In an otherwise somewhat undistinguished compilation called All Things Hold Together in Christ there is an outstanding essay by Bishop Barron called The Epistemic Priority of Christ, which is extracted from his book The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism.
Much in this essay provides independent confirmation of the venerable Way of the Raccoon -- or in other words, that we're not just making it up. Every page is full of highlights, not so much because the material is new as because it is familiar.
Which is an even bigger shock. It's always that way when you bump into someone wandering around in the same attractor, especially when the attractor is otherwise so sparsely populated. God gives us this vast open space, and yet, so few people care to hike around in it.
Indeed, Barron is even in the same attractor as it pertains to the existence of attractors, which we might characterize as the teleological lures that shape our thought and even our lives. Being that we inhabit a vertical hierarchy, there exist attractors at various levels, with God being the ultimate attractor, and indeed, the Attractor without whom there can be no attraction, least of all to such intrinsic realities as truth, beauty, and virtue.
And of course, the Trinity is none other than the doctrine of attraction within the Godhead. This is not only a mind-blowing concept, but the only concept adequate to describe our terrestrial situation, in which there are attractors everywhere, on every level.
Now, an attractor isn't merely analogous to a magnet, or like gravity, through which things pull together in an exterior way. Rather, the whole point is that it is an interior attraction, more like love. And yet, gravity resembles love, which is why Dante could speak of the love that moves the sun and other stars.
Speaking of which, there is also repulsion, which goes to what we've been saying about rightly ordered disgust. For we should -- duh -- love what is lovable and hate what is hateful. Some people hate what is lovable, but I don't want to get political this morning. Although we may get back to the subject of Satan later in the post. Suffice it to say that God is the transcendental condition of our disgust (Dávila) as well as our... eu-gust, or something.
Imagine a purely exterior attraction which pulls all matter together. For example, they say that if the rate of expansion of the Big Bang were one iota different, the cosmos would have instantaneously collapsed back into oneness or nothingness, which amount to the same thing.
Fortunately, the rate of expansion is such that literally everything in the cosmos is attracted to everything else, but not so as to be static or to pull itself backwards. For now at least. We don't know if or when the process will reach an outer limit and head back to the womb of spacetime. Big Crunch or Big Freeze, not really interested.
Back to the Big Attractor. In the case of vertical attraction, it leads to higher levels of wholeness, harmony, and integration; it results in a unity-in-difference, not mere unicity.
Unicity is death. It is assimilation of the many into the one, whereas Life is preservation of the many in the one. This is what an organism is: a harmony of parts within the whole, such that the whole is somehow present in each part (think, for example, of how the genome for the whole organism is present in each cell).
Life. Jesus makes a number of seemingly paradoxical statements to the effect that he isn't just alive, but "the" life. Wha'? Actually, it makes perfect nonsense. Barron:
Jesus is not only the one in whom things were created but also the one in whom they presently exist and through whom they inhere in one another.... Individuals, societies, cultures, animals, plants, planets, and the stars -- all will be drawn into an eschatological harmony through him (emphasis mine).
Harmony is a unity of individual notes, not everyone singing or playing the same note. I love harmony. Now I know why. Existence itself is symphonic, and life is a melody. Or, life is a movie accompanied by a soundtrack. The important question is, what is the genre of your film? It can be drama, tragedy, adventure, horror, suspense, visionary, or one of those tedious or pretentious foreign films... Or, worse yet, a non-binary SJW superhero sub-farce.
Mine? I would say it's an unending quest. What kind of quest? A divine comedy, I guess. With a soundtrack consisting of spontaneous improvisation situated on the living border between order and chaos.
"Jesus," writes Barron, "is before, during, and after all finite existence, creating, surrounding, and pulling it to completion" (emphasis mine).
In fact, if we reverse imagineer existence, we will inevitably arrive at an X-factor that just so happens to be in the shape of the missing Jesus, or better, the Christ Mind.
Of course, you can pretend the x-factor isn't there, but this is why your metaphysic can't even account for you, let alone everything outside and beyond you. Materialism is, among other things, cosmic narcissism. Personality is still (implicitly) at the center of things, only it's your own little personality disorder -- or dis-ordered personality -- instead of a cosmically healthy one.
And what is a healthy personality? Certain deuscriptors apply, such as wholeness, harmony, radiance, integration, actualization, objectivity, etc. Conversely, the unhealthy person is fragmented, at odds with himself, unactualized, enmeshed in radiant darkness, and sunk in subjective emotionality. But again, I don't want to get political or demonological this morning.
To be continued tomorrow. We don't need no steenking Chinese virus to get us to thinking about the Tao.
