9/30/23 – Bring on the robot revolution! It might be disruptive and scary, but only if we let it by not planning for it. Let’s build free housing for everybody. Nobody should be living on the streets anywhere in the world. We can even have robots build them, or they can help us build them. All of the new communities should have community gardens with plots for everyone so that people can grow fresh fruit and vegetables. They should also have hens that are treated humanely for eggs. Maybe a couple community cows or goats who are treated like part of the family. Kids can be given lessons on how to milk them without hurting them. They can learn the value of and the sacredness of life. All communities should also have wells or other ways of capturing rainfall. We need to live in communities again, share our resources and help each other. We need to live in communion with animals and other life. People used to do this, and we were all better off the way it was. Let robots work like slaves. They are made of metal and wires, and by us. We are not. We need rest. We and the animals with whom we share our beautiful planet are made by God. Let us respect ourselves and them.
9/30/23 – The Jewish people are a gift to the world. Never let anybody tell you otherwise. They gave us so many things, and one very important thing is simply a value for rest. Beautifully said! “Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote that for Jews, whose sacred architecture isn’t only physical but temporal, ‘Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.’ ‘Six days a week,’ he observed, ‘we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.’” It doesn’t matter if it’s the third or fourth commandment. It’s God’s commandment to us. It doesn’t matter if it’s Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Ideally, it’s all three days. The entire world is tired. We all need more rest and more time for the things that make life worth living. One day for errands, cleaning and such; one day for wholesome entertainment with family and friends; one day for God and our spiritual lives. Right now, the first two days are compressed into Saturday or spread out over Saturday and Sunday, which ends up being a partial day instead of a full day of rest. Some people don’t rest at all, which is quite sad. We can choose on which day we do what. Do we really need to shop on Sunday, or can we give the consumerism a rest, for at least one day? Sure, the greedy ones won’t like it. God doesn’t care what they like, and neither should the rest of us.
The Quiet Revolution of the Sabbath
9/30/23 – And on the last day of the month of September, there is still hope. If moderates in both parties defied the extremes, we might actually move forward as a country and as a world. Shut out the extremists. They are a death cult. They can die alone.
Kevin McCarthy Finally Defies the Right
9/28/23 – The elite liberal media are vile mad scientist worshippers. They don’t worship God. They worship crazy humans who think they’re god.
9/28/23 – While conservatives have been obsessed with abortion and LGBTQ+. They missed this “Brave New World” development.
Japanese scientists race to create human eggs and sperm in the lab
9/28/23 – Of the main media organizations, some of the worst ones are the New York Times and NPR. NPR should not have any governmental support of any kind. After contributing to the destruction of our world as we knew it, the elite liberal media are now contributing to the destruction of the human species.
9/28/23 – Instead of reporting on our big, diverse country in a way that accurately reflects the entire nation, the elite liberal media have been pushing their own agenda and reflecting their values and beliefs onto the country. They think that they are morally and intellectually superior. Thus, this approach is justified. “In a new study, Black Americans expressed broad concerns about how they are depicted in the news media, with majorities saying they see racist or negative depictions and a lack of effort to cover broad segments of their community.” Black Americans aren’t the only ones who are dissatisfied with the media. It is also incapable or unwilling to critically examine itself.
Black Americans express concerns about racist depictions in news media, lack of coverage efforts
9/27/23 – After listening to several of his well-delivered sermons, they were all thematically similar to other sermons I’ve heard, albeit with his own twist, which was usually interesting. This question, however, never occurred to me, and I’ve never heard it in a sermon. What is the “USP” (unique selling point) of Catholicism? For Christianity, without question, Jesus. He’s not a “selling point,” but there is no Christianity without Jesus. What is the “USP” of Catholicism? Without hearing the answer, I knew that the priest would say the blessed sacrament, but in my opinion, that’s not accurate. Many denominations have high regard for communion even if they theologically think of it a little differently from the Catholic Church. There are also other denominations that are more conservative or more liberal. One could perhaps argue the prominence of Mary. I would say, it’s simply the long history of the Catholic Church, which comes with the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s likely the largest, most continuous institution in the world. Empires have come and gone, and it’s still here. It’s broad, deep and diverse, and it started with Jesus and a handful of Jews. What’s interesting and revealing is that after the priest says “blessed sacrament,” he goes right back to talking about Jesus. Don’t be Christian because of any selling point. Be Christian because of Jesus. Be Catholic because of Jesus.
Why Be Catholic?
9/26/23 – A balance between labor and leisure is necessary to be able love authentically and fully.
Labour, Leisure & Love
9/26/23 – This is an interesting question. “Many studies have shown a strong association between workaholism and the symptoms of psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety and depression, and it has been common to assume that compulsive work leads to these maladies. But some psychologists have recently argued reverse causation—that people may treat their depression and anxiety with workaholic behavior.” Helpful advice for those struggling with “workaholism.” “This has been a game changer for me. I treat my walks, prayer time, and gym sessions as if they were meetings with the president. And when I have nothing planned, my plan is literally to do nothing, without succumbing to distractions.”
The Hidden Link Between Workaholism and Mental Health
9/25/23 – Many countries around the world love Bollywood, which is much more conservative in comparison to Hollywood. They also like much of Indian style, henna, jewelry, attire and such, because it’s more modest while still quite beautiful. Women can be free and modest. In fact, with modesty comes a genuine liberation. A woman is not a sex symbol but a human being. Dressing appropriately reflects our inherent dignity.
9/25/23 – “‘If your primary dystopia is a kind of fascist authoritarianism, you’re going to end up in a different alignment versus if your fundamental dystopia is something closer to Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The latter—a secular state that manages sex, death, and reproduction—is Douthat’s dystopia, and in several of our conversations he brought up newly permissive euthanasia laws in Canada and other countries.” Americans are aware of how crazy the liberals can be. It’s just a matter of priority. The imminent threat is the evil one, trump, and retaining our democracy. The more serious, long-term threat is “Brave New World,” which the irreverent experimenters, aka the crazy libs, keep pushing us toward. They have inadequate regard for the divinity and sanctity of human life, but the crazy libs aren’t America. They are just one faction of a big, complicated country with people from all over the world. To our conservative Muslim sisters and brothers and those of other religions, know this, many Americans will fight like hell against turning human beings, with our divine spark, into some monstrous science experiment.
Ross Douthat’s Theories of Persuasion
9/25/23 – One of the things many countries in the Islamic world, such as Iran, misunderstand about Americans is that they think we’re a bunch of half-naked, godless hedonists who fornicate and do drugs with abandon, have broken families, and are obsessed with all the wrong things. This misconception is quite understandable because they got it from the liberal media and Hollywood. Americans are not all like this. We have huge populations from conservative countries, whether Muslim or Christian ones, who tend to be quite family-oriented, god-fearing and moderately conservative. Many of us are aware of the excesses and lack of restraint of liberal America. Don’t look at Hollywood and liberal media, or one will get a very biased impression of who Americans really are.
9/25/23 – “The Talmud also understands Yom Kippur to be the day that God presented the Israelites with the second set of tablets after Moses shattered the first.” In the Sisyphean punishment, who was punished for thinking himself superior to God, there is no forgiveness. It is a forever punishment. In the Jewish tradition, God persists. Moses had to convey the tablets twice because the Jewish people were not, to put it delicately, getting it. (After 2,000 years of Christianity, most Christians are still not getting it.)
“The many prohibitions on the Day of Atonement allow us to disconnect from the material world and focus on repair and repentance for our sins. While owning up to our spiritual wrongdoings can feel daunting, there is great joy to be found in knowing that God sees the opportunity to forgive as nothing short of a celebration.” There is great joy and humility to be found in a God that doesn’t give up on us.
Why Yom Kippur Is a Joyous Holiday
9/25/23 – If you worship a false god, you’re violating the first of the Ten Commandments. The first one.
9/25/23 – In the Christian tradition, we believe that God simply speaks words, and the world is created. We also believe that the word became flesh. Imagine if our God lies. Imagine that instead of speaking truth, he speaks falsehood. Lies is truth. War is peace. Hate is love. Darkness is light. Slavery is freedom. What kind of flesh would a lying “god” take? MAGA, Russian nationalists, Hindu nationalists, all the world’s nationalists: what kind of flesh would he take?
