10/15/25 – Public service announcement: Time exists. We understand that its abstract nature might make it hard for people to fully grasp it, but let’s try. From the beginning of the universe, as matter was created, so was time. Time marks the birth, and wait for it, the change and death of matter. From our perspective, this is part of the divine order. Civilizations and calendars vary in how they measure time, but they all measure this abstract concept.
Now, why does this come as a public service announcement? Because it seems that some people want to deny the existence of time. This is as futile as denying the existence of our sun. With time, comes change. No one can stop time and change. You can rage against the dying of the light, but our sun will remain, marking the seasons and the years, and you will die. So too, at some point in the distant future, will our sun.
Our climate is changing. You can deny this reality, but it might end up being a very costly denial. If you are a homeowner, know that just as mortality is real, climate change is real. If we measure superiority by survival, some of the world’s most superior creatures are insects, such as the cockroach, which has outlived the dinosaurs. Although inconvenient for evolutionary theory, let us not confuse intelligence with survival.
Continuing to live in areas that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change is continuing to engage in the denial of the existence of time and change. Although the human brain is sophisticated enough to come up with all kinds of delusions and irrational justifications, this doesn’t mean that they are actually in service of our own survival, not to mention, even remotely tethered to basic physics.
So, again, why do we point out all of these facts in the context of a public service announcement? Well, you might consider adjusting your plans to account for these changes. You might consider accounting for the fact that time exists, and it doesn’t care about you. Even if human beings didn’t contribute to climate change (we do), the climate would change, in ways beyond our control, because it obeys God’s divine order. And since the beginning of the universe, God’s divine order involves time and change.
10/14/24 – It is an interesting strategy to go to some of the bluest states and the bluest cities to try to convince their happy people to be miserable too. Looking at you, a certain person/Vance. We understand that this ticket has a penchant for insults and are perpetual malcontents, but, you know, the rest of us just don’t and aren’t. It might have something to do with our high-quality of life because we live in places where people care for each other instead of hating each other. Next time, come to learn kindness instead of coming to preach hate. You might actually grow as a human being.
10/14/24 – “The quiet as old as the beginning of time.” As someone who practices contemplative prayer, the quiet is part of my connection with the divine. How can one hear the voice of God when one is always listening to the monkey in one’s head, other people, and the sounds of our unnecessarily complicated lives?
Traditional Republicans were also often conservationists. They understood the value of the natural world. By investing in nature, we also invest in ourselves. Investing in it, including the wild, pristine parts, is wise.
Personally, nature was my first friend, and it remains my best friend. In it, I found a divine comfort that continues to serve me well. Just as God is always there for me, nature is always there for me. Reveling in God’s creation in its abundance and awe makes me feel grateful simply to be alive. What a gift life is, my own and everything around me.
Like all of us, our indigenous sisters and brothers weren’t perfect, but they understood and respected the value of nature. We could learn from them and return to a way of life that respects God’s creation. White people have been dangerously good at obtaining material wealth and worldly power. They haven’t been good at appreciating the wealth that they had no role in creating, our natural world whose value is infinite, and divine power. Let’s replace this misguided value system with one that elevates God’s creation, in its splendid biodiversity.
We have suggested that people, especially our fellow Americans during this election season, breathe. We also suggest that they spend some time breathing in nature and in silence. Silence is an ancient prayer, one that is as old as the beginning of time. There was no matter, no light, and no sound. There was also no time. There was nothing. Everything that you are, everything that you feel, see and hear, none of it was made by you. It was all made by our creator. All we did was change the composition of God’s existing material. In our misguided pursuit of material wealth and comfort, we have lost so much.
Preserving biodiversity isn’t just about protecting our planet and God’s other creations. It’s about restoring ourselves. We are not whole. We are not oriented to our creator. So, how could we possibly be whole? Instead, we are broken and lost. We either choose to control our destructive, insatiable appetites for power, wealth and comfort, or we lose everything that actually matters. We lose what God gave us, and we will have only our transformation of it. It will be a disappointment and a regret. It already is.
