Pope Francis' 10 Keys to Happiness

1. "Live and let live."

2. "Be giving of yourself to others."

3. "Proceed calmly" in life.

4. Have "a healthy sense of leisure."

5. "Sunday is for family."

6. Be "creative" with young people and find innovative ways to create dignified jobs.

7. Respect and take care of nature.

8. Stop being negative. "Letting go of negative things quickly is healthy," he said.

9. "The worst thing of all is religious proselytism, which paralyzes."

10. Work for peace. "We are living in a time of many wars," he said. "The call for peace must be shouted."

Misc.

Have you ever shopped at Wal-mart? The prices are to die for! And thankfully the store practices localism, since they can be found pretty well close to neighbourhoods everywhere. There are two  about a fifteen minute drive either east or south from here. Actually there are three, including the one fifteen minutes north. That saves burning of fuel too. In fact, it's really reductive of carbon footprints because you can do pretty much all your shopping in one go - for accessories, clothes and groceries. They have everything - everything. Some Wal-marts even have a McDonald's in them! They should make a deal with Trader Joe's and incorporate Trader Joe's into Wal-mart somehow. That way fans of Trader Joe's would not need to make two stops, just one. It would also go towards healing their schizophrenia! And it would make for a more global, communal kind of peace: the latte-sucking Libertarian asking where can he find the tzatziki for his fresh-made pita bread will rub shoulders with the wife-beater-wearing fatty asking where can he find the kerosene to deal with the bed bugs under his mattress. Some people make a big fuss about Wal-mart. They say to patronize your small outlets instead, make your wallet cast a vote for the dirty hippies. But Wal-mart is so huge - and you're so puny! It won't make any difference. Think about the money you save by shopping at Wal-mart. That money can then be spent on the movie theater, with popcorn and nachos and coca-cola.

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I have become very obsessed with fig trees, with growing them, the kinds that will grow here, in the ground. You go around Vancouver and Burnaby you see the fig trees in so many yards, some quite big. There is one that local legend has it is the biggest in-ground fig tree in Canada. No winter protection. I've seen a picture of it. I can believe it is the biggest in Canada. It's huge. There really is a quiet cottage industry of fig growers here in southwest British Columbia, started of course by Italian immigrants.

I've got Negronne, Desert King, Celeste Improved and Uncle Corky's. I still need to get Lattarula, and heck, I'm just going to keep acquiring any and every variety available. Because I'm obsessed. Figs are so damn good.

So is Chilean Guava.

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How exactly is the Invisible Hand not crypto-communism?

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A person passed by and said, "That must be a labour of love."

And I forget what I said in response, except that afterwards in the useless recrimination of afterthought, I said to myself, "But you should have answered: a labour of love is the only true labour. Everything else is toil." And I would have sounded so enlightened too.

Then another passed, and said, "That must be tedious." To which I said, "It can be". Except that it was not an honest answer. For as far as the activity goes, I love it while I am resigned to it.

There are many things that do not require patience, so much as they require resignation.

Acrostic Poem: Hyssop

Hwæt! They drowse the air beside the beans,
Yielding heavy, hairy spires to the bees.
Simple, brilliant, modest colour of their blooms
Spreads a dazzling flush when teamed, bush by bush.
Opulence near escapes the eye with these!
Pure as their inner pungence, washing clean!

Desert King

Two Differences

I.

He poured his love upon the plants.
They grew before him in a trance.
When he went upon a trip,
all the plants grew deathly sick.

II.

He tended not, nor ruled a row.
Plants sprang forth without a hoe.
When he came to care and tress,
all the plants gave up their breath.

 

 

Wisdom is the first and highest gift of the Holy Spirit

Fr. Angelo M. Geiger writes in his first of a series of essays on Tolkien on Modernity:

Even religious men have lost wisdom and have failed to see that some things are greater than the sum of their parts, such as sacred scripture, the deposit of faith, the sacraments and even the liturgy. To know these things, they break them. Theirs is not the path of wisdom because the fruit of their knowledge is not freedom but control, which brings death, destruction and damnation. Tolkien called those who produced the atomic bomb “babel builders,” who hoped in vain that their creation would bring peace (Letter 102). So too, the architects of the “Church as Machine,” constructed in the service of Revolution or Counter-revolution, break the very thing they wish to reform or restore. For Tolkien the real danger was not open malice, but the self-deception of overcoming power by power. The real danger even today is the mirage of the benevolent Machine.

Saruman summarizes the argument for Gandalf thus:

“As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order, all things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak and idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means.”

This seems to be an accurate description of modernity, as well as the revolution against modernity, which by definition is “modern.” It is the spirit of the activist, the community organizer, the social engineer, the technocrat and the theocrat. All is permitted in the service of the good. This is not wisdom, but the logic of power.

Sonnet of Difference

The difference told from tares is that the wheat
wears clustered peaks of grain, apart from looks,
grow not to themselves, as those that crook
appearances - since cunning wolves can bleat -
from those they would deceive with mirror look.
Ready rather to have chaff shaken, wheat brooks
the one eternal word through summer heat
until the up-filled harvest's kingdom come.
Distinguishing is made by those who wait.
For traits that hook the eye attempt a sum
of heaven cinched, attained, to satiate.
The difference lies in what is borne and thrummed
from stalk: a falling groundward, gravid weight.

Time-Stamped