The Poisoning of My Mother

Where does one go, and who does one turn to, when you find out that your Mother, who loved you and cared for you- the one whom God gave you to raise you up and give you life and consciousness, is sick? Your Mother whom you at times dismissed, yet always in your struggles had the solutions and nurturing necessary to help you lead the life you are meant to live (but always fell short of). She cleans you up, dusts you off when you fall. She feeds you, clothes you, looks after you and prays for you– especially when you make the terrible mistakes you make in this wayward life we live. She is there, standing on the porch, disheveled and tired, waiting for you to come home; She never wavers in her beliefs about you, nor in those beliefs that make up the world she occupies. She set up fences in your life; fences that always kept you from falling off of cliffs, or drowning in rapids- fences that kept you safe. Yep, the fences that you always moaned about at the time, the ones when you look back upon your life  were the ones that you were so glad they were there.

MOM

One day you wake up with unease, for Mother is ill. You cannot put your finger on it, but you KNOW: She is not the same; She makes no sense at times, contradicting Herself when before She would never dream of doing so. She acts strangely, and invites people over that in previous times would never darken Her door. Those who care for Her constantly try to assuage your concerns as ill-founded; after all, your Mother is old, and just needs to adapt to new conditions.  You feel ignorant (for you are told you are), after all these people who are in charge are experts, and you are just that dumb kid of Hers that never makes his bed, ” Scuttle off! and leave Her care to us!!”

MOM

One day after a visit, having noticing a faint sickly odor in Her room, you scout around and find it- a phial of deadly poison. The truth comes to the surface, despite the pleas of innocence; those who were charged with the care of Mother, have been slowly killing Her in the hopes they can supplant Her with another; and you were not going to notice. I know Her; I know how she feels, how She moves and how She smells. I know Her voice,  I know what She looks like, I know how She talks, what She says and what She always taught me. While there were many times I ignored Her, I always knew how She would comment and react to anything I did. I KNOW Her, and now, She is at deaths door; and everyone around me says there is no hope to save Her, that I must accept the “inevitable” and move on.

Never. She is my Mother, and knowing what love is from Her teachings, I know what love truly is- it is sacrificing yourself for those whom you love, regardless of the cost to you.

I love you, Mom.

Advertisements

An Apocryphal story from the French Revolution

One day during the waning time of the French Monarchy, someone complained to the Queen that the people had no bread. Her reply was to “let them eat cake then”. Which in her world was and obvious alternative to the scarcity of the staff of life.

Thus does myth move to legend, and legend into history. While the debate leans overwhelmingly against the Fact of the exchange, the underlying reasoning is sound. Her Majesty was so out of touch with Her subjects and the basic rules of survival; she could not conceive of the real world, where bread is essential and cake is not the alternative for one who merely has no one to run and get some freshly baked bread from the Royal kitchen for Her.

If one does not read history, one is doomed to repeat it. A lesson again so often ignored: Take His Eminence Archbishop Cupich. Sitting in his palace, watching the great unwashed surge against the gates for such little meaningless incidents of Priests and Bishops abandoning their sacred roles of Shepard’s, and instead raping the sheep, both physically and financially.

His response? (to paraphrase), “LET THEM  EAT CAKE!

Need we any more information to conclude that the Royal Offices of the Kings Dominion  are infested with the agents of Darkness either through indifference, ignorance, or pure malice(the results are the same)?

My Mother is sick unto death, and those who have been charged to care for Her are giving Her poison. Veni Spiritu Sanctu!*

*(help us obi wan kenobi! your the only one who can!)

*translation provided by the unchurched for those who cant understand some Latin and do not care to figure out what the heck is going on around here.

 

Peace ! Peace!

                  

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!”

 “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased
at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

Patrick Henry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Absolute Power

Chafing under the stifling rule of despotism, my life as a teenager underwent a stunning change in ways I had not expected; more sudden than a car wreck I arrived at University. What I had yearned for since my first sentient thoughts was freedom; expecting to receive it in gradual degrees much like a draftee moving up through the ranks to four star general. What transpired instead was a handshake, hug, and admonition to “make the most of this chance” – off into the waning afternoon sun went my last moorings of childhood, and I was free.

Expectations of liberty are far different than the reality of it; the nascent thoughts of, “I can do whatever I want”, soon give way to the sudden blanket of solitude. Never hearing the maxim “with freedom comes great responsibility”, the veil of yonder gives way, and I realize now that I very well could have uttered such a phrase if I had the erudition; I certainly had the emotion for it. Forty years of reflection gives way to certain conclusions that have matured over the decades like slowly curing Roman concrete; wrestling with life much like Israel and the mysterious Angel, I have as a certainty come through the contest with a permanent  hitch in my get-a-long, but without the victorious memories of pinning my opponent to the ground.

