Rochester Chesterton Conference

A visit from GK?

It is good to be king

There are tremendous trifles, (you know like the solar system and such) and then there are trifles that are tremendous like becoming Home Coming King. My number 2 son was crowned king last night. Eleven years ago my number 1 son was crowned king.

My number 1 son opened the door for a new era. Out of the fifteen previous years he was the first nonjock to be king. For those of you still familiar with High School life that is big deal. Many were in an uproar that power was taken by the geeks, freaks and nerds and they have held sway ever since.

My number 2 son is not a jock yet he is king. Now that makes me a king maker.

You may send me tribute.

And yes that is a cheerleader hugging him.

Rochester Chesterton Conference

The Rochester Chesterton Conference is tomorrow. I am looking forward to it - see some of you there!

There is a genre of movies called Catholic movies. This is usually meant to be a put down or for audiences who can’t “think for themselves.”.
This was not always the case. There was a time when Catholic movies were just called movies. This past weekend I saw the original 1951 version of Angels in the Outfield. The same basic plot line as the Disney version except the original was from the adult view point and was saturated with Catholic imagry. It is an enjoyable film. Then again it came out in a time when Bing Crosby was everybodies favorite priest. It was also the time when Archbishop Fulton John Sheen began his TV show to become one of the most watched shows of that era.

It’s not that Catholic movies are not being made and done well but it is not the norm and it’s hard to get widespread distribution. An exception is the work of Roland Joffé (who gave us The Mission) now comes out with There Be Dragons.

(From Studio synopsis) There Be Dragons follows the story of controversial Opus Dei founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, in a sympathetic portrayal of the Catholic organization, bravely contradicting the sentiment set by Dan Browns The Da Vinci Code.
In this action-packed film, Director Roland Joffe surrounds the priest with fictional characters and deals with universal themes of love, betrayal and redemption.

A sympathetic portrayal of the Catholic organization, shows you that that the studios lack any knowledge of faith and are suspect that anything can good come out of it.

If this is as good as some of his other films it should start some interesting discussions

Get your game on

With my tongue firmly thrust into my cheek I mentioned that in the future school teaching and testing will be done with video games. Well not so fast white boy this seems to be a good idea as a teaching tool. The premis is this, a dozen biochemists may take decades to solve a problem but a million people working on the same problem would take far less time. Enter stage right - Foldit.

Foldit is a new on-line game to teach how proteins work, with levels of play from novice to expert. As you work through each level you learn more and get a better and better at understanding on how proteins work. Scientists, through the magic of cyber space keep track of what is going on.

The co-creator of Foldit, Professor ZORAN POPOVIC, says “ This game is basically enticing huge number of people around the world to solve one of the deep scientific problems in biochemistry that pretty much has to do with the way the life functions. So what Foldit is trying to do is trying to merge computers and people together
to solve a very hard scientific problem that neither computers nor people alone can solveby themselves. ”

This is pretty cool stuff.

A message for England

Once it is baptised a country, like an individual, can never cease to be Catholic it can only cease to be itself. - from "Laodicea a filthy puddle of popery"

Sounds like something Chesterton could have said.

Eat em up yum

Food has always been the center of my family life or at the very least it is the kitchen where my family was FAMILY. As a boy my Dad would cook up some sauce when ever he was nervous (when my brothers and I were teenagers there was a lot of sauce) and when ever he was joyous.
The former calmed and centered him the latter was how he shared that joy.

Cooking brought us into the kitchen. He would have mom taste the sauce to see if it needed anything. Then we would all test it. He would have one of us kids assist him in making the meat balls The size of tennis balls) or what ever he needed. Mom would make the bread and the pasta. My parents always cooked as a team and it was fun to watch them share a spoon. Nearly every dinner was an event and did not end until the last dish was dried and put away. On weekends this event began shortly after breakfast.

No visitor ever left my dads house hungry.

Much of this model I follow today.

My dad also had a rule: You do not come to any meal with a frown on your face. (very Franciscan of him).

Of course we Catholics understand the importance of the shared family meal. And every sunday we say "Happy are those who are called to his supper."

Here is a priest that combines the joy of the family meal in the Lords house and the Domestic Church.

The Liberace museum closes?!?! OH the Humanity!

I mean really a Catholic Archbishop having the nerve to insist that Catholic rites be... well... Catholic.

In the blink of an eye.

Happy Birthday Mario

“It is only we who play badly who love the game itself,” GKC

9.11

Big picture:
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." GKC

A picking from the big picture:
"One could assume that many ordinary Catholics dispensed with the teachings on sex and marriage during the turbulent 1960s for the simple reason that these teachings are difficult to live -- that they require, for some of us, a degree of self-control and selflessness that is beyond ordinary means." Erika Bachiochi

Tools for Manly Men

Football season is here (yea!) and the boys will coming over to watch the game.

You will have to feed them.

