alice von hildebrand speaks

“…what is amazing, is that through grace, man can be purified and his beautiful male characteristics can revive, can be rejuvenated…you see that in the Saints: they are strong, they are powerful when it comes to defending the faith, they are gentle and tender toward the weak. In other words, the great mistake is to believe the opposite of strength is gentleness. It’s not true at all. Strength and gentleness belong together – you find this in Christ, who is so strong and simultaneously meek of heart, you find that in the Saints. What is the opposite of strength is weakness and cowardice.

You find the very same thing in women – the opposite of sensitivity, of empathy, is not sentimentality, which is basically to be sense-centered, it is a holy courage for the faith. This is why, for example, one of the things that always impresses me so, is the Holy Virgin at the foot of the Cross. We have to keep in mind that no human being has ever suffered as much as the Holy Virgin – she had the greatest privilege ever granted to a human being, simultaneously she carried the heaviest cross because she was at Calvary watching every single step of this abomination which is the Crucifixion. And what is absolutely amazing, this struck me already when I was a little girl: Mary was standing. She was not collapsing in self-pity. She was standing because it is by standing that she collaborated most with the Crucifixion of her Son. This is why the Blessed One is also the Mother Dolorosa.

...

shuffling the ontological deck of cards

In the Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Q. 2, A.1 
Aquinas says clearly that we do not know the essence of God, 
but we can prove that the essence of God “exists.” 
To say we can only know “about” God 
might make people think 
we think our knowledge 
is vague and generalized like the pagans.
 I would say it differently. 
It is still a knowledge ‘about God’.... 
Aquinas says somewhere that
 we only know the truth of the proposition: 
God exists...through causality, a posteriori. 
I say, that what we are ever knowing 
is the being of God
 and that we cannot not know the very being of God
 right within the effects that we know
 in everyday experience. 
But the knowledge of God’s very being
 is largely or totally unconscious (spiritually). 
No wonder folks fail to distinguish 
the ‘existence of God’ and the being of God!
 Good old cosmologic lock! 


                         Robert E. Joyce, PhD






....

boiling things down

the biggest problem with the roman catholic church
 is the widespread pettiness and ignorance of the laity...
they've sold their souls to  the illusions of secularism
and use this as a basis to criticize her leaders

some will say it's the structure the vatican clericalism etc.
....i say it's the pretensions of her sheep

the failure of the 2nd vatican council
is the failure of the faithful in the pews who have failed
to take up the challenge of preserving the traditions
have assumed knowledge they just do not have
and have played havoc with the treasures of doctrine

the confession lines should be 10 times as long as they are

all the critics of the church are veritable cowards





.....

words with a purpose most heavenly earth bound

DEAR BRITTANY                                              



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...................found poem literally found on the dying grass
outside a doctor's office what inspired me to read the little offering
i shall never know....maybe it was the pictures









......

interior landscape lyrics

The sun shines not on us but in us. 

The rivers flow not past, but through us. 

Thrilling, tingling, vibrating

 every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies,

 making them glide and sing. 

The trees wave and the flowers bloom

 in our bodies as well as our souls, 

and every bird song, wind song,

 and tremendous storm song 

of the rocks in the heart 

of the mountains is our song, 

our very own, and sings our love.

                             John Muir

....

just wondering

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKO5t3rcIZU








.

rage against the oppressive state...on a demonstration sign

soy trans de veron a mujer
e de mujer al a puta





      .....you'd think it would be enough to merely be alive
           ...but no

the inherent questions are not without merit

THE FEMINIST QUESTION                                                                     

Without admitting it to himself, he was afraid that one day she would get her animals mixed up. When she was at the foot of the tower, frail romantic amazon, she reined in her horse, massaged her fiance, and then whistled for her mount, which returned to her from quite a ways off. That Mlle de Valombreuse was a masseuse her fiance could pardon.  But that she was a trainer of a wild beast was just too much.

                                                                        Max Jacob

.....

a lyric for which i'm learning the melody

Time after time I tell myself that I'm So lucky to be loving you So lucky to be The one you run to see In the evening when the day is through I only know what I know The passing years will show You've kept my love so young, so new And time after time You'll hear me say that I'm So lucky to be loving you




.....

o the trials of a cowboy

Singing To Cows

“The singing was supposed to soothe the cattle and it did; I don't know why, unless it was that a sound they was used to would keep them from spooking at other noises. I know that if you wasn't singing, any little sound in the night – it might just be a horse shaking himself – could make them leave the country; but if you were singing, they wouldn't notice it.

Two men on guard would circle around with their horses on a walk, if it was a clear night and the cattle was bedded down and quiet, and one man would sing a verse of a song, and his partner on the other side of the herd would sing another verse; and you'd go through a whole song that way...”Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie” was a great song for a while, but...they sung it to death. It was a saying on the range that even the horses nickered it and the coyotes howled it; it got so they'd throw you in the creek if you sang it.

