1/3/25 – A Greek Chant, Agni Parthene, sung by Malayali Christians (Nasrani, the word comes from Jesus of Nazareth, also known as Thomas Christians), an Indian ethno-religious group. (The script you see is the Greek script. The church, St. Mary’s Indian Orthodox Cathedral, is located in Bahrain.)
From the comments (lightly edited): “I am a Hindu. I always feel happy and blessed when I hear this song. It gives me a divine energy. I have heard the Russian and English versions of this song. But this is the first time I am hearing it in an Indian language. Very powerful song. I have subscribed to this channel too. Happy Easter to my brothers and sisters. God bless everyone.” One of the greatest joys we have as human beings is sharing in each other’s religious music and traditions. All are always welcome.
Agni Parthene
1/3/25 – So, another realization is that we assumed that people were just being lazy, which never goes over well…. Although there is an element of laziness, more precisely laziness as expressed as a lack of self-discipline, once the addiction has taken hold, it becomes a pathology. It’s like a self-inflicted disease. We are looking at a sick country – one of phone addicts, who have compromised the integrity of their bodies, minds and souls.
1/3/25 – Know this: As soon as you reach for your phone when you’re resting, as described below, you’ve stopped resting. You can say it’s relaxing, but you’ve stopped resting because you’re asking your brain to do things, likely when it is telling you it needs to stop doing things.
1/3/25 – Maybe to some people, you don’t need God. You can just worship yourself. You don’t need to think. The elites and others will tell you what to think. You don’t need rest. You need to be a slave. We don’t agree with this, and we don’t think that it’s the way to live a life.
1/3/25 – A few weeks ago, when we were explaining the basics of the God question, we said that our culture is retrograde, that we are moving backward instead of forward. Since then, there was the realization that people aren’t thinking for themselves or at all. They are just copying others. We had to emphasize that people actually have to do the work and think. Now, we’re explaining rest. God and rest would be intuitive to even the most uneducated indigenous person. Please tell us that this is progress. It’s not.
1/3/25 – As I’m processing this disconcerting information, I’m realizing something, and it’s scary. Many people have likely gotten so addicted to their phones that it has damaged their relationship with their own bodies. In other words, my body and my mind tell me when I need to rest. Sometimes, maybe often, I override it because I am working or I have a deadline, whatnot, but when I can, I give it what it needs. This is not the same as sleeping. It’s resting. I go idle. I’m still conscious. It’s not the deep, restorative rest that only sleep can give, but it’s still restorative. I’m letting my body and my brain relax. I’m not asking anything of it. I’m not trying to control it. I’m just letting it be, like letting a field lie fallow, but for short(er) periods of time. What this is telling me is that it’s not just that your phone is causing mental health problems and sedentary habits, it’s also inhibiting an appropriate response to the call your body is making for you to rest. Some people might not even be hearing the call because they have gotten so disconnected from their own bodies. You’re not actually giving your body and your mind what they are telling you they need and want. You’re giving them the opposite thing.
1/3/25 – Wait, are people not resting? So, y’all are not resting and not thinking? I’m totally confused by what’s going on. Have you always been this way, or only after you developed your phone addiction? I never developed a phone addiction because I don’t like it that much, and I never put addictive apps on it.
1/3/25 – As I read this article, I found myself engaging in some metacognition, including thinking about what I hate the most. I hate tedious activities – with a passion. It requires a lot of discipline to get through them. I get quite irritable and pray to God to have enough patience to deal with them. Often, these are bureaucratic activities, like paying taxes, that are often required or semi-required. You have to do it. (Pay your taxes.) These kinds of activities require your brain to actually function, but they are repetitive, unsatisfying (meaning I’m not learning anything I would like to learn), and exceptionally tedious. If anyone asked me whether I would like to do nothing or one of these activities, there is no doubt, I would say nothing.
