- Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago.
"Keep safe and don't let the wackadoodles get to you. They got to me and I suspect I will never be the same again." (Friend,AB) "The farsighted tend to get blindsided by the near sighted." Barry Kolb
"When you begin to think outside the box, you often become some other "leaders" lousy follower. That usually costs something" (Andy Rayner)
"Our guardian angels are bored." (Mike Foster)
It's where I feel I'm at these days. “In the second half of life, it is good just to be a part of the general dance. We do not have to stand out, make defining moves, or be better than anyone else on the dance floor. Life is more participatory than assertive, and there is no need for strong or further self-definition” (Falling Upward. Richard Rohr.120).
Monday, December 31, 2018
Silencing What Was Seen
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Picking Berries But Seeing Little
I Give Up Rather Than Be A Hypocrite
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Cheap Church Sunday Grace
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost Of Discipleship
Justification Of Sin Not From Sin
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost Of Discipleship.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer On Monasticism
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost Of Discipleship
Grace As An Idea
Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolations of his grace! That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.....
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiting repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.....
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost Of Discipleship
Can't Shake My Community
"One of the hardest things about .... living in a developing country is the constant tug between the world you left and the world you are currently living in. You can’t ever really shake either one."
- Stephie. Meet Me In The Middle
Friday, December 28, 2018
Why Should I Go Out?
Introvert conversation
"What we really need to do is get you out into the real world with other people, not just stuck in this house so that you never leave."
"Why should i leave when I have you to get me groceries?"
- Movie "Bird Box"
Enforced Ignorance
- Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. Vol 1, pg 242.
The Cost To Moderate Muslims
We are not paying the greater sacrifice in the struggle against fundamentalism. Moderate Muslims pay the greatest price under terrorism, radicalism, and fundamentalism.
They too are seen as people who need conversion to clearer thinking and understanding. It happened to half the Malian muslim population, in half the country, under the AQIM occupation (Al-Qaeda). Local peaceful Muslims who treat non Muslims of other faiths with a laissez-faire attitude, and not so strict with hijab were treated as bad, inadequate, fallen or failed muslims for not adopting their rigid fundamentalist stances.
I can share several stories of murdered imams, murdered for refusing to preach violent and abusive doctrines.
A full mosque of men who got up and walked out of a mosque in Timbucktu, when radicals arrived in the city and stood up to speak to the assembly on a Friday. When they stood up in place of their imam the men walked out in silent protest, not giving them the satisfaction of a listening ear. Keep in mind this arriving group of radicals had AK47s. Leaving was a risque.
Yet admittedly, others side with the radicals, and some take up the call and end up helping and hiding the radical elements working into their community, making it almost impossible to root it out. A divided community cannot easily stand without a cost.
Here is a story from Algeria.
"“Oh my God, oh my God,” the wizened Muslim woman in front of me says, looking skyward. “Ya rabi, ya rabi.” During Algeria’s dark decade, Fatma Bisikri’s husband, an Arabic teacher, went to do the grocery shopping in Ben Achour, the poorest area of Blida where they lived. He was stabbed and then shot to death by two masked terrorists. I think Fatma, now seventy-one, is finished with her story when she tells of running through the streets without her shoes to find her husband. But this is only the first chapter. Two years later, someone pounded on her door at night. She did not want her daughter to open the door, but her daughter did. Three or four armed men in the recognizable “uniform” of the fundamentalist armed groups—baggy seroual under a long qamis—pushed their way in. “I do not want to talk about this,” Fatma tells me in her small, strained voice. Then she keeps talking. I am grateful for the presence of my friend Lalia. There is too much grief to absorb alone here at the office of Djazairouna, the Association of Families of Victims of Islamist Terrorism. When Fatma Bisikri continues telling us her history, Lalia begins to cry. “Smhana, smhana.” “Forgive us, forgive us.” Fatma says the armed men dragged six of her nine children, aged thirteen to thirty, from the house. She held onto the legs of one fighter, sliding along, until he kicked her to the ground. Then she ran out after them, screaming: “Give me back my children.” The fundamentalists put a knife to her throat. “What are you looking for?” one barked. Even her maternal instincts could not overcome the fear they knew how to provoke. She retreated into the house. Not a single neighbor came out to help. There had recently been eleven killings in a home nearby. Terror had become mundane. At first light, in a torrential rain, Fatma Bisikri went to look for her six children. All too soon, she found them. The fundamentalists had cut their throats and dumped their bodies in a oued, a nearby riverbed. The smallest details are what make a crime against humanity all too personal. They are what finally make Fatma Bisikri sob. Not long before that macabre night, one of her young sons had been crying that they had lost their father and did not have new clothes for the Eid holiday, as other children did. His older sister, a teacher, managed to buy him new pants. He was wearing them when he was murdered. Why did this happen? Later, someone suggested to Fatma that it was because her daughter refused to stop teaching despite being ordered to do so by the local fundamentalists in their crusade against education. Or it could have been because people in the area had previously given succor to the terrorists, thinking they were fighting for religion, but then stopped helping them due to the jihadists’ local atrocities. None of these theories can answer the big why, or ease this mother’s continuing agony. After the murders, Fatma applied for a new place to live to get away from the mouth of hell her home now seemed to be. However, she has never been given other housing. So Fatma Bisikri remains alone in the same location with the view of the oued where she found her children’s bodies. She wants to sleep in a different place, but she has nothing. “Andi walou.”"
- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here.
Religions Living At Peace?
"Some of the journalists I met confront fundamentalism head-on. Others document it, analyze it, challenge it, and survive it. Radik Amirov personifies an alternative to it. He transcends narrow categories, being Tatar and Russian, tolerant and interested in tradition, a citizen and a believer, a Muslim and a modern journalist."
- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here.
The Same Prophets?
Yet another chapter memorializes good things Jews and Muslims have done for one another. It tells the story of a Jewish doctor who cured a Muslim boy, and then his parents saved Jewish boys during World War II. The Muslim boy in question, Abu-Bekir Shabanovich, grew up to become mufti of Belarus. For Radik, this history stands in stark contrast to today’s “war of civilizations.”
(Radik Amirov, who is president of Russia’s League of Muslim Journalists when I meet him in 2010, and press secretary to Moscow mufti Ravil Gainutdin)
- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here.
Lazy Russian Believers?
"In that capacity, he observed the problems facing Russian Muslims up close. He says they have to be less passive. “Unfortunately, most of us are sitting and waiting for Allah to help us.” The mainstream Muslim population has lost a lot of time in the last fifteen years in the battle against fundamentalism, according to Amirov. “We could have organized good madrasas or a good Muslim university.” Instead, the Muslim leadership here was bogged down by infighting. The lack of moderate Muslim schools at home in Russia saw young people leave to get their “Muslim education” in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. He does not have a high opinion of what some of these students learned. “They came back completely different people. They said you should not greet Christians, that you should hate Jews.” A friend of his returned and tried “to teach me how to live.” They found themselves “on different sides of the barricades.”
(Radik Amirov, who is president of Russia’s League of Muslim Journalists when I meet him in 2010, had been press secretary to Moscow mufti Ravil Gainutdin)
- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here.
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Church Curmudgeon
- Edward Abbey
Get Out Of Your Tin Car
"What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can't see the desert if you can't smell it. Dusty? Of course it's dusty—this is Utah! But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that peice of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk—yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills—yes sir, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse? Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk—walk—WALK upon your sweet and blessed land!
- Edward Abbey
Rule Of Law Means I Die?
"If I should object to force I will be arrested. If I object to arrest I will be clubbed. If I defend myself against clubbing I will be shot. These procedures are known as The Rule of Law."
Edward Abbey, The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel
Get Out Of Your Car
"You can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamn contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbrush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail, you'll see something, maybe."
- Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Sacred Million Year Old Things
" If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world is contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature. Anything becomes permissible. We return once more to the nightmare cultures of Hitler, Stalin, King Philip II, Montezuma, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Herod, the Pharaohs; Christ sacrificed himself in vain."
- Edward Abbey, Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
Let Us Chop Wood
"High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring."
- Edward Abbey
Little Talk Of Tiny Heros
"Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp."
- Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Cockeyed Ambition To Conquer
- Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
No Management Zones?
"Simply because humankind have the power now to meddle or 'manage' or 'exercise stewardship' in every nook and cranny of the world does not mean that we have a right to do so. Even less, the obligation."
- Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Mystical Faithfulness
"The love of a man for his wife, his child, of the land where he lives and works, is for me the real meaning of mystical experience."
- Edward Abbey,
More Democracy
"Anarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more."
- Edward Abbey,
Teamwork As Stupidity
"One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork."
-Edward Abbey
Our Institutions Are Too Big?
"Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject."
- Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Leadership
"Grown men do not need leaders."
- Edward Abbey
Some institutions hold people as peretual infantiles.
