5/30/24 – Let’s pray, pray and pray that the evil one, trump, goes to prison and then to hell. May he burn in hell for eternity.
5/29/24 – It’s not traditional or modern. It’s not east or west. It’s not Hindu or Muslim. It’s not black or white. It’s not either/or. It’s both. We’re not going backward. We’re international. We’re connected in a way we’ve never been, and we like it that way. We’re going forward because it’s our future.
5/29/24 – If you were lucky enough to see her 1998 exhibition, it was masterful.
Shirin Neshat’s Turbulent
5/29/24 – Today, nerding out on some art. Don’t worry, Auntie. Their beautiful Indian hair is still long. They can let it down, wear it in a braid, and do the traditional Indian Bharatanatyam. The classical Indian dance that originated in the South of India, in Tamil Nadu, tells stories using music and dance. Art from all over the world can be combined in creative ways to make new art because all art tells stories and gives expression to the human condition.
Hybrid Bharatham EPISODE 6 | Usha Jey Choreography | Empire State of Mind – Jay Z ft. Alicia Keys
5/28/24 – Nerding out on Christianity and religions in general is so much fun. Enjoy!
5/28/24 – Let’s consider this. So many nonbelievers, atheists, agnostics, and even some quasi/skeptical “believers,” pretty much all of them think they would truly believe if only they saw basically some sort of miracle. Well, Jesus’s disciples saw plenty of miracles, and he had to keep telling them they had little faith. Who can forget Peter walking on water until he fell like a stone when he saw the wind. What changed between this and they themselves performing miracles? There is Jesus’s resurrection, but they had already witnessed the precursor to the resurrection, raising Lazarus from the dead. One could argue that what really changed was that they received the Holy Spirit. So, instead of needing to see or feel like Thomas did, maybe we just need to receive our advocate, the paraclete. As formless and fleeting as the wind, yet more powerful than our sensory perceptions.
5/27/24 – There have been many people on the right who have been willing to criticize the right. We’re still waiting for members of the left to step up and do so with the left. We cannot fully realize our greatness as Americans and as a country if only one side is willing to do an examination of conscience.
5/27/24 – Christianity will survive the clergy abuse. It will also survive the factions within the laity who don’t practice the faith correctly. Christianity is not to be used to advance either the left’s or the right’s political agenda. It is an ancient religion, deeply rooted in love, hope and faith. It is not about worldly power, money or fame. It is about sacrifice. It is about serving God and each other. Nobody is required to remain within the church. If one can’t orient themselves to God, to Jesus Christ, and to these core tenets, please leave the church. Thank you.
“‘For some on the religious right,’ Malcolm Gladwell wrote in an American Spectator essay in 1986, ‘advancing a political agenda has come to take precedence over even the most basic ethical considerations.’ This has been a decades-long through line.
Another reason things are playing out the way they are in the white evangelical world is that its leaders are giving in to the ancient temptation of proximity to political power, choosing to be court pastors in order to win the favor of the king. They are thrilled to be taken seriously, thrilled to be offered invitations to the halls of power, thrilled to be seen having influence in this world. In my years in politics, I’ve never found a group as easily seduced by political power as evangelicals….
There is also this unsettling fact: Too many people who claim to be Christians treat Jesus as a ‘hood ornament,’ to quote my friend Russell Moore. Christianity is for them an add-on, something they use to validate their preexisting ideological and partisan political beliefs. The Bible is useful to the extent that it acts as proof text for what they already believe.”
Praising Trump With Faint Damnation
5/27/24 – An older article that identifies a recurring weakness within conservatism. Tradition definitely has its place. For societies, it can create a sense of stability and continuity. It also gives us the opportunity to remember our ancestors, our compatriots and others who have helped shape our common history. It is filled with memory-making and memory-sharing. It brings us together in our shared identity and our shared humanity. However, maintaining tradition should not come at the expense of fundamental values, such as justice and accountability.