Nations Must Protect What Is Still Wild
10/13/24 – One of the amazing aspects of The Atlantic, founded in 1857, is how long it’s been around. Its own archive is also a national treasure. There aren’t many publications that can boast this. As the article mentions, it has endorsed a candidate for president only four previous times in its entire history: Lincoln, for obvious reasons, in 1860, Lyndon B. Johnson because of the unfitness of his opponent, Barry Goldwater, in 1964, Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, both times because of the unfitness of the opponent. And here we are again, America. Again. Three times with the same guy for the same reasons. God help us.
As The Atlantic notes, this election is yet another turning point. Of the three times, 2016, 2020 and 2024, this time is the most crucial. We are asking you to think about something bigger than yourselves. We are asking you to think about the fate of the American experiment. We are humbly asking you to trust our judgment and our ability see into the character of this man and into the future of our country under him for a second term. If you can’t trust us, then look at yourselves. Look hard. When you have to preface your support of someone with, “I don’t like how he talks or treats people…,” there is a serious problem. Whatever words come after those words are irrelevant, no matter how important they seem at this particular moment in time. In other words, do not be penny-wise, pound-foolish.
The Case for Kamala Harris
10/13/24 – “I was looking for a country I want to live in.” An informative and funny article about the important and patriotic work the National Archives does. In families, there are often a few people who tend to the documentation of its history. They make the family tree, preserve the photographs, and painstakingly go through a life’s worth of stuff to keep the things that must be kept. They do so for future generations to see, read, feel and weep as they connect with their ancestors.
Our country is a family, and we are making our collective history each and every day we live here. Every day, often without realizing it, ordinary Americans are contributing to our National Archives. Think about the implications of this. Will you be proud of what future Americans see documented about you and your family?
The Equalizer
10/13/24 – “Penny-wise, but pound-foolish.” One of the sad facts about Republicans is that they tend to vote based on lowering taxes and presumably raising their own personal finances and quality of life. This is not a smart approach. Of course, we expect the government to be good stewards of the American people’s purse, and where there is “fraud, waste and abuse,” as the phrasing goes, it should be eliminated. But a people who are pound-wise understand that paying taxes is an investment in ourselves, our country, and the world.
Do you really want to live in a country that does not invest in itself and its people? You can’t live in a bubble. You can’t pay for your own infrastructure, military, local, state and national parks, police, emergency responders, etc. You also can’t pay for your own safety net. Do you know why? Because you don’t know what might happen in the future, not just to you, but also to your friends and family.
A government is more than a bureaucracy. It is a statement of values, and on a practical level, we pool our money to express those values. Solidarity is a verb, and one of the most common expressions of it as Americans is simply paying our taxes. Do so with a generosity of spirit, without grievance, jealousy or bitterness, and do so with the wisdom of investment in yourself, your own family and the other Americans without whom you couldn’t build this great country.
10/13/24 – To everybody: Disconnecting is healthy and wonderful. The more usual and regular posts will start again soon. Hope you enjoy this beautiful fall day. Peace be with you, friends.
10/13/24 – To MAGA world, who are also our fellow countrymen and women, we have a suggestion. Disconnect from the unreal world you’re living in, and spend some time in the real one. Don’t follow anything related to the news or your absurd conspiracy theories, which are like an alien invasion of the mind. The lies have taken over your brains, and they have ceased to operate in the way God intended. Remember: Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Truth is fundamental to Christianity. When you stop practicing truth, you stop practicing Christianity.
Instead of living in your unreal world, come hang out with us in our blue areas. Go to where your “enemies” live, and see how they live. You might find that it’s actually quite nice. We have a high-quality of life because we pay for it. We pay more in taxes than in red states, and our money goes to our people, our schools, our parks, our roads, our infrastructure, our everything that we value. Are we ever excited about paying taxes? No, but we understand that this is the cost to live in a great area that is well-managed and that this is what it looks like to take care of each other. We also, are you ready for this, help the red areas of the country pay their bills. More likely than not, we send you money.
