Bruce Charlton had a thought-provoking post recently which struck a chord with me. His point is that the work of Christ was to lead men out of a world of sin and death, an entropic world in which nothing lasts, into a second creation, one without rust or decay or worm or canker in which the good can build on itself ...

In the early Chapters of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus repeatedly tries to explain the nature of his 'mission' - what he brings - using a contrast between water on the one hand, and that which water becomes through following Jesus after death: spirit or some other.

More exactly; Jesus uses "water" to mean this life, this ...

'Conspiracy Theory' is correct, compared with the incoherent and non-explanatory nonsense that the world Just Happens to be driven continually in the direction of secular Leftism, generation after generation.

(e.g. The idea that sustained directionality through time in the face of entropy can be simulated by purely ...

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My original plan was to take a break from blogging and most other Internet activity during April and May and resume normal posting around now. Neither of those things ended up happening. I continued to post during my break, albeit at reduced frequency, and now that I'm supposed to be back, I'm ...

On May 27, as I was finishing George MacDonald's book At the Back of the North Wind, I took a photo of the last page but one (p. 350) because it reminded me of something that I wanted to check later. In the passage that caught my eye, the boy Diamond, at death's door, reports that he has been visited one last time by ...

Just an observation. Light-irises - i.e. blue/ grey/ green eyes seem to work best on screen (movies and TV) when it comes to acting.

Here, we need to distinguish 'actors' and stars. 'Actors' are those who are well-known for their ability to act, versus those who are known primarily for their star-quality, for their ...

'We will come', said Imrahil; and they parted with courteous words.

'That is a fair lord and a great captain of men,' said Legolas. 'If Gondor has such men still in these days of fading, great must have been its glory in the days of its rising'.

'And doubtless the good stone-work is the older and was wrought in ...

I sometimes wonder how many other people have experience of pure existential freedom; a recognition of oneself 'standing before' reality, and choosing how to regard it.

I suppose that such an experience is not universal, and used to be much rarer than it is now. Now, I suspect that such an experience is almost ...

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The boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

To controlling hands

T.S. Eliot, The WastelandWhen I was a boy there was a certain bookshop I used to love going into, down a cobbled street in ...

I regard Beethoven's Third Symphony (the Eroica) as the best Symphony ever composed; and one of the handful of best pieces of music.

But until yesterday, I didn't realize that there exists a really excellent movie (posted below) about the first rehearsal of the Eroica, during which the whole symphony is performed ...

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Not me, you fool! - I mean the broken-in-half Roman rotary-quern.

Such a quern works as described in this video. When complete, this stone would have had a hole in the top, and a hole in the side (you can see two-thirds of it at the point of breaking) which would have had a horizontal stubby ...

How do you communicate with people? It might seem obvious. You talk, you converse, you write, you debate and so on. But how do you really get through to people? Increasingly, I notice that everyone thinks what they think and hardly anyone ever changes their mind. As people think and believe radically different ...

People, including bloggers, in the mass media seem very keen on telling people-in-general to boycott some particular product or service of some specific corporation or another in response to their latest woke outrage.

This proposed boycott is presented as an opportunity to engage in a politically-effective ...

To ask what God is doing in the world - in whole or in part - is regarded as either futile or blasphemous by many/ most religious people through history - and even today.

Yet for Christians the question is (or ought to be) permissible; and through the past several generations the has indeed become unavoidable - ...

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Hardik Pandya and MS Dhoni

We have been following the Indian Premier League (IPL) over recent weeks, which is the biggest, most highly paid tournament in world cricket.

Each team has at least seven out of eleven Indian players, and the rest can be overseas signings; and IPL salaries and ...

I finished reading George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind (1870) today, that is to say, May 27. In the last few chapters, the main character, a rather otherworldly little boy named Diamond who has lived in London for almost the entire story, relocates to the countryside and acquires the habit of climbing up ...

I have been asserting for many years that motivation - the lack of it, its weakness - is the overwhelming problem in modern Western societies; and that its root is the deletion of (real) religion - which was, through recorded history, the strongest motivator of Men.

The fact that fashions and fanaticisms change so ...

In yesterday's "'Russian-reversal' consecration revisited," I discuss what I had thought was a peculiarity of Book or Mormon phraseology, but which turns out to have been used by Protestants as well. This made me think of my attempt years ago to find any non-BoM instances of the unusual construction "It supposes me ...

Things in the modern world, especially 'The West', are much-more wrong than most people (most Christians) realize - and wrong for fundamental (metaphysical) reasons.

Modern Men already (and increasingly) participate in 'making' the realities they inhabit - they co-create reality.

This has always been the case - ...

Last night I was listening to some music on YouTube, and discovered this recently uploaded (May 20) performance by the Petersens of the hymn "How Firm a Foundation":

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This surprised me because the Petersens are Protestants, and I had always thought that this was an exclusively Mormon hymn. I had ...

One of the advantages of being alive now is that we have easy access to all the religious traditions of the past. This can expand our spiritual horizons though I admit it can also lead to confusion and more breadth but less depth as we turn from one thing to another without ever fully engaging with anything. That is ...

Dissident Christian websites, are usually inhabited by pseudonymous identities (or writing as 'anonymous'), who pour scorn on useless talk, and call instead for 'action', for doing something: organizing, confronting the problem etc.

And with the implicit, when not explicit, assertion that those who 'just' try to ...

I recently finished reading The Uninscribed by Stephanie South, which left me with the feeling that there is some specific British slang expression which perfectly encapsulates her particular brand of wackiness, but I couldn't quite get it off the tip of my tongue and still can't. While I was trying to dredge it up ...

In 2011, Gareth Knight (1939-2022) published an autobiography titled I call it Magic which is easy and enjoyable to read on the surface; yet contains several deeper layers of implied content that have only revealed themselves on re-reading.

Of particular interest was his account of the transformation in his own ...

Reading books from even as recently as the early and middle 20th century, it is clear that many believed-in (or at least hoped-for) a universal and permanent 'system' of symbols - which was inferred to be rooted in an innate collective unconscious - that would reliably evoke human responses of particular types: ...

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We were up in the Rothbury Hills yesterday, and serenaded by at least four cuckoos at various points around the circuit - these being the first of the year for me.

The sound of this bird is, of course, absolutely characteristic - being a repeating and loud minor third (i.e. three semitones) ...

It is very difficult, sometimes, to avoid being gripped by fear - and by 'fear' I do not mean that acute emotion which leads to adaptive behaviours such as 'fight or flight'; but that chronic existential fear (or 'angst') which gets hold of the emotions, distorts thinking, and Will Not Let Go.

It is important to ...

This is available free from Catholic Culture Audiobooks: information, evaluation and links are at my Notion Club Papers blog.