In fact, there is not a single day, when for at least some part of it, however brief, I don’t do anything. I just sit or lie there and think. I do nothing. I end up here either because I’m tired and need a break, or because I just feel like it. If I have the time, I can do this for a long time, hours. I do not find it boring at all. I find it relaxing. I’m resting, not sleeping or even daydreaming, just resting, thinking, not thinking, not doing anything. Walks, which I consider doing something, are especially good for relaxing and stimulating thought. I also get to be outside and get some exercise. I view prayer and meditation as doing something, the most valuable thing I can do, connecting with the divine. (And no, I almost never have a temptation to reach for my phone during any of these activities or resting. I routinely forget about it.)
I also routinely take breaks as I’m reading. I’ll pause, look away or even walk away from the text, process my thoughts, and then go back to reading the same text or writing as a reflection, during and/or at the end of the text. If I’m unable to write physically, I’ll write in my head and hope that I don’t forget too much, having a certain amount of confidence that enough of my original thoughts will come back to me when I am able to write them down. (I’m sure I forget stuff all the time, but who really cares.) In general, while I’m reading, I often need some time to think about not just what the author is saying but also my initial response to it. Unless I’m taking a test or something that’s timed, I can be a slower reader for this reason.
It was rather startling to read that other people don’t seem to like to do nothing. Frankly, it scares me a little. Apparently, this is because they are afraid of their own thoughts. I’m at a loss as to what to say about that. I mean, how can one be afraid of their own thoughts? It’s like they are afraid of themselves. They also categorize this as boredom. How can being alone with one’s thoughts be boring? I don’t understand this. So, apparently, I’m living in the modern world with a bunch of people who live in it with me but in a very different way, which probably explains a lot. I wish I had some advice to give, but I don’t because I don’t understand this way of being.
I Want Your Attention. I Need Your Attention. Here Is How I Mastered My Own
1/2/25 – You have to think. It’s one of the great joys of life: being your own, independent thinking person as God made you. You are nobody’s slave. Don’t make yourself into one.
The 73 Percent Solution
1/2/25 – We don’t do resolutions, but this is a good idea. You could break up the year into fourths, although not particularly spiritual, but as financial quarters, and assess how the resolutions are going, to possibly make modifications. You could also do so according to the suggestions here, such as monthly, “Rosh Hodesh, the celebration of the new month.”
This was a great insight: “To help the Israelites break out of their slave mentality, they had to take control over the way they marked time. To be truly free, they had to take time into their own hands.” Sometimes, people like to say that “we are corporate slaves.” Obviously, they don’t mean this literally. Maybe the best New Year’s resolution is simply to be more mindful of how you’re spending your time and not do so as if you’re a “slave.”
“If nothing else, we can commit to being moon watchers, gaining our inspiration from the cycles of the natural world, taking in the tides of time that have captured the imagination of our people through the ages. Together with an appreciation of the rhythm of the Jewish calendar, we can learn to trust in a process that allows us to continually assess our goals and keep ourselves on a path of growth and personal exploration throughout the year.”
The Jewish Way to Make a New Year’s Resolution
1/2/25 – “They need to think of Liturgy as a kind of school.” It’s a good description for the Liturgy of the Word. In the Catholic tradition, the mass is divided into two halves. The first half is called the Liturgy of the Word, and the second half is called the Liturgy of the Eucharist. If you think about Jesus’s Ministry as, first, his preaching and healing, and subsequently, his death and resurrection, the structure of the mass follows the structure of his ministry.
How Is Syriac Christian Thought Different from Greek and Latin Thought?
1/2/25 – Obviously, Jesus didn’t speak Latin. He spoke Aramaic (Galilean dialect, Aramaic script). (We speak English (various dialects, Latin script).) From this parent language, Aramaic, comes Hebrew (Jewish) and Syriac (Christian). They are both in the Semitic language family (as is Arabic (Muslim)). This is the Lord’s Prayer (also called the Our Father, Notre Père in French) in Syriac Aramaic. The translation is provided in the comments.