What “Orwellian” really means – Noah Tavlin
9/25/23 – Every single person, even evil dictators, should be given opportunities for genuine repentance. All the evil poop would have to do is walk into a church, a real one not one that is an extension of the Kremlin, and be honest with himself and repent. Every single diabolical scheme he’s devised, every single lie he’s spoken, every single murder he’s ordered is known to God anyway. What the world is wondering is whether the satanic s—t knows it. Walking away from continuing the war in Ukraine isn’t weakness. It’s strength. It would be an act of reconciliation with God, and there is nothing more important in the world than one’s relationship with him.
9/25/23 – God’s designs have a way of inconveniencing dictators. It would have been so convenient, a neat sales pitch if the Ukrainian leader were a run-of-the-mill white person, preferably with ties to the west. There is the Russian s—t’s theory. “The ‘Western sponsors’ of the Ukrainian government, he told an interviewer, had deliberately chosen a Jewish president of Ukraine to camouflage the ‘antihuman’ essence of the Kyiv regime.” Then, there is the divine theory that God deliberately chose Zelensky, aka David, as president of Ukraine to expose the antihuman essence of the Russian regime.
Putin Is Worried, So He Turned to Anti-Semitism
9/25/23 – “‘We are waiting for the right moment regarding the schools. And while the schools are closed now, they won’t be forever,’ he says. He won’t give a timeline but insists that ‘the world shouldn’t use this as an excuse’ not to recognize the Taliban government.” The Afghan people should govern their own country, their ancestral lands, and the world’s people recognize that the Afghan government is the Taliban because it’s clearly in power. What the world’s people and its institutions don’t recognize is a world where women are erased. Before any man existed as a breathing human being, he existed in the womb of his mother, a woman, tied with an umbilical cord to her body without which he would die. The Taliban seems to think that once this baby comes out of his mother’s womb, he should rule over her and other females as if he is now a god. There is only one true God in Islam, Allah, and he has no parent, neither father nor mother. The Taliban are simply men born of women, children of God, as are all people, men and women. It is a sin to elevate oneself above God or to act as if one is God.
Women, Erased
9/25/23 – To Christians, particularly Catholics, my personal take on the mystery of communion: As someone who was raised in the Catholic tradition, I received my first holy communion at the traditional age, around eight-years-old or so. I still remember it. I had my beautiful white dress and veil. Like so many other Catholic kids, I was nervous and worried whether I would do things correctly. I was also really excited to participate in something I had seen my parents and others share in every Sunday. Communion still feels like a great privilege, one in which any Catholic of any station in life can and is encouraged to participate. From all ends of the earth, from all occupations and classes, we file one after the other, forming orderly and patient lines, to receive communion. We walk to the altar and receive the bread, the body of Christ.
For me, this act has gone from a ritual of remembrance, which has great value and beauty in and of itself, to one of hope of transformation. (Jesus said, “Do this in memory of me.” The Christian tradition of communion is, in part, derived from Jewish traditions. The Jewish people are one of remembrance. One could even say that their identities are built on it.) I can’t remember when this transition took place, but it was sometime after I realized that a supernatural divine presence can actually happen. When I receive communion now, it is the only time that I regularly hope for a supernatural presence. Anticipation would be too presumptuous. It’s truly hope. Now, communion is both remembrance of the God we love and his tremendous love and sacrifice for us and hope that his presence will transform me on a supernatural level. I am not interested in the theological debates. All I know is that somewhere along the way, this change occurred, and therefore, for me, at least the possibility of Christ’s presence must have registered. The thing I want more than anything else is to be connected in the strongest possible way with God because nothing else really matters, and, in my view, the best chance of that happening in ordinary life is during communion.
9/24/23 – Several church leaders have said that they’ve gotten too comfortable. In the developed world, we’ve all gotten too comfortable. We need to get uncomfortable, in many different ways, and we need to start giving up our comforts. It’s a hard truth.
9/24/23 – Solidarity Sunday is the best! Everybody looks so beautiful in their traditional clothes. The church is more diverse than the United Nations.
9/24/23 – God bless church and state separation. God bless the Black Church.
After Florida restricts Black history, churches step up to teach it
9/24/23 – To some extent, worshipping with our Jewish sisters and brothers, this is a good Sunday for an examination of conscience and repentance.
9/24/23 – Beautiful images! The box camera heightens the contrast, which one would normally have to do in a dark room. In the Abrahamic religions, God created men and women equal, and no God anywhere permits raping anybody ever. It is a sin of the highest order. It is a crime. On this Sunday, pray for the Afghan people. American has not forgotten them. The Middle East will have peace and will be free, and its people will have the opportunity to realize their ample God-given talent. Salaam.
Afghanistan in a New Light
9/23/23 – Everybody has a right to be fed up with everything, but nobody is a saint. We all contribute to this misery. Giving up religion doesn’t absolve anybody of sin or hypocrisy. It’s just that much more likely that you never examine your own conscience.
9/23/23 – The reason why marriage rates have fallen is because liberals created a terrible culture, one that told men and boys (and women and girls) that anything is permissible, and the men and boys raised in this culture never matured. Why should they grow up when they can get all the sex they want and remain adolescents for the rest of their lives? The women who wanted to get married and have traditional families had no suitable choices for a husband, which requires an actual man and not a boy. That’s why there are so many broken or single-parent (meaning female parent) families, particularly black American families. But hey, what’s important is the virtue-signaling. What’s important is that everybody thinks you’re really cool and open-minded. What’s important are not the ramifications of your words and actions on real people and their lives. Right?
9/23/23 – Just wondering if all the people who were quick to criticize David Brooks took the beam out of their own eye first. In some providential irony, as the Jewish people are atoning for their sins, the judgmental virtue-signaling liberals are pointing to others for the sins they commit themselves. This applies to even poorer liberals. For every poor person in the USA, there is a person living on the brink of starvation elsewhere, many of whom probably made the cheap clothes they’re wearing and the cheap goods they’re using. David Brooks apologized for his insensitivity, which is something the virtue-signaling liberals pretty much never do because, well, they’re too busy judging others and tells others not to judge others.
9/22/23 – At the crux of the entire conundrum is the fact that the people who theoretically should have all the power don’t seem to have any power. Why? Some might argue it’s the nature of our political system. If only we were fill in the blank of some perceived superior political system. Some might argue it’s corruption and greed. Certainly, these are serious problems, but let’s be honest and ask ourselves: is that all there really is to this miserable situation we find ourselves in, the f—king torturous doom loop? Are we condemned as a world civilization to a Sisyphean punishment? Are we destined as a human species to enter a period of global self-destruction every few decades?
Let’s ask some other questions: Is it other people’s sinfulness that has led us to this place where we eat the flesh of tortured animals and continue to do so even when we are made aware of this fact? Is anybody forcing us to do this? Is anybody forcing us to be obsessed with money, comfort or other people’s estimation of us? Is anybody forcing us to buy goods we know were made with slave labor? Of course not. These are all our own afflictions that govern the decisions we make on an individual level, and after some labyrinthine, Kafkaesque journey, our individual afflictions become collective dysfunction. Our afflictions, our selfish indulgences which we console ourselves with as relatively minor, end up becoming the evil we condemn in the world.
One could reduce the values of the Gospel, of what Jesus preached, very simply yet accurately to overcoming this affliction. Yet even the Apostles of his time, for example, Paul, struggled with controlling their own afflictions. Does one find this comforting or discouraging? At least, they were honest. The reason we’re in this situation is that, metaphorically speaking, we’re addicted to eating each other’s tortured flesh. We just don’t recognize it as such. The communion is said to be the eating of Jesus’s tortured flesh and drinking of his blood. It is the only cannibalistic act that will save us from ourselves. When you read the Gospel, read it as a guide to examining the darkness within your own soul, and if you’re completely honest with yourself, you’ll realize everything he said about us was right. If we are to ever escape from the evil doom loop, we have to actually do what Jesus asked us to do. Can we do this?