Just Disappear
"I suppose each of us has his own fantasy of how he wants to die. I would like to go out in a blaze of glory, myself, or maybe simply disappear someday, far out in the heart of the wilderness I love, all by myself, alone with the Universe and whatever God may happen to be looking on. Disappear - and never return. That's my fantasy."
- Edward Abbey
Let Them Get Eaten?
"A venturesome minority will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches - that is the right and privilege of any free American."
- Edward Abbey
More Eating Places Needed
"Wilderness is the place where you can still get eaten."
- Edward Abbey
What I Stand For?
"I stand for what I stand on."
- Edward Abbey
When Guns Are Outlawed
"When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws."
- Edward Abbey
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Grapes Are Enough
- Augustine.
Two Legged Thanks Giving
- Chesterton
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
God Leaps Out Of The Frame
"Said a boy of missionary parents attending school in this country as he looked at a picture of his father. “I want my father to step out of that frame.”
That's exactly what God did for is in Christ. He steps out of the frame of the universe and comes to us personally, intimately. This is the Truth which Christians celebrate at Christmas."
- William (Bill) Weale. Charlottetown.
Depressed Radicals
- Conor Barnes. "Sad Radicals". (Dec 11, 2018) Quillette.
Monday, December 24, 2018
He Will Always Be God With Us.
Pope Francis. Homily at the Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, 2018.
Earth Is Crammed Full With Heaven
Does My Life Matter?
Nothing To Loose!
Grandiose People Cannot Creat Peace
Participating In The Healing Of People
Pretending Is Exhausting
Mission Work Is A Gift Not A Burden
The Illusionary You
Don't Waste Your Life Defending Your Ego
No Naked Head Pictures
A Lifetime Of Talking Too Much
Armpit of Africa?
Freedom From Their Rewards
Stories Help Us Digest Wisdom
Your God Is A Dog
Good And Bad Pilgrims
A Very Few Issues With Jesus
Bake The Gay Cake
Eliminate The Laity
Dry Hearts
We Don't Have Any Money
Friday, December 21, 2018
China Has No Reformer Leadership
- Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now.
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Harnesses Capitalism's Productive Capacity and Constrains Its Destabilizing Impulses
"Still, the global financial crisis was a lesson that less intervention is not always the best intervention.
Markets are a powerful tool for allocating scarce resources, linking capital and customers, and producing huge sums of material wealth.
But frameworks matter. It is up to government to establish an institutional framework that harnesses capitalism's productive capacity and constrains its destabilizing impulses.
It is also up to government to ensure the system serves broad public interest and not just those of big Market players. This means developing an agenda focused on getting good outcomes for working and middle-class people, not on fulfilling intellectual abstractions."
-Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now.
The Opiate Of Intellectuals
It is worth mentioning that one important element of society never fully embraced the new economic consensus. Much of the western academia remain fixated on communism. Indeed, as the Berlin Wall fell, it became evident that Communists True Believers persisted only on its western side. In the educational establishment, Marxism lingered as the opiate of the intellectuals."
- Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now.
No Stopping Place In Life?
- Johannes Eckhart
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Chivalry Of A Bygone Era?
(Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke, legendary military genius and Christian who plotted with Bonhoeffer for Hitler's Assination)
- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
Let Your Conscience Drive
(Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke, legendary military genius and Christian who plotted with Bonhoeffer for Hitler's Assination)
- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
Habituated To Murder
......Moltke was a committed Christian. Canaris drafted him into the conspiracy (to assinate Hitler)at the outset of the Polish campaign when he documented many human rights abuses. In October 1941 he wrote, “Certainly more than a thousand people are murdered in this way every day, and another thousand German men are habituated to murder. . . . What shall I say when I am asked: And what did you do during that time?” In another letter he wrote, “Since Saturday the Berlin Jews are being rounded up. Then they are sent off with what they can carry. . . . How can anyone know these things and walk around free?”"
- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
Monday, December 17, 2018
When Preachers Prepare To Murder
"When Bonhoeffer returned from Switzerland in late September, he learned of more horrors. But these were being perpetrated inside Germany. A new decree required all Jews in Germany to wear a yellow star in public. Things had now moved into a new realm, and Bonhoeffer knew it was but a foretaste of things to come. At the Dohnanyis’ house that September, Bonhoeffer famously said that, if necessary, he would be willing to kill Hitler. It would not come to that, but Bonhoeffer had to be clear that he was not assisting in the fulfillment of a deed he was unwilling to do. He stipulated, however, that he would first have to resign from the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer knew that most of its members would not share his position on this matter, but more important, he did not want to implicate them in something that he was undertaking alone. His role in the conspiracy was between him and God alone; that much he knew. And he knew that being chosen by God..."
- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
Stand Strong
- Julius Evola. Revolt Against The Modern World. (Italian Philosopher)
In What Name
- Julius Evola. Revolt Against The Modern World
People Don't Know Their Wants?
"For quite some time now it has become almost commonplace to talk about the “decline of the West” and the crisis of contemporary civilization, its dangers, and the havoc it has caused. Also, new prophecies concerning Europe’s or the world’s future are being formulated, and various appeals to “defend” the West are made from various quarters.
In all this concern there is generally very little that goes beyond the amateurishness of intellectuals. It would be all too easy to show how often these views lack true principles, and how what is being rejected is often still unconsciously retained by those who wish to react, and how for the most part people do not really know what they want, since they obey irrational impulses. This is especially true on the practical plane where we find violent and chaotic expressions typical of a “protest” that wishes to be global, though it is inspired only by the contingent and terminal forms of the latest civilization."
- Julius Evola. Revolt Against The Modern World. (Italian Philosopher)
Too Bad For Mussolini
(H.T. Hasen's introduction to Evola in the following book)
- Julius Evola. Revolt Against The Modern World
Orgy Of Executions
"As a result of such things, many more in the army leadership were driven to the conspiracy. At one point officers came to Field Marshal Bock and begged him with tears in their eyes to stop “the orgy of executions” in Borisov. But even Bock was powerless. When he demanded that the SS commander in charge of the massacres be brought to him, the civilian commissioner, Wilhelm Kube, laughed defiantly. Hitler had given the SS free rein, and even a field marshal could do nothing about it. "
It was during this time that Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and his cousin von Stauffenberg overcame their fundamental feelings against conspiracy. Both were devoutly Christian and had been raised in the caste of German military aristocracy. What they witnessed was a reversal and mockery of every value they held dear. Stauffenberg would take the lead in the famous July 20, 1944, attempt to kill Hitler, as we shall soon see.
- Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Prayer is Incarnation
" Prayer is a moment of incarnation - God with us. God involved in the details of my life."
- Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
Preaching Too Soon
"Would-be theologians. ... must be on their guard lest by beginning too soon to preach they rather chatter themselves into Christianity then live themselves into it and find themselves at home there."
- Soren Kierkegaard. (Recorded in his Journal, July 11th, 1838)
Leave Yourself Alone
"We began to inhibit, control and organize our immediate impulses, so that we could stop interfering with other people and our future selves."
- Jordan Peterson.
Saturday, December 15, 2018
Forcing Nothing Good?
"An act that is compelled is not virtuous."
- Stephen Molyneux
What Witnesses Have Seen
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1.
Starved In Prison To Avoid The Good Life
The Russians were carrying the whole war on their shoulders and this was the Russian lot. Why? Gradually, explanations came in from here and there: it turned out that the U.S.S.R. did not recognize as binding Russia's signature to the Hague Convention on war prisoners. That meant that the U.S.S.R. accepted no obligation at all in the treatment of war prisoners and took no steps for the protection of its own soldiers who had been captured...
We did not recognize that 1907 convention until 1955. Incidentally, in his diary for 1915, Melgunov reports rumors that Russia would not let aid go through to its prisoners in Germany and that their living conditions were worse than those of all other Allied prisoners - simply in order to prevent rumors about the good life of war prisons inducing our soldiers to surrender willingly. There was some sort of continuity of ideas here."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL. 1.
About Feeling Religious?
- Richard Rohr. Everything Belongs.
Twisted Thinking
Interesting statement with a twist.....
"We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking."
-Richard Rohr. Everything Belongs.
Hero's That Give Up
- Richard Rohr. Everything Belongs.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Civilization Pushing Us To Resentment
- Julius Evola. Revolt Against The Modern World
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Church Is The Easy Thing
"For some reason, it is easier to attend church services than quite simply to reverence the real - "the practice of the presence of God," as some have called it. Making this commitment doesn't demand a lot of dogmatic wrangling or managerial support, just vigilance, desire, and willingness to begin again and again.
- Richard Rohr. Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer
Expelling Systems
" I watch how foolishly man guards his nothing - there by keeping us out,. True truly, God is hated here.