If you are like me you also like working around the kitchen but don't want to look like a wus when you do it.

You bring out your freshly made chicken ranch and bacon pizza and strawberry chocolate bunt cake but before they can call you Sally McFancypants you whip out your new pizza circular saw and cross cut saw and they will know they are in the presence of a real manly man.


Kitchen gadgets for men - what fun.

Revisiting Anne

To Hate is easy - To Love is hard. It is easy to lash out at 'stupid' instead of instructing, a fault I am guilty of. Recently I did this with the Anne Rice apostasy.

Those who hate search out those who will confirm them in their hate and bigotry instead of those who will challenge it. This is, of course, why news outlets seek out stories of hate - they are easy to find and easy to talk about. Since MSM hates Christians, Catholic Christians in particular, they used Anne to confirm their hate and give proof to their bigotry.

["It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong." GKC]

Robert Lockwood put it nicely when he said, "We live in a world where media reflect the prejudices of the times. Frankly, media have always done that. The image portrayed of Catholics — anti-science, anti-gay, anti-humanism, even anti-Democrat — fits a preconceived bigotry, a picture of Catholics that has nothing to do with the reality of who Catholics are and what they believe.

There are two unfortunate results to Anne Rice’s public departure from the faith: she gave another excuse, as if media needs one, for their preconceived bigotry, and she is no longer with us.

We need to respond to the first. We need to pray for the second."

He also answers each of her objections. We should all have these answers at hand because Anne is not the only one who is a wondering sheep.

The most important question we need to ask is "Who was pasturing her?" The problem with us Catholics is that once a soul has entered or reentered the Church we leave these young ones alone and think everything is going to go fine. We need to stay with them until they they get their adult teeth and become meat eaters.

Bigotry of Christians is the one thing being taught by the media because we are in the way and we just won't shut-up. Yes we are carefully taught.

Burning books (with paper roses)

Rumor has it that that Florida pastor originally planned to burn copies of the Book of Mormon, but decided against it when the Osmonds threatened to perform a free concert in retaliation.

Teachable Moment

The joke used to go like this:
What do call a medical student that graduates at the bottom of his class?

Doctor.

Now the answer is an abortionist.
Much scarier and no longer funny

safe, legal and rare. Yea right.

oh yea and, 'why is it amazing that somebody who kills babies for a living is a liar as well.'

-------------
A lost thing could I never find;
Nor a broken thing mend.
And I fear I shall be all alone
When I get to the end.
O who will there be to comfort me,
O who will be my friend?

H. Belloc

Clerihew: Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck
said, "What the heck.
I can make a lot of money
pretending to like Tea."

More News From The Big Heads

The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded.

The scientist has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed.

In his latest book, The Grand Design, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

Hmmmmm. If there is gravity then there is something - right??? And where did the gravity come from? Also doctor, since I only have a little head, please explain how something can come from nothing when in science 101 we learned only nothing can come from nothing. Are you saying that the Universe willed itself into being if so where did the will come from? Or should I say from whom?

Least we get discouraged there is beauty, truth and joy in this world. And on this Labor Day many paticipate in the labor of Love.

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”

Notre Dame Fires Only Senior Official Who Opposed Obama Speech

We have met the enemy and dey be us

Thought I Was Joking?

It seems that the current administration, with its unlimited funds to change everything for the good, is going to redesign standardized tests to help the 'i-don't-give-a-crap' students who are now called students with learning differences.

Christina Samuels writes in her "On Special Education" blog for Education Week (9/3) that Secretary Duncan "made several direct references to what these new tests may mean for students with learning differences." That's because "all English language learners and students with disabilities will take the new assessments, with the exception of the 1 percent of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities." In his speech, Duncan indicated "he has pretty high hopes" for the tests because they incorporate "smart technology."

Another word for smart technology is video games.

other articles here and here

"But the Church is not a movement but a meeting-place; the trysting-place of all the truths in the world." - GKC

And it is a healing-place

the new morality

Two men wearing tennis whites walk out on the court. Opening a folding table and chairs, they sit down and start to play chess. An attendant rushes up and says, "Sorry, gentlemen, this place is for tennis. You can't do that here." Looking up with a scowl, one of the men snaps, "This is how we play tennis. We have a right."

Standard tests

During the 09-10 school year my job was to tutor high schoolers to help them pass their state graduate exam. If they do not pass this exam they do not graduate.

These standard exams have been a source of controversy since they started especially in the reading comprehension category. A few years back many were saying that they favored white people then it was since they were only in English they discriminated against Latinos, teachers are lambasted for only teaching to the the test – on and on.

Since this was my job to help these kids I have read a lot of these short stories, poems and essays. Most of them are banal. The latest controversy is that they favor Islam and put down Christianity.

