My old friend keeps swearing he’s going on a news fast. Me too. But somehow we never manage to slim down.
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Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
Gerard Van der Leun
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Yeah, can we just vote and get it over with?
I hear that!
But even after the election we still have 2 months remaining in this most awful year.
Turn off the TV.
This awful year actually started in Oct 2019, with the release of the virus from Wuhan. Between 6 October and 11 October 2019, a novel coronavirus was released, accidentally or maliciously, from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. Between 7 October and 24 October 2019, there was no cellphone activity around the location of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and it is believed that a hazardous event occurred there.
During that same time period, beginning on 6 October 2019, a three week long meeting between the Catholic Vatican hierarchy and a delegation of Catholics from the Amazon began, that is referred to as the “Amazon Synod.” During the synod, a number of ceremonies and Masses were conducted and wooden idols from the Amazon were included. These idols depicted a nude, pregnant female Mother Earth deity called the “Pachamama”. The idols were bowed down to, were brought into sacred Catholic places, and were temporarily housed in a Catholic church during the three weeks of the synod.
In the early hours of the morning of 21 October 2019, a young, faithful Austrian Catholic, entered the church in which the Pachamama idols had been placed, carefully removed five of them, walked to the bridge over the Tiber, and flung them into the river.
Unfortunately, the idols were recovered and were present at the closing Mass of the Amazonian Synod on 27 October 2019, on the Feast of Christ the King. A Pachamama bowl was also placed on the altar in violation of liturgical norms.
But there, in the midst of Wuhan flu, Pachamama idols, and war against invisible enemy ideologies, in a little country surrounded by the sea, shined a light on 6 October 2019. That same day. It is no accident. Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa, who had previously experienced three Marian apparitions that took place in Akita, Japan between 6 July and 13 October 1973, received a message from The Blessed Virgin Mary for the first time since 1973. The message was, “Put on ashes and pray a repentant Rosary every day.”
I believe that at the end of October this awful year will come to an end.
Chris sed: “I believe that at the end of October this awful year will come to an end.”
=========
How?
Holy Mackerel! He’s not kidding!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synod_of_Bishops_for_the_Pan-Amazon_region
Whatta Pope! ….Amazon needs its own Church with “an Amazon face and also an indigenous face” rather than “a European Church transplanted in the Amazon”
That’s funny, I thought that Christianity was born in the Middle East and the “Apostolic and Universal Catholic Church” has successfully brought the word of God to every continent and race on Earth for thousands of years (with varying degrees of success) chiefly on the basic idea of one God and one Liturgy for every soul.
Any chance they can farm Francis out to the Protestants?
WOW!!!
I just stumbled onto this GREAT website after surfing for articles on Paradise, CA.
I, too, am a Camp Fire survivor, and BARELY survived escaping that horrible, demonic fire on November 8, 2018.
I had just purchased a home in Ohio just 10 DAYS before the fire hit, returned home to Paradise (I lived on Millwood Lane) to start packing and preparing to move.
A few days later, I had almost NOTHING left to move- my home, my shop, my truck Jeep and RV, my contracting and gunsmithing tools and equipment, and worst of all- my two beloved classic Harleys- a 1972 FLH and a 1969 XLCH that was one of the two “Then Came Bronson” bikes used on the TV show WERE ALL GONE.
The BRIGHT side? I got out ALIVE- just barely. I rescued most of my family photos, a few necessities, and 95% of my extensive firearms collection. I also saved a bit of money- as I suddenly needed a SMALLER moving truck!
Coming up on 2 years since the Camp Fire, I see that nothing in Commiefornia has changed, and almost FOUR MILLION acres have now been consumed by wildfires.
I will be reading this great website daily, as it’s now one of my favorites.
God bless America, Conservatives, and President Trump. MAGA!
(PS) The cost of living in NE Ohio is LESS than 1/3 of what it was in NorCal, and houses here cost 1/4 of what they would in NorCal.
Welcome aboard Pete. A gunner and ex-harley dood.
This is NOT an “awful year” and I can prove it to anyone who says it is.
My proof: Gerard still has the “Fire Sale” girl up on his sidebar, and I’m still in love with her. [Sorry, honey. I’ll get over her soon enough. Probably. ]
Francis is an antipope. Probably. And a socialist liberation theologist. Definitely. As a relatively new Catholic, this neither surprises me nor scandalizes me. But for the cradle Catholic, it is a vexing and never ending show of linguistic contortionism. Many just walk away, when they should read the words of simple shepherd children and nuns from hundreds of years in the past. Those prophecies are astounding with their specifically accurate timetables and events. And always, the messengers tell them the same thing: Repent! Do penance! Same as in the Old Testament. Just watch the slick and oily media hound Bishop Robert Barron describe the victory of the Nouvelle Théologie over the traditional and orthodox beliefs. Methinks he doth too soon gloat. It’s never wise to gloat in French.
So we are governed by heretics, apostates, cowards, and traitors. I’m still alive, still believing, and praying, and thankful to be among people like you all here who comment. Life is still amazing.