“But it was the church’s conservative instincts, the insistence on institutional loyalty, obedience and the absolute authority of clerics, that allowed the abuse to spread unpunished. What’s more, it was a conservative hierarchy’s bunker mentality that prevented the Vatican from reckoning with the scandal.”
A Time for Contrition
5/27/24 – Any day that honors our veterans and our shared history as Americans, whether indigenous or immigrant, recognizes the best aspects of the great country we’re building together. This is not the finest moment in our existence as an independent nation, but as long as the Statue of Liberty still stands, we’re still Americans. For as much as some people want or claim to see a multipolar world, it would be so only to a minimal extent. The United States is still regarded as the guardians of the free world. It’s an immense responsibility, and not one many of us really want. (Whenever any other country wants to bear this cross for us, please just let us know.) And the most demanding parts of it fall on our veterans. May we honor them and their sacrifices not just today but every day. May God bless them and keep them.
5/26/24 – “Napoleon Bonaparte once taunted a Catholic cardinal by threatening: ‘Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?’ To which the cardinal quipped: ‘Your Majesty, we Catholic clergy have done our best to destroy the Church for the last eighteen hundred years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.’”
Nothing and nobody will ever succeed. The church are the followers of Jesus Christ. We are the followers of the way. He never abandoned us, and we will never abandon him. Two-thousand years later, Jesus is awe-inspiring, and the Spirit continues to work in mysterious ways. Glory be to God in the highest.
5/26/24 – A couple of excellent articles from The Atlantic if you’re actually interested in developing as a human being. Remember to take breaks from the tech and the politics to focus on living in the world, for others and for God. Also, everything that really matters in life takes work. It’s healthy work. Embrace it. Happy Sunday and enjoy the articles!
5/26/24 – “The growing phenomenon of the nones, however, is not evidence of a lack of interest in spiritual life. Many today who previously fell away from their faith—or never had one to begin with—are seeking something faith-like in their life. They are open to thinking about such commitments, but just don’t know what to look for. Maybe this describes you. If so, ironically, the research data on why people say they became nones in the first place might hold the answer of what to focus on to set you on your spiritual path.”
How to Find Your Faith
5/26/24 – “From their earliest days, the Dominicans have done battle with lies, folly, and ignorance, and what the Order of Preachers has taught to combat falsehood still serves today…. You have probably been told that college is a place you go to figure out your career plans and life ambitions—where you discover what your passion is, what you’re good at, and what the world needs specifically from you…. The second big lie you may have absorbed osmotically through the culture has to do with pain and suffering…. Perhaps the biggest lie of all that can hold back your life’s journey in the modern world is that you should seek your own individual truth in life.”
What Monastic Mystics Got Right About Life
5/21/24 – This is not the place for the battles of the day. We aren’t here to affirm or to condemn. We are just here in our moments together. People are diverse, and they are designed by their creator to be different. Both the extreme right and the extreme left are trying to make everyone uniform, wanting everyone to conform to their ideas, their thoughts and their ways of being in the world. You don’t have to agree with people. You don’t have to affirm them. You’re not their therapist. You also don’t need to condemn them. You’re not sovereign over them. Just be another human being living humbly alongside them.
If you’re worshipping together, focus on glorifying God together. If you’re studying together, focus on learning together. If you’re working together, focus on doing a great job together. If you’re doing creative work together, focus on making great art together. Nothing else matters. Can you do these things with someone that is of a different race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. from you? Or, for example, do you need the person to conform to your identity, your values, your whatever, before you can worship God together? If you do, then where is your relationship with God because God created the person with whom you can’t worship because the person doesn’t align with your preferences? So, who really needs to change?