‘The most troubling passage came from Daniel Roselle's "A World History: A Cultural Approach," observers said. The passage reads: "Wherever they went, the Moslems [sic] brought with them their love of art, beauty and learning. From about the eighth to the eleventh century, their culture was superior in many ways to that of western Christendom."
Meanwhile, an excerpt listing the common procedures used by Christian friars to introduce the religion in Latin America stated that "idols, temples and other material evidences of paganism [were] destroyed," and "Christian buildings [were] often constructed on sites of destroyed native temples" -- and built with free Indian labor, to boot. ‘

Keep in mind that within one hour after taking these tests the kids cannot remember what was in them.

The thing that jumped out at me in this is that the reporter did not mention that the best of the Muslim culture Roselle could come up with happened 1000 years ago and the worst thing the Christians did happened 500 years ago.

As mentioned earlier, students have to pass this test to graduate - well that is only partially true. Any student who has been diagnosed with ANY TYPE of learning disability at any time in their school life does not have to pass so they just do not give a crap.

And that attitude is growing throughout the whole of the public school student body and these tests now discriminate against them. Fortunately the Media is now picking up on this.


In The Know: Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit?

Religon in the Modern World

This video has been making the rounds so I hesitated in putting it here but since Uncle Gilbert was mentioned it made sence to post

We have all met this guy. More good stuff here and here

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

The annual first day of school ritual came on us this year with added significance. The last of our children would start school today. This would leave my wife alone, all day, for the first time in eleven years. We both had that 'oh my god we have no more babies' look on our face. We tried not to let it show, because this was their day. We went about our routine with the parental mask of joy loosely strapped to our heads.


My wife was tying and untying my youngest pigtails working to get them just right while my daughter was trying, unsuccessfully, not to fidget. I was making a big breakfast of eggs, homemade biscuits, and slices of honey dew melon. I did this knowing all but mine would go partially uneaten.


My oldest daughter was being very cool, this being her fifth first day. Cool or not, she still was up before dawn and dressed when we got down stairs. In about a month we will need a bullhorn to rouse her from bed. She helped me set the table and put a chewable vitamin next to each plate carefully choosing who got which cartoon character. I got the rabbit. My son followed her around and switched them all just too annoy her. His clip-on tie had come undone and held on only by the tie clasp, it was hanging down and out like a cows tongue.

"Fix your tie, put your shoes on and leave your sister alone.", I said trying not to sound agitated. My peaceful summer mornings were officially at an end. He went off to another room and began to bounce a ball; I told him to stop that too.

The thinly veiled excitement was building to a level that our cats, Gladys and Bob were getting skittish. I put them out.

The pig tales were now just right and tied with yellow ribbons. My wife had to convince my youngest that 'no, she could not wear makeup. That almost brought on tears form the both of them but for very different reasons. We made a deal with her; no makeup but she could bring her stuffed monkey to school. She agreed with the deal. I only had to break up one other fight before it was time to leave and wait for the bus.

In the semidarkness, by our front door, we took pictures of the children in their uniforms. They were holding onto their lunch boxes, but losing their grips on their composure. We took a few more snapshots by the stone wall they "helped" me build and a few by the garden with the sun flowers looming over them. I wanted to take a few more but the kids told us to stop.

We waited for the bus by the edge of the road. My wife and I took turns holding our 'baby', (holding back time) until she squirmed down from us to stand with the "big" kids. My son silently slipped his hand into mine. My eldest was holding Bob while Gladys did figure eights around our legs. The bus was due any minute. We fell into silence as we all stared down the street watching the other cars pass by. We could just see the bus rounding the corner and I told my wife to ready the camera to get the picture of them bordering the bus.

She knew the routine and told me so.


The bus was just one stop away when we heard a sound similar to dropping a basketball that lacks air. Out of the corner of my eye there was a black and white blur. Gladys got hit and was now fifteen feet down the road. I thought I was the only one to see it but our baby saw it to and screamed. She started to run for the cat and I told her to stay with her mother. Our eldest was working very hard not to cry. My son kept looking at my wife and me, his earlier cockiness suddenly washed away. All including myself were wondering what to do until my wife whispered to me,"Get Gladys out-a-here. Quick!"

I scooped up the cat and took her to the back of the house. They all had their backs to the road when the bus pulled up. I heard the bus horn sound and then pull away.

I went back out as my wife came toward me and she said "Is she dead?"

"No"

"Will she be all right?"

"I don't know. I don't think so"

"Well go see."

"Did the kids get on the bus all right?"

"Yes! Now go see to the cat."

I went back to Gladys. She had not moved. She was breathing but not well. Her eyes were two black holes that looked like they were eaten out by insects. There was a little blood on the corner of her mouth. I just stared at her and both prayed to and cursed God.

My fathers voice, long since silenced by cancer, spoke to me: "When the time comes, a man must kill his own dog."

I knew the cat was suffering. I also knew that unlike my Dad, I did not own a gun. I thought I could just smash its head with a rock and then dismissed that thought. I decided to strangle her.