From the comments (lightly edited): “I have the heritage of both, the Chaldean (Syro-Malabar) and Antiochian (Syro-Malankara) Syrian Christians, and I am proud! God bless you all. Love from India!” She’s referring to the historical relationship between the Indian and the Middle Eastern churches, Syrian Christians. The Indian counterpart in terms of rite, hymns and language to the specific Middle Eastern church is in parentheses. (All Christians of this Syrian heritage need to remember that spiritual pride is also a sin.)
Abun d’bashmayo (Syriac Aramaic) The Lord’s prayer
Abun d’bashmayo — Notre Père en araméen syriaque — Syriac Aramaic Lord’s prayer
1/1/25 – A Gregorian chant as an initiation for the New Year. It is an over 1,000-year tradition in the Catholic Church to sing it on this day. Even if you don’t understand the words, try to sing along in the Latin. You just copy the sounds.
Veni Creator Spiritus / Come Holy Spirit
1/1/25 – Reporters need to adhere to journalistic standards and report what is happening in the country and what the American people think in an unbiased and objective manner. That is not what is happening, and the public has lost trust in the news media. Poll after poll has shown this. The American people don’t trust the news media because they are not trustworthy. They can continue to erode whatever remains of this trust or do their jobs correctly. The choice is theirs. We, however, will continue to try to find other sources of information that have more journalistic integrity and are of better quality.
1/1/25 – We have long had a dislike of the Washington Propaganda because it has been the worst abuser of the American people’s trust. It was the most deceptive newspaper regarding Biden’s infirmity. Its reporters and op-ed writers have used the platform to push their own or progressives’ agenda numerous times, in ways beyond what some other news organizations were doing. We will not tolerate even the slightest deception, condescension, manipulation, or insulting insinuation. And The New Yorker is simply completely detached from and out-of-touch with the American people. For a while now, we haven’t even bothered with it.
1/1/25 – On the tedious but necessary topic of the news media. The link, which was chosen in haste, to the article on MacKenzie Scott below was changed yesterday from the AP to ABC News. This change was made for the following reason. The AP’s coverage of religious news, which has been the main reason we read it, has fallen in quality, and lately, it is categorizing stories as religious news when are not. Sports, somehow tangentially tied to religion, is not religious news. It’s sports news. This happened at least twice. The trans politician profile article they recently published is also not religious news, even if it has some minor references to religion. It is political news. We read religious news to get away from politics and other fluffy things we don’t care about, like sports. The content needs to reflect the category.
1/1/25 – Note that we don’t talk about many issues, including anything related to sports or most entertainment (we do talk about some art), bathrooms and whatever else happens on social media since we’re not on it, etc. The Atlantic covers the trans topic from time to time and are a good source for public opinion on this and other topics since they try to present the American public’s views, not their own personal views, and have good writers. This was their latest article on this topic. We do bigger, broader issues: obviously, religion, the planet and the environment, and other life issues, such as housing, education, economics, etc. You get the idea: God, life, learning. Also note that we routinely correct minor errors, such as typos or minor rephrasings, without any notice. Unless the edit is fairly significant, we don’t mention it.
What the Left Refused to Understand About Women’s Sports
1/1/25 – This story is hard. We remember images of koalas being roasted alive in the Australian wildfires caused by climate change. Now, this. We must save the koalas! They need to push the vaccine through now and save them. We love the planet God gave us. We must save as much of it as we can. We owe it to God, the animals, and to ourselves.
Chlamydia could make koalas extinct. Can a vaccine save them in time?
1/1/25 – We cannot survive physically or spiritually without a healthy, thriving planet. The animals that we share this planet with are our friends. When I was young, I covered my walls with posters of wild animals and some pets (and the occasional cutie musician) with stickers of them in between the posters. A favorite was a poster of a baby seal. I would look into the baby seal’s eyes, and it looked back at me with such deep kindness and innocence. It comforted me better than any stuffed animal could. Nature and God’s creatures were my childhood friends, and they are still my friends. The mass extinction of their life on our planet hurts my soul. The natural decline in human populations cannot come soon enough.
1/1/25 – It is 2025. May God bless you and save all of us, our beautiful planet and its amazing creatures.