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Then they set out along the black top in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.
Cormac McCarthy, in The Road
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McCarthy writes of a father and his most beloved son who walk under the grayest of skies in a burned out and broken America. It is both a compelling book and extraordinary movie. In both I am struck by the love of the father for the son and the son for the father, and by the grayness of the sky amid the ruin. The latter reminds me of the verbal and video landscape of the present days where hostility is thick as fog and division seems the only objective of the public voices we hear and where each day brings stories of death, cruelty, hatred and the commentaries of the C- and D+ scribes and talking heads whose range of thought is a tad lower than that of a carnival barker.
In a most extraordinary land darkness has descended. What was once one is now fragmented into many bruised parts .
He could not construct for the child’s pleasure the world he’d lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he. He tried to remember the dream but could not. All that was left was the feeling of it … he could not enkindle in the heart of the child what was his own ashes.
This father like me had lived a dream – a dream in better times. I was conceived when the Second World War was near its triumphant end. My childhood was spent on a street of veterans and their families – remarkable men and women whose childhood commenced in the Great Depression and turned then to World War – its millions dead, others murdered in Stalin’s gulag.
How does one speak of what we had and lost? How does one make that the known experience of an adult son? Give him the optimism purpose and meaning I, poor as we were, knew so well?
How do my grandson or my granddaughter gain what had been, but now is so damaged? How can my ashes live to sign their forehead?
The Road. Where this father and son had the dark shadow and penetrating cold of a dying orb – they at least had silence. We have the unstoppable voices and words of those whose lips bring darkness and cold. They are now our dismal cover.
“You have to carry the fire … It’s inside you. It always was there. I can see it.”
So says the father to the son. So say I to you, this day.
Shalom.
News as Soap Opera – This is where we are in a superficial mass communication, digitized social media culture. We interview people with no achievement or proclaim and, in doing so, cannot distinguish people of substance from people who have no particular accomplishment. We are more soap opera than not. We can no longer tell the difference between depth and shallow, or what is substantive and what is not. A real astonishing decline.
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I define evil, then, as the exercise of political power – – that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion – – in order to avoid extending one’s self for the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth. Ordinary laziness is non-love; evil is anti-love.
M. Scott Peck, M.D.
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Dr. Peck, of course, wrote a marvelous short book about evil (People of the Lie) in which he noted that lying is evidence of evil. Peck observes that evil is built on lies.
Peck’s above words (that of a noted Psychiatrist) are worth thinking about with what we face today: the questionable conduct of high-ranking people in the FBI and Justice Department and, seemingly, in the intelligence community. Yes, we see a collective partisan interest in using their positions politically – in order to destroy a candidate for President and, once elected, the man himself.
Such conduct as we see is ripe with lies. For Peck – this is evidence of evil.
Notice that in Peck’s words he says that those who pursue evil do so rather than extend themselves to grow spiritually – in effect, to mature and take on a healthy wholeness.
The root of evil is, it seems, faithlessness – a disregard for God.
When you think about it – he is describing (in the extreme) people like Stalin, Hitler, Mao and others – those who are godless and treacherously sick. Yet, people as people can easily submit to lying and evil.
That said, Peck reminds us that evil is anti-love. Yes, hostility to God.
What an indictment he has made. Where do our present miscreants fall?
We live in times that are fundamentally challenging. They put us to the task of asking: Who are we? And, what have we become? And, who dared corrupt us this way? What shall we do to those who destroy what is good? Shall we all return to faith, to Truth and to God?
Shalom.
“The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. But you do not believe, because you are not my sheep.”
Jn 10: 25, 26
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These are the words Jesus spoke to Jews in Jerusalem at the Temple. Let’s put them in today’s context.
Yesterday a young man in Toronto drove a van down the sidewalk and killed ten people and seriously injured more. A few days ago in Nashville, Tennessee, a young man entered a restaurant early in the morning and shot and killed four patrons and injured others. Each young man had a history of mental health problems.
These two incidents are reminders of the Parkland, Florida, school shootings that took the lives of 17 students. That young man also has a history of mental illness. In that case, the public authorities totally failed to address the needs of that very troubled young man.
” … you do not believe, because you are not my sheep …”
The success of Alcoholics Anonymous is dependent on recognition of the existence of God (“a higher power’) and on our limitations to address our problems as if we are that “higher power.”
It seems to me that the constant signs of our neglect of those in need and the violent actions of those who (in their deranged state) randomly kill innocent people is an indication of our neglect of our own spiritual needs.
I think too of the two lesbian women who adopted six foster care children and retained custody of those children while having had run afoul of child welfare officials in three states. As you recall these two women drove a vehicle (with the children in it) off a California cliff to their collective deaths 100 feet below.
We are a troubled nation because we have forsaken belief … because we have neglected our full health, our need for spiritual sustenance.