Putting my hands around its neck I slowly squeezed through the fur; amazed at how thin her neck really was. I felt my grip wasn't right so I started over; this time squeezing harder. When I felt the true circumference of her neck and her hard wind pipe I couldn't squeeze any more.

"It was her time. Just get a new grip and do it, brother! A man has to kill his own dog”. I was saying all this to myself as I took a new grip. I was squeezing harder this time and I could begin to feel the flesh of the neck fold around my fingers and then that cat coughed.

I let go and stood up, went into the house and told my wife I was taking Gladys to the Vets maybe, just maybe, she wasn't hurt that bad.

"What about work" my wife asked.

"Call them. Tell them I'll be late."

"Should I tell them why"

"Uh no. Tell them its car trouble . . . No wait. Tell them the truth."

"I'll call the Vet first to meet you. They don't normally open till nine."

"Thank you"

"Let me know right away, if she's ok, so I can go tell the kids."

" Yes. Yes. Of course. But what if . . ."

"Just go."

I took our old picnic blanket and wrapped up Gladys and gently carried her to the car. I talked to her all the way. I talked to her as I carried her into the Vets, and as I told the Vet what had happened I was looking at her. Struggling not to say; “Don't worry baby it will be OK. I don't want to tell the kids you are dead. I don't want you to be dead." Instead I looked at the Vet and said "Do what you can."

Wanting to but not asking how much this would cost.

All right, so, I couldn't kill my "own dog.". But, hey dad, they're other things a man has to do. Like sit in his recliner on a Saturday afternoon and watch old movies on TV with his family while listening to the familiar music of our new baby nursing. Also to have the joy of a fat black and white cat named Gladys take a nap in his lap. Now that she will no longer venture far from the house I have all that.

Blood Money

See the review from the media nun Sr. Helena Burns.

World Cup Goes To Middle Earth

Dialoging with the deaf at ground zero

While Muslims have every legal right to build a mosque near Ground Zero, this initiative carries the unmistakable odor of Islamic triumphalism. More importantly, Abdul Rauf's dubious background and associations give reason to worry that his center will spread Islamist ideology. Therefore, it should be barred from opening.

Many are asking for dialog with the Cordova Project in an effort to ease tensions, you know, so we can just get along. The question remains how do you dialog with a group who not only does not believe in compromise but views any compromise as defeat? They use dialog as either a stall or to wear down the opposition until they get exactly what they wanted in the first place. Book after book has been written on leaving no mystery of what they want-World Conquest for Allah.

'In July 2010, journalist Andrew McCarthy revealed that What's Right with Islam originally had been published in Malaysia under a different title: A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. What's Right with Islam was a “special, non-commercial edition” of the book and was produced after the original, with Feisal’s cooperation, by the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought. Both of those organizations are American tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood. McCarthy explains the meaning of the term dawa, from the book's title:'

"Dawa, whether done from the rubble of the World Trade Center or elsewhere, is the missionary work by which Islam is spread.... [D]awa is proselytism... "The purpose of dawa, like the purpose of jihad, is to implement, spread, and defend sharia. Scholar Robert Spencer incisively refers to dawa practices as 'stealth jihad,' the advancement of the sharia agenda through means other than violence and agents other than terrorists. These include extortion, cultivation of sympathizers in the media and the universities, exploitation of our legal system and tradition of religious liberty, infiltration of our political system, and fundraising. This is why Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and the world’s most influential Islamic cleric, boldly promises that Islam will 'conquer America' and 'conquer Europe' through dawa."

Also check out “Islam Will Not Be the Loser” by JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J. where he quotes extensively from Belloc and Chesterton.

Some Grizzlys eat thier young

Remember the up roar over Tim Tebow’s pro-life super bowl commercial that caused the death coalition to go apoplectic?

Well now Shara Palin’s Mama Grizzly speech has fired up EMILY’s list. EMILY’s list is a group of women infatuated with death and raises funds for pro-abort women candidates who have now come out against Shara Palin's mama grizzly persona. (Ohtay, Ohtay, Shara Palin, I know, she chose to be a political celebrity instead of a political contender. What amazes me about her is the ginormous hate the left is heaping on her especially on pro-life issues).

EMILY’s list now says that a mama grizzly has a right to protect her children or kill them as the mood fits, and to protect the right of her children to kill their children. They equate this right with unemployment insurance and education.

Mark Shea said it best,”Sin makes you stupid.”





The Susan B. Anthony list supports pro-life women canidates - has a measured response and at the same time shows how out of touch EMILY's List is with reality.


"By the Babe Unborn"
by G.K. Chesterton

If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.

In dark I lie; dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.

Let storm clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.

I think that if they gave me leave
Within the world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,
If only I were born.

