Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
--But who is that on the other side of you? --T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Meditations on the Tarot has a lengthy account of the nature of guardian angels. It's pretty straightOward, so I don't want to just rewordgitate what our unKnown Friend says. All I can really add is that if you don't think you have a guardian angel, just fake it for awhile. There is no one lonelier than an angel with nothing to do.
Out of curiosity, I looked it up on wikipedia, and it says that "A guardian angel is an angel assigned to protect and guide a particular person or group.... Christian mystics have at times reported ongoing interactions and conversations with their guardian angels, lasting several years."
UF writes that "The Angel depends on man in his creative activity. If the human being does not ask for it, if he turns away from him, the Angel has no motive for creative activity. He can then fall into a state of consciousness where all his creative geniality remains in potential and does not manifest. It is a state of vegetation or 'twilight existence' comparable to sleep from the human point of view. An Angel who has nothing to exist for is a tragedy in the spiritual world."
I'm just going to reflect on whatever strikes my attention, such as the following: "the formation of wings" depends upon "a current from above [read: (↓)] which moves to meet that from below [(↑)]. Wings are formed only when the two currents -- that of human endeavor and that of grace -- meet and unite." Thus, identical to the manner in which earthly wings are formed by natural selection, the need evokes the function.
UF goes on to say that all forms of radical secularism "can create only the wings of Icarus." I am immediately reminded of Michael Novak's outstanding On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, in that our Fathers -- perhaps because they were listening to the counsel of their better angels -- got the formula exactly right for our extraordinary national flight of the past two and a quarter centuries.
As always, when we say that the left in general and Obama in particular are "anti-American," we do not mean it in an insulting or polemical way. Rather, we mean it in this precise way: that the left explicitly wishes to clip one of our wings, which, as God is my witness, will cause us to plummet to the ground like bags of wet cement, no different than any other turkey of a nation.
When the flightless birds of the left squawk about "separation of church and state," what they really mean is the violent dismemberment of one of our wings. It makes no more sense than cutting off the thumb to spite our hand. The hand will remain, but it won't be able to grasp much, just as a single-winged biped is unable to achieve liftoff in the vertical. It has nothing to do with politics, but with a pre-political choice. The politics follows logically from this prior auto-amputation.
True, the leftist may develop wings of a sort, but we all recognize these appendages for what they are, for they are "the wings of a bat, i.e., those of darkness which are organs by means of which one can plunge into the depths of darkness" (MOTT). These are the worldly wings that allow one to navigate through that dark and dreadful 'batmosphere. Most contemporary art and literature is of this nature -- just the further erosion of eros and its replacement with the cold and loveless idols of the day. Such autists cannot soar upward but only can sink downward and confuse it with flight (which it is, until one hits bottom). The Waste Land comes to mind:
And bats with baby faces in the violet light / Whistled, and beat their wings / And crawled head downward down a blackened wall / And upside down in air were towers / Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours / And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
Yes moonbatman, you may flip and flap your two vestigial left wings of hope and change, but you will never achieve true flight, for there is no such thing as a free launch. Rather, you will simply turn on your own axis in a tight little spiral. Nor will you grow, for you are trying to subsist on your own byproducts. The shit-eating grin of Election Day 2008 will be wiped from the face of the left soon after Inauguration Day 2009.
Our "vastly enlarged perspectives of knowledge should open up fresh vistas of religious faith" (Eliot), not close off the frontier of unKnowing. Remember, human knowledge is like a little expanding circle amidst the sea of Being. Thus, the more we extend our boundaries, the greater the area we do not know. As a result, we have all the more to unKnow in the writ of a single lifetome. In other words, for them the problem was paucity of knowledge. For us, a surfeit. Much of the latter needs to be tossed overboard in order to leave the ground.
Russell Kirk writes that no Christian belief is "more neglected today... than the concept of guardian angels," which is "no less credible than many other dogmas which Eliot had learned to accept.... Imperfect though it may be, evidence for the existence of intermediary spiritual beings is no less intelligible than the proofs for various theories of natural science.... [F]or him, there was nothing repugnant or incredible in conceiving of tutelary beings of another order than human."
Hey, why not? Kirk mentions Yeats, "who believed that some great dead man watches over every passionate living man of talents." I believe this. I believe that through a kind of "passionate resonance," we may enter the interior mansion of a great person and borrow a portion of his precious ʘjʘ. Greater men than I just steal it.
As I sit here at this moment, I have several iconic photographs and pneumagraphic icons sitting on my desk, so I may look to them for a little cosmic inspiration (↓) -- or be scared straight up if need be. You really do become what you venerate; or, what you spontaneously venerate reveals your true nature.
Which is again why the unreal ideologies of the left are so spiritually catastrophic. Should one truly believe and assimilate those worthless braindroppings, one ends up batshit crazy.
