tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post269142003872241102..comments2024-03-28T18:48:41.469-07:00Comments on One Cʘsmos: Memoirs of a Frivolous ManGagdad Bobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-78916393327122039972015-07-06T07:04:42.419-07:002015-07-06T07:04:42.419-07:00Great post, Bob. All true.
I suppose every old m...Great post, Bob. All true. <br /><br />I suppose every old man in human history comes toward the end of his life, surveys the contemporary scene, and feels a mixture of disgust and resignation. It's in our nature, that our old orders will pass away. Humanity is restless and impatient. <br /><br />These days, I just shrug. My hedges need a trim. The new doors in the entry hall won't paint themselves. The boy still needs a kick in the pants sometimes. It's time to harvest more peas. And so on.<br /><br />The only thing necessary is to be a man that God, in that indiscernible end, will see and say, "hey, I remember that guy."Tonyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00987042455512485699noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-48377210146384926242015-07-04T09:59:19.856-07:002015-07-04T09:59:19.856-07:00Roaming the internet and got a nice find for the l...Roaming the internet and got a nice find for the long weekend: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zYEFgrc6Lc" rel="nofollow">Father Bede Giffiths</a>. Things really get going at the 7 minute mark on the discussion on the Trinity.tedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07354048695798015131noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-76956637342975905592015-07-04T09:42:02.435-07:002015-07-04T09:42:02.435-07:00Quite often, when the "worst" that could...Quite often, when the "worst" that could happen in our lives comes to pass, it is actually a blessing if only we will see it. At least, that has been my experience thus far. I hope your friend comes around, Anonymous.juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-59911630095260978122015-07-04T09:26:14.730-07:002015-07-04T09:26:14.730-07:00It's easier to be an atheist, just as it is ea...It's easier to be an atheist, just as it is easier to be unhappy than happy.<br /><br />There is a nonlocal order, but discerning it is analogous to perceiving the deeper order in an outwardly chaotic free jazz composition.Gagdad Bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-72301157104411247312015-07-04T09:22:12.188-07:002015-07-04T09:22:12.188-07:00For some reason, this brings to mind the saying th...For some reason, this brings to mind the saying that there are none so blind as those who refuse to see. <br /><br />An acquaintance of mine, a sixty-something former hot shot lawyer in New York City, lost his entire, substantial fortune some years ago and needed something like $22,000 to get back on his feet in a specific way. Just days before this opportunity would have been lost and he would have been in truly dire straits, he got a check in the mail for the exact amount he needed, an inheritance from a relative he scarcely knew he had.<br /><br />To this day, he says that if he were religious, it might have been a miracle, but he refuses to actually admit The Truth. Doing so would blow his mind in ways that would change everything, and so far, he just can't do it. <br /><br />Thanks to this and other resources, my mind has been blown and is still out there somewhere, shimmering in the One Cosmos Under God and seeking to reflect His light in this dark and darkening world.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-32297978704522992702015-07-04T08:08:59.025-07:002015-07-04T08:08:59.025-07:00Job One of the left is always about creating the m...<i>Job One of the left is always about creating the misery from which they promise to rescue its victims with more of the same. It never works (in the world), but always works (at the polls). If nothing else, it sheds light on the deep structure of man's soul, since every generation falls for the same trick.</i><br /><br />Yes, just so. Looking again to the Old Testament, it's a lesson that had to be learned over and over again; forty or so years of the good life, followed by a period where it all went to hell because everyone forgot to teach their kids why the good life was so good, and why they ought not to act like their asshole neighbors. Zoom up to the recent past, and I was thinking yesterday of some of the tales of the cultural decadence that was happening in the late 1800s through the early 1900s. There's a reason it was often called the Gilded Age. It took a couple of world wars to turn things around for a while; one might say we had, oh, forty good years or so where America was still on the "good life" side of the ledger, and now, true to form, we are back on the downswing. Strangely, that gives me a little hope because it suggests that a new generation will come up that has learned, however harshly, that there is a right way to live.<br /><br />On a tangent, I was watching some documentary on National Geographic yesterday about life in Africa, focused on a swiftly growing village with a paved road and a couple of ramshackle shops. Most of the villagers still live in mud huts, though, and the town has no running water, much less electricity. So they go to the local crocodile-infested river every day, where livestock and people are occasionally eaten. It dawned on me that that is exactly where leftist policies would send the whole world, to an idiocracy where it apparently occurs to <i>nobody</i> living there that it might be a good idea to set up, at the absolute minimum, a rudimentary pipeline or aqueduct to divert some of the river water into the center of town and away from the crocs. One might argue that here would be a good place for some well-meaning group to swoop in and install a water system for them; a fine idea, to be sure, except that (so I've heard) towns that receive such systems often fail to maintain them. They often can't produce even one person to do the most rudimentary maintenance. Except that by having been "helped," they are now that much less inclined to do something on their own initiative, and that much more inclined to blame others for not giving them what would make their lives better. <br /><br />The mind boggles.