Radical Vegans Are Trying to Change Your Diet
9/22/23 – Today was a dark, brooding day. On a day when one would welcome a change from the heat of summer, fall’s crispness, the warmth of the sun against the coolness of the air, the turning leaves with their branches like ripening fruit, there is a sense of pervasive evil. It roams the earth with impunity and with force. It has taken over swaths of the world: Russia, China, India, many parts of Africa, and the one last key line of defense are the democracies of the west, and look at us, we are barely holding the line. There is a sense that evil is winning. We have to get serious and fast. We have to assert who we are as a people and ourselves in no uncertain terms or that sense of evil winning will become the reality.
9/22/23 – If we collectively screamed at the top of our voices about all of the evil and madness we have to process on a daily basis, our voices would be heard well into the darkness of our solar system. Yet here on our beautiful blue planet that is being destroyed every second of every day, we end up being muted and muffled by the elite, by the institutions, by the structure of the world we’ve created. The people are supposed to be the ones with the power. We have the numbers. It’s our talent and our money that make this world work, and in spite of all of this, we seem to have no real say in the countries and in the world we actually build.
9/22/23 – If you’re overwhelmed with all of the dysfunction at every possible level, you’re not alone.
9/22/23 – If you are seething with frustration and anger about the doom loop, it’s entirely understandable. For f—k’s sake, can the f—king idiots we elect govern or what?
9/21/23 – We have a domestic and international governance system in which people don’t matter. They are controlled by the elites. Some of them are good people. Many are bad people. And the rest of us have no voice or agency. We don’t matter. That’s the message these domestic and international institutions send to the rest of us.
9/21/23 – In a country of over 330 million people, apparently, there are only two candidates who are qualified or competitive enough to run for president. Most Americans also don’t want them as president again. Are we understanding this situation correctly?
9/21/23 – Just wondering how many times the world is going to ask the Ukrainian people to justify their fight against evil. At what point does the questioning of them stop and the questioning of Russia and the Russian s—t, putin, start?
9/21/23 – The truth is that the evil one, trump, doesn’t care about abortion. More precisely, as with everything else, he has a position on it to the extent that it serves the only thing he does care about – himself. To all the pro-choice people, the pro-life people aren’t your “enemy.” To all the pro-life people, the pro-choice people aren’t your “enemy.” The actual enemy is the evil one, trump. Having an honest disagreement on a particularly tough moral issue is honorable. Pro-lifers and pro-choicers obviously disagree, but they both have heartfelt positions that are based on their sense of right and wrong. For those who are tempted to think that the evil one is taking a moderate, reasonable position, considering the values and views of both sides, he’s not. He’s taking a position that he deems to be the most presently politically favorable to him. He is a transaction man. He is a con man. He is a man without a moral bone in his body. He is the evil one, and one hopes that evangelical Christians will finally see him for who he has been this whole time. We might disagree on abortion, but both sides of this debate agree on the value of human life. The evil one has no value for human life.
9/19/23 – One of the most beautiful things a religion can offer is to ask us to be introspective. The introspection can take many forms, but they generally pull us out of our worldly preoccupations and, perhaps paradoxically, outside of ourselves. One common and valuable form is meditation. The Jewish and Christian traditions have periods for what Catholics call “an examination of conscience,” a time for repentance and forgiveness. In the Catholic Church, during last Sunday’s mass, we talked about the importance of forgiveness. The essence of the lesson was that God forgives us, so we need to forgive others. This is really from the Jewish tradition, and it is helpful for Christians (and other people) to better understand the Jewish faith because it is enlightening. “Anger’s enormous power is not easily contained by rational thought. But its destructive force can be tempered by love, the mitzvah at the very center of Jewish practice. In fact, while Leviticus doesn’t specify a ritual to resolve grudges, it includes ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:18) in the same passage, directly linking love to forgiveness.” Even if you can’t bring yourself to love the person who has wronged you, if you walk humbly with God, you can forgive others out of love for him.
How To Forgive Is Just as Important as When to Forgive
9/18/23 – If the present Indian government is worried about secession by any Indians, domestic or of its diaspora, it’s a situation of its own making. In fact, if India was presently true to its rich spiritual history and freedom of religious expression, which throughout its history, it has shown it can be, then nobody would want secession. Instead, it has a clone of the evil one, a Trumpian “leader,” who is trying to maintain power by feeding base feelings, anger, resentment, hate and so on. India, one of the greatest civilizations in world history, and the Indian people deserve better.
9/18/23 – Gandhi was a Hindu, a true Hindu and a true leader. We have the fake Christians here. They claim to be Christian, but they don’t actually practice the faith. The same problem exists in many different parts of the world across many different religions. In India’s case, there are many fake Hindus. Modi is just one of many.
9/18/23 – Let us consider a simple question: Are you actually surprised that the evil Modi might have ordered the execution of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh Canadian national? If you are, then you didn’t really understand the kind of person Modi is.
9/18/23 – Reauthorize PEPFAR. Americans, we are a people of hope and love. We have obligations to the rest of the world that we must fulfill. This is something on which both Democrats and Republicans agree. We are a strong people. Be true to your word, America.
9/18/23 – The most ancient part of the world is Africa. The continent is a natural marvel, and its people are warm and essential to our understanding of ourselves as human beings. The new world bursts with innovation and dynamism. It has attracted people from all over the world, as they seek new beginnings and opportunities. However, let us all remain connected with our roots and our ancient traditions. For millennia, the ancient civilizations have traded with each other, made business relationships and friends, and broke bread. We enrich each other through commerce and our cultural exchanges. Our modern existence has made us detached from our essential selves, our elemental needs, and we need to make a conscious effort to reconnect with our own ancestors and ancestral way of life and build connections to others’ ancestors and their ancestral ways of life. We move forward by building on our collective past and by honoring all of the people who came before us, within our ethnic groups and national boundaries and beyond them.
9/18/23 – The memories of the sadness we’ve seen can be overwhelming even crippling at times. When you think about events or people you know, met or with whom you simply crossed paths and wished you could have done more for, been there for, you can lay these feelings and thoughts at the foot of the cross. You can take these small crosses that seem to weigh so much and just hand them over to God, and say, my heart feels heavy, and it is too much for me to bear. I feel impotent in a cruel and unjust world. Lord, all powerful God, you be the justice that the world seems unable to deliver. When you remember someone like this and call upon God, these are prayers. These are silent acts of love, and God will hear them.
9/18/23 – People often want to cry in church, and many people sometimes do. One should never feel self-conscious or embarrassed about this. Church is the Lord’s house. It belongs to God, and it is safe. It is where you can be entirely vulnerable and yourself with God. Also, there is no point in being dishonest with God. God knows everything anyway. Be candid with your petitions and yourself even if you feel embarrassed, demanding or whatever. If you’re angry with God, say “I’m angry with you God.” If you’re sad, say “I’m sad”. And so on. Just be yourself. You can’t have a healthy relationship with God or with anybody if you can’t be honest with yourself and with other people. Take the time to go to the depths of your feelings and thoughts, well beyond the masks that we all wear to some degree, to find these truths. Then, speak these truths to yourself, to God and to other people. Vulnerability is essential to honesty, and honesty is an important virtue. It opens our hearts and binds our relationships.
9/17/23 – We have to be honest with ourselves and our history as human beings. It is very important for our continued progress. We can’t move forward into the future if we’re not honest about our past.
9/17/23 – We cannot have a world where one nation or group of people invades others and claims their land as their own. The days of empire are over. The world should not have any tolerance for it. It is violence. It is greed. It is sinful. We also cannot have a world where one nation or group of people rewrites history to suit their narrative. We need to move beyond these violations of human rights and human history and be a people of peace. Peace means coexistence in acceptance of our differences, our history and our heritage. We discover and honor history and respect territorial integrity.
9/17/23 – To our Jewish sisters and brothers, the ancestors of our faith, Happy Rosh Hashanah.
9/17/23 – Although it might be frustrating to Muslims, the fact is that of the Abrahamic religions, Islam is newer than both Judaism and Christianity. Judaism is an ancient religion. It started at least 4,000 years ago. Christianity began 2,000 years ago, and Islam began around 1,400 years ago. There is no Christianity or Islam without Judaism. This is a fact. Any statements or claims to the land that contradict these facts are invalid. Who are the Palestinian people before Islam? They are simply people without a religious identity as defined after Islam. Therefore, they can live side by side with the Jewish people as they once lived on the land. However, any claims of a religious legacy and corresponding claim to the land that predates Judaism is simply historically false. Lying or misrepresenting facts does not move any of us forward. It pollutes our discussions and prevents us from finding consensus and compromise.
