic, to protect the beefsteak tomatoes I was growing in the backyard. We were thinking of some weeks ahead, yet that very afternoon, right after we placed the mobile 'greenhouse' over the tomato vines, there was a terrific downpour; the first great rain you get after the long west coast drought.

My Dad stood at the kitchen window and he kept saying, "We built that shelter just in time!" He kept repeating this. He said it three times.

 "We built that shelter just in time!"