"As summer lurches to an end, the hallucinatory carnival that is America continues to spin like a carousel set to "liquefy":"

So begins John Zmiark's article Summer Hedonism

Followed by
An Ideological Map
How can we build a “good society”? Four evolving strands of progressive thought and the guiding spirits behind them assessed. In which Belloc gets a nod.

Oh Boy

Came across this supposed new ad for the republican party for this up coming election cycle.

Many accused the Dems for playing up the Messia angle and rightly so. Now the Repubs are going to play up the crusades angle to rid our "holy" country of these infidels. I was sure at the end it was going to say, "God wills it!"

This vid is as close to the top without going over I've seen in awhile. OK it is over the top.

I have little to no faith in our two parties. The dems support abortion and turn a blind eye to torture while the repubs support torture and turn a blind eye to abortion.

The repubs will not repeal the health care mess or cut off the TRAP spigot the best we can hope for is they might, maybe, perhaps, possibly slow the current occupant down a little.

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types--the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine." - GKC

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." GKC

Yes, even John Paul the Great used this logic.

Chesterton Sighting

Searching for a Bach piece by the Swingle Singers I came across this:

"Redlegs"
an adaptation of GK Chesterton's "The Disadvantage of Having Two Heads"

You just never know where Uncle Gilbert will show up.

Random Thursday Thoughts

One judge overturns a majority vote in California, the current occupant sues Arizona for rightly enacting a law the people support, Missouri votes NO to federal health care and the occupant plans to ignore that vote - are we moving from majority rule to minority rule?

"We are back to an oligarchy pretending to be a republic pretending to be a democracy." Ed Henry
--------------------------------------------------
The power of our right to freedom of speech is in the protection of speech we don’t like. The same is true for the freedom of religion. We cannot deny the building of a new mosque
at ground zero on the site of the Burlington Coat Factory because they are unreasonable or even if many know the building of this mosque is the planting of a flag on a victory.
But it begs the question why is New York denying the Greek Orthodox Church that was destroyed at ground zero to be REBUILT.

"The opponents of Christianity would believe anything except Christianity." GKC
----------------------------------------------------------
Why is the teacher’s union asking for a federal bail out to help local schools pay teachers when they have millions to spend on lobbying and political campaigns?

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." Frederic Bastiat

It's Tough All Over

Will a bailout for criminals be far behind?

"Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before." gkc

but that no longer is enough:

'Young men bought flashy clothes and got sharp haircuts and always paid in cash. But no longer. The economy is now so bad in Camden that even the criminals are struggling and going short.

"Even the guys who got money from illegal means really don't want to spend it," said Richard Gains, a local businessman.'

Education is tradition, and tradition (as its name implies) can be treason. This first truth is frankly banal; but it is so perpetually ignored in our political prosing that it must be made plain. ... It is quaint that people talk of separating dogma from education. Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It is education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.

G. K. Chesterton, (from What’s Wrong with the World, 1910)

"the Catholic university that conserves its own identity, as was delineated in Ex Corde, truly has a future and will contribute to the good of society," while seeking to be an interlocutor between cultures and a force for progress.

More On Public Art

In John M. Grondelski article on Decorating Naked Public Squares he states, "The late Richard John Neuhaus described the banishment of religion from public life (and public view) as the phenomenon of the "naked public square." Advocates of this approach hold that religion has no place in public life. Public life should be hermetically sealed off from religion -- de facto agnostic. Secularists deem this arrangement "democratic" in a religiously pluralistic world. The corollary of that position, however, is that believers, even if they form a cultural majority, must strip themselves of their religious convictions when they enter public life. The good citizen is either irreligious or someone who doesn't take his religion too seriously. ...

There is also a shorter-range lesson. We as private citizens can go about reclothing the naked public squares of America, putting religion back in the public eye. How? Many Catholics in the United States have the resources to fund new religious art. Just as the Church hierarchy used to support Europe's artists, perhaps it is now time for lay Catholics in this country to take on the important work of patronage."
(emphasis mine)

An excellent idea. We should encourage those with the heart, spirit and funds to bring religious art back into the public square.

Oh yea, he is not talking about Bathtub Madonna or Lady of the Side Yard.


Chesterton on how public religious art can change our view of things:

Even when I thought, with most other well-informed, though unscholarly, people, that Buddhism and Christianity were alike, there was one thing about them that always perplexed me; I mean the startling difference in their type of religious art. I do not mean in its technical style of representation, but in the things that it was manifestly meant to represent. No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The mediaeval saint's body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards. The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we shall find some interesting things.

What Anne has wrought . Good news to some.

It's What's for Dinner

The recent news brought back one of my strongest memories of grad school. I was sitting with a few friends on my stoop demolishing a case of beer.

It was a beautiful early spring evening and the conversation was good. We were comparing and contrasting Louisiana politics with our home states when one of my friends, who had recently immigrated from Vietnam, blurted out, “ I love this country! Dinner comes right to your door!” Two of us did a spit take.