By unmasking a truth, one encounters a Christian face. --Dávila
22 comments:
On the plus side, if there is one, in the aftermath of this steenking Chinese virus perhaps we'll see a reduction in a lot of the cultural snowflakiness, as whole generations discover there are real problems in the world that need to be handled as best they can.
One can hope, anyway.
I mean really, who the heck does Marvel think is even remotely interested in reading about their lame new characters? It's like some kind of bizarre slo-mo business suicide pact, where they keep ratcheting up the barf factor with each new issue, until the number of actual readers drops to zero. They should have heard by now that wokeness = brokeness, but it's as though no matter how many woke offerings bomb, they just can't help themselves. Almost as though there's some sort of dark attractor...
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Our diocese officially canceled pretty much all church today, at least until April. Sounds like the same is happening around the country. I feel for the people who rely on their active life in the Church to find their connection both to Christ and to each other. This Lent, the season of penance has become all too real. We must have faith, then, that in time there will be an Easter to follow.
The Quest continues; who knows what kind of plot twists we'll be seeing in the days to come? Stay tuned to the main Attractor to find out!
In these perilous times it is more important than ever to maintain a sense of perspective and focus on the important things, like not calling the Chinese virus the Chinese virus.
have you hugged your local Chinaman today?
I like "kung flu", since everybody is now literally kung flu fighting.
Anybody got a source on some of that THC TP? Because I think members of the MSM could use a few crates worth...
Bob: Have you encountered the new diagnosis where we all have pychosomatic symptoms of the Coronavirus? I feel like I got it every day, although I know it's allergies. Or is it? Hmm.
Ha - no kidding. Most of my household (especially the kids) has some kind of allergies/ standard sinus crud, which they've had for at least a few weeks thanks to rainy weather. Let's just say I've been practicing a lot of deep breathing techniques for the past couple of months...
I'm sure there's a lot of hysteria out there. What I'm curious about is how all the SJW snowflakes, who can't handle so much as disagreement, are dealing with this. They literally need a safe space from their safe spaces.
Really good question. I won't say the feels haven't gotten to me now and then, but at least I know what it is and can separate emotions from actions, most of the time. What do you do when you literally believe that your emotions are more real than reality?
Judging by the demands of leftist politicians, it's open the borders, let all the criminals out of jail, hug random strangers, and have gay meth parties, I guess...
Incidentally, I find it darkly ironic that Zerohedge, which has been publishing nonstop terrifying stories about the kung flu in China and elsewhere since early February or late January, today has a post with this headline: Panic Pandemic – Why Are People Who Should Know Better Buying The Covid19 Hype?
Huh. I wonder. Meanwhile, at the top of their page, they have a running death count for New York.
One way or the other, an awful lot of people deserve to have no credibility when this is all over.
Leftist culture is mostly a diversion. Lookoverthere at all the mistreated gays and illegals while our dear leaders rake in that corporate donor dough. Of course rightist culture would improve immensely if they quit electing spoiled rich sons of successful men. It's time for actual leftists and actual rightists to debate honestly for our votes.
Not that there's anything we could ever do about such things of course.
Right now they’re talking about multi-trillion dollar bailouts. Can anybody even imagine that the cash will go to exactly when and where it’s most and best needed?
Sounds to me like the Dems, GOP, and their Wall Street buddies will be having plenty of cash on hand to scoop up properties and businesses for cheap.
Some thoughts on the post.
Unity is the theme. I would agree that a person reaches their full potential only when all parts of the psyche are in harmony and aligned and do not clash.
Ambivalence, waffling, saying one thing and doing another, etc. are very common and these kinds of things are indicators where the work of unification is most needed.
The Coronavirus is a great force for unity. I am impressed by the vigorous response mounted by the world to quash this virus. If we quash COVID-19 well and truly, it will be a great victory. It will be like the Battle of Britain. This will be our finest hour if we face the attack collectively win.
There will be casualties. The financial carnage will be spectacular. But the main thing, the main thing: We pulled together. Inspiring.
-SJW Snowflake, on lockdown, stoned, nude, and tattooed.
Speaking of pulling together, I divided and conquered today with most excellent results.
I had to partner with three other guys from a different company on a mutual project. They were a whole black race different from my own whiteness. I knew the leader/boss was going to be an asshole since he gave out that vibe immediately. As we know assholes usually try to put undue burdens on “nice guys”.
So I focused on charming the others. I found stuff in common with the friendly one, then amused the quiet one with my Steven Wright humor. But for all three I gave total respect. When the asshole inevitably tried to put the typical undue burden on me, I refused to give in. He then started doing the whole getting loud, getting in my face, getting all gaslighty, trying to make me out to be unreasonable... you know, going through his repertoire of asshole tricks, I stood my ground. The others just stood there acting all impartial and involved. In their minds we three were of one kind and their asshole associate was of a different kind. He eventually backed down but left in quite the huff.