But this isn’t about money. This is about our country. This is about you stepping out from behind the screen that is feeding you a world that doesn’t exist and stepping into the world that actually does. Come and check us out. We welcome you. Come and talk with your fellow Americans and see how we live, how we treat each other, and what we value. Then, let’s talk. Tell us what you find. We’re listening to you. God bless you.
10/8/24 – Studying the Christian and Jewish texts is addictive. It’s like gardening. You start with one plant, and before you know it, it’s acres of garden. Just like that, the bumble bees are so fat that they fall asleep on your flowers. They are so gluttonous that they don’t care that you are stroking them. They are in bee paradise. You start with one word; well, what about this one and that one. Before you know it, you’re feasting on the Word of God.
10/7/24 – To the Jewish people, we love you. God loves you. We pray for the safe return of the remaining hostages, for the beautiful souls brutally taken from you, for God’s comfort to their families and to you, his Chosen People. We don’t really have the words for moments like these, but you already have them. Today, we pray and read our religious texts. Remember this: although it might not always feel like it, you are not alone. You are never alone. God is with you, and there are good people in the world who will always be there for you, no matter what. Peace be with you. Shalom.
October 7, 2024: Sources for Grief and Comfort
10/6/24 – As a point of clarification: we are not interested in “determining the authenticity of people’s faith” (see below) as it relates to conversions. People will come to conversion in different ways, different measures of head and heart that is impossible for others to truly understand. However, the long initiation process in traditional Christianity is intended to act as a vetting process. It is an important process to retain. However, we do feel entirely comfortable, in fact, that it is a duty to maintain the integrity of the religion and to ask people to leave who violate fundamental tenets of the faith. A red line is worshipping a false god, which is what “Christian nationalists” are doing. It is extremely damaging to the faith, and if left unchecked, it can metastasize and corrupt the body of Christ.
10/6/24 – The Catholic Church’s leadership is not rising to the challenges of the moment. The leadership has not been focused on Jesus Christ and our faith. It is preoccupied with worldly things.
10/6/24 – Tomorrow, October 7 will be reserved for the Jewish people, who have been persecuted throughout much of their existence. We wish them peace and love. We have been and will always be there for them. Even if the entire world turns on them, we will never abandon them. Our loyalties are always with the people who sacrifice the most and who are the most vulnerable.
The plight of the Palestinians also brings the world much heartache. We are sympathetic to the cry of their innocents. All people of goodwill wish there would be peace in the Holy Land. For the three Abrahamic religions, it is a sacred place. The scale of Palestinian deaths and the destruction of their lives are painful to us. We blame the current Israeli “leadership,” mainly Netanyahu.
Our parent religion is Judaism. This is a historical fact. Any denialism of facts will be met with assertion of truths. We do not receive lies with sympathy. We also do not receive any violence with sympathy. A sad fact about the Middle East is that militant Islam has terrorized the region. It does so presently in Afghanistan and Syria. It has repressive regimes, such as in Saudi Arabia and Iran. All of them treat women as property instead of as human beings with the rights endowed to them by their creator, the God of Abraham.
Militant Islam has driven massive populations of Muslims to misery and fleeing to the safety of regions beyond their homelands. It is a cancer that has metastasized throughout much of the world, especially African countries, with notable exceptions, such as in India. We want to thank our Muslim brothers and sisters in India who have resisted the siren call of extremism. Thank you for peacefully and patiently fighting against Hindu extremism in India.
Islam is the youngest of the Abrahamic religions. This is a fact. Yet it wants to dominate the lands to which the parent religion, the Jewish religion, belongs. This is simply unacceptable. Extremist Islam has driven out the Christians who are original to the Holy Land and the Levant. These Christians can trace their ancestry to the origins of the faith and to this land. They cannot live there because of how violent and intolerant the region has become due to militant Islam.