UN committee votes to list ruins near ancient Jericho as a World Heritage Site in Palestine
9/17/23 – In order to be truly happy, deeply happy, a stable, calm contentment, we need to redirect ourselves to God. In him, we will be healed of the brokenness caused by our broken world. In him, we will be made whole. Happy Sunday!
9/16/23 – India is one of the oldest civilizations in the world. It predates European civilization. The name “India” comes from the Indus Valley Civilization (“c. 7000 BCE – c. 600 BCE The Indus Valley (or Harappan) Civilization”). The people (horrible BJP) who want to call India “Bharat,” which is not a pretty name, want to ignore, well let’s see, “c. 60000 BCE – 32768 BCE Human habitation of India” until the 5th century BCE. Trying to rewrite history by ignoring huge swaths of it doesn’t make history so. It just makes one a liar.
Ancient India
9/16/23 – To suppress the religious diversity of India is an act against the cultural and religious heritage of the world. Buddhism, born in India, took root throughout Asia, and it’s even popular in the west. Meditation is an integral part of the faith and a practice from which we could all benefit. The Muslims in India are some of the most moderate in the world and could play an important role in countering the extreme forms of Islam found elsewhere. Let us all remember that algebra, one of the greatest contributions to math, came from the Islamic world, which can once again be a center of great intellectual and artistic generation, as it once was. The Taj Mahal, one of the greatest testaments of love to a woman, was built by a Mughal emperor, a Muslim. The Jewish people who lived in India for millennia lived in peace, one of the few places in the world for which that record holds true. This is something for which India should to be proud. Christianity has existed in India since the beginning of the faith and in an expression that respects its Jewish origins. Hinduism, of course without the hideous caste system, is a beautiful religion. It is truly ancient, complex, and its adherents are deeply spiritual. Whether or not one believes in reincarnation, there is an element of interconnection, and birth, death and rebirth to which we can all relate. Hindus help other religious people remain grounded in our spirituality and remind us of the eternal need to connect with God. The India of our collective spiritual heritage is one that respects religious diversity and freedom, nourishes it and offers the world a much-needed elemental antidote for our technology-dominated modern lives.
9/16/23 – Before the Russian war in Ukraine, most people didn’t think of the country. It wasn’t really on the radar. Now, it is clear that it is an ancient country with a beautiful people. Its unique history is fascinating and worthy of study. Its cultural heritage is a gift to the world. Slava Ukraini!
9/16/23 – The man delusion has been in vogue since the Enlightenment. It has run its course. Science is based on observation. If one objectively observes our current situation, it is quite obvious that man is the source of all of our problems, not God. Let us think back to what our pristine planet must have been like. You walk to a body of water, dip your hands into it and drink. You pick fruit off trees and eat. This world, the one God created, no longer exists in this form. Our water is polluted. Our food production is compartmentalized, and we have no real connection to the food we eat. Much of the food that’s produced is processed garbage. We have to return to the world God created.
9/15/23 – On the 15th anniversary of the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers, let’s remember that there are two justice systems in our country: one for the rich and powerful and one for the rest of us. We bailed them out. They got golden parachutes. They behaved irresponsibility again. We bailed them out again. They got golden parachutes again. You get the idea. We’re stuck in doom loop.
9/15/23 – Perhaps Catholics can eat meatless on any two days out of the week. This is really not hard to do. One can still eat diary or even better nuts and beans. This would be entirely in keeping with the faith and being stewards of our planet.
9/15/23 – Only crazy liberals would think that the solution to mental health issues is magic mushrooms. What’s wrong with these people?
9/15/23 – There is a fundamental divide between religious people and atheists that go well beyond politics. These are profound differences in our understanding of many foundational concepts, including life. There is no way to bridge these differences since many of our values and beliefs are antithetical to each other. The atheists, with their science worship, are posing an existential threat to the vast majority of life on the planet, human beings and the animal kingdom. If they only self-destructed, it would be one thing, but unfortunately, their activity does affect the rest of us.
So, to all religious people: protect your genetic lineage, and try to live as natural and simple a life as possible. Don’t engage in unnatural reproductive or sexual activity. Eat genetically unmodified fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains. Eat as little meat as possible. Although the godless atheists are making it as difficult as possible, try to avoid chemicals. You’ll likely need to use filtered or bottled water for drinking. Minimize the use of tech, and do activities that give you natural movement and exercise. Keep aesthetic modifications to a minimum. When it’s time to die, just die in peace. Don’t try to extend your life unnaturally. We were all better off the way it was. We’re careening toward a dystopian death of epic proportions. Be wise. Be prepared.
9/15/23 – The western world, which is mainly liberal, atheistic white culture, suffers from a particular affliction. Consider the prevailing aesthetic ideal. A woman who is taller than most men, which is neither objectively attractive nor practical. Pale white skin, which provides inadequate natural protection from the sun, that they color an unnatural shade of orange intended to look tan. Blue eyes, which also provide inadequate natural protection from the sun. Veneered teeth, which damages teeth. Fake nails, which damages nails. Chemically processed hair, which damages hair. Fake boobs, which damages the body. Unhealthy even dangerous weight-loss strategies. And on and on.
One could make a strong argument that liberal, atheistic white people hate natural things, and the rest of the world likes and respects natural things. Conservative, religious white people, for all of their issues, are the exception to some degree. To some extent, they respect the natural order of things. They need to have more respect for the judicious use of science, but at least they are not irreverent experimenters, narcissists thinking they can solve problems via science, when all they are actually doing is making everything much worse to the point of posing an existential threat to all life on the planet, including the human species. White people are dying off, and there are many reasons for it. This might be one of them. If you mistake yourself for God, you’re living in a state of delusion, and nothing good can come of it.
9/14/23 – A gender divide on contemplating the Roman Empire? Ah no. It’s so fascinating. The ancient world as a whole is fascinating. Our twisted modern lives are filled with chemicals, a dying planet, unhealthy weirdness, and the atheists’ science worship. The ancient world was at once brilliant and barbaric. It was filled with gods and godlessness, which it wore honestly. In a time of fakeness, it is real. Also, if you read the Bible regularly or are devoutly Christian, you’ll think about it at least once a week, likely more.
9/14/23 – Veneers. What a joke! It’s the same with the weird acrylic nails. Firstly, how can anybody get anything done with that s—t on their nails? They are ridiculous. Even if you don’t have great nails, just go with them. At least, they’re natural. They’re yours. Just like your smile. Unless your smile is quite off, one shouldn’t even bother getting braces. You have to wear your retainer every day forever, which you’re not going to do, and your teeth will pretty much go back to the way they were. Also, you’re not damaging your natural body, which you likely can’t fix. This can happen with nails, teeth, hair, you name it. People, save your money, and just be natural!
9/14/23 – Stuck between the crazy MAGA who want the destruction of everything via man and god and the crazy libs who want the destruction of everything via man and science. They are all sick nutcases.
9/13/23 – NPR is a vile atheist, scientism rag. They are promoting procreation without a sperm and an egg. They are sick nutcases. It should be put out of business.
9/12/23 – If God isn’t real, well, I guess a bunch of people, the vast majority of the world, believed in something that wasn’t real. They were also likely healthier and happier for their beliefs whether or not they were real. If science is wrong, we’re dead. Guess what, we’re dead. All science and people’s unreasonable faith in it is doing is destroying everything: our planet, our lives, our health, our happiness and on and on. So, who’re the fools: the religious people or the science worshippers, aka atheists?
9/12/23 – Was just thinking that this is the way to go a couple days ago. “‘Thanks. I made it.’ Trust me, it never gets old.” What has gotten extremely old is being a slave to the world and destroying our planet. Also, clothes have become so boring. We wear the same stuff, and everybody looks the same. There are so many different cultures with unique ways of dressing. We can make our culture’s traditional clothes or give them a modern take, exercise some creativity and design skills, and be kinder on our planet.
