the year of being a mother, a dad, a child…a family

The need to get parenting right has become an obsession for many of us.
But we can make some simple changes and bring some fun and sanity into our lives.
We can love being moms again.
We can sit.
We can laugh with our kids.
We can love life and enjoy our wonderful kids.
Dr. Meg Meeker
The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers

(Madonna and Child by Raphel)

2019 seemed to the year of the hashtag did it not?
Or was that the year of the feminists?

The year of a fanatical and even angry #metoo movement—

As in I am woman, hear me roar.

As in let’s demasculinize and neuter all men in the name of revenge.
As in let’s let little boys be girls while we let little girls be boys as
in gender is no longer relevant.
As in let’s say hooray for abortions…for pregnancy is an inconvenience
As in it is my right and my choice by gosh by golly…
As in it’s all about women empowering women…cause power is important is it not?
And so let’s hear it for the rise of militant feminism.

The rallying cry has gone out…
Challenging, even defying, any and all legislation put out there to protect
a fetus in the womb.
Strike down those heartbeat bills…

As we are left wondering who will speak for those who cannot speak…

And so it is my prayer that the coming year of 2020 would be the year of the moms,
motherhood, and the family.
The year of the traditional family.
The year of both moms and dads along with their children.
Bound by the covenant of God.

As the late Pope John Paul II continues to remind us …
“As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world
in which we live.

To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children.
Each member of the family has to become, in a special way, the servant of the others.

It is the duty of every man to uphold the dignity of every woman.”

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols
are pleasure, comfort, and independence,
lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.

And thus I will leave this offering of hope with a final offering of wisdom
from Dr. Meg Meeker, a Christian, a Catholic who is married to an Evangelical, a pediatrician,
an author and most importantly– a mother…

If every mother could wrap her mind around her true value as a woman and a mother,
her life would never be the same.
We would wake up every morning excited for the day rather than feeling as though
we’d been hit by a truck during the night.
We would talk differently to our kids, fret less about our husbands’ annoying habits,
and speak with greater tenderness and clarity.
We would find more contentment in our relationships,
let mean remarks roll off our backs,
and leave work feeling more confident in the job we performed.
Each of us would live a life of extraordinary freedom.
Dr. Meg Meeker
from The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers

‘let the chips fall where they may, I’m at peace with my decision”

“If we do not risk anything for God we will never do anything great for Him.”
St. Louis De Montfort

(Susan Collins, Senator from Maine, during the Senate vote on Brett Kavanaugh
for Supreme Court Justice 2018)

I must confess that by the time Senator Susan Collins spoke on the Senate floor
regarding her vote for Brett Kavanaugh as Supreme Court Justice nominee,
I wasn’t watching.

I was blessedly out of the country.

My cousin had even text me, “I’m sorry you are not here…missing all of this!!”
She was being totally serious as she takes the things that happen in our Nation
very seriously.

My response was simple, “I am glad I am out of the country”

I also told her that despite not being physically present in the US, I was nonetheless
seeing and hearing plenty in the way of the fiasco back home.

If you’ve ever traveled outside of the country, your English speaking channels are
limited to CNN International and the BBC International.
Two news outlets not known for their conservative take on world happenings.

I also confess I was not up to speed on Senator Susan Collins.
I just knew she was a senator from Maine and that I like Maine.

I’ve about had my bate of politics and politicians in our country.
I’ve had my bate of swamps.
I’ve had my bate of elections.
I’ve had my bate of the caustic rhetoric, of angry hate-filled demonstrations,
my bate of the endless sea of obstructionists, liberals, progressives, feminists, atheists,
Satanists, Communists, Socialists, Antifa folks, Left-wingers, Right-wingers,
Klan members,Supremacists, Militants, and anyone else causing trouble while rattling my chains.

However, I did very much want to hear the latest interview with Susan Collins.
She was to do a sit-down interview with journalist Martha Maccallum as she would recall
the lead-up, as well as the aftermath, of her vote and her address to the Senate…
an address that has been hailed as one of the greatest speeches on the Senate floor.

She cast the pivotal vote following the circus-like hearings that lead up to the vote
which would be sending Brett Kavanaugh to the highest bench in the land or would either
send him back home to private life.

And following the vile display of our lowest lows, I’m not
so certain I wouldn’t have simply wanted to just go find an island someplace far away from
the madness and spend my remaining days mindlessly fishing…

Susan Collins was viciously and verbally threatened prior to the vote as well as after
the vote.
Her family was viciously threatened.
Her very life was threatened.

I’m sorry, but where did we say we lived?

Is this America???
Home of the Brave, land of the free and thriving with the lovers of all things Democracy?