We have some suggestions for Islam. Practice more peace, humility and tolerance. Also, Judaism and the more traditional forms of Christianity, such as Catholicism, have long periods of initiation into the faith. In the Catholic tradition, it can take over a year to convert. We also do not force people to become or to remain Christian. It would be a violation of their God-given rights and would be spiritually meaningless. Although cradle Catholics are initiated by baptism as infants, it is only one of the three Christian rites of initiation. The other two span the life of the young person. We want people to understand and to think deeply about the demands of our faith. They are considerable, and it is not an easy religion to practice correctly. We also want people to build a personal relationship with our God, especially the Son in the Trinity, Jesus Christ. We ask MAGA “Christians,” who often belong to denominations with less extensive initiation rites, to leave Christianity. They are always welcome back when they can adhere to the tenets and the rigors of our faith.
We encourage Islam to adopt a rigorous initiation process, as both Judaism and traditional Christianity have. We also encourage Muslims to allow their adherents to leave the religion if they so choose. God does not force religion on anyone. We come to him by our choice. We choose to give of our free will our hearts and our lives to him. This change would greatly mitigate the militant strain in Islam. God made us free. Respect the God of Abraham. Peace to our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters. May you be instruments of God’s peace.
10/4/24 – Love is more important than politics. We ask blue-collar workers to vote with us, your fellow laborers, for Harris Walz because we think they will be better for labor and for our country. However, we want our first responders to know that you have our hearts, and we have your back no matter what. If a certain person ends up disappointing you, we will not blame you. We will keep fighting for you because you fight for us.
In Michigan, Harris doesn’t get hoped-for firefighters endorsement amid shifting labor loyalties
10/4/24 – Flashback Friday. 8/31/23 – “Men (as a group and to a significant extent) are larger, faster, and stronger than women. This cannot be disputed, and it cannot be understood as some irrelevancy, because it comes with an obvious moral question that each man must answer for himself: Will he use his strength to dominate the weak, or to protect them?… The opposite of toxic masculinity is heroic masculinity…. [I can’t remember the number of times I have cried, more accurately, sobbed when I have thought about this.] Heroic masculinity is the understanding that someone has to climb the endless staircases in the towers. On 9/11, 343 New York City firefighters died at Ground Zero, and there wasn’t one of them who didn’t know, or at least suspect, that he was climbing to his death. They didn’t do it because of a union contract or an employee handbook. They climbed those towers because they knew that it must be written into the American record that heroes were there that day, and that the desperate people inside those buildings had never—not once—been abandoned.” To those who sacrificed their lives for us and their relatives, know that they live in our hearts, minds and souls. We love them with a genuine, grateful love that’s as eternal as their heroic souls.
In Praise of Heroic Masculinity
10/4/24 – To the propaganda: start humbling yourselves and start treating your fellow laborers (and Americans) with more respect and value. You are not better than they are. Start practicing some humility.
10/4/24 – As a reiteration of the argument made in September 2024: The statement that “all people are equal” is false. It is objectively false. The statement that “all people are created equal” is true. It is not an objective statement. It is a moral declaration based on Judeo-Christian tenets. Any conclusions derived from it as an assumption, therefore, depend on this Judeo-Christian belief. Liberal atheists: stop deluding yourselves to claim the contrary.
Although we are unaware of all of these developments regarding conversions and such, we do know that for over 2,000 years, the church has been evolving. We also have no interest in determining the authenticity of people’s faith. Christianity will continue to evolve, and believers of various stripes will come and go. We welcome all new believers to the church, but we want the wealthy, well-educated ones to remember something: you are not the heart of our church. Our church belongs to our God, and Jesus Christ valued above all the poor, the powerless, and the marginalized.
Personally, I would love to claim that my heart just knew, and it alone informed my confirmation. However, it was not the case. I read and analyzed the Gospel for and by myself, and I decided it was true. I also realized that I loved Jesus Christ, while simultaneously understanding that this was a totally irrational love. I marveled at it then and still do now. My head led, convinced by logic, and my heart sealed the decision.
There are millions of people around the world who come to Christ because their hearts just know. They don’t have the same kind of self-consciousness or even surprise that I had at my heart. They might be illiterate, poor, powerless, but they understand him better than many of us will ever understand him. So, while we welcome everyone, the rest of us, including myself, need to walk into the Lord’s house in a posture of humility and gratitude.