- Street graffiti in Albuquerque New Mexico, as told by Richard Rohr
Better Than Trite Slogans
"We constantly need to press beyond the one-line summaries and the popular slogans."
- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began
Love Unknown
"My song is love unknown,
My Savior's love to me,
Love to the loveless shown,
that they might lovely be.
- Hymn. My Song Is Love Unknown.
How To Be Taught Better
".... by 1525 the protest movement involved much more than the mass, or even believers baptism - it involved the nature of the church. The concept of a church of committed Believers had taken the place of a church made up of the mixed multitude. This new church, like that of the Apostles, was to be made up only of those confessing Christ as Lord followed by Believers baptism, instead of everyone born in a given Parish. The Lord's Supper would then be observed by the baptized in a simple manner, shorn of its medieval trappings, as a pledge of Brotherly Love in remembrance of the one, all sufficient sacrifice of Christ.
Fritz Blanke (1525) has asserted that the characteristics of the church described above "were not to be found anywhere else at that time." Then he asked, "What is the source of this new view of the Christian Church?"
Griebel answers: "We were listeners to Zwingli's sermons and readers of his writings, but one day we took the Bible itself in hand and we were taught better.""
- William Estep. The Anabaptist Story. An Introduction To Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
No Distinction
"The net tightened around the Jews as Bonhoeffer withdrew to America, knowing that he must return again as a pacifist -almost certainly to face death.
He became a resistance worker, and was part of a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. But it was his evasion of the call up for military service that led to his arrest.....He supported and prayed for his fellow prisoners. Perhaps he died because of his political convictions and not as a Christian martyr, but he would have said that there was no distinction between the two."
- Celtic Daily Prayer. The Journey Begins. Book One
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Tranquillity of The Holy Spirit
Tranquillity, Gentleness, Strength.
.... Fuss and feverishness, anxiety, intensity, intolerance, instability, pessimism and wobble, and every kind of hurry and worry -these, even on the highest levels, are signs of the self-made and self acting Soul the spiritual parvenu"
- Evelyn Underhill. The Spiritual Life
Attentive To Time
"Therefore, be attentive to time and the way you spend it. Nothing is more precious. God, the master of time, never gives the future. He gives only the Present, Moment by moment, for this is the law of the created order....
You will not be able to excuse yourself in the last judgment, saying to God: "You overwhelm me with the future when I was only capable of living in the present."
- The Cloud of Unknowing
Saturday, December 8, 2018
The Mistrust of Politicians and Bankers
The world was lunging from an economic slowdown to an economic meltdown to total panic. Financial markets were frozen. Stock markets were plunging. Shipping volumes were in a free fall. The global economic situation was visibly worsening by the day. In short order, the US economy alone would lose nearly 9 million jobs, see 10 million foreclosures, and shed nearly three and a half trillion dollars in retirement savings.
As Leaders, we were not under any illusion about finding Perfect Solutions. The options before us were all bad, and the only objective was to avoid imminent Calamity. The meeting's final communiqué committed to "whatever further action are necessary to stabilize the financial system. " And we meant it. The stage was set for massive worldwide deficit spending, unprecedented and coordinated monetary interventions, and huge corporate bailouts.
In the weeks and months that followed, a measure of stability return. The Panic subsided and financial institutions stopped collapsing. The stock market bottomed out. In fact, it returned to pre-recession levels faster than most of us had imagined. Corporate profits, too, recovered comparatively quickly.
For many people, however, things would never be the same. As the Great Recession faded for some, employment and wages leg behind for most......
This experience has taken its toll on the Public's enthusiasm for markets, capitalism, and globalization.....
Add insult to injury, when the crisis hit, the result was unremitting capitalism for the working class and socialist protection for the Wall Street financier who caused the Meltdown in the first place. Still, in many Elite circles, the old narratives quickly returned. Even Bank Executives were soon back to paying themselves bonuses - not that they had ever really stopped - and decrying any attempt to regulate their sector.....
I am not saying these things to denounce or disparage the American system. I still believe in the general efficacy of markets more precisely, of well-governed markets. History shows unambiguously that capitalism usually produces Fair better incomes than the Alternatives. The market has a unique ability to connect capital and ideas with customers, and to drive sustained economic growth. The tendency of government, by contrast, is to politicize the allocation of wealth and opportunity at every turn."
- Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now: Politics and Leadership In the Age of Disruption
Populism
Stephen Harpers book on the the topoc of Populism really is proving insightful. He is not fan of Trump nor does he think is a real conservative. He takes his shots at him. This was interesting.