5/21/24 – In Christianity, a well-directed spiritual journey is all about being closer to God. One does so, perhaps paradoxically, by being closer to other humans and all of God’s creation. One also does so by retreating from time to time from the world into quiet and contemplation. Humans and life in general can be exhausting. Like Jesus often did, sometimes, we just need to be with God by ourselves: read our Bible, pray our rosary, or just think about how amazing God and his creation is. Contemplation of the divine fills us with gratitude, love and peace. When we feel quite uncharitable to everyone because they can be so annoying, taking time to just be with God helps soften our hearts, replenishes our patience and gives us rest. Then, we can go back to building stronger relationships with humans, which brings us even closer to God. It can be a virtuous cycle.
5/19/24 – To the persecuted church, we love you. We pray for you all the time. You are our best. May God be with you always and forever. May he give you comfort: spiritual, emotional and physical. In many ways, Christianity is not an easy religion to practice correctly, but it’s worth it. They will know us by our love and by our unwillingness to abandon our God. In response to those who persecute you, for as hard as it can be, never seek revenge. Like our Lord, seek only truth and justice. God bless you all.
Open Doors USA
Barnabas Aid
The Voice of the Martyrs
5/19/24 – With respect for Pope Francis, he appeases too much. He concedes too much. Wear red for the martyrs of the faith: past, present and future. Christianity is worth risking everything for, including our lives. That’s what Jesus did for us. We either believe in him and in his teachings, or we don’t. We either trust God, or we don’t. Don’t do politics. Just do pure, uncompromising faith.
The Vatican’s Gamble With Beijing Is Costing China’s Catholics
5/19/24 – The temptation to abandon unwelcoming churches is common, particularly for people of color, LGBTQ+, and others. Don’t. If true Christians leave the church because it’s become dominated by social club Christians, with their spoiled, precious white children who they don’t want around nonwhite children, or even worse, “Christian” nationalists, who are not real Christians at all, then how can we reform the church? Reform doesn’t come easy, and it will never come if we quit and let them win. Think about the persecuted church, past and present. They sacrifice everything. We can deal with some discomfort. Reclaim, reform and rename in Jesus’s name because it’s his church. It belongs to him and, therefore, to those who genuinely want to follow him.
5/19/24 – Happy Birthday to the Church. The mother of Jesus, Mary, is also the mother of the Church. There would be no Christianity without her because there would be no Christ without her. If anyone tells you Christianity is a male-dominated religion, please remind them of these basic facts.
5/18/24 – If one is delusional enough to think that God needs an advocate, one is delusional enough to think that the evil one, trump, is the messiah. Tomorrow is Pentecost, one of the most important days in the liturgical calendar. It is the day that Mary the Mother of Jesus and the Apostles receive the Holy Spirit, the advocate that God sends to us because we are the ones who need an advocate, not God.
Neither MAGA nor the evil one, trump, are the chosen people. According to Christianity, the Chosen people were the Jewish people, but with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Jesus’s own actions during his ministry, any person can be saved. However, redemption is not guaranteed. Jesus alone is the judge. One is free to go through their lives in a state of delusion, but at the Last Judgment, what matters will be reality and truth.
Jesus is their savior, Trump is their candidate. Ex-president’s backers say he shares faith, values
5/18/24 – To all Christians everywhere: Serve the Lord, with a clarity of conscience, of heart, mind and soul, and nothing and no one else.
5/18/24 – As Christians, we often ask our Lord and our God, Jesus Christ, a Jew, to help us be instruments of his peace – his peace that he modeled and gave to us. We can’t do this if we can’t be absolutely honest with ourselves and with others about who we serve. If we are motivated by anything but truth and justice and serving our God, instead of being instruments of peace, we would be serving ourselves whether or not we realize it.
As Christians, we are called to love and support both the Jewish and the Palestinian people alike. It’s not either/or. It’s both. The truth is that the war against Hamas isn’t going well for the Israelis and the humanitarian cost to the Palestinians has been too high. The truth is that many Israeli and American Jews have spoken out about it. Many Israeli Jews have protested their own government’s policies, and recently, the Israeli Defense establishment has spoken out publicly against Netanyahu’s leadership or lack thereof.