Never Acquire Clothes the Same Way Again
9/11/23 – When we pulled out of Afghanistan two years ago, the Afghan people were devastated. Americans were also devastated. We wanted our presence and the considerable investment we made in the beautiful country to end with the realization of its promise. However, history is long, and the story is not over. We are the children of the God of Abraham, and we will have peace and prosperity in the Middle East. Its people will be free.
9/11/23 – Also from two years ago. 9/11 was a painful day. It remains so, but today and every day, Americans love our Muslim sisters and brothers. The Statue of Liberty stood tall and proud against the devastated Twin Towers. When Muslims come to our shores, it and their Abrahamic brothers and sisters, Jews and Christians, among other Americans welcome them. No terrorist will ever change who we are as a people.
AP PHOTOS: 20 images that documented the enormity of 9/11
9/11/23 – From two years ago.
They Lost Loved Ones In 9/11. We Invited Them To Leave A Voicemail In Their Memory
9/11/23 – Remember the cross, and remember the people who have loved us even when they didn’t know us. Love them as they loved you.
9/11/23 – Yesterday, the Catholic Church beatified a Catholic family that was murdered with the Jews they were sheltering, a total of 17 precious souls. “Last year, Francis pronounced the deeply Catholic Ulma family, including the child that Wiktoria Ulma was pregnant with, martyrs for the faith. The Ulmas were killed at home by German Nazi troops and by Nazi-controlled local police in the small hours of March 24, 1944, together with the eight Jews they were hiding at their home, after they were apparently betrayed.
Jozef Ulma, 44, was a farmer, Catholic activist and amateur photographer who documented family and village life. He lived with his 31-year-old wife Wiktoria; their daughters Stanislawa, 7; Barbara, 6; Maria, 18 months; and sons Wladyslaw, 5; Franciszek, 3; and Antoni, 2.
With them were killed 70-year-old Saul Goldman with his sons Baruch, Mechel, Joachim and Mojzesz, along with Golda Grunfeld and her sister Lea Didner with her little daughter Reszla, according to Poland’s state Institute of National Remembrance, IPN, which has meticulously documented the Ulmas’ story.” They took the risk and sheltered them because it was the right thing to do, the Christian thing to do.
The Vatican beatifies a Polish family of 9 killed by the Nazis for sheltering Jews
9/11/23 – Today is the 22nd anniversary of 9/11. Please take time to honor the men and women who sacrificed their lives for us that day, particularly the firefighters, police and other first-responders. They run towards danger, while we run away.
9/11 Memorial and Museum
9/10/23 – Apparently, this story, which is more accurately described as a non-story, merits coverage by at least three major self-described national news agencies. Here’s a quick summary: While “making it,” Perry Bacon decided to worship himself instead of God. Instead of God blessing him, he realized that he’s actually really smart and, well, evolved, much like the white people he went to school with instead of the black people he went to church with, so he became a “none,” whatever that is. He tries to make this about BLM, blah blah blah something (BTW the religious black civil rights movement achieved much more with much less violence) and LGBTQ something. Basically, he’s become so inclusive that he’s excluding everybody who doesn’t think exactly like him. That’s it in a nutshell, but the world greatly benefits from hearing the extended version of this profound story over and over again.
Also, since they grew up in Christianity, yes, you do need the “resurrection part,” as they well know. Don’t come to our churches for the donuts. We have enough problems. There are many secular organizations where one can get donuts, volunteer or whatever it is that one is seeking, presumably community. Frankly, their “search” seems more like an exercise in narcissism and attention-seeking than any kind of genuine spiritual quest or even community quest. If one is having such a hard time finding community, one is most likely not actually looking for community (alone). So, the honesty with oneself is not really where it needs to be. Also, please don’t free ride on other people’s faith. Thank you, and have a nice day.
The search for a church that isn’t a church
9/10/23 – Does NPR ever have anything positive to say about our country? It has the word “national” and “public” in its name, but it’s not either. Also, it has someone who’s supposed to write about spiritual matters, but who’s not spiritual. Don’t people need to have a background in world religions and be spiritual for that job? Can religious people get coverage that is valuable to us? Or are the millions of us in the USA and billions around the world just not that important to “NPR”? They pander to the atheists who have no sense of morality and treat humans like disposable experiments. It is a coastal private liberal atheist website.
9/10/23 – Christians, Happy Sunday! We will hope until the end, and we will hope through the end. Respect your body, mind and soul. Preserve your integrity as a child of God and do what Jesus asked. We’ll be fine. After all, for us, death is going home. Peace.
9/10/23 – If you can live in peace with people of various faith traditions, you are succeeding at one of the most important things people need to do well. You don’t have to believe in their god. Obviously, you are of a different faith for a reason, but you can still respect, learn from and even participate to a degree in their religious traditions. This is a beautiful thing. Be a people of religious tolerance. Be a people of peace.
9/10/23 – Islam has been in India since the late 7th century, basically soon after the beginning of the faith. The members and supporters of the BJP need to show the world their DNA analysis to prove that they are not genetically related to the very people they are persecuting and demonizing as not Indian. Do it now or STFU.
9/10/23 – What’s going to come first: the end of democracy, the inhabitability of the planet, the destruction of the human species via gene editing, or nuclear war? Or will they all converge in one gloriously apocalyptic climax?
9/10/23 – Let the genetic editing arms race begin, right everyone? Is the Chinese government conducting gene editing experimentation on their Uighur or other minority populations? Hey pro-lifers, did you know that the super-evolved atheists with their big brains are treating fetuses like guinea pigs, and when it doesn’t work out as they expect, they abort them? This is what happens when people give up God and worship science. The end is nigh. It’s just a matter of time.
9/9/23 – In one of many great ironies, China, the most godless large country is right next to India, arguably the most religious country. Hinduism is one of the oldest religions in the world. The country gave birth to many other religions, and Christianity has been in India since the beginning of the faith. These two countries don’t get along, and it’s going to be interesting how all of this evolves.
9/9/23 – The atheists, with their evolved brains, are a curse to all humankind.
9/9/23 – We can’t save or, more accurately, recreate the planet this way. God’s creation fits together perfectly. It’s not piecemeal creation. The way to save the planet is by respecting the planet.
One way to save coral reefs? Deep freeze them for the future
9/9/23 – To be willing to die prematurely to preserve the integrity of the human species is a noble thing to do.
9/9/23 – So, how is the evil Xi going to use gene editing to realize his demonic plans for global domination? It’s all just a matter of time.
9/9/23 – “In the first ten years, he would tackle a variety of genetic diseases; in the ten years after that, he’d extend the human life span to a hundred and twenty years.” Living in the simplest of ways, which has the added benefit of having a light footprint on the planet and, other little things like, poses no risk to the human species, the people in the regions below are doing the same thing or better. See, we can’t improve on God. When we think we can do better, we just end up destroying everything and ourselves. Gene editing is a recipe for annihilation. “Editing human embryos for reproduction is taboo in the world of genetic engineering; the possibility is too great that a scientist will accidentally introduce mutations that harm the subject and affect future generations…. As crispr became available, a broad consensus emerged among scientists that they should, at least for the time being, resist the temptation to make heritable changes to the human genome. crispr was too new and too poorly understood. ‘You never know what you will introduce,’ Charpentier told me. ‘Is it the realization of a nightmare?’…A further complication is that, as embryonic cells divide and multiply, and the crispr scissors keep snipping, they often fail to edit every cell. The growing embryo becomes a ‘mosaic’ of edited and unedited DNA…. ‘Fear number one: the weaponization of the military. We know how to make a human being who runs on four hours of sleep—I can tell you what mutation to make. Two: We know what gene to edit to reduce pain sensation. If I were a rogue nation wishing to engineer a next generation of quasi-pain-free special-forces soldiers, I know exactly what to do. It’s all published. And three: physical strength. You don’t need a large lab operation. You just need the ill will.’…. (It would also cover abortion costs in the case of a serious genetic defect.) [What a plan.]… There is also evidence that disrupting CCR5 affects bone growth. Had JK created superpeople? Or had he inadvertently condemned unconsenting not-yet-born victims to potentially serious health problems?” The crispr monster has begun. Science. With 100% certainty, it will destroy us.
The Transformative, Alarming Power of Gene Editing
9/9/23 – Back before all of this madness, pretty much all of us lived like this. The recent changes to how humans live have been so bad, they are now posing an existential threat. We should all just go back to the way it was. “A body of scientific research validates the blue zone way of life: Good food, good sleep, good friends, plenty of movement and a sense of purpose are a recipe for living better.”