"The same pundits, press, and pollsters who deemed Trump utterly unelectable are now telling us why he won. They have become instant experts on what happened and what to do about it. If you are not skeptical, you should be.The good thing is that we do not have to look under rocks or rely on Talking Heads for the answer. Trump is trying out these really not that much of a mystery. The president has been Frank about the economic and social forces that motivated his voters and ultimately put him in the White House. In truth, he saw these Transit earlier and more clearly than anyone else. We need look no further than Trump's inaugural speech. It was a clear distillation of what was behind the populist uprising in 2016.......
There were four major themes that came out of the speech (Trumps Inaugural). They were unique. They distinguish Trump's approach from those long taken by establishment politicians in both major parties.
The first was, for lack of a better term, a certain economic realism. Particularly atypical for a Republican, there was no talk about the morality of the markets or praise of economic liberty. This was not a speech for think-tank Scholars or philosophical conservatives. Instead, Trump articulated a hard-headed focus on bringing industry back to America and restoring jobs for American workers.
The second was trade. Trump challenged the assumption that free trade is inherently and always good for the United States. He called and trade deals that create and uneven playing field between American-based firms and international competitors, particularly trade agreements with China and Mexico.
The third was nationalism, which includes the America First philosophy. Trump criticized representatives from both parties for putting Global priorities ahead of national imperatives. He pledged to govern in the national interest without nuance or apology.
The final thing was immigration. Trump broke with the bipartisan consensus in its favor. He notably rejected policy that effectively allows large numbers of low-skilled workers into the country......
While each of these subjects deserves further discussion, Trump did not have much to say about practical solutions. There were few policy proposals or commitments that went beyond slogans like "winning again." Eighteen months into his presidency, this is still proving to be a weakness.
This does not, however, diminish Trump's insight into the electorate. It does not change the fact that he saw things that much more experienced observers had not. Indeed, in his inaugural speech, he was telling us what he had tapped into and why he won. He was reviewing the blueprint that got him to that Podium and into the Oval Office."
- Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now: Politics and Leadership In the Age of Disruption
- Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now: Politics and Leadership In the Age of Disruption
Life Of Normal
"Life is neither particularly exciting or great, nor disastrous or grandly and interestingly tragic. Life is just trundling along, which is why I have been quiet."
- Commuting To Timbuktu.. Swiss expart used to live in Djenne Mali
Friday, December 7, 2018
Reform Thy Self
The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example.
- A Tramp Abroad
A Cantankerous Chruch Choir
The choir always tittered and whispered all through the service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was.
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
A Fast Lie
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Mark Twain
Only Hogs Go To Church?
“There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Thursday, December 6, 2018
What is Populism
At least since Trump's damp and dreary Inauguration Day, populism has become a loaded term. It has been made the default explanation for any political view or event that diverges from establishment opinion. Opposition to trade deals? Populism. Protest against immigration? It must be the populist. And unexpected election result? What else did populism? And So It Goes. One academic has the gist of it: most uses of the term populism are motivated by an establishment desire to denigrate any opposition to the "liberal consensus." Put differently: there is a tendency, particularly among contemporary liberals, to call political outcomes that they support "democracy," and ones that do not "populism." In other words, they see to wait equate populism with demagoguery.
That effort is itself demagoguery, for populism can have a positive interpretation. Put simply, it is any political movement that places The wider interests of the common people ahead of the special interest of the privileged few. If you think about it, in most every democracy, every political party tends to frame its core appeal in such terms, at least to some degree.
Is this such a nonsensical concept? In fact, there are times when the consensus of the political establishment diverges from the weight of a public opinion. For instance, the desirability of trade deals and of unskilled immigration are areas where the leadership of both the US Republican and Democratic parties has often parted company with the bulk of their supporters. When such divergence occurs, it is the tendency of the elites to try to take such political debate off the table. Populism is a force that can put these issues back on the agenda.
There have been many instances of elite consensus being challenged by the wider public. Economic orthodoxy in one peroid has become economic heresy in the next. Wars have been undertaken when they should not have, and pacifism has been practice in the face of inevitable conflict. Elites often have interest and perspectives that are distinct from those of the general public. And they are sometimes wrong.
Think of it this way. Populism is a framework for identifying political priorities and making political decisions. But it does not tell us much about the underlying policies per se. So-called populist politicians have stood for ideas that could be classified as left-wing, right-wing, or even Centrist."
- Stephen Harper. Right Here Right Now: Politics and Leadership In the Age of Disruption