Some of Christianity’s Biggest Skeptics Are Becoming Vocal Converts
10/3/24 – To all the blue-collar workers out there, we want you to know something important. We respect you. We value you. And we hear you. The only difference between blue-collar workers and teachers, nurses, and others is that the latter group has to have a college education to work in their profession. We are all laborers. That’s all we are, and that’s all we want to be. Blue-collar workers, we have your back. We are not elites. We are simple folk like you. We work hard, and we come home to our families and our communities that we love. Many of us are God-fearing people.
The Biden Harris administration did more for blue-collar and union workers than the Democratic Party has done in a long time. A certain person is lying to you. The older generation was right. The Republican Party is the party of the business elite. That is who a certain person is. He is a business elite. Although his running mate has more potential to be convinced of our positions, at the moment, he has become a business elite. They are not being honest with you.
Did the Democratic Party before Biden Harris leave blue-collar workers behind? They did, and they need to own that. However, the Biden Harris administration has made changes that we can build on. On a cultural level, the “wokeness” on the left is out of control. Let’s push back on it by splitting the ticket: voting for Republicans or Independents on other races, not the presidential one. Remember: we are laborers, like you, and we have mutual interests. Vote for Harris Walz, and work with us to move this country in the right direction. Solidarity forever.
10/2/24 – Please note that both abortion and immigration are important issues for Catholics. We do not like dehumanizing treatment of immigrants. Stop the demagoguery. Some commentary on the VP debate without the breathlessness. “The U.S. bishops have been lobbying for comprehensive immigration reform for decades. To learn more about their efforts, visit the bishops’ Justice for Immigrants website.”
Vance and Walz showed Americans how to politely disagree. Here are six Catholic takeaways from their debate.
10/2/24 – The liberals went from holding their breath during Biden’s disastrous debate performance to hyperventilating over Vance’s strong debate performance last night. Maybe try just breathing properly. It was a VP debate a month before the election, when most people have already made up their minds.
But of course, that’s not what this is really about. It’s about their sudden realization, with great fear, that Vance has real political potential. (We wrote about this way back when, after the Republican National Convention.) Ironically, the liberals presumably underwent a similar realization, with great elation, with Kamala Harris. In any case, all the breathless commentary all the time is rather tedious. Breathe.
Childish insults and demeaning comments are beneath Vance, who is obviously not an idiot like a certain person. It is also insulting to his own character and intelligence to cover up for a certain person, especially denying that he lost the election and incited January 6th. Many of us watched it with our own eyes. A certain person lost the election, refused to accept his loss and incited an insurrection. These are the facts, and many if not most Americans agree on them. Don’t insult our intelligence or your own.
We also understand that kissing the ring means reciting the lie. That’s the present state of the Republican Party. Vance’s political prospects are promising, but they would be even more so if he would stop dancing with lies. Also, as far as unpopular positions, such as abortion, both sides ended up sharing their positions but in evasive ways. Late-term abortions are not popular, and that’s why Walz (and Harris) danced around it. An abortion ban is not popular, and that’s why Vance (and a certain person) danced around it. Both men had more in common than misspeaking. They both avoided telling the truth about inconvenient lies and clearly and directly stating what their positions are when they know they are unpopular. Here’s an idea: maybe just tell the truth and moderate those positions.
10/1/24 – Thank you to both VP candidates for a substantive and civil debate. The American people won.
10/1/24 – The propaganda, which doesn’t include The Atlantic, needs to own up to the fact that they have contributed to the dumbing and the decline of the American youth. The proof is in the pudding. If their scientism and their wokeness are so great, then why is the American youth so much worse off? On practically every metric, they are worse off than they were: attention span, productive struggle, intellectual ability, especially critical thinking and analytical ability, writing ability, which has always involved argumentation, creativity and facility with language, mathematical ability, interpersonal skills, mental health, and on and on. There likely isn’t an educator of a certain age that hasn’t noticed a marked decline. It’s pathetic. So, spare us the bulls—t. It’s either there, or it isn’t there. And it’s definitely not there. The propaganda, which is dominated by liberals, often atheists, is in great part to blame for it because they help set the cultural tone for the country. They pushed us and the culture to this place. And now, here we are.
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books