So I won! As an added bonus, when we parted company those two saw their boss as even more of an asshole than they’d already known him to be. And I did all of that without having to cite Obama or Charlie Murphy or anything. And I even kept my MAGA cap on the whole time.
Maybe I digressed a bit. Unity. I know that left and right can do unity, but the right just won't be having any of it. As we all know, COVFEFE-19 is too much of an act of God / Democrat-China conspiracy for this to ever happen. But for his part, Trump did just sign into law a relief package bill, once again showing his miracle greatness. Not to mention millions of potential starving zombies have been kept away from his towers, for now.
Anonymous 8:59, congratulations on your successful group project. You have evolved, you have fortified yourself, you have asserted yourself, and the group project worked. People skills are very good to have.
One question to ask is did the unpopular boss bring anything good to the table? Sometimes these kind of people serve some purpose in an organization. We have one very abrasive operator, but for certain applications he is the right tool. We send him solo to confront abrasive people and situations and he thrives amid conflict, the more acrimonious the better. When he works in a group setting he is disruptive. But we keep him on, he has been valuable, much like an attack dog.
I think left and right can and do unite under common threat.
A suggestion for lockdown is to enjoy decadent treats such as ice cream. If you have a partner mutual massage would be soothing, a good idea. We can expect a baby spike in about 9 months due to cocooning causing increased love-making.
-Moaning Lisa
The unpopular boss jacks the customers and jerks his help. Jack-n-Jerk is a system that currently works for the owners, but customers not so much. This system wouldn't work at all if most people weren't so dadblame dumb. Sure maybe you pay less but if the owner's not one of those Crazy Dan! loonies like you used to see on TV then he's likely a fucking liar who's gonna get you in some way which he doesn't advertise so he can make his profit. But I did once go into Crazy Dan's appliance store and saw him yelling at his sales staff through the office window. It confused me at first. He'd seemed like such a lovable goof in all his commercials. But I slowly realized that like with so many politicians, it's all just an act. Crazy Dan is really Fucking Asshole Dan.
The way things are going, Fucking Asshole Dan will come into vogue and dadblame dumbs will flock to his store after watching one of his commercials where he beats the crap out of some hapless little guy, just to say they've been there.
But then they say Jesus wasn't nice. Maybe in reality he and his apostles/capo henchmen went around beating people up and kicking some money upstairs to Pauly.
From the post "the unhealthy person is fragmented, at odds with himself, unactualized, enmeshed in radiant darkness, and sunk in subjective emotionality."
Add to this the physical side of things. The viral threat should not be underestimated.
We were able to capture and interrogate seven individual CoVid-19 virions. They would not talk even under severe pressure. They certainly did not lack discipline. These were ugly, spiky skinned brutes, insolent and defiant.
White blood cells who battled the foe and lived to tell about it describe fanatical mass attacks on body cells carried out with great vigor and cruelty. White cells indicate these attacks were difficult to check and resulted in ravaged tissue as cytotoxic factors were needed to literally blast the invaders out of affected cells.
As if having psycho-spiritual deficits wasn't bad enough, there is this too.
Stock up on supplies.....
Julie: Speaking of breathing exercises, I watched an interview with an older gentleman who contracted the Coronavirus on a cruise ship. His case deteriorated quickly and there were going to place him on a ventilator. He claimed the technique he learned in this video saved his life. I think you can make some adjustments since this is geared for a secular audience. When he mentions the "Unseen Therapist", I just substitute Christ.
And here is the interview I mentioned.
Interesting. Thanks, I hadn't seen this. That guy reminds me of whats-his-name, the British guy who does the rant videos on occasion. Except much more calm, especially in the circumstances. His mention of being in denial about the coughing is a good point; denial is a powerful force, and is no doubt a part of why this virus spreads so easily. How many people are "asymptomatic," who have actual symptoms but chalk it down to something relatively benign?
It's good to know there are a lot of potential therapies being looked at for this, some of which seem really promising. Whatever may happen in the next couple of weeks, I think (hope!!) a year from now things will be looking much better.
I had a bout of idiosyncratic pneumonia last fall (nobody around me was sick; when I finally went in to urgent care, the doc asked me, "How did you get sick?" Just one of those weird random things). It was pretty horrible; I coughed so much I lost my voice for a couple of weeks. At the worst, I could barely drag myself to the bathroom. This sounds orders of magnitude worse; I'm glad they are recovering.
*Thanks to Vanderleun; David reminds me of a calm and soothing Pat Condell
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