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Every writer I knows has trouble writing.
Joseph Heller
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Gee, that is a problem. I never have a problem writing. Maybe I am not a writer.
To me writing is like breathing. Like seeing. Like watching the human parade of the morally and spiritually disshoveled with a blithering idiot section (reserved for those with a public presence), each marching out-of-step with one another – and in this I include the upper middle class haughty bourgeiose – the pretenders of affluence, the self-proclaimed “special people” and those of faux status and little humor – the “intellectuals,” the people near the top of the pyramid, the celebrites and the life-long elected – “ahummm” – “public servants” who seem to gain more belly fat with each successive electoral victory – balloning in time to the size of a small banana “republic” or a well-fed water buffalo.
I was born poor. To this day I have not become a man who looks like he swallowed a small Volkswagon or Toledo, Ohio.
I can still see my feet clearly with no interruption at the waist line. Poverty, dyslexia betrayal and untimely loss kept me humble – a near failsafe against a culture of being “special.”
As to writing – life has always seemed to me to be hand to hand combat and an hilarious Marx Brothers adventure. A combination of terror and hysterical laughter. This – more than an adequate mix for a verbal man such as myself.
Long ago someone said to me – “You write like you speak.” Ah, that is the answer to the puzzle.
I am who I have always been. The same eyes looking at variations of the same insanity with rare moments of crystal clear brilliance on our worse and on our best days.
Light and severe dark produce the same product: I write from this – the combat, the terror, the instinct to fight back, the absurd idiocy and the humanity of it all – delivered outside to reside within until its moment arrives.
The crowd and its antics, like God, write of me – I just transcribe. Somewhere in my head and heart the notes have been stored, the images kept fresh.
If I am a writer it is all because of what God gave me. Blame Him. I write from the gifts of pain and suffering, from cunning and courage – and from the endless laugther at the folly of it … from the surrounding of beauty, heartbreak, sacrifice, heroism, pathos, common injustice, freinds, people who loved me and the uncommon victory that emerges now and again.
Shalom.
Ekklesia (Greek word meaning church) … signified the assembly of citizens of the polis (a city or small state in ancient Greece), who meet to make decisions.
Dairmaid MacCulloch, in Christianity: The First Three Thosuand Years
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The history of Western Civilization aligns faith or church with governing – ekklesia with polis. But we live in a time (a treacherous time) in which that nexus is lost … and that loss makes for a far more errant society and culture – a government more prone to chaos than tranquility, distain and division than gratitude and unity.
This is where we are now in the West and in America.
If you want a source of our problems in government, in law and in public affairs – look no further than the disconnection between church and state and the hostility and sickness that arises when this nexus is ignored, or worse yet – attacked, disparaged and forbidden.
Really, there is not much more to say except – when you listen to public discourse ask yourself one simple question: Does this man or woman speaking convey any sense that he or she knows anything at all about who we are and who we have been for centuries, or for the tenets which have provided our foundation, survival, peace and prosperity?
If you answer in the negative – stop listening – for that speaker deserves none of your time or attention.
Shalom.
Greek religion was a set of stories belonging to the entire community, rather than a set of well-bounded statements about ultimate moral and philosophical values … Within the common Greek culture, then, was an urge to understand and create a systematic structure of sacred knowledge which ordered everyday life.
Diarmaid MacCulloch, in Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
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If you want to understand why we are in the mess we are in, why the state of affairs in our nation are troublesome (indeed self-destructive) you need only know that those who would command our attention have no idea of our inheritance – the place Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews played in the development of Christianity and, in turn, Western Civilization.
You see we license all manner of poorly educated public personalities to speak to us without them knowing much at all about who we actually are.
Yes, we listen to people with no claim on our attention but that we listen because they are presented to us on television, in the media, among the intellectual or celebrity or political class, and the “special pleaders” who push one or another foolish idea or idiotic claims.
In short, we have an extreme deficit when it comes to the wise and broadly read, experienced and insightful whose knowledge runs to our origins and the process of human development dating back two thousand years before Christ.
Think I am wrong? Ask youself who among our public figures might be able to explain the connection between Greece, Rome, the Hebrews and the development of Christianity and the laws, institutions of governance in the West or identify the distinctions and similarities between Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christians when it comes to the Divine and our relationship with God or gods.
When is such a fundamental conversation ever been expected of those who seek to lead or “share” with us their opinions and desires for radical change?
Get serious. Those on the public stage subtract from the sum of human knowledge when they speak. This, of course, is taking its toll on us and our long term existence.
Shalom.