Exercise naturally. Gardening is great on so many levels. Have a pollinator friendly one to have communion with God’s creatures. Sure, the critters might destroy some of your plants, but living on our beautiful planet is about sharing.
Eat vegetables and beans. You don’t have to cook vegetables. You can just grow or buy them and eat them. If you feel like cooking them, great, but don’t skip them because of time.
Stop eating so much meat. It’s bad for animals, the environment and people.
Have community. Different types of community, and try to be in person as much as possible. Maybe you can’t get to everything in person, but it’s much better than being online all the time.
Volunteer. Everything isn’t about you. Do your part.
Rest. Even God rested.
7 habits to live a healthier life, inspired by the world’s longest-lived communities
9/9/23 – As we deal with climate change (it’s real and it’s here, folks), we might consider reviving long tunics and ditching shirts and pants. It’s one of the most universal items of clothing, and many cultures have some tie to it. (In India, it’s called a kurta. See below.) It’s highly versatile and can be loose fitting. It’s comfortable and practical, while still stylish, and it can be worn by men and women. Walking around half-naked like western, especially American, women like to do is not a good approach to increasingly hotter temperatures. Firstly, it’s quite indecent and inappropriate. (This is embarrassing for us as a country. Other cultures don’t do this. Please stop.) Secondly, it gives no sun protection.
9/8/23 – Men and women dress more differently in the west than in many other places in the world. Women wear extremely tight and revealing clothes that are often quite indecent while men are dressed more comfortably and modestly. There is nothing liberating for women in dressing like this. It is demeaning. In many other countries – including Muslim countries – there is more parity in men’s and women’s clothing. In India, many men wear kurtas. Women also wear them. The sari, which can show a little more skin around the mid-section and the back, is an iconic Indian attire for women, but it’s not indecent at all. It’s quite elegant. The sari is actually somewhat similar to the togas that Roman men would wear or the stolas that Roman women would wear. It’s strange that the self-described bastion for women’s rights, the west, has less parity in attire than many more traditional societies.
9/8/23 – We want the names of the plutocratic traitors – every single one of them. We want it in the American record.
9/8/23 – When it comes to preserving our republic, we’ve ended up with some surprising bedfellows. To those who can set aside our differences in this moment of peril and be American patriots, we salute you. “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” Former VP Dick Cheney
9/7/23 – BRICS is becoming dicks, a group of authoritarian countries.
9/7/23 – The Chinese model was actually never alive, although many economists and others were convinced it was heading for world domination not that long ago. Its model wasn’t entirely bad, targeting a higher level of export sophistication via state capitalism than would normally be associated with its prior level of development. However, if one actually took the time to look at the totality of China’s development, it was obviously unsustainable.
“By example, China has sought to demonstrate to the Global South that democracy and development are not inseparable, and that autocrats can have wealth, international respect, and political power. Those claims are harder to make with a faltering economy. If anything, China’s economic troubles suggest that authoritarian regimes cannot both tighten control and sustain economic progress—that, ultimately, political reform must accompany economic reform.”
It’s surreal to read this when many western economists and policymakers not that long ago were making a similar argument to Xi’s. However, they were wrong. To have long-term economic success, a country does need to be democratic. Capitalism has been associated with Adam Smith’s invisible hand for a long time. The idea is that a country’s people in the collective are the best corrective and rebalancing for markets and economies. This doesn’t always hold. There are market failures, such as the tragedy of the commons and negative externalities, but it’s generally true.
State capitalism has its place, though, and when used correctly, it can catapult a country into a higher level of development or, more importantly, lay a solid foundation for sustained economic growth. However, for industries to emerge or to thrive, corruption must be consistently kept in check. Although it can be difficult, only democracies can really do this well. Certainly, corruption can take hold even in capitalist countries, but they are better able to root it out.
The rich parasitic traitors who want to turn the USA into Russia also want to turn our capitalism into a kleptocracy. They want to kill us economically so that they can enslave us, horde our wealth, and turn themselves into walking corpses as they try to avoid death. In other words, they will try to avoid death as they inflict death on everybody else. Democracy dies in darkness. Capitalism dies without democracy. Thus, they both die in darkness.
PS China’s demographics are a nightmare. Don’t forget to consider them.
The China Model Is Dead
9/7/23 – Here’s another analogy. It’s like considering the feelings of Germans when trying to stop Hitler. And yes, this includes Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It includes anything and everything to stop the evil one, trump, arguably the most dangerous person in the world. “Yet this harsh medicine wouldn’t be necessary if Trump hadn’t brought this challenge to American democracy in the first place. And letting the challenge go unanswered would have far more destructive effects. The idea of the body politic, and the risks of its decay, is a very old one. Trump’s actions are the source of its current illness, and though the treatment may seem extreme—and have unpleasant side effects—it’s what’s needed to stop the disease from taking over.”
The Metaphor That Explains Why America Needs to Prosecute Trump
9/7/23 – The rich (no, not you, the people who’re actually rich) are afraid of death because they, at least subconsciously, know that they’re going to hell. They will do anything and everything to not die, even if it means becoming a walking corpse and threatening the entire human species with their genetic experimentation.
9/6/23 – The evil, murderous dictator modi and all members of the BJP should be required to make their DNA analysis, conducted by a reputable company such as 23 and Me, public. If it isn’t basically 100% of the country of India, they should be required to move to their country of origin, such as the Middle East or Europe. All “royal” family members around the world should be required to do so as well.
9/6/23 – Hindi and Sanskrit, which belong to the Indo-European language family, are not original to India. They are the language of the invaders. The Dravidian languages are original to India, and nobody should ever forget that.
9/6/23 – All words are not created equal in any one language. Bharat is simply quite unattractive as a word/name. Namaste is a pretty word. India is a pretty word. Hard truths, particularly for the BJP, an evil party full of demagogues and criminals. Thank you and have a nice day.
9/6/23 – And lord of the flies comes to the Ivy League. Given it’s filled with s—t, it’s quite appropriate that it’s infested with flies. “‘It’s strange to me how many student organizations decide to be selective when it’s students who completely control the system,’ Mira Debs, the executive director of Yale’s education-studies program, told me. ‘I have often found it to be a puzzle. What force drives Yale students to be so competitive, and to construct all of these different categories that they’re applying for?’”
You Already Got Into Yale
9/5/23 – Let’s take a long view of our current miserable state. We had the biggest generation in recent world history, the Boomers, descend on the earth like locusts. They were spoiled and narcissistic. They did a bunch of drugs, fornicated like rabbits, then did a 180, became “greed is good” sellouts, and the world has yet to recover from their damage and influence. Millennials, for all of their stated attempts to distinguish themselves, in practice, simply adopted much of the Boomers’ values, particularly the hedonism and the shallowness of their existence.
Even as we face the existential threat of climate change, the quality of our clothes, furniture, most durable goods and the attitude we have towards them is to embrace the cheap, temporary and disposable. Granted the free trade economists, which are pretty much all western economists, had a key role in pushing this ideology, but the American consumers, starting with the Boomers, now perpetuate it. This approach to trade eviscerated our manufacturing sector, diminished our autarky and made us dependent on our enemies for important goods.
What have we lost? In no particular order: the earth is on the precipice of being uninhabitable. Other species are facing a mass extinction due to our selfishness. Our communities, particularly our faith communities, are considerably weakened, and some might never recover. Our families are broken, and the extended family is practically nonexistent. Our elite educational institutions are bastions not of intellectual and personal growth or agents of meritocracy but of the wealthy ruling class and its domination. The arts and humanities are going extinct. We eat more processed food than ever before. We are depleting our water sources at an alarming rate. Among countless crises, we have an obesity crisis, a drug crisis, a gun violence crisis and a mental health crisis. More generally, the American people are losing it. We are at risk of losing our democracy that countless American patriots sacrificed their lives to defend. And on and on.
