A few days ago I ruffled some feathers by criticizing an American bishop's plea for Catholics to return to Mass now that the dreaded birdemic plague appears to be waning. The overall intent of the cursory remarks I added to the bishop's message in the post was to draw attention to the manipulative rhetorical ploys the...

I went to the Thomas Becket exhibition (as they call him now, I always thought he was Thomas a Becket) at the British Museum last week. Whilst giving a good account of its subject the exhibition wasn't quite as interesting as I'd hoped simply because there isn't that much that survives. There were some beautiful...

It seems that God wants us to strive, while mortals on earth; for higher spiritual states - for greater awareness of God, Jesus Christ, spiritual beings such as angels - and indeed for a greater sense of the aliveness and purpose of God's creation.

This; despite that we cannot (and should not) expect that our efforts...

Following some links on the Junior Ganymede led me into the world of Mormon Twitter. (I mean, I guess I knew some Mormons must be on Twitter, but I'd never really thought about it before.) I quickly discovered that Dallin H. Oaks is extremely popular with the #DezNat set and extremely unpopular with "progressive"...

A hobbit in a library...I have often wondered how many people read the Prologue: concerning Hobbits, which comes before Chapter 1 of The Lord of the Rings.

This gives-away a good deal of the coming story, by implication at least - and it is surely a very strange way to approach a fiction via some 20 pages of...

A real book, owned by my brother; not from a dreamCucurbits are members of the family Cucurbitaceae, including gourds, melons, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, etc. (This post has nothing to do with the book shown above; I just love the fact that it exists.)

⁂

Sinawava's watermelons

In a June 11 post, I mentioned a...

What does it mean to say that society has changed because consciousness has evolved? It means that societal changes have come about because of an internal change, a change in how human beings think, feel, and understand.

Most discussions about changes in society refer to external forces such as changes in...

Chapter 1: [1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] The same was in the beginning with God. [3] All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. [4] In him was life; and the life was the light of men. [5] And the light shineth in...

The power of television advertising for my generation can be seen by the associations it makes.

The River Tyne (which runs just a mile and a half from where I write) is famous both for heavy industry at its estuary (coal exports from Medieval times, ship-building later); and for salmon fishing in its scenic upper...

The synchronicity fairies have been drawing my attention to the biblical Book of Joel recently, as I mentioned in my post on last month's lunar eclipse:

The lunar eclipse ("blood moon") made me think of this solar eclipse, and the combination of the two made me think of the second chapter of Joel: "The sun shall be...

The collected letters of CS Lewis, edited by Walter Cooper, are in three volumes - and the first two volumes - which span from Lewis's childhood to 1949 are the best. After Lewis became famous; most of his correspondence was with people he did not know well (or at all); and these later letters are therefore mostly...

Ahasuerus at the End of the World - Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl - 1888 An interesting choice of subject for the Hungarian painter Hirémy-Hirschl, who was a Jewish convert to Christianity.Heavily symbolic in its composition, the painting depicts the final steps of the Wandering Jew, a mythical figure cursed to...

Like most people, I have muscae volitantes ("floaters") in my vitreous humor, and I have been aware of them from a very early age. Noticing floaters is apparently rare enough that there is a medical term for it: myodesopsia; for the non-noticers among my readers, they look like little transparent wormy things that...

In the Vedic culture of ancient India life was divided into four stages known as ashramas. These stages were Brahmacharya, Grihastha, Vanaprastha and Sannyasa and they corresponded to the student, the married man with family, retirement and gradual withdrawal from worldly affairs, and then complete detachment from...

Francis Berger is himself a Roman Catholic - but his most recent post - which is a point by point response to a Bishop's call for Catholics to return to mass - would also apply to Eastern Orthodox and Anglo Catholics.

It is a very powerful, heart-felt and angry response to his church's response to the birdemic; and...

I was going to be in a movie written and directed by a friend (no one I know in real life), and we were talking about it beforehand. All I remember is this little exchange:

"I hope you don’t expect me to deliver lines like 'I would never say that, wink wink, judge judge.'"

"That was an email, not the...

​Warning: The following post is severely critical of System Christianity, more specifically, the Catholic Church. If you are a true believing System Christian of any denomination or a Catholic who still maintains some sense of loyalty to the Church (despite everything), you'd be better off skipping this post and...

Lying is evil. But there is an 'obvious' way that lying is pragmatically evil; and this should not be confused with an 'absolute' way that lying is spiritually evil.

First of all - in 'lying' is included all forms of dishonesty, untruthfulness and misleading - for example misleading by partial, selective, distorted...

Empty interior of the abandoned Kirtland Temple

A recessional is a closing hymn, marking the end of a church service. It is also the title of Rudyard Kipling's inspired poem of 1897, which -- although it is about the British Empire, written at its height and prescient of its end -- has long been part of the Mormon...

Although the specific meanings of life are specific to specific persons (each in their specific situation) - there is a metaphysical level of understanding of why there is illness, and why there is ageing - and what their functions are, in a general sense.

At an ultimate level; this reality (incarnate mortal life on...

Leonid Ilyukhin, Apollo and Dionysus (click to enlarge)

In "Scattered thoughts on the Ganymede model," I wrote:

The Birth of Tragedy . . . made me realize that another famous Nietzschean dichotomy may also be relevant: Apollinisch vs. Dionysisch. Isn't it obvious that Apollo is Devic/Ahrimanic in nature, while...

I've spent the last few days working in my yard and helping my father renovate the house he bought in the village. During this time, I barely gave any thought to the birdemic, or the 2020 global coup, or the peck, or any other Satanic evil. Yes, my father talked about these things a little here and there as we knocked...

Three lost Christian writings which would be interesting to read are the books of Hegesippus and Papias, as well the Acts of Pilate. The Acts of Pilate was an account that Pilate wrote of the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus and sent to the emperor Tiberius. There is an apocryphal document with that...

Here comes a big generalization...

We can divide a long and archetypal human life into three phases of 1. childhood, followed by 2. single adulthood then 3. marriage and parenthood (shortly after which, in most traditional societies, came death).

Indeed, we can divide life into just two phases - family, and...

The latest installment in my notes on the Fourth Gospel is up at Fourth Gospel Blog.

Blogger "seriouslypleasedropit" has joined-together the textual clues, and came up with what seems like the true explanation (slightly edited):The eponymous Mr. Norrell is a somewhat timid creature—a landed country squire, ever a bachelor, who likes nothing better than sitting in a corner reading a book, and is...

The latest stats from Taiwan:

2019:Total deaths from flu and pneumonia: 15,715Average deaths per day: 43

2021:Total birdemic-attributed deaths so far: 260Average deaths per day so far: 2Average deaths in the last 7 days: 22Additional deaths needed to beat 2019: 15,455Average deaths needed per day for the rest of the...

Over at Winking Back from the Dark, I review Whitley Strieber's latest book, which is about Jesus. This will be of general interest to my Christian readers, not only to fellow Strieber enthusiasts.

In this stage of human consciousness; we create reality by choice. The choice is inescapable - although it can be (usually is) denied.

Thus people talk all the time (incessantly, but dishonestly) about the importance of facts ('fact-checking'), evidence (evidence-based') and objectivity ('real world') - while their...

One of the greatest problems in the modern world is the absence of virtue. This is more subtle than the obvious abundance of vice. One reason is because it is an absence rather than a presence. It is apparent if something happens that should not, but what if something that should happen does not? That is much...