We then spent some time trying to convince him that, as good as they are, dogs and cats in this country are not be considered as a food source for your family.

I do not know if he ever followed that advice but from that time on, when my wife and I were invited to his place for dinner, I always asked what was on the menu.

potbelly hill

The word evolution seems to get attached to everything even things and ideas. Truth can not evolve nor change we can only discover what was always there or come to a better understanding. This is the work of the Church and should be the work of science. Both of those entities come together at Gobekle Tepe.

The Church tells us God was here at the Beginning science tells us God is/was a product of evolution. Science and history tells us Religion is a product of culture but Gobekli Tepe show us religion was the cause of culture.

This site isn't just old it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago - a staggering 7,000 years before the great Pyramid, and 6,000 years before Stonehenge.

Klaus Schmidt, the archeologist credited with the discovery, says, "Many people think that this changes everything...It overturns the whole apple cart. All theories were wrong."
Maybe that's why so few people have heard of this or why the text books have not been changed - the "brights" have once again been proven wrong.

The temples thus offer proof that mankind emerged from the 140,000-year reign of hunter-gathers with a ready vocabulary of spiritual imagery, and capale of huge logistical, economic, and political efforts.

Schmidt's thesis is simple: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.

Genetic mapping shows that the first domestication of wheat and pigs was in the immediate area.

Schmidt concludes that man's first house was a house of worship.

The other interesting thing of this site is that the people did not just abandon this site or die off. They took the time to bury it, a feat as great as the building of it. Why this happened we do not know. But they did discover at some point the worshipers here turned to human sacrifice.

Some are putting forward that is the site of Eden but as Scmidt says, 'Gobekli Tepe is not the Garden of Eden: it is a temple in Eden.'

"Maybe it was interred as a kind of penance: a sacrifice to the angry gods, who had cast the hunters out of paradise. Perhaps it was for shame at the violence and bloodshed that the stone-worship had helped provoke."


Chesterton tells us:
We have of course seen just lately the most dramatic exit of great material scientists from the camp of Materialism. It was Eddington I think, who used the phrase that the universe seems to be more like a great thought than a great machine: and Dr. Whitney as reported, has declared that there is no rational description of the ultimate cosmic motion except the Will of God. But it is the perishing of the other things, at least as much as the persistence of the one thing, that has left us at last face to face with the ancient religion of our fathers. The thing once called free thought has come finally to threaten everything that is free. It denies personal freedom in denying free will and the human power of choice. It threatens civic freedom with a plague of hygienic and psychological quackeries; spreading over the land such a network of pseudo-scientific nonsense as free citizens have never yet endured in history. It is quite likely to reverse religious freedom, in the name of some barbarous nostrum or other, such as constitutes the crude and ill-cultured creed of Russia. It is perfectly capable of imposing silence and impotence from without. But there is no doubt whatever that it imposes silence and impotence from within. The whole trend of it, which began as a drive and has ended in a drift, is towards some form of the theory that a man cannot help himself; that a man cannot mend himself; above all, that a man cannot free himself. In all its novels and most of its newspaper articles it takes for granted that men are stamped and fixed in certain types of abnormality of anarchical weakness; that they are pinned and labeled in a museum of morality or immorality; or of that sort of unmorality which is more priggish than the one and more hoggish than the other. We are practically told that we might as well ask a fossil to reform itself. We are told that we are asking a stuffed bird to repent. We are all dead, and the only comfort is that we are all classified. For by this philosophy, which is the same as that of the blackest of Puritan heresies, we all died before we were born. But as it is Kismet without Allah, so also it is Calvinism without God.

This Just In : Civilization Ends

In The Ethics Aristotle wrote, "men start revolutionary changes for reasons connected with their private lives."

Marriage: a 'hang up' or God's plan?
Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted telling it like it is.

"What is at stake here is cultural sanity and viability. Defending the clear nature and purpose of marriage is not discrimination against homosexual persons. Why did God create both men and women, not just one sex? Is it merely accidental that one is born either a woman or a man? Is femininity or masculinity of little import? Does it not matter if a child grows up with no mother but two fathers? Does the pandemic of cultural ills born of fatherlessness in so many of our homes teach us nothing? Is it really all that difficult to fathom that God had a plan for marriage, which He wove into the very fabric of human nature? This plan is so deeply embedded in our human nature that every culture in history has recognized it and enshrined and protected it in law and custom. Marriage being exclusively between a man and a woman was not an idea created by these cultures but, rather, a truth received by them as something handed down from a higher authority.

Is ours an enlightened age that is wiser than previous ones? Are activist judges helping us finally to rise up and overthrow the “hang ups” of billions of people who have gone before us and to free us from the shackles of religion?"


"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." Chesterton goes on to say: "Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father."