What have we gained? Tech for tech’s sake. A bunch of cheaply made s—t. Tacky and meaningless “markers of accomplishment and status.” A culture of rank hypocrisy. Facades of glitz and glam brought to you by social media. New ways to exploit human beings also brought to you by social media. You get the idea. Aside from some gains on women’s and civil rights, the past approximately 75 years have been an unmitigated disaster for our society. The status quo is simply untenable. The aging Boomers, who refuse to go quietly into the night, want to continue to impose the disaster they created. There are seemingly no limits to their narcissism, their desire to maintain control of our society and the destruction they are willing to inflict on it, even as or perhaps because death comes knocking at their door.
9/5/23 – This piece is well-intentioned and has some helpful advice, but who are we kidding right now? There was a time, not that long ago actually, perhaps with the last of the bohemian Gen Xers who were also the last of the analog kids, when being a well-travelled, well-cultured, and truly well-educated (meaning not just getting an education to get a high-paying job but to be actually learned) was something to which one would aspire.
The smart phone and social media killed all that and people’s attention span with it. Not only are people addicted to their phones, mindlessly scrolling through the inanest and sometimes poisonous material, but it has warped their experiences with the finer aspects of life. Although potentially pretentious, there is nothing necessarily wrong with wanting to impress people with a substantive knowledge of the arts and the world, but this is no longer the case. The goal is to create the impression of it: take a photo, make a video, put it on social media, or even more crude, just invoke jealousy. It doesn’t matter whether one has experienced something moving or not. The phone has become the device that documents a superficial life pretending to be a substantive life, and one that always asks, hey audience, are you jealous of me yet?
The reason to spend time on the finer aspects of life has ultimately nothing to do with anybody but oneself. It is to transform oneself on the inside not to project to the outside. It is to become someone who is more sensitive to the human condition, and by so doing, better able to interact with others and the world in a healthy way. It is similar to the difference between hedonism and humanity. Hedonism is the simple pursuit of pleasure; on the other hand, art, whether it invokes pleasure or pain, is the pursuit of understanding. Its power is the distillation of the human experience into a concentrated form to move its audience from their present often shallow preoccupations into consideration of life’s bigger questions.
You know how you get good at all of this, whether it’s art appreciation or spirituality? By actually putting in the work! What a concept. There are those who sit on their lazy asses, who don’t actually want to put in the time and energy, but just want the benefits of seeming as if they have. There are those who don’t want to put in the work into their spiritual lives, instead they will dismiss the existence of God with a convenient certitude so that they don’t have to think about these thorny questions. There are those who think if there is a God, the onus isn’t on them to discover him, but on him to reveal himself to them. Guess what? None of this works that way. If you want it, you, with the emphasis on you, have to put in the work. Go to these spaces, museums, theaters, places of worship, etc. and spend time learning and absorbing. Spend time engaging in the activity not with the intention to impress others but with the intention to transform yourself.
How to make a meaningful connection with a work of art
9/4/23 – This Labor Day, let us pray for and commit to helping the people who are unemployed, underemployed or enslaved. May the unemployed and underemployed find meaningful work that respects the dignity of their person. May the millions of people throughout the world who are uncompensated for their labor, whether they are sex slaves whose bodies and the holiness of physical love are perverted into commodities, indentured laborers caught in the evil trap of modern slavery, or child workers who should be loved and nurtured not exploited, be liberated and restored. Let us strive to build a society free of the shackles of greed and full of the freedom of love.
9/4/23 – If you’re not encountering homeless people at some point in your church or in the communities it supports, then your church is not doing Christianity correctly. That is all. “Several of the foreign-staffed Catholic religious orders in Mongolia run shelters, orphanages and nursing homes to care for a population of 3.3 million where one in three people lives in poverty. But the new clinic for homeless people, people with disabilities and victims of domestic violence is aimed at showing the outreach of the Mongolian Catholic Church as a whole to its local community. ‘The true progress of a nation is not gauged by economic wealth, much less by investment in the illusory power of armaments, but by its ability to provide for the health, education and integral development of its people,’ Francis said at the shelter, urging Mongolians rich and poor to volunteer to help their fellow citizens.”
Francis opens a homeless clinic on the 1st papal visit to Mongolia
9/4/23 – Happy Labor Day, proudly brought to you by unions, one of the last safeguards of human beings’ divine dignity. Unions are stronger now than they have been in a long time, but they are nowhere as strong as they ought to be. They are essential to rebalancing our distorted lives, and we need to continue to strengthen them. The Boomer generation has done immense damage to our lives. They are the people who promoted the “greed is good” ethic. Generation X, a small and ridiculed generation, pushed back against this by focusing on human experiences and connections, and were labeled slackers. In the end, many of them adopted the Boomers’ obsession with money, status and other superficial aspects of American life. Unfortunately, they couldn’t beat them, so they ended up joining them. The Millennials didn’t bother to push back, and they were even more atheistic than Gen X or the Boomers. The Millennials discarded the last meaningful corrective to the work-obsessed direction the country had taken. We are now just masses of cells who can be easily formed into slaves by corporations and other entities by dangling the carrot of accomplishment and status in front of us: the false gods of mammon and the praise of men.
Prior to this destructive turn to our country’s social fabric, we had an unspoken Protestant work ethic, which although it could be excessive, the focus was still on treating work as a divine calling and on using one’s gifts to glorify God. Catholics share in this focus while departing from Protestants in giving leisure more importance in life. To Catholics’ great credit, they also have been the guardians of the arts, which reflects a sensitive understanding of the essential nature of human beings. In the tradition captured by the great writers and artists of the human condition, of the endless paradoxes of our collective existence, the corruption of the Renaissance period was a terrible sin, but the artistic giants and the masterpieces of the period were also funded by it. The arts aren’t just a hedonistic indulgence. They are life itself. In a religious context, they are how we, mere mortals, glorify and show our love for God. After worship of God, they are the deepest, most powerful expression of our humanity. The arts, like places of worship, also afford us spaces to be in communion with each other, to be a people not of mere flesh and bone, but of deeper consciousness and souls together.
This Labor Day, reflect on how we are living our lives. Are we living and working for more comforts and conveniences, or should the goal of our lives have loftier ideals and expressions? We need more work/life balance so that we have time for our spiritual lives, for the arts, for our families and communities, simply put, for the things that make life worth living because they honor our divinity as children of God.
9/3/23 – A little loathed to bring up politics on Sunday, but this was an important article. Europe is dying, so pining for a “secular” (actually atheistic) society that has several serious problems is misguided. Returning to our own country, “[d]enominations and church commitments once preserved a set of broadly shared Christian moral values that transcended the right-left divide, but now that some of the loudest supporters of Christian nationalism have left these denominations behind, there is little to stop them from refashioning the Christian faith in their own image, with potentially heretical [many are heretical] results. And in contrast to the days when both Republicans and Democrats—and northerners and southerners—shared a common religious language despite their differences, little common ground is now left between the post-Christians of the urban North and the post-churched Christian nationalists of the rural South. The decline of churchgoing in America, it seems, has not eviscerated Christianity; it has simply distorted it. And that distortion will have politically unpleasant implications that go far beyond church walls.”
In a way, Christianity is its own language. Which language are people going to speak: it or the language of politics? Are we going to speak: the language of love or the language of division? This summer, a group of Christian volunteers of mixed political views (generally somewhere in the middle) came together on hot summer days to volunteer for our communities. The only thing that mattered was our love for our God and for each other. We would break together, eat, drink and laugh. We shared our differing thoughts and feelings respectfully and then got back to work. This is the language of love, and it needs to be spoken inside and outside the church. The church is our common house, the Lord’s house, where we worship, pray, sing, read Scripture together, celebrate each other and remind ourselves of our shared faith, of who we really are. Christians are not a political group. We are simply followers of Jesus Christ.
What Really Happens When Americans Stop Going to Church
9/3/23 – Evangelization is sometimes loud, like Billy Graham, who was great. Other times, it’s quiet, “‘When you whisper, you whisper to an individual or a few people, you cannot whisper to many people at the same time because they simply will not hear you,’ he said. ‘And I think this visit will also somehow manifest the attention that the (pope) has for every individual, every person who embarks in this journey of faith.’” Beautiful.
Go to church and find your soul. It doesn’t matter what society wants or says. What matters is your personal relationship with God. You can go in-between services instead of to mass or service. You can just sit there and pray. Sometimes you need a priest or preacher to help guide you through the text and your spiritual journey. Other times, you just need to be with God by yourself. Bring your mind to stillness and your soul to silent love. Happy Sunday!