We all are under the illusion of bondage to higher things. Circumstances, be they economic, social, or political, have a habit of binding us with their chains; but these chains are not made of iron, but of brittle clay. There is no power over us in this life: indeed in many ways there is no power over us at all, for we have been given the most precious gift of all from He Who Is,; the power to choose our own fate. There is a wonderful line from the movie Kingdom of Heaven, “Jesus says, CHOOSE.” Through the mystery of fathomless Love comes the gift of absolute power- the power we all have to decide our destiny. There is no greater power than this; no other particle, or combination thereof within the bounds of Heaven and Earth, nor amongst the starry realms of the cosmos can claim this power but man. He who has unleashed this power within us now waits to see what we shall do. We stand as Adam and Eve did- much like I did once, at the edge of the future, endowed with liberty but restrained by the endless venues of choice that radiate from our present. If we fixate upon the past, we lose who we are in who we were; if we covet the future, we lose our sure harbor of security. Only in the present are we assured of making right choices; properly exercising the essence of being the sons of the Most High.

Each day this absolute power is with us, needing to be wielded in our constant skirmish against those who care not. The dark spaces of this world wish among other things, to fool us into the shadows of futility. Each day we must act, for their is no eternal security or damnation within the bounds of time and space. Vigilance is essential: and with vigilance comes the need to move, and movement is the exercise of decision. I know not choice others may take, but for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord

The Navigator

Breakfast this morning consisted of scrambled eggs, waffles, coffee and about six million vitamins(courtesy of Wifey, who is trying to keep me for a museum exhibit). I skimmed the news online (gasp), did some reading, barn chores and finally proceeded to work. These are the choices I undertook and executed as actions before 7am; and I dare say if experience is any guide the rest of the day will be fraught with an astounding array of many other mundane choices- each one part and parcel of daily life. However trite they seem, each decision made is fraught with consequence; and to be sure the more rote the decision seems to be, the more drastic the consequences if made incorrectly (I stop taking my pills and the resultant ire from my beloved, for example).

Life is rife with a wilderness of constant choosing; each change of degree on the helm of our voyage may not seem like much in the beginning. One degree of change is a sixty inch difference at 100 yards; at 1000 miles it is  1,140,480 inches, or almost 18 miles 9 you only can see 3 miles to the horizon: you will never even see your destination). Constant course correction (more choices) are essential to stay on the path that we have originally decided upon. If our goal is the far green country of Heaven, the we must take the steps necessary to achieve a proper execution of our plan. We need first of all the proper charts of the trip, made by those who have gone on before and returned; people who can tell us with a surety that the trip is possible. Secondly and just as important we need an authoritative entity who can interpret those charts and transmit their knowledge of chart symbolism and language along with their knowledge of the seas sky and stars. These class of men we call navigators then assimilate all of this data and translate it into understandable advice for the captain of the vessel. This captain (us) can subsequently order the helmsman (us once again in this crude example) to change course if needed.

The desire and decision to undertake an expedition is a brave and bold thing- to be commended in almost every instance: and much more so when this expedition is that of the most precious thing we possess, our life. However this is only the beginning of a long to-do list – once we decide where we are going, we must plan on how to get there, and it behooves all of us to carefully prepare for such a dangerous task. Some of us pick the right charts; some of us do not. Some of us hear rumors of Golden Lands and decide they can draw their own charts, our use charts obtained from specious sources. There are then others of us who use the proper charts, yet believe we can navigate the way on our own, without any previous piloting experience- or they choose navigators who suit their fancy due to slick advertising, or because said navigators acquiesce to any weird or dangerous choices of ship, crew, or cargo.

These are the choices that so many make– to charge off on our own heedless of the sound advice of others who have made the trip before: ” I’ll just take a rowboat, one oar and a baloney sandwich”, some declare, ” all I have to do is head west and eventually I will get there”. Perhaps. The seas are rough at times and filled with raiding corsairs, enemies more than happy to board your ship and clap you into chains and slavery… . They make their living doing so, and a very good living indeed.

Christ is the Chart Maker; and the Schooling of the Holy Spirit had given His Church the tools, experience and sage ways to get us where we want to end up. Beware of clever imitations! If you desire a short safe journey on this harrowing trek, please choose your Navigator wisely.

The Sixth Crusade

 

When General Eisenhower wrote his memoirs of the Second World War he titled his work, “The Crusade in Europe”. For him perhaps and for a surety, for the ones who bled and caused others to bleed, this was a concrete reality. I remember asking my deceased father-in-law why, when he was 30 years old with a wife and small child and a service exempt job on a military base, did he choose to go to Europe to fight in WWII. I will never forget the look he gave me, nor his succinct response. He actually jumped as though startled and beheld me much as an astronaut would when eyeing a strange new life form for the very first time. He slowly blinked and said in a voice like Cecil B DeMille, “Why, to save the World of course!”