Random Tuesday Thoughts

The current occupant promised “change”. Is the change he has delivered more in the way of speed instead of direction?
“All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.” - GKC

Since the powers that be believe in Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory (in a literal sense) why do they insist on putting warning labels on everything?
“But the point was that the fittest did not need to struggle against the unfit. The survivor had nothing to do except to survive, when the others could not survive. He survived because he alone had the features and organs necessary for survival. And, whatever be the truth about mammoths or monkeys, that is the exact truth about the present survival of religion. It is surviving because nothing else can survive.” - GKC

The Capitalists tell us ‘all boats rise with the tide’ but capitalism is the roller coaster manic depressive approach to life of booms and busts. Socialism is a slower smoother ride but it’s direction is down hill.
Time to reconsider Distributionism

Public Art

My youngest and her gaggle of gal pals are always busy, “Playing as children mean playing is the most serious thing in the world.”

They have a limited set of yards to explore each day since but, for them, these places are never the same from day to day. One day it is a ball field the next a dark wood of dragons and elfs sometimes a classroom other times a kitchen. Some days all the above.

When I got home on Friday my back yard was an industrial art studio with papers, crayons and water colors everywhere. Upon completion of their days work they processed around town and taped up their work on each pole they past.

The best example of Guerilla Art I’ve encountered. Better than the ones I participated in during my more down-with-the-man days.

As cars past these master pieces it made those, who looked, smile and point. Beautiful.

At this point I wanted to quote Chesterton form an essay that appeared in Gilbert magazine several years ago on public art. Well, for the life of me I cannot find that issue.
I know better than to quote from memory with this crowd so I will give you the gist of the essay. Public art that the public does not like is not public art but private art exhibited in public. The people need to have a say in what is displayed.

monkey love

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously told Americans that they would have to wait until Congress passed ObamaCare to see what was in it. Well know you have the opportunity to see exactly what is in this new 2,562 page law. Where do you fit in this tangled web of red tape. See the small star in the lower right hand corner.


This is the best schematic of seven monkeys trying to fornicate a football I’ve seen.

Of Course we need to get good quality Heath Care for all or as Bishop William F. Murphy said, "Genuine health care reform that protects the life and dignity of all is a moral imperative and a vital national obligation"

But right now this legislation is a mess but do not be discouraged because as Uncle Gilbert said, "It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on."

new book

A new book by Father John McCloskey.
Any one get this yet? Reviews welcome.

Charming

Josh Ritter gives us puppets, an interesting twist on an old story, good music.

the puppets were done by the drummer of the band, Liam Hurley.

E pluribus unum - NOT

"It is our expectation that, when the law takes effect on December 31st, the Department of Education will announce that TUSD is to have ten percent of its entire budget withheld, until it complies with H.B. 2281. At that time, you will have the right to appeal to an administrative law judge. If you agree to this video tape, it will be helpful evidence to the administrative law judge. If you refuse, we will offer that refusal as evidence to the administrative law judge that the school district has deliberately hidden facts that would show that the district is in non-compliance with H.B. 2281."


Read the letter about this course here

As if you needed another reason to home school.

Make The Call

Ground-breaking Bill Would Ban Tax-Funded Abortions — For Good

OK people make the call or email to your representatives and tell them to support this bill.
Most of them will not do right on thier own they won't do anything unless they think there job is in jeopardy.

go ahead flood the lines

Even NPR has noticed the feeding frenzy.

Toleration is not enough YOU MUST APPROVE

There have always been times in history when it seemed that the lions were winning. It is easy to feel that we are now in such a time.
Today the lions are political correction beasts dressed in pink.

Lee brought to our attention the story of the counseling student, Julea Ward, expelled for upholding her Christian life view.
Ward’s attorneys claim the university told her she would only be allowed to remain in the program if she went through a “remediation” program so that she could “see the error of her ways” and change her belief system about homosexuality.

There is also a similar case with Jennifer Keeton.

Professor is fired for stating what the Church teaches. Then rehires him.

Campus Christian groups cannot "discriminate" against non-Christians from joining their clubs or from becoming officers of that group.

John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, said, "The Supreme Court has now enshrined political correctness as a central tenet in American society and in American university life. This decision is yet another broadsided attack on the First Amendment, especially religious freedom.

"It will force well-meaning groups to abandon the tenets of their faith in order to be granted the same privileges and freedoms afforded to other campus groups and organizations. If not, they will face discrimination."

Or as Groucho Marx once said, "I have a good mind of joining a club and beating you over the head with it."

Now the University of California won't admit students that graduate from a Christian High Schools.
"Essentially what's happening is the UC has to pre-approve courses taught in high school," Tyler said. "It's pretty shocking, because in depositions UC reps made it clear: whether it be English, history or science, the addition of a religious viewpoint makes it unacceptable."