Netanyahu’s selfish motivations are nothing new, and he is yet another among several authoritarian leaders, such as the Russian, the Chinese, and the Indian ones, and of course, the evil one, trump, who put their interests above the interests of their country, the people they are supposed to serve, and the world more generally.
The protestors and others among American liberalism are choosing to ignore these truths, the internal dissent within Israelis and the Jewish diaspora. Acknowledging it would complicate their neat narrative of us versus them: Palestinians good, Jews, bad. But of course, the protestors are not motivated to be instruments of peace. They are motivated by something else, something that ultimately serves them, but like David French’s piece below, they just can’t see it.
The Israeli Defense Establishment Revolts Against Netanyahu
5/18/24 – The Atlantic has taken what is, at present, an unpopular stance in the liberal press and in liberal circles. It pushed back against a rising tide of anti-Semitism, especially on the extreme left. Even prior to this particular inflection point, The Atlantic was more moderate than other mainstream publications. In journalism, it takes courage to go against a prevailing narrative or popular perspective, but one that is morally wrong, and The Atlantic deserves recognition for doing so.
Tuesday, May 7 marked the 2024 Days of Remembrance Commemoration, to remember the 6 million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. If one is dispassionate, nothing in our evaluation of the war against Hamas should change the horror of the Holocaust. There are no two sides about the Holocaust or anti-Semitism. They are pure evil.
The protests on college campuses are not primarily driven by morality and humanitarianism. They are driven by tribalism and trends. They don’t seek truth, justice or reconciliation. They seek attention, and the liberal press gave it to them. The press also often gave the protestors their implicit support in their coverage.
Don’t Both-Sides This One, Joe
5/18/24 – David French should be commended for being honest and open. As Christians, if our faith has been practiced correctly, we should be primed for brutally honest introspection in any and all contexts. What else is an examination of conscience? How can we have a good relationship with God if we can’t even recognize our own sinfulness? By doing so, we naturally better understand our own souls and psychology, and we also better understand human psychology more generally.
One of the greatest threats of tribalism is that it obscures truth. If one is blinded or biased by loyalty, to oneself or to others, how can one be honest or objective? As Christians, we are called to be loyal to one and only one entity – our God. We are called to be committed to God, and with it, to truth, to see oneself and the world without fear or favor and through the eyes of the divine.
I Was a Republican Partisan. It Altered the Way I Saw the World.
5/17/24 – This summer (We’re only a few weeks away. Time flies!), instead of scrolling like an idiot on your phone and wasting away your brain, do something creative. Especially, do something with language, i.e., spoken/written languages, but also music. Duolingo, which can be free, is rather logically branching out beyond spoken/written languages to include math and music. (Math is also a language.) Libraries sometimes lend musical instruments, or you could try Buy Nothing or Craig’s List. Learning any of these types of languages is very good for your brain, and as importantly, connects us in healthy ways with other people and cultures.
You can also do creative writing, make visual art, or dance. If you don’t have a lot of money, just check out books by great artists from your local library or go to museums when they are free and copy the images. You just need pencil and paper. Take a dance class. They can be a little expensive. See if they offer a discount rate. YouTube has free videos that teach dance and music. You could also do gardening, which is basically painting with plants.
All of these activities also require patience, persistence and consistency, which are some of the most important traits to develop as a human being. The creative arts is the learning that makes you complete. Don’t cheat yourself out of it because you’re too “busy” mucking around on your phone or because you think academics is the only thing that matters. Academics and the arts are complementary. It’s not either/or. It’s both.
5/16/24 – Sometimes, one just wants to listen to a black (negro) spiritual. No autotune, as it should always be. Just a talented woman with a beautiful voice. Enjoy!
Joan Baez – Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Live, 1969)
5/15/24 – Sometimes, one just wants to listen to some Mozart. Music is universal. It can be made, played and appreciated by anyone. Enjoy!