                         Teddy Blue Abbot

....

it's come to this

i am nearing a cyber dead end
i do not lament or manifest any sadness
other than the fact of numerous wasted hours
but what is time anyway...
at this time i find myself enmired in YouTube
it's all that remains
i smilingly refer to myself as a 
YouTube scholar
a surfer in the short film world
video becomes me
what got me into all this
i can't quite recall
the first YouTube explorations were musical
i found myself following trails to sites
that featured guitar construction 
and videos featuring performance or demonstration
of high end guitars
how this transmogrified into world championship bull-riding
and extreme skiing i do not know
why i became momentarily obsessed with young women's track and field
is beyond me other that the fact that what they're wearing these days
in the name of sports clothing is nothing short of amazing in terms of
what is revealed and barely concealed
 the athleticism of the girls
does not impress me at all
what they're wearing and what they do with their bodies
i find somewhat engaging if that is the right term
anyway the african swedish long jump star khaddi sagnia 
captured my imagination for awhile
and why wouldn't she

my first major exploration into intellectual and social affairs 
had to do with the critical world surrounding the events of 9/11
i recall some years ago exploring everything i could find
that made reference to the actual events of 9/11
i became a dedicated follower of the presentations of Dr Judy Wood
and then i began attending to the information brought forth by Christopher Bollyn
sometime during this phase of YouTube scholarship i launched into
a  study of the Frankfurt School of critical realism
about this same time i was introduced to Janice Fiamengo 
a canadienne anti-feminist  who offered me great hope
for in her i had found a thinking person who saw through the deceptions
and ignorance of so much that passes for women's liberation
i am still a devoted follower of her wisdom and gentle comic spirit
where she exposes the idiocy of the gender wars
and she falls to the side of upholding the dignity and integrity and necessity 
of good strong worthwhile men
at some point shortly thereafter i began looking into videos which represent 
opinions and views from a Roman Catholic perspective
i watched almost all of Bishop Barron's early Word on Fire films
and i especially sought out intelligent Catholic women like mary eberstadt and Helen Alvare' and Mary Rice Hasson and Janet Smith who are out there in the world talking the truth of catholic doctrine in an atmosphere of complete controversy and suspicion and social verbal rhetorical degradation for that matter
in and around all of this i became familiar with podcasts by Ben Shapiro Andrew Klavan Joe Rogan Patrick Coffin Gavin McInnes Michael Voris and the news from Church Militant and there wa a lengthy stint in there of watching EWTN videos of the COming HOme series of conversion stories  and more recently i am hooked into everything i can find about
 E Michael Jones 
i've even gone so far as to buy two of his recent books and am steeped deeply into
 Labido Dominandi
a fascinating study and overview of the pretensions of 
sexual liberation since Enlightenment days
and his interviews with the likes of Owen Benjamin

this passed winter i watched the complete series of the travels by bicycle of Johan Gueorguiev from the Arctic Circle to the end of the road in Chile...31 fascinating episodes of bike travel in the most extreme corners of the americas...i highly recommend this travel series.... it's amazing

amidst all of this i have heard performances of Classical Guitar music that i would never have found anywhere else and some interesting music related films that i would never think of watching anywhere else

i've even gotten lost in food videos
how to prepare the perfect Ribeye steak for instance

i am at a loss now as i know i do not want to stay in the realm of YouTube
i want to get away from it
but my email life has dissipated and my life in the blog world is all but deadended
(perhaps it was deadended from the start)

i am thinking of making a drastic move
i am contemplating relinquishing my computer 
giving up on my landline phone
and condensing all my communication into one device
the iPhone...i am perplexed however
it seems to be going in the direction of endless simplification
which will end in my inhabiting one little silicon chip in the vast array
of nothing that is the world of communication swept away like dust beneathe the mainframe

i must fight the tendency to become a robot

fight the robots

fight them






........

seems like i've been mucking about in a wasteland

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrNs0M77Pd4






..

and then i came across this #2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0V2UGqQjUk






..

and then i come across this

                                     thank god for ethicists





Breaking News: 
Researchers removed the brains
 from 32 dead pigs and, 
hours later, 
restored some cellular activity.
 An ethicist called the brains "partly alive".


                  - found poems galore





...

1 January 1965

The Wise Men will unlearn your name.

Above your head no star will flame.

One weary sound will be the same—

the hoarse roar of the gale.

The shadows fall from your tired eyes

as your lone bedside candle dies,

for here the calendar breeds nights

till stores of candles fail.

What prompts this melancholy key?

A long familiar melody.

It sounds again. So let it be.

Let it sound from this night.

Let it sound in my hour of  death—

as gratefulness of eyes and lips

for that which sometimes makes us lift

our gaze to the far sky.

You glare in silence at the wall.

Your stocking gapes: no gifts at all.

It's clear that you are now too old

to trust in good Saint Nick;

that it's too late for miracles.

—But suddenly, lifting your eyes

to heaven's light, you realize:

your life is a sheer gift.

                               a Joseph Brodsky poem

                               transl.   by   George  Kline

....