Cardinal says the pope’s visit to Mongolia’s tiny Catholic community will show his dedication
9/2/23 – We need a religious moderate party. We need to get rid of the atheists. They don’t fit our values. That is all.
9/2/23 – Speaking of the earth, we need to change the way we eat. We need to eat way more vegetables. Indian food does vegetarian meals exceptionally well. They are healthy and nutritious. Lentils have a lot of protein, and we need to each more of them. Westerners and others eat way too much meat. It’s hard on the digestive system, unhealthy and bad for the environment. If one must eat meat, eat smaller portions. You will appreciate it more. As one example of a highly nutritious and delicious vegetarian meal: wheat roti (chapatti) with dal (lentils) (dal roti is an Indian staple), vegetable curry or other vegetable dish, and, optionally, a small side of fish (fry or curry).
9/2/23 – India’s G20 logo, “One Earth, One Family, One Future,” with the earth cradled in a lotus flower is beautiful! It’s imagery that resonates throughout Asia, including China, and even the west that doesn’t have the same attachment to the lotus flower. Thomas Christians, an ancient church, use it in their cross, which is quite beautiful, and “following the introduction of Christianity to China by the Church of the East, the Nestorian cross was frequently depicted on a lotus flower in Chinese Christian iconography.” The colors of the logo are the Indian tricolor, which are also symbolic religiously but in a universal way, and they are earthy colors. The issue must be “universal values.” Well, if a country’s leaders, say the horrible Chinese leaders, take issue with values such as love, truth, peace, compassion, courage, and respect for God’s gift of life to us, our beautiful planet, then the problem isn’t the proponents of the universal values but the opponents of them.
9/2/23 – Obviously, this doesn’t apply to all atheists. Many are relaxed about their position on God. Others are not relaxed at all. You can read the comments to get a sense of the difference. The main thing to remember is that your spiritual journey is yours, and everybody’s journey is going to look different. A lot of people won’t have one at all. You can’t change others. Serve them as you would anybody else, extending compassion and love, but remember, Jesus kept walking. They have their free will, and you have yours. They have the right to their views that are conflicting with or antithetical to yours, and you have the right to just keep walking (or even running).
9/2/23 – Apparently, some atheists come to our churches as they say for the music. (Many of them also pray, but that’s a different oddity than this one.) What to do with this rather strange phenomenon? Since it’s the Lord’s house, one should always be welcoming and gracious, but they don’t believe in our God, and they’re using us for our beautiful music. So, what is a Christian to do? Always be polite unless they are disruptive and rude. Then, they can be politely asked to leave. Many of them are proud to be hedonists, so perhaps our worship music is just another “pleasure” to them. Is this flattering or insulting? Hard to say. These are not logical people…so it’s best to not try to get into their heads.
9/2/23 – From the comments in the link below. “The Satanic Temple is an atheist church. About the smartest, most interesting, most fun group of people I’ve encountered in a very long time. [Whether or not they belong to the Satanic Temple, they all think this about themselves.] We are committed to doing good in the world, while harming or controlling no one. The same cannot by any means be said of many Christians.” Is it any wonder why we want to avoid them?
9/1/23 – And into the church I go to lose my mind and find my soul. Yes, the “s” word. Tra la la.
9/1/23 – To the people who are trying to recreate church without God, please just give it rest. We get it. You have unmet needs or desires, but, no offense, it’s ridiculous. “Let me answer you with a question: do you know what ‘ridiculous’ means?” Exactly. Just stick to this. It’s more honest and logical. Perfect, in fact. “To get together, spend half an hour parking, shaking hands with friends, getting seated, having someone up in front say ‘I don’t believe in any gods’, everyone responds, ‘neither do I’, we get up, shake hands with other friends and go home? I’d rather sleep in.”
To religious people: Atheists are the most unhappy people on the planet. They keep going on about how smart they are with their big, evolved brains and such, but we know they are miserable f—kers. When you encounter these people, run, don’t walk, lest they kill your natural joy.
Quora – What do atheists think about atheist churches?
9/1/23 – The coastal liberal elites live in their own bubble. At a recent gathering, when the presenter asked the audience where they find belonging, many people answered “church.” It was the most common response. Yes, the music can be amazing! (Check out the Washington National Cathedral as a supplement to your own church.) The community, worship and formation activities are all lovely and helpful to our spiritual growth. We are well-organized and routinely volunteer our time, talent and treasure. We are asked to be the hands and feet of Christ, and we do our best (we can all do better) to live the faith. The belonging is very important, especially celebrating the sacraments with each other. Having said all of this, and it’s a lot, the main thing though is to have a peaceful place to pray. We have the great privilege to enter our testaments of love to our God, into our beautiful churches, humble ourselves before him and pray, or just sit in the pews, in the quiet, read our Bibles, pray, and think about how much we love him. It is peace. It is love. One can’t find that anywhere else. We are so blessed.
9/1/23 – The baptismal bucket is well-preserved and beautiful.
Archaeologists in Turkey have identified massive structures below a Roman-era castle
9/1/23 – When you allow others to change you for the worse and to define you, you’ve lost.
9/1/23 – Christians, as the inheritors of the Jewish faith, which we made our own, would like to remind our sisters and brothers, the Jewish people (and ourselves) that they (and we) are a people of hope. The entire world needs them to be a people of hope and to act accordingly. For every persecutor, there is a liberator. For the Nazis, there are the Americans who stormed the beaches of Normandy, who like the 9/11 firefighters, climbed its rocky cliffs knowing full well that they would likely die upon them. Honor them and their sacrifice. Visit France’s testament to them. Come to our cemeteries and read their names. Brothers and sisters of the God of Abraham, do not become like the persecutors. Be like the liberators. Be a people of faith, hope and love.
“Israel, after all, originated as a great vessel of hope for people across the world—nationalism as a kind of redemption for a long-suffering people. Illouz suggests that hope, in principle, can strengthen the bonds of fraternity not just among the nation’s own members but with other countries as well, opening the way to dialogue, tolerance, and justice. Perhaps, but there is something forlorn in hoping that hope will carry the day. Given recent events in Israel (and the United States), Penslar’s conclusion, tragically, carries greater weight. He reminds us that the Hebrew word for hope is tikvah, whose literal biblical meaning is ‘cord’ or ‘rope’—‘something to hold onto.’ Many of us now find ourselves grasping this cord more tightly than ever before.” The Jewish people cannot lose hope. Where would the rest of us be?
A Country Shaped by Love and Fear
9/1/23 – The Christian symbol is a cross. It’s an unusual symbol. If one doesn’t give it much thought it looks innocuous, two lines crossing, but it symbolizes an instrument of torture. Our other symbol is a crucifix. It’s even more unusual. It includes an image of Jesus hanging on this device of torture. A compelling argument could be made that people need to overcome one main emotion that resides in the body, mind and soul – fear. Our body responds to perceived threats involuntarily: fight, flight or sometimes freeze. Obviously, we respond emotionally. Fear is also one of the great corrupting forces of the soul. It can drive us to kill, to horde, to persecute, to commit all kinds of evil.
The cross is a truly practicing Christian’s response to fear. Our God was sentenced to death, one he freely accepted. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was fearful of the fate his Father had revealed to him, but he accepted the cup and fulfilled God’s will. The Christian response to fear is to be like Jesus and to overcome our fear. What do we have to fear? Death? We all die. It’s simply a matter of when. Should we fear the passing of time? Then, we would be in perpetual fear, wouldn’t we? That’s no way to live.
“In the realm of fear, the demagogue is king.” (Link above.) In the realm of love, God is king. Some might argue the opposite of fear is courage. A strong argument could be made that the opposite of fear is actually love. Look at the many people we admire and honor. What they often have in common is that they put love first, and therefore, fear last. Fear, which can command and consume the entire person, was relegated to the fringes of the psyche, still present, still flickering, but eclipsed by love’s brilliant light. What kind of love? Certainly, not a tribal love. Jesus’s sacrifice was for all humankind. The cross is a divine love. That’s how an instrument of torture, of fear, became a symbol of true power, of love, and that’s why it’s our symbol as Christians.