Thanks Jim Unger

for the many, many laughs...

 

 

 

 

(Click to enlarge)

Still Life with Spike and Candle

Still Life with spike and candle

11 inches x 14 inches

Oil on Canvas

Medium: Pencils

Some quotes

"Another important thing is personal appearance. And I would say that any priest who says the contrary is a bad adviser. As years go by a woman who lives in the world has to take more care not only of her interior life, but also of her looks.

Her interior life itself requires her to be careful about her personal appearance; naturally this should always be in keeping with her age and circumstances. I often say jokingly that older facades need more restoration. It is the advice of a priest. An old Spanish saying goes: ‘A well-groomed woman keeps her husband away from other doors.’

That is why I am not afraid to say that women are responsible for eighty per cent of the infidelities of their husbands because they do not know how to win them each day and take loving and considerate care of them. A married woman’s attention should be centered on her husband and children, as a married man’s attention should be centered on his wife and children. Much time and effort is required to succeed in this, and anything which militates against it is bad and should not be tolerated.

There is no excuse for not fulfilling this lovable duty. Work outside the home is not an excuse. Not even one’s life of piety can be an excuse, because if it is incompatible with one’s daily obligations, it is not good, nor pleasing to God. A married woman’s first concern has to be her home. There is a Spanish saying which goes: ‘If through going to church to pray a woman burns the stew, she may be half an angel, but she’s half a devil too.’ I’d say she was a fully-fledged devil." --(Conversations with Saint Josemaria Escriva, 107)

A quote I read at Abbey-Roads.

"You allege that you never invite others to sin. You did not by your tongue, but you have done it by your dress and deportment more effectively than you could by your voice. When you have made another to sin in his heart, how can you be innocent? You sharpened and drew the sword. You gave the thrust by which the soul is wounded. "Tell me whom does the world condemn? Whom do judges punish? Those who drink the poison, or those who prepare and give the fatal draught? You mingled the execrable cup; you administered the potion of death. You are so much more criminal than poisoners, as the death which you cause is the more terrible; for you murder not the body, but the soul. "Nor do you do this to enemies: not compelled by necessity nor provoked by any injury; but out of a foolish vanity and pride. You sport yourselves in the ruin of the souls of others, and make their spiritual death your pastime." --St. John Chrysostom on Immodest Women

A quote I read at Laudem Gloriae

I will continue to receive on the tongue

This evening a priest used Christ's words about no longer calling His disciples servants but friends, and turned them into the difference between those who receive communion in their hands and those who receive on their tongues.

After introducing the reception issue, he said that those who receive Him in their hands can be likened to those who respond to Christ as His friend; and then he said something that was rather nasty: to paraphrase, he said those who receive Him on their tongues should not feel obligated to change to receiving Him in their hands just because of what he - the priest - said, and that they should continue to receive Him on their tongues as they have been receiving - but those who hear that music in their hearts should respond as Christ's friends. He introduced all of this by stating there are two stages in relation to Christ, and that we need to move beyond the first, which is that of servant, and go to that of friend.

So my reception of Christ on my tongue means I'm immature, and an encumbered servant who can't get past servitude to friendship.

And it was all worded in such a way as to sound like he was saying something absolutely the opposite of the implications in the above sentence. The implications would dawn on one only when gathering up in retrospect the various "structures" of his words, each structure built without finality before going on to another seemingly different structure, but when all of them are brought together, a final statement is made indeed, and all the more deadly for being unspoken. And so softly and gently too.

Ugh! Those Disgusting People!

People across the internet - which is to say, across the world - are showing their disgust and outrage over pills smuggled from China that contain the powdered flesh of aborted babies. Those disgusting people, they say in the comment boxes, and those disgusting people who consume them - so stupid - believing such things will cure them or keep them young! Outraged! Horrified! Disgusted!

But fetal cells to grow our vaccines and make anti-wrinkle creams and cosmetics and fetal cells for Senomyx to develop better-tasting food, and embryonic stem cells for endless research and fetal tissue transplants to treat things like Parkinson's - who are you to deny anyone that? Now just you shut up about that! For that is the true fountain of youth that will cure us and keep us young! Not like those barbarians!

We've made our plank to the dimensions of infinity.

Because we are so smart, decent and don't want to do no harm to no one.

Medium: Pencils 2H and B and charcoal

Medium: Pencils H, 2B and 3H or it might have been 2H

Medium: 2B Pencil

Medium: 2B Pencil

To be honest...

I rather prefer The Goonies Day.






And George, Han shot first.

And you bloody well know it.

The Daylight Moon

The Daylight Moon is a film that was made in 1992 about Les Murray, the Australian poet. It features him speaking about his life and his country and him reciting his poetry overlaid with images of his country. Here is a 14 minute excerpt from the film. Though some of the images used for the recitals match too obviously with some of the words, this beginning excerpt makes me want to watch the whole thing.