… it is difficult for churches, government, and leaders to move beyond ego, the desire for control, and public posturing. Everything divides into oppositions … vested interests pulling against one another. Truth is no longer possible at this level of conversation.
… you can lead people only as far as you yourself have gone …
Richard Rohr, in The Naked Now
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Richard Rohr writes of two monks of the 11th and 12th century – Hugh of St. Victor monastery in Paris, France, and Richard of the same monastery. He tells us that these monks wrote that humans have been given three different ways of seeing. One way arises from the eyes that produce thoughts. The second way of seeing leads to reason, and to reflection and meditation. The third way of seeing leads to true understanding and contemplation.
It is the third way of seeing that is the rarest and most evolved. Whereas the first way of seeing is common, it produces little depth of experience, is more concrete and binds one to the immediate without nuance. The second way of seeing allows one to relish his or her power to conceive of the material disposition of the world. Ah, but the third way of seeing allows one to do more – it allows one to “taste” existence, to be in awe before the underlying mystery, coherence, and spaciousness that connects one with everything!
The third way of seeing is seeing as a mystic sees – seeing as God has designed us to see. This seeing exceeds the senses, does not rest on knowledge and intellect alone – but rather sees in a manner that expands his or her consciousness – and in this is transformed, made whole, lives in and above at the same time, is mortal and immortal, contented, whole and wise in ways that neither the senses nor intellect can offer.
In commenting on this Rohr says “I cannot emphasize strongly enough that the separation and loss of these three necessary eyes is at the basis of much of the short-sight-edness and religious crises in the Western world.” Hence the above quote that leads into today’s blog.
The view that Rohr shares, Dear Friends, highlights how and why “identity politics” is so destructive, so wrong-headed, so primitive, tribal, hostile, aggressive, hateful and unappetizing. Those with greater depth of human experience cannot abide that which pits one against another in a death struggle. We are, after all, not made to be enemies to one another but rather brothers and sisters to one another.
This historic moment requires us to see as the mystic sees.
Shalom.
“Shall I tell you where the men (and women) are who believe most in themselves? … The men (and women) who really believe in themselves are all in a lunatic asylum.”
G. K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy
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“Tis quite a thing to see the Democrat/Socialist Party of the Left looking like it has something in common with the thought process of the late Charles Manson. But alas it seems so.
Where does one start? Well, Joe Biden is a good place. He was in Boston recently talking to labor union members and claiming that he was one of them – one of the middle class, working men who build this country by their sweat and labor. Only one problem – Old Joe has never worked a day in his life in a private job. No, he has been on the government payroll as an elected politician for his entire adult life. Never had a private pay check – not one … but he is a millionaire-plus. Lunacy.
Then we have the ever-strange Mad Uncle Bernie who advocates that all imprisoned convicts have the right to vote. Bernie (another guy with no history of work in the private economy but with accumulated substantial wealth) never says how he will explain this “convicts can vote” idea in the small towns and sparsely populated counties where the prisons are usually situated. Uncle Bernie never explains what he’ll say when those small towns of 1500, 3000, etc. law-abiding citizens are governed by a town council and mayor who are convicted murders, robbers, sex offenders and the like. Lunacy.
Then there is Democrat Mayor of New York City who announced yesterday he would present legislation to forbid (or banish) skyscrapers from “The Old Big Apple” because he opines that nothing does more damage to the environment and “global warming” than skyscrapers. Yes, lunacy.
Then we have the young Congresswomen Cortez (sans an accomplished life in the private economy) who advances the Green New Deal which will (in the name of saving the planet) dismember the American economy by banning all sorts of things like airplanes because they and all other free-market objects and activities are (for her) a central cause of “global warming.” Lunacy, again.
Then you have the female Democrat candidate for President who slept her way up the political ladder. With no embarrassment whatsoever she seeks to occupy the Oval Office – becoming the first occupant of said office who has been a dedicated courtesan. How quaint! Lunacy, again.
Then you have the press/media and activists going somewhat bonkers for the Doogie Howser candidate in the form of young Mayor Pete of South Bend who has a “husband” to accompany him to the White House. Who among us thinks that his election will strike fear in the hearts of our adversaries? Lunacy, once more.
Alas there is not time enough to extend the list to the “pretend” Indian Princess and the fellow Democrat presidential candidate who fancies himself Spartacus. Lunacy.
We have the asylums in plain view, Friends. Yes, we have an open-air asylum. The residents can be found within the Democrat/Socialist Party of the Left.
More over Venezuela!!! Here we come.
Shalom.