It's hard not to get depressed or upset that God's hand moves soooo slowly but "Fear is useless what is needed is trust." JC

"The early Christian martyrs talked of death with a horrible happiness. They blasphemed the beautiful duties of the body: they smelt the grave afar off like a field of flowers. All this has seemed to many the very poetry of pessimism. Yet there is the stake at the crossroads to show what Christianity thought of the pessimist." GKC.

Or from another great writer:
The message of the cross is complete absurdity to those who are headed for ruin,
but to us who are experiencing salvation it is the power of God. Scripture says, “I
will destroy the wisdom of the wise and thwart the cleverness of the clever.”
Where is the wise person to be found? Where the scribe? Where is the debater of
this age? Has not God turned the wisdom of this world into folly? Since in the
wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it pleased
God to save those who believe through the absurdity of the preaching of the gospel.
(1 Cor 1:18-21)

Fur Real

"All the human things are more dangerous than anything that affects the beasts - sex, poetry, property, religion. The real case against drunkenness is not that it calls up the beast, but that it calls up the Devil. It does not call up the beast, and if it did it would not matter much, as a rule; the beast is a harmless and rather amiable creature, as anybody can see by watching cattle. There is nothing bestial about intoxication; and certainly there is nothing intoxicating or even particularly lively about beasts. Man is always something worse or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness - or so good as drink. " GKC


When I first heard of this I thought someone was talking about a scene from a Will Ferrell movie.
But it is true. The strongest beer in the world packaged inside stuffed woodland creatures.

Yes Grasshopper, they combined Chesterton's 'animal with drink' in a literal way.

This immediately brought three questions to my mind, How drunk do you have to be to think that:
1.) this is a good idea?
2.) that in the cold light of the next day it is still a good idea?
3.) people will pay $725.00 a bottle?

Of course, if I were rich, I have the personality that would buy a few for the drink and the laughs.

Magic clean up

Not to minimize the Oil Spill in the Gulf, it is/was a disaster. But now many are wondering where the oil is. They are saying that Mother Nature is doing her job and cleaning it up. Early on this was something the CEO of BP said would happen. He was pilloried and sent to Siberia for telling the truth.

Everyone is all agog that Mother Nature can clean up the "worst oil spill like ever".

“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.” GKC

But she can't clean up global warming?!?! Because "they" think she is a solemn mother who rewards and punishes without rationality.

There is another man-made disaster in my area at Grand Lake St. Mary's. The water has become life threateningly toxic. People are warned not even to touch it. If people or pets drink from it they could die.

We are not talking about Pelicans but cats, dogs and children.

This is a man-made disaster through local large farm run off of manure and fertilizer. And one columnist is blaming those who like to Bar-B-Que pork or like eggs for breakfast for this disaster.
I do not think he is being tongue-in-cheek.

I do not recall anyone blaming those who like to drive for the gulf spill. But I am sure someone did.

There is no company to extort a super fund to help those businesses and people effected. But it was caused by big factory farming. This why I and others fight CAFO's whenever they try to move into our area.

If they manage to clean this up it will be done with tax dollars, dollars our state does not have.

Mother Nature will not clean this one up alone.

Please pray for those in the Grand Lake St. Mary's area.

Anne Rice Leaves Home

I once wrote clerihew about Anne Rice's rediscovery of her Christian faith:

Anne Rice
found a pearl of great price.
But she had to make money first
dwelling on an unnatural thirst.

I was skeptical. Sure enough, she recently rejected Christianity, declaring:

"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian."

A few years back she wrote about her return to Christianity in Called Out of Darkness.

I guess she's heading back into the darkness.

Christian booted from counseling program

This is a case where a Christian student in a counseling program was assigned a homosexual client. The client wanted his/her lifestyle to be accepted; the counseling was for another reason.

The student did not deny the homosexual treatment. She simple referred the person to another counselor because she did not feel as a Christian she could condone the individual's actions. The person would have gotten what he/she wanted from another counselor - yet the university felt this Christian needed remediation (i.e. indoctrination) or to be dismissed.

Christians face persecution across the word, including in the U.SA.

Judge rules against Christian banned from Eastern Michigan counseling program :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Canadian Anglicans vote to unite with Rome

I'm not sure of the numbers who will really come home, but this is just another sign of what's happening.

Canadian Anglican Catholic group votes to unite with Rome :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Leaping Lizards It's Hilly On The Air

One of our local public radio stations has a little feature called, Conrad's Corner. Where Conrad Balliet reads a few poems with a quick bio of the poet. Usually he reads from the works of local poets with occasional readings from the world famous both short and long dead.

This week I got a pleasant surprise when I heard him introduce our friend Hillaire Belloc.

Conrad read three poems of Belloc's, the first was this:

The Frog

Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As "Slimy skin," or "Polly-wog,"
Or likewise "Ugly James,"
Or "Gap-a-grin," or "Toad-gone-wrong,"
Or "Bill Bandy-knees":
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare).