Sometimes I think the greatest stretch of belief for people today has to do with the most basic realization and acceptance that the problems, the darkness, the confusions in their lives, stem from very specific decisions they made and very specific things they more or less immersed themselves in, either in the not-too-distant past, or way back once upon a time. Things that appear to them as little things. They cannot even make the connection when these decisions are occurring in the present.

To realize that:

--no, it is not that you have problems/struggles with lust which causes or weakens you to look at pornography, but that you have problems with lust precisely because you are looking at pornography/reading pornographic material - or more specifically, because you made a decision at one point to look at pornography/read pornographic material. You became its sowing bed, its slave; there is no "struggle" in fact; and the materialization of your decision in conjunction with that material is so actual and so real that even after you stop looking at those images, they will continue for some while to emerge in your mind and influence your very body;

--that the things you do, say, think, look at, read, hear, go toward incarnating in this world, beginning with the world of your own heart, either light or darkness, good or evil, which gives birth to fruit according to its own kind, and this becomes concrete, evidential, actual in your own life and the lives of others;

--and that no one is exempt from this inevitable transpiration in which the decision of the will becomes actual fruition;

For many people today, to see that this basic transpiration in their personal lives is for real - like realizing how venial sin can lead to mortal sin, and the way mortal sin produces spiritual death, which leads to a plethora of rotten fruits - strikes them like they just saw a wooly mammoth or a sabre-toothed tiger jump out of the woods. Like they saw something living and breathing and all-too-real from an age they never experienced; and in a sense they didn't experience it, for they were blind at the time.

Some of it comes, to my thinking, from a sort of gluttonous appetite for enjoying one's own problems - I almost want to say one's own cliches; a sort of anti-confession that serves to aggregate the filth around one as a sort of concentration of loose coal into impervious diamond. Which stems from atomization of the individual - or simply put, individualism.

This is one of the reasons why I'm wary of the seemingly intellectually vigorous discussion about 50 Shades of Grey like it was some kind of amazing phenomenon come down to us from the remotest regions of the cosmic world. Suddenly it's an incarnation of a culture sick for the alpha male, and it's like Walter White, and blah, blah, blah - and no, it has to do with Islam which means "submit" and blah, blah, blah - and no, it has to do with generations that were never disciplined as children and now they're seeking it out in sick and twisted ways and blah, blah, blah.

Yes, are you enjoying it?

It somehow also reminds me of an article written by a priest that I read a while back. He described how a husband was talking to him about his temper. Referring to his bad temper, the husband said, "I guess it's just the cross that I have to bear."

To which the priest said, "Well, no, actually. It's a cross your wife has to bear."

Enjoying it?

All of this - do not doubt for a second - is costing somebody something, somewhere, at some time, in some way.

And the cost ain't enjoyable.

February

In last year's leaves an oak is clouded.
In soporose russet houses
the stars pulsating on cold air.

More than the wind-picked branches,
poplars whistling as a strand of whale ribs;
more than the thick wall laurel, holly, pine,

this cyning slæping, refuses both
donning and doffing to season's timeline,
never punctuated, but slipping note;

limbo limb and leaf 'til, passing him by,
the fallow chapters of spent foliage
dry in void winter, rattle, rattle,

as of a vein of might whose roots
speak through dried up scales, air-shared
its in-rings, not bared, but mute

a whole night's partaking, of good repute.

"For the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of." --Ephesians, 5:12

So I guess that's an epic fail for all the Christians who latched onto the 50 Shades of Bait machine? A great opportunity for discussion and spreading the Gospel? LOL.

I'm not sure, but since the so-called public square is demarcated more and more by the pathological as a strict rule, the fact that one is speaking truth in this arena seems to not only matter little, but one seems to be casting pearls before swine. For you have given assent to their pathological grounds as an a priori for discussion. And, moreover, you are depriving a culture of life which is seeking fruition through you; in other words, one is lacking in faith. And thus lacking, one is ripe for the illusion that one is really engaging in a real battle by addressing such things as the aforementioned pathological artifact soon to be tossed onto the garbage heap of history. Sometimes silence is golden.

I tend to have an over-sensitivity, but still, when reading through some articles and blog posts, I've just had to stop reading, saying, "Do you not see that the trade-off here is simply not worth it?" One blogger even posted the original movie poster as the header image in his post. Not that the image is terribly explicit, by today's standards, but still. How does that help things? I thought to myself. I guess it's a way of getting people to read your post? Which is rather cheap.

"Give not that which is holy to dogs; neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and turning upon you, they tear you." --Matthew, 7:6

The last part of that teaching often goes unquoted:

lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and turning upon you, they tear you. 

Mull those words in your mind; think about the meaning of each word. This teaching of Christ is actually very positive and not, in fact, sectarian - or stand-offish, which is precisely what one would accuse me of with this post, I'm sure. I sometimes chuckle when picturing what a run-in between a Catholic today and the first Christians would look like, and how utterly sectarian they would appear to us. But their sensitivity was owing to the fact that they had such superabundant life. They knew how precious was every moment. They knew how dark was the darkness. We today, not so much.We tend to be rather dulled.

Remember that Jesus spoke in response to the Pharisees; He spoke in response to Pontius Pilate; but He was completely silent in response to Herod.

If you don't agree with me, then at least take this as a warning to keep in the back of your mind.

One of the most pleasant things is to dig over last year's dried, brittle bean plants. As you turn the earth they break apart easily, their pieces mixing with the soil, and you can hear the worms saying thank you. Never pull up bean plants once they are spent, if you can help it. Leave them over winter. And if they have been pulled up, then let them sit there in the garden. Till them under come late winter/early spring. They make a really nice clean fodder for the dirt that won't interfere with the sowing of new things.

Another really pleasant thing is digging up the the garlic, just sprouting green, and moving them to another location in the garden. This is something you can get away with into early spring. The earth smell - wet but not too wet - earth that has not been turned for a year, in the sunlight, in the mild weather, and the faint odour of the garlic bulbs.

Another really pleasant thing is to brush against the thyme and hyssop, their green winter colour not looking too shabby at all, especially the thyme, and they still give off their pungent aroma; to brush the sage and rosemary, grey-green in their winter colour, and they still give off their pungent aroma; to clip the dead flower stalks of the oregano and wild bee balm, and they still give off their pungent aroma.

Time-stamp repeat

From some of the best "time-stamping" of youtube videos I ever did (from this post):




LOL!






Yes. Right. Of course. The mega text.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

First Effect

The first effects of the blood of Christ on Calvary were manifest to those who were absorbed in the recognition of who it was that was dying on the cross. There was something like the startling recognition of a great, long lost friend - or brother. Moved to pity, and refusing to deny truth revealed in love crucified, they allowed their hearts to be moved in tender and fervent proclamation, in confession, and in penitence. They allowed their heretofore self-occupied and set assumptions about the world, in a moment, to roll away into the scraggly bushes shivering on the hillside. Even while the recognition was not entirely articulate to them, the good thief St. Dismas recognized Christ the Innocent Victim; the centurion St. Longinus recognized Christ the Priest and King. They were instantly converted. One of them was the first mortal to enter Paradise.

But those people absorbed in the demand for concrete, watertight, objective, working evidence of effects and results, of the assurance of their own tests being requited, of valid credentials necessitating the truth of the Messiah come in the flesh, were those who derided Christ, saying to Him, "If you are the Son of God then come down from the cross and save yourself."

And so it is to this very day.

Heresy has eternal consequences

In times of relative comfort the Devil does everything to make a person presume on God's mercy. In times of hardship he does everything to make a person despair of it.

Thus transpires in practice the typical narrative of universalism: a soul goes through life shirking any compunction towards his sins, having no remorse towards lost opportunities of grace, indifferent to the defacing and dirtying of the image of God in his soul, the desecrating of the presence of the Holy Trinity in his soul; and then when mortality calls, through various factors - disease, age, injury - the Devil does an about-face and makes the soul despair for all that has been lost; he displays this lifelong loss in an eternal panorama before the despairing soul, and he makes the soul blaspheme God and revile Him.

I suppose only in an age addicted to comfort and mammon could universalism take root?

Time-stamped

Resurrection of the Dead, By Max Beckmann

The Supreme Court of Canada is a damn mockery. Under the guise of the rule of law it turns over laws; it decides that laws, foundational laws, suddenly no longer mean anything; that laws are arbitrary - by their "rules". They themselves thus become the only absolute law.

The fact that more and more we are inundated with bureaucratic petty rules like extensive no-smoking zones around the perimeters of buildings and so forth while the very laws of human life - which are not arbitrary, for human life is sacred - are simply "removed", or done away with, which is ultimately to pretend they are abolished by enforcing a damn lie that we can actually do such things, when we can't - this fact, this starkly amazing insanity doesn't really seem to dawn on people today. It doesn't make them stop for a second to think about what is going on. For people today it is nothing more than another animal motion - it's simply amoral. It's just some kind of amorphous progression. Like the way fornication is viewed today: it's just an amoral animal motion. Kicking a puppy will land you in trouble with the authorities. Smash some eagle eggs and it's to the gulag for you. But deciding that killing someone who wants to be killed is now suddenly "legal" - that's just, you know, just decided: they decided amorally that it is an amoral decision concerning a matter that is entirely amoral. It is amoral because we are amoral (or at least we would like to pretend); we are neither moral or immoral; we are amoral, like walking across a busy street while looking at your smart phone is just an amoral animal motion. Or like taking a selfie. And you vil take ze selfie or vee vil beat your ass with ze selfie stick!

So watch out, boys and girls. They could decide at some point that you need "terminal assistance". By what standards? Well, glad you asked: their own standards. They are the Supreme Court after all. Their boundless compassion will go so far as to insure you are not burdening the economy by going without terminal assistance. No, every person deserves to receive their compassion!

How did our country ever get along without their mighty and far-reaching latter-day benevolent rulings? We've been bound hand and foot until these former lawyers came along and donned flowing robes. Oh, the pain is ending! The Supreme Court is here! Hurray! The former lawyers, present-day bureaucrats Nine Supreme Judges have ushered in our deliverance from suffering! Yay! Time for our happy pills! Now that the Supreme Court has bowed to their faceless masters, it's time to roll the media machine into gear to whip those politicians of Parliament into place!