Gloria from Twelfth Mass by W A Mozart. Conducted By James Varrick Armaah
5/14/24 – Ora et labora. Laborare est orare. “God instituted prayer in order to allow his creatures the dignity of causality,” Pascal. We can’t be both puppets and people. However, we can be and are independent people yet also God’s children under his care. The exercise of God’s discretionary power is a mystery. Accept it, and keep praying.
Work and Prayer by C.S. Lewis Doodle
5/14/24 – The theory of evolution in a nutshell: Correlation is causation. We share a bunch of genes with other forms of life. Thus, we came out of the same source of life, the primordial soup, which will remain unspecified. Life evolves based on survival of the fittest. We are motivated by this result and this one alone. Like other animals on the planet: Kill or be killed. Of course, there is no prayer. There is no mystery. There is no morality. There is only might.
5/13/24 – Let’s do everything we can in every way that we can to triumph over evil, and the evil one, trump. Let’s also pray, pray and pray some more, and put our faith in God. It’s not either/or. It’s both.
5/13/24 – Not as well-known as some of Serge Gainsbourg’s many hits, such as Bonnie and Clyde or Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais, but it might come in handy on say, November 5, 2024. Don’t let us down, America. Don’t let the world down. Everything is at stake.
Serge Gainsbourg – Requiem Pour Un Con [Orange]
5/13/24 – Protests aren’t always in the streets. Arguably the most effective protests are just doing the Lord’s work day in and day out. They are directing our gifts in the myriad of forms they take to help good prevail against evil.
“The more expansive work on the album is a 44-minute symphony for violin and orchestra titled Dedication. Who’s it dedicated to? Lyndon-Gee, writing in the album’s booklet, treats it as an homage to the ‘life-force’ of the human race — which encompasses not only tragedy, but also love and renewal.”
What’s past is present for Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov
If you want to help, you can’t just virtue-signal. That’s actually not helpful. What’s helpful is understanding that human beings are often walking contradictions. It’s rolling up your sleeves and doing the work in spite of or because of this truth. “‘I am so distracted,’ Zielinski says. ‘I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. If I’m doing one thing right, I’m just forcing myself to do it, forcing myself to bring myself to that space knowing that faith in God will fill in the rest.’… He looks for God in the world, in the suffering, in the daily work, in others. ‘Thy will be done,’ he prays. ‘Take the work of my hands today and the mistakes I make. Remedy them. Take the good that I do, augment it, and let it be.’”
Inside the prayers of a middle manager at a Denver family shelter saving — and turning away — homeless families
5/12/24 – The men and women start singing separately but end up singing in unison. Some paradoxes make a whole. Happy Ascension Sunday!
Christus Paradox | Alfred Fedak / Sylvia Dunstan
5/12/24 – The number of times we have wept for Ukraine’s children, it’s countless. On this Mother’s Day, let’s collectively weep for the world’s children who have been abused, neglected, tortured or killed. The world’s children, our children, who have insufficient food and water, housing, health care, education, or other basic necessities of life.
They came out of their mother’s womb as God’s perfect creation, just as they are, and our imperfect world that doesn’t adequately value life, human and all life, treated them like pawns and commodities. It treated them as disposable. Our children are our collective treasure and responsibility, and we are failing them.
The mothers of Ukraine need you
5/11/24 – Americans are an industrious people. We hustle. We work really hard. God bless you all (even MAGA) for contributing to our great country. Remember to rest though. That’s also important. (To MAGA, don’t vote for the evil one, trump, and don’t waste your hard-earned money on a loser. You’re better than him.)
5/11/24 – This Mother’s Day, please pray for Ukrainian mothers, who along with their husbands and children have sacrificed so much to remain free and democratic. They are a testament to courage, resilience and strength. We admire and respect them. They inspire us. Slava Ukraini!