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal --Eliot
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15 comments:
Bob sez:
"All I can really add is that if you don't think you have a guardian angel, just fake it for awhile. There is no one lonelier than an angel with nothing to do."
Hmmm, fake it till you wake it?
My guardian angel must have been really bummed out for most of my life. "Yeah, you were just loads of fun," GA says. "Still are, to a lesser extent so don't get cocky. Now, you see that sign that all lit up like a giant star? You can't miss it. Ok, you can...but don't. I implore you. What? It's too bright you say? Then put on your Son glasses." ... Now why didn't I think of that?
The interesting thing about High Spirits is that they are so transparent. They are not at all interested in revealing themselves, but merely in transporting that which is above them into that which is below them (and perhaps in a certain sense the other way around). If I want to be a High Spirit after I pass from this existence, I need to become transparent while I am here, and this is the challenge of a lifetime, at the very least.
For about the last year I have been receiving, unsolicited, in the mail lots of stuff that I call "Catholic bling." Somehow I got on someone's mailing list. The one piece of Catholic bling that I get, that I really like, is a gold coin that has a guardian angel on it and the coin is attached to a card with the guardian angel prayer printed on it.
I gave the first one away to an aquaintance who was having one of those "when it rains, it pours" experiences. Lots of deaths in a short amount of time. I felt a bit foolish, but I decided to give this friend the guardian angel coin even though he is not Catholic. The same day I gave him the coin, I got another one in the mail. I have now given three of these coins away, and it never fails; the day I give it away, I get another one in the mail.
These are the worldly wings that allow one to navigate through that dark and dreadful 'batmosphere. Most contemporary art and literature is of this nature -- just the further erosion of eros and its replacement with the cold and loveless idols of the day. Such autists cannot soar upward but only can sink downward and confuse it with flight (which it is, until one hits bottom)."
"Look Ma! I can fly!"
Splat!
BTW Bob, 'batmosphere is an excellent description of the endvironment the moonbats live in.
"You really do become what you venerate; or, what you spontaneously venerate reveals your true nature."
That alone is enough to make my knees buckle!
Chris m:
Thanks for sharing that experience. :^)
When I was dyin' I wore a scapula with the image of Saint John.
Not only did it comfort me but it didn't get in the way of x-rays, CT scans or other tests.
During the worst part, when the pain was so unbearable I felt like screaming and the minutes seemed like hours I would clutch that scapula and pray...or try to pray.
Often, all I could manage was a few words.
And yet, the unbearable became bearable without me knowing and it changed me.
I became more grateful, which obliterated my cynicism and any trace of bitterness.
When I unexpectantly lived and finally got to go home the scapula was gone, but I wear it still, in my heart. :^)
Um, Dare I ask what species?
See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. -- Matthew 18:10
This seems to fit much better with the UF and OC concept of guardian angels than with the more popular depiction.
I agree with Ben about the veneration.
It struck me, too, that one of the reasons I might have had less trouble at various times had to do with following a leader that I looked up to and respected.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but this video struck me as being very apropos the post. The music seems of the feathered variety, though the visuals seem to have more in common with the bat wings, at least until the end (but then, isn't that how it often goes?). YMMV...
@julie.
Sucks to be an herbivore.
I kid! That was a very cool video. Chock full of hunter/prey/spirit animal/serpentine/life/death goodness. (Well, mostly death.)
Cweepy Barney Frank out!
ya-a-a-a-y
Lousy-shady Maxine Waters in!
[Financial Services Committee chair]
no-o-o-o-o!!!
"As always, when we say that the left in general and Obama in particular are "anti-American," we do not mean it in an insulting or polemical way."
Yep, simple statement of fact. America was founded upon ideas of natural law and individual rights supported through property rights, and with that the idea that it is the right and responsibility of individuals to make their own choices, personally and in the market place. Because Leftism is opposed to all of that, it is fundamentally anti-American.
wv: hollysi
Hmmm... either wv thinks all that is holy is speaking in my favor... in spanish... or it began to curse at me and bit its font.
"Most contemporary art and literature is of this nature -- just the further erosion of eros and its replacement with the cold and loveless idols of the day."
A simple glance at contemporary fashion tells the tale.
"You really do become what you venerate; or, what you spontaneously venerate reveals your true nature."
Just try and say that what 'society' holds up for admiration is rooted first and foremost in veneration of The Good, The Beautiful and The True... and... we might have discovered an up date for the Monty Python lethal joke.
In fact, our sense of humor has been weaponized... it just kills more slowly, and is not biologically lethal.
"All I can really add is that if you don't think you have a guardian angel, just fake it for awhile. There is no one lonelier than an angel with nothing to do."
An interesting thought that has been persistantly raising itself from the dead since yesterday morning.
Hmmm....
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