Indeed we live like we are each a god unto our self. We are, in this regard, absolutely NOT helped by all the discontented “special pleaders” in politics and particularly the angry godless voices on the Left who create division and disorder and their counterparts in the Democrat Party in the U.S. Congress, the federal bureaucracy and in state and local government. Yes, godless voices breed sickness and hostility.
Let’s be honest, we awake each day to read or hear about one or more horrific accounts of murder, child abuse, infanticide, abhorrent sexual assaults, or some form of human deprivation that is beyond our imagination or understanding … and we see day after day the utter failure of authorities to do much of anything about these matters.
You know I recall the hubris of Mr. Obama who boasted about fundamentally transforming America and that no one seemed ever to ask in what form this change might take, nor did anyone dare to say to him: “Hey, pal, you’re NOT God and you have accomplished nothing thus far in your life.”
The point to be made? Man is not God. Heck, we are not now even clearly showing that we are the Shepherd’s sheep.
Might be time to believe again. But do we have it in us to be humble as we once were?
Shalom.
Warped Self-interest – No Democrat Senators on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted in favor Mike Pompeo for Secretary of State. They did so largely to deprive President Trump the person he wanted in that position.
Mr. Pompeo, a former Congressman and Director of the C.I.A., graduated first in his class at West Point and first in his class at Harvard Law School. He has had both a successful military career and an excellent business career in which he started (as I recall) two successful businesses.
When you think that we have had recently both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry as Secretary of State (neither of them who achieved any particular success in their lifetime), it shows you that Democrats always put their own interests before the interests of the Nation and its people. Shameful.
Listen, O my people, to my instruction; incline your ears to the words of my mouth … tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord … He commended our fathers that they should teach them to their children … even the children yet to be born that they might arise and tell them to their children … (Emphasis added.)
Psalm 78: 1, 4, 5, 6
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I have written lately of our need to separate from the pagan, secular culture and turn away from the public discourse for it is destructive and devoid of God.
Yet, turning away is not enough. We must turn to God, His words and instructions – to the good and faithful ways of His Prophets and Saints – His Disciples and Teachers.
We live in serious times, in a time of great deception and destruction whereby we jeopardize our nation and its legacy, and that of Western Civilization.
Our faith, beliefs and ways of living are attacked by those without God. Yes, we are attacked by those who occupy positions of authority and command public presence.
We have failed to teach our children well. We have been silent when we should have spoken. Our silence has allowed evil and division to take root.
It is fair to say that we have not lived in more serious times than these.
I ask, then: do you read Scripture each day? Do you grow in holiness? Do you teach your children? Do you stand in opposition to what is godless? Stand against even family members who deny God and live in opposition to what is right and good and just?
This is a time of fundamental challenge. Where do you stand today?
Shalom.
Men and Boys. The state of men and boys is not good. Men have more suicides than women. Mortality among working class men shows men are dying younger than they once did. Institutions like schools thwart the masculine aspects of young boys. White Men are assumed to have a privilege and held suspect for it. It is no surprise that police officers are targeted, hunted, killed regularly.
That said, we do not own this reality and its origin.
Its origin is explained in no small part by the division between men and women that Feminism has promoted. Feminism, of course, is a simple variation of Marxist dialectic – that is, the notion that one must have an enemy to oppose in order to gain power.
Yes, Feminism has been at war with men for several decades.
Funny thing – having reduced men, one wonders how Whoppi Goldberg (62) and Joy Behar (75) will defend us from foreign enemies now that 71 percent of young men subject for military service are disqualified by reason of intellectual deficit, addictions, criminal records and health (obesity and mental health issues among them).
To the barricades Joy – to the barricades Whoppi!!! What a mess the Left has made!
“Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
Jonah 3:1-2
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These are the words of God given to Jonah, the reluctant prophet, who was tasked by God to bring a message of impending doom and the need to repent to all in Nineveh.
This morning I awoke to hear on the radio of young high school students who assembled in the Florida state Capital to urge members of the legislature to toughen existing gun laws. In the radio broadcast I heard a young girl weeping and moaning in disappointment because upon the students’ arrival the legislature had taken a vote that very day to reject a gun control proposal. Poor misguided child.
With this radio report, one thinks of Jonah and Nineveh and the King of Nineveh’s proclamation that his entire population shall repent from their evil ways and violent behavior (which they did).
High school kids and Nineveh. What is missing? God is missing.
Our education system and culture teaches us not to rely on God, but rather the false notion of our omnipotence and that of human beings and human institutions at-large. Foolishly this imparts the view that we are God or God-like and hence capable of great things – mere humans without God.
The students (like many adults) petition the wrong body. They look for mortals to act as if mortals are divine. God enters not at all into the young people’s consciousness or efforts. Their petitions ignore our godlessness … but then again their school systems shun God, and prayer, and the manifestation of anything religious within their confines.
The scene of student action and bitter reality is quite frankly a pathetic and obvious identification of precisely our collective failure – young and old. We are those of “evil ways” and “violent behavior.” But unlike those in Nineveh, we do not relate to God … we show no humility and heartfelt remorse. We have not repented and sought God’s forgiveness.