<br /><br />Thank God for America. I hope we can keep it.juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-64896759896767615072015-07-03T17:41:02.751-07:002015-07-03T17:41:02.751-07:00Yes. Therein, too, lies the terrible wonder of Chr...Yes. Therein, too, lies the terrible wonder of Christian martyrdom. juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-8198795773721714522015-07-03T17:22:23.733-07:002015-07-03T17:22:23.733-07:00"Likewise, how would one express truly selfle..."Likewise, how would one express truly selfless love, in which there is nothing in it for the lover? Yes, by dying. Anything short of this might be suspected of self-interest, which is why Jesus in principle transcends any such self-interest."<br /><br />Which helps explain why so many people fail to understand Jesus on a basic, fundamental level, let alone any higher ones.<br />Because one cannot even begin to comprehend Jesus if they have a heart blackened by envy and pride.<br />In truth, it's because they cannot relate to Jesus that so many believe they know everything about Him, for they only relate to Him as a reflection of themselves.<br /><br />Hence they believe Jesus was a pacifist or a social justice warrior, or that He was/is only defined by physical love/lust. No, He was and is not. USS Ben USN (Ret)https://www.blogger.com/profile/07492369604790651538noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-78031976199457496802015-07-03T15:30:46.275-07:002015-07-03T15:30:46.275-07:00Grandpa tried to lie into WW1, but just a baby. T...Grandpa tried to lie into WW1, but just a baby. Tried again in WW2, too old. Ran moonshine through the hills and hollers, and helped invent NASCAR.<br /><br />I watched the Cold War get negotiated away. Lost nukes, and submarines.<br /><br />My Father rolled a tank over in Germany. He got drafted in Point Pleasant, WV. Very full of the War.<br /><br />It is interesting how the older taboos of combination of the dead and the living really do not address those that are neither.<br />Probably staying in school, and not getting drafted. I wish sometimes the children of this had more real stuff to work with.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-88111194261422223712015-07-03T15:12:46.308-07:002015-07-03T15:12:46.308-07:00"When he died, Christ did not leave behind do..."When he died, Christ did not leave behind documents, but disciples."<br /><br />This high lights (again) how important personal relationships are to God. USS Ben USN (Ret)https://www.blogger.com/profile/07492369604790651538noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-21912082637085191452015-07-03T15:08:38.151-07:002015-07-03T15:08:38.151-07:00Seems to me Our Lord had some pretty good one-line...Seems to me Our Lord had some pretty good one-liners, too (not sure if they qualify as aphorisms, though):<br /> <br /> Let the dead, bury the dead.<br /> <br /> Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God was is God's.<br /><br /> What profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?<br /><br />...among many others. A fascinating subject all around, seeing how truth can just explode from a very few words, and comparing that with the flood of verbiage and obfuscation that invariably accompanies falsehood.Kurthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01750808052006968358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-56262084340814942682015-07-03T14:48:37.711-07:002015-07-03T14:48:37.711-07:00Christianity does not solve 'problems'; it...<i>Christianity does not solve 'problems'; it merely obliges us to live them at a higher level.</i><br /><br />Ah yes, if we could just get this across those social justice Christian (in name only) types.tedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07354048695798015131noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-55937468323950477552015-07-03T10:29:44.229-07:002015-07-03T10:29:44.229-07:00"If the good life is impossible for man, then..."If the good life is impossible for man, then why bother fighting for it?"<br /><br />That's one I've been considering quite a bit recently, inasmuch as there is a strong current in Christianity (and other religions too, if I'm not mistaken) which seems to take offense at the idea that anybody should live in material success. Or rather, should live what we in the First World call "middle class," but which the rest of the world sees as "the One-Percenters." They rail against the evils of poverty while simultaneously railing against the evils of success. But if God really hated wealth that much, he never would have taught the Jews how to be successful. And if everyone were poor, who would help the impoverished?<br /><br />Of course, all of that is a side issue inasmuch as the point of the good life is not only to live it here as much as possible by, well, <i>being good</i>, it is to place our true treasure on the other side. That is where courage comes in - to be willing to die here for whatever is Good, and trusting that on the other side will be a reward that makes everything about that "good life" herebelow seem like so much dust. Which is what it really is, anyway. Looked at that way, the dying part doesn't seem quite so terrible; rather, it is the living that becomes a challenge, as we must daily remember What's At Stake, regardless of our present circumstances. Even, or perhaps especially, when things are good.<br /><br />If that makes any sense. I'd offer to sell some pot, but that was my last spliff...juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-62453533258254698542015-07-03T09:51:38.646-07:002015-07-03T09:51:38.646-07:00Re the impossible-to-please-left, from today's...Re the impossible-to-please-left, from today's Taranto:<br /><br />"Last week saw a huge victory for gay rights at the U.S. Supreme Court, which left Takei infuriated. Specifically, he objected to Justice Clarence Thomas’s observation, in a dissenting opinion, that human dignity is innate."Gagdad Bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.com