Also, please consider donating to United24, or purchasing some cool merch, especially the vyshyvanka or MUGA (because it’s sass) hat or t-shirt, from Saint Javelin. If you’re unable to donate or make a purchase at this time, you could spend some time learning about Ukraine, its culture and its people, or sending emails or letters to them to show them that our support is steadfast. They need to hear from us. They need to know that we’re still here for them. We’re Americans, after all. Like Ukrainians, we persevere.
5/9/24 – Let the body of Christ model unity for the rest of the world. Let us be instruments of God’s peace. Let’s have more interdenominational and interfaith exchanges and events. Let’s show the world that love doesn’t have boundaries. Instead, it reaches across divides.
5/9/24 – Churches are a feast for the senses and for life. They are beautiful and complete. They do everything. You can volunteer your time and talent and donate your money to help people materially and physically. You can help yourself and others spiritually.
They are also a sensory delight. Our churches are still patrons of the arts. They commission works while being architectural works of art in and of themselves, with their grand, elegant spaces. They have incense, organs, and incredible music. Perhaps most importantly, they have pews to rest your weary body or to kneel in silence with God and find peace.
Vespers of Ascension was today. Even if you’re not a terribly religious person, the sensory experiences in our religious spaces will help you come into your body, mind and soul in ways nothing else can. God is great. God is good. We are so blessed.
5/6/24 – Our diversity is part of God’s creation, and it’s a thing of beauty. From Catholics to our Evangelical sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus liked to have fun too. Have a drink, listen to some good music, sing, dance (it’s OK if you suck at either or both, nobody cares) and relax. Everything will be OK (or we’ll all die in the apocalypse, but that’ll be OK too). Just don’t vote for evil people, like the evil one, trump. Don’t sell your soul to the devil.
PS All the limited edition vinyl is gone. Don’t bother. The Black Keys, consistently good.
The Black Keys – Beautiful People (Stay High) (“Official” Video)
5/6/24 – Pope Francis is a man of the people. He understands human frailties. He is compassionate and kind. And apparently, he likes a good empanada. Who can blame him? Let the pastoral pros just do their jobs in peace. To the haters, please find something productive and helpful to do. Maybe spend less time on politics, conspiracy theories and the end of times obsessions, and more time on tending to the needs of your flock and your communities.
How Pope Francis opened the Vatican to transgender sex workers
5/5/24 – We can spend our whole lives trying to decipher the mystery of creation, in its tremendous diversity, but we will never really understand it. No matter whether people are gay, trans, black, white, whatever, as Christians we are called to love. The New Testament goes to great lengths to teach us this. Pope Francis was entirely correct to welcome transgender sex workers. We are always to reach out to the marginalized. It’s what Jesus did and would do. Expressing compassion doesn’t mean you agree with other people’s words, actions or ways of being in the world. We don’t need to pretend to believe in false things, but we do need to be compassionate and kind. Be like Jesus. Happy Sunday!
They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love
5/4/24 – Unless one is completely delusional, typically speaking, one’s identity is connected to their physical person. It’s true of race. It’s even more true of gender. You can pretend you’re white when you’re really black, but people will think you’re crazy and will still think and treat you like you’re black. You can pretend to be black when you’re actually white, but people will think you’re crazy and will rightly criticize you.
Obviously, many people don’t fit neatly into a race. For example, what race are Indians, Middle Easterners or Latinos? The truth is that most of us don’t fall cleanly into the three main categories we have created for race: black, white and Asian, but most of us do fall into some category. Indians are Indians. Middle Easterners are Middle Easterners, and Latinos are Latinos. Most of us put ourselves into the category that best aligns with our genetic composition, our DNA, to the best of our understanding. We usually base this on our knowledge of our heritage and lineage, and what we can physically see about ourselves.
No matter the actual complexities and overlap of these categories, the natural genetic mixture has always been formed with a man and a woman creating new life. It is never anything but a biological man and a woman, and this needs to remain so. Biological sex is dichotomous, divided into two distinct categories. There are two complementary reproductive organs that come together to divinely form new human life. This is not to be scientifically experimented with, or all human life will be threatened.
