A little forest was torn up to build some boring sports complex/ice arena. While the immediate ruins lie, amid the mud and unearthed roots, greenfast starts again; even saplings come, as the site hangs briefly in suspension.

That is an image of time: the lowly green coming on between the wreckage without bewailing, as if no venerable forest was destroyed in a day. That is the quickness the forest had all along, when one would have called the forest old.

This is why certain memories can seem older and further away than others, though sequentially they are not ordered so. The event of one memory will seem far away which happened at a more recent date, while one that is sequentially older seems more recent: because there are certain points in time - like a time of crisis or a time of particular peace - that are an aggregation of previous points of time. This aggregation reveals those old memories in a new way, rather than making all those memories older. And the only time this happens is in the present.

It shows that we are born of suffering, and more often than not, we die from pleasure, or at least pleasure passes, and passing, becomes old. A time of trial though sends one bounding away from that point in time at a certain soaring rate, plumb into the present, which puts recent memories further away than older memories, while the older ones gain a newness.

While people like to say that time flows, the truer statement is that time aggregates.

One of the deepest things that T.S. Eliot wrote: "The past is about to happen."

The crucifixion that took place on Calvary is present on the altar when the consecration of the bread and wine takes place. No pious posturing necessary: you are present at Calvary and the Last Supper. This is the Bread of Life. This, and only this, truly fills you, moves, animates, brings joy and peace to you, beyond all understanding. And not for a moment only, but for your lifelong journey that is your life.

The power of absolution, the washing away of your sins, in a concrete moment in time, the forgiveness that Christ already won for you applied now in the present, after which you are a new creation, is the light in which you see your sins and past truly - in the soothing consolation of God's absolution.

I remember once driving with my Dad along some country road and I imagined in the forests we were passing, two companions walking. One of them was a priest, and at certain points, the man would make confession to the priest, and they would then carry on, till again, they would stop and the man would yet again make confession; over logs and creeks and around trees, they went forward as new creations, until yet again they would stop and the man would again make confession, and so on, and on; and every time they stopped, all time previous aggregated, and then unfolded as they went forward; and this never became tired to them.

On the contrary, their going forward like this was the very healing of time itself.

Thought for a day; thought for a lifetime

Your duties are a way out.

Love Philip Glass

Listen to all those bitty pieces working together.

Hand from gurney

Satire

I've been revisiting SCTV. I watched it quite a bit through high school and a little while thereafter. Its got me thinking about satire and what makes it good and what makes it not so good. One of the reasons I've been thinking about it is because I was equally acquainted with Monty Python, both the show and the films, but I never found them funny, never got them, in spite of trying. I had friends who were total Monty Python geeks and I wanted to get it, but didn't. But I found SCTV very funny, and sometimes found it so funny the show seemed a miracle.

I'm pretty sure this is what makes good satire: the one wielding the scalpel can wield it, by necessity, only from the source of some initial openness that is uncomfortable because it is a place of anticipated humiliation, and the anticipation is already humiliating. It can't be conjured. Evelyn Waugh was such a great satirist because he had this ability, which within the satirist feels like a disability. You see it especially in the acting of John Candy. I watched an interview of him on Letterman in which he seems to be painfully aware that he's starting to come across as a bore, and suddenly, almost in spite of himself, he turns it into a source of laughter for the audience. It's like he didn't even need to try. He was just funny. Joe Flaherty and Martin Short were also great in this regard. Those three guys were just so damn funny.

Monty Python always seemed too easy, too towering, too one-sided, too overbearing. SCTV though had a certain light regard that was a two-way scalpel. That special zone they were able to create, light as a feather, was like an endless progenitor of cutting satire that was deadly funny yet didn't injure. And that's the greatest laughter. The more it cuts, the more the healing laugh, and vice versa.

Today there is absolutely no good satire whatsoever - at least not mainstream. Certainly there are good comedians out there. Kevin O'Brien is one actor/satirist who I find very funny. But mainstream like the way SCTV was mainstream, there is nothing. All of it is just a competition to see who can out-vulgarize the other.

I wonder what that says.

Protection

The issue of protection has faded from the economics discussion because we have lost the shrewdness of our ancestors. One of the primary purposes of government is to protect the people, to protect the common good. The notion that the economy is not used to determine the well-being and moral state of a people - or to put it another way - that grave evil and harm cannot take root in a people through their economy, is very foolish.

The ancients recognized it, but the idol of the Free Market today keeps people blinded and bound. Our ancestors of long ago and not-so-long-ago had no problem stating that the private monopolization of the economy has very detrimental effects on human life all the way around. They had no problems stating so while being free from the armchair alarmism that pontificates at every drop of the hat about the threat of socialist doctrine that reduces man to a part completely determined by the economy. That's because our ancestors retained a capacity for shrewdness.

But among the conservative circles today cowed into unthinking deductionism by the hyper-inflated threat of socialism repeat the same old formulas about the free market and inflation and taxes and the gold standard and the invisible hand (lol), and there is a level of cupidity there that is really astounding.

It used to be the Manichean Bogeyman

But that's passe.

"I see Ultramontanists."

We got a real good show for you today

Canada produces 90% of the world's mustard

from which you have your condiments.

You're welcome.

God gave us ten commandments

But the transgender police give us over 70 and counting.

Narcissism is the narcotic that gets injected through the tender skins of children via the gender-bending social engineers of whom the words of Jesus apply:

It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.

One is born a boy or a girl. And that you are born one or the other is a beautiful unfathomable mystery. God knows you by name.

Christianity says one is born already a kind of masterpiece.

This age of narcissism says one is born indeterminably of no value other than as a number, as something to be consumed.

God gives one an identity that is forever.

This age gives one an identity that is already wasted.

That's all the transgender-queer pantheon is about - the destruction of identity, at the heart of which is narcissism. But behind that yet is the spiritual - and that is something so hateful that if one were to catch a glimpse of it even for a second, one's life would become totally blighted.

The reason is because that something is a demon of hate. It has nothing to do with sex and sexuality. Behind it all is a demon of such hate that a person with the wildest imagination could not begin to conceive how hateful.

That is the reason why if you were to have a glimpse of this demon for one second you would be incapable of getting out of bed in the morning, and would likely die in your bed, as everything you know and live for would have been totally blighted.

The world applauds the fake compassion that ushers in this destructive hate into the lives of children.

"That which"

High time to get rid of this stupid combo. Even in the ranks of the great theologians and philosophers it is barely passable. Just replace it with "what". The English language can be so retarded. I don't know if the equivalent of this retarded insufficiency exists in other languages, like Latin and so forth, but I wouldn't be surprised. We are so limited.

...that calls for another way of living

Heart Pope Francis so much