You know, a little religion would do these children and us (top to bottom) a whole lotta’ good. Time to grow up … and we grow up best from the kneeling position.
Shalom.
Irony. I will bet you a whole lot of money that there is not ONE parent or child petitioning the Florida legislature that could tell you that ISIS took control of Nineveh and leveled a Catholic Church where Mass had been said for 13 hundred years and dug up and destroyed Jonah’s grave. Quite honestly we will not get very far acting alone and without God. In such ways we show our godlessness – the very source of all our problems. We are an unsympathetic mob in present form.
What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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I like the symmetry of this. Our gift from God is being itself. However our gift to God is in our being not just singularly but collectively.
What we become in reflected in each of us and in the culture in which we reside. Just as we prosper in who we are, what we do, what we think, what we believe and how we order our life and time – so too is culture assessed in a similar manner.
As to culture today – we are not much of a gift to God. Indeed, we live as if we reject this gift of being.
We have normalized all sorts of abhorrent behaviors. We make violence lawful – think: killing children. Yes, mothers engaged in child sacrifice. Hideous. Marriage is not honored as it once was – and families are in tatters. Drug use is common, suicide and child abuse too.
Intimacy is scarce. Vulgarity is not.
We care less about others and more about our self. We have dumbed education down. We have ideology but not belief. One political party relies on division, Father Government and variants of destructive Marxism fantasies. Envy and hatred are common. Humility is rare.
What is one to do? Separate yourself from godlessness. Turn your back on it. Close your ears to it. Live independent of it. Keep your distance from it. Learn to live in silence, quiet, peace. Learn your faith. Recall its wisdom and employ its truth daily. Speak softly of what is good. Help those who come to you. Be candid in describing what you see and the truth you know. Make each breath count for what is good. Stay close to God who brought you into being and ignore all those around you who have no God but themselves or some nonsensical idea or fetish.
A time for choosing what is good is here. You are either a gift to God or nothing at all.
Shalom.
Washington Post. The newspaper reports in a long article today that Nikolas Cruz was identified as a troubled child in his early school years. The story reports that getting a child into the proper setting was a long and involved process that took years to accomplish. Likewise, the newspaper article says that places in the right settings were fewer than needed for troubled children. It also reports that Broward County had used many of the placements for youngsters who would have likely been referred for prosecution. The paper suggests that some groups wanted to interrupt the “pipeline” from school to jail that beset certain ethnic groups.
“What then will you give us, Lord? What are you going to gift us? “Peace I give you. Peace I leave you,” says the Lord.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in On the Song of Songs
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You may always know that crime is committed by those without peace. Yes, the disturbed – sometimes the very prideful – those who think so very much about themselves. The present-day F.B.I. adulterers of Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page – a classic example of Judas, so sure of their genius and purity that they (and their colleagues) could tip the scales of justice and defy the national electorate in their choice of President.
We don’t often mention Judas these days. But we should. Honor cometh to the peaceful. The Lords gives us peace. The miscreants lack peace and ergo lack honor.
This is, sadly, the state of the elites. So much for “education” today at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, et al. Ditto legal education at-large. By the way, we saw evidence of this in the 1950’s when Patrician Secretary of State Dean Acheson could not fancy that one of his breed (Alger Hiss) was a Communist spy.
Mr. Trump saw the failures of the elites and this is precisely why those who claim “privilege” so vehemently attack him. He commits the offense of exposing them as they are.
Our necessary corrective? Restore our faith. Make it that which governs us.
Lacking that, we will rot from the top echelons down. Thus, history declines once great nations.
Shalom.
Strangers to his counsel, hirelings of his pay, these of all deal our justice: sell – deny – delay.
Rudyard Kipling
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As we come to the day of our greatest Gift of God, we note we live with disturbing details of trouble in our important legal and political institutions in Washington – at the FBI, in the Justice Department, among prominent members of one of our political parties and their close confidants, and among the staff of the present Special Counsel.
Yet, God’s Gift reigns over all of this. Blind God is not, nor disinterested. The Gift is greatest in times of troubles and when the corruption of man’s soul is present – worse yet, explicitly present when the trust between the governed and the governing is broken.
Does this not make God’s Gift even more valuable? Can it not be seen any clearer? Is not the Star of Bethlehem brightest today?
The fact of the matter is this: our current problems are because those with authority and privilege have discarded the Gift of God in favor of their own desires and false sense of the perfection of their own judgment. In this they show themselves lost souls.
The Truth of the matter is such times and circumstances are corrected by returning to the Gift of God.
Shalom.
Wonderful Humor. An American temperance campaigner approached Winston Churchill and said: “Strong drink rageth and stingeth like a serpent.” Sir Winston replied: “I have been looking for a drink like that all by life.”
When the words of the self-righteous liberal advocate ring in your ears, may you be inspired by the wit of Sir Winston. God governs best of all.