If people are born with one set of reproductive organs and want to identify with the opposite sex, they are, of course, free to do so, but it is also unsurprising that the general public will receive it even more critically than people claiming to be a different race than what they actually are. To criticize people for not going along with black is white, up is down, right is wrong, is to claim to love truth but only when truth loves you back the way you want to be loved. That’s not how truth works, and that’s not how reality works. What is simply is. Would you like to be white when you’re black? Well, you’re not, and claiming to be white doesn’t make it so. Bleaching your skin won’t make it so either. Your DNA doesn’t change, and your DNA is the truth. That’s the truth. That’s also the science.
If one is looking at a penis, but the person identifies as a woman, well, this is obviously a disorder. The person’s physical reality and their psychology identity are not in alignment. Therefore, the reason people are accommodating what is obviously not genetically true is out of a sense of compassion, an understanding that the person suffers from a disorder. We are not pretending that reality isn’t actually reality because that would make us all crazy.
This is not the same thing as being sexually attracted to someone of the same sex. For gender identity disorder to fall under an umbrella category of homosexuality is simply wrong. No matter how one feels about the morality regarding homosexuality, it is not a psychological disorder. There is no misunderstanding of or detachment from reality. The reality is that homosexuals are attracted to the same sex.
There are people who might say that homosexuals’ brain chemistry is off, or they feel this way, but they shouldn’t, or they shouldn’t act on it or whatever, but any of these judgments are still based on the person, in reality, being attracted to the same sex. There is no incongruity with respect to their genetic composition. In fact, the genetic reality is part of the definition of homosexual or heterosexual.
Everybody needs to stop being emotionally driven about everything. Look at what is and what isn’t. The idea is to be as clear as possible in one’s thinking. One can’t do that when one’s thinking is clouded by one’s emotions. Also, stop following social trends. Groupthink doesn’t make you smart. It makes you shallow and stupid.
Psychiatrists learned the wrong lesson from the gay rights movement
5/3/24 – Animals aren’t just animals. They are God’s creation. Like all of us, they belong to him. “He said to them: ‘My brother and sister birds, you should praise your Creator and always love him: He gave you feathers for clothes, wings to fly and all other things that you need. It is God who made you noble among all creatures, making your home in thin, pure air. Without sowing or reaping, you receive God’s guidance and protection.’”
St. Francis and the Animals
5/3/24 – On a day-to-day basis, Americans are remarkably polite and helpful in their in-person interactions. Foreigners routinely comment on it. Although we could be better at greeting each other before asking questions, as is the culture in much of Europe, Americans are more polite overall. They regularly say “please” and “thank you.” They open doors for each other. They are considerably more helpful.
However, when they’re in their cars driving, which creates a certain illusion of anonymity, they become less polite. When they’re behind a screen, which has even more anonymity, they can become obscene. What happens when this natural human tendency meets a man intent on manipulating it for his own gain? An entire nation can collapse. That is what we’re watching unfold in real-time.
Stop with the extremism. Have real conversations with real people in real time. Get some fresh air. Go birding. Be like St. Francis and talk with our animal friends. Be weird in a cute way instead of crazy in a dangerous way.
5/3/24 – Wow! Look at that beautiful bird. Blue rock-thrush. Lucky photographer.
Hobbyist photographer snaps photo of extremely rare bird in 1st U.S. sighting
5/3/24 – Millennials and Gen Z are destroying the fashion industry with their bad taste and addiction to fast fashion. It’s also damaging our planet. Just buy well-made clothes and shoes, which don’t have to be expensive, and wear them until they wear out. If they stop fitting, donate them. Bring your shoes and boots to the cobbler. Mend your clothes or repurpose the material. High-quality brand names are feeling economic stress because of them.