He  fought with the fourth infantry all across the heart of Europe til the very end. Walter was the only man from his company to come home. The stories he told were mind boggling- so much so that many years later I took the time to transcribe what I could remember for his posterity. The best way to summarize these horrors for others is to tell them to watch “Saving Private Ryan”– then multiply it by a factor of three. One story he told was about liberating a concentration camp at the end of the fighting. Walter was a man who, ethnically German, always called the enemies “the Germans” never “the Nazis”: when he saw the camp, and what was in it, and how close it was to the town, he said to me,”Don’t let anybody fool you- those people in the town KNEW exactly what was going on in there. We should have killed them all”.

They went there to win, and win they indeed did– to rid the world of  a carbuncle upon its weary visage like one that had never erupted before. I am sure that he would be delighted to know that after the wreck that was the Second World War, and the scraping away of its terrible growth, even to the point of removing almost all of the scar it created on the rind of civilization, the root remained. And it begins to grow again.

The moral issues that were debated upon those miserable gut strewn fields seemed to be solved once and for all. The Godless States recoiled in ruin from the might and determination of those free, moral, and fundamentally charitable peoples that opposed them. The Good Guys it seemed, DO win when it matters most.

From a political standpoint however, it seemed that the only way to defeat the all-encompassing State was to become similar to one; and we dismissed the principle that States and Peoples, just as individuals are not mechanical, but organic. When they go bad, we cannot just start replacing parts and expect them to work properly. If their (or our) hearts are not properly disposed, if they are filled with envy, greed or hate; no amount of political restructuring or financial aid will help. If Goodness, Truth and Beauty, abandoned for comfort, security, and titillation become merely historical aberrations or the musty furniture of a forsaken past, the future becomes sooty and dim. For us now it remains to look beyond the hills from whence comes Our Help.

Another generation of Crusaders has come and gone .Their deeds mighty, their valor true and their hearts pure. Yet the lands in which they strived have reverted to the Enemy.

Society in Four Simple Sets!

 

The world is full of all kinds of folks: lets sort the herd and see what its composed of. There are the Talkers: these can be split into two categories; the ones who have something to say, (subset a) and the ones who believe everyone else exists to listen to them (subset A) . The next cut goes like this. There are those who act- they too can be refined as well into two categories: those who act for the sake of acting( subset B) and then there are those who act due to the fact that there are things that need to be done (subset b).

Subset A

This set talks mainly for the sake of listening to the fulsome tones of their own pie hole. Strange as it may seem, they are usually the ones who garner the most attention in the world. Look around and see- who do we end up hearing, because they are always flapping their gums? Who possibly can be so erudite that they are able to mechanistically reel out periodic blather containing consistent  merit and edification? Why of course,what they have to say is always “new” and “progressive” and certainly must be unique and worthwhile.  Well it is not. to paraphrase someone much wiser than I, “there is nothing new under the sun”.

Subset a

The people in this category– those who have something to say are generally ignored–  Trite and old fashioned ! Out of touch with “the way things are nowadays”!  How silly is it for any of us to take to heart such things as, “I AM the Lord, I change not”. Or, “I do not desire sacrifice, but obedience”. These folks don’t say much, due to the fact that the things they say are worth LISTENING to and pondering. They also don’t say much because… why should they bother?  No one listens anyway.

Subset B

Those who act for the sake of acting tend to turn action into a game, and all actions become codified and regimented into some sort of score card for self worth. They take a system such as free enterprise and turn it into a survival of the fittest, King of the Mountain contest we call Capitalism; or morph the agape ideals of ancient Catholic Christianity into an insane death dealing Dragon called Socialism. With these accomplishments come the sure knowledge that those who act for the sake of action are best suited to rule the rest. All they need is a bit of public relations and someone who can truly explain what’s in store for the rest of the world.  So… they seek out someone with an impossibly large smile, teeth beyond the reckoning of any dentist, and eyes that remain clouded in what some call mystery. The fact of the matter is those eyes, the windows of our soul, remain hidden for they are filled with deceit. We all have glimpsed a good representation of him at the gates of  Mordor: Tolkien named this being the mouth of Sauron. Ever so apt.

Subset b

Then there are these guys who are credulous, naïve, and without guile; the ones who listen to subset b and take it to heart.  The nameless blob that inhabits the world amidst the chaos of the great unwashed; hidden in the muck and mire of everyday living. Those fools who do the things that need to be done, as no one else will get off their lazy backsides. The ones who feed the fires of civilization with charity, mercy, love and hard work. These folks are the guts of the world: and most of us do not give one whit about them.

Why on earth should we?