Or are we living in some remote tribal area of the globe rife with ambushes
and battles to the death?

It’s just that after all of this latest assinine behavior by our Nation regarding
the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, I couldn’t quite tell…again, I’m just saying.

Susan Collins shared with Martha MacCallum that an envelope containing white powder
was mailed to her home in Maine with a note that said “Anthrax, HA HA”
Another arrived supposedly containing ricin.

Her husband and dog had to be immediately quarantined while the folks in the bio-hazmat
suits invaded her home.

Martha then ran a few of the voicemails and emails that flooded Senator Collins
office and home.
Crude, vile and foul sums them up rather succinctly.

Again, where are we actually living?
Is this America or rather some alterego Scifi surreal land of all things Orwellian?

She recalled an evening just prior to the vote that she had been working late.
She drove herself home but there was nowhere to park near her DC home so she had
to park about a block away.
It was late and dark.
She stepped out of her car to find a lone man standing on the sidewalk as if he had been
waiting on her.
She began walking and he began following her.

As she approached her house this man quickly moved between her and her door,
getting right up in her face, brandishing a flashlight and
waving it wildly at her face as he verbally attacked and berated her.

She said the only humorous moment of an otherwise frighteningly life or death situation
was when she yelled at him, demanding that he leave her alone…
as she just as quickly thought to ask, “and by the way, what is your name?”
Of which he actually gave to her.
Needless to say, the authorities quickly found him and detained him.

She told Martha that despite these “scary” moments,
these threats and attempts to sway her vote away from the favorable, she was
not going to be intimidated.

I admire her for digging in and for holding her own.
And yet at the same time, I found myself,
as I listened and watched this woman explaining why she voted the way she did and why she did,
feeling very sad listening as her interview continued.

I no longer recognize this place I’ve known and called home for near 60 years.
Who are these people who live now to persecute those who they disagree with?
I just don’t get it…it is absolutely tragically surreal.

Senator Collins explained that she had listened to the days of hearings, the witnesses,
the recounting of events 40 years prior…
she, in turn, weighed the words, the reactions, the records, and the lives now lived as adults…
and concluded she could and would vote in favor of sending Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

The funny thing in all of this is that Susan Collins is, well, obviously a woman.

She is a smart woman.
A woman who didn’t marry until late in life.
An independent woman.
She is neither naive nor gullible.

Her former college, St Lawrence University, a school that she loved attending and a school
she has carried a deep affinity for throughout her adult life has recently rescinded two
honorary degrees it bestowed on her in the wake of her being that same very independent
woman that they once loved and embraced—
so since they no longer find her independence something they care for, as she is independently
voting with a mindset they helped to instill in her, yet now runs counter to their own thinking
…sadly so….they find that they can no longer claim her as a former student.

Toward the end of the interview, Martha asked Senator Collins if she could live with the
idea that in 2020 she could actually lose her seat due to this single vote.
In essence ending her long political career, of which could come to a screeching halt
all because of a single vote…

Without batting an eye, Senator Collins said “yes, let the chips fall where they may,
I’m at peace with my decision.”

Now here is a woman who knows her mind.
Isn’t that what our society keeps clamoring about??
Empowered women?
And yet we seem to have a woman who is taking her stand and still, there is no
pleasing of the masses…

Here is a link to the full interview…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/susan-collins-reveals-critics-personal-attacks-over-kavanaugh-vote

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers,
intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people—–
for kings and all those in authority,
that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.
1 Timothy 2:1-2

where does the truth go

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
Aldous Huxley

(dried seed pod / Julie Cook / 2018)

So yesterday we took a bit of a diversion, traveling off in a different direction—
one of health, leeches, mutants and Sophia Loren…an odd mix but hey,
somebody has to cover it…
And as there is no new news to report on any of those fronts, it’s best we get back on track,
getting refocused and back to the matter at hand…

Today the issue is that of truth…that which is real and that which is not.

Our dear Bishop Ashenden, in the latest version of Anglican Unscripted,
explains that society is witnessing a new phenomenon which is known as “identity politics—
or rather a “near Marxism identity politics”
of which is the idea of immersing people into a collective identity versus the notion of God
having made each one of us as a unique being whom He holds individually precious…
a being He views as a unique individual, one that has been wonderfully and mysteriously formed.

Yet we are a people who are rapidly becoming “ideologically closed off” one from another…
If we perceive a person to differ from or oppose our ideology, then we choose not to listen.
We’d rather close ourselves off, putting up the barriers and divides of anger and hate.
In essence being unable to love, evangelize or unable to be in communion one with one another—

The notion that folks have allowed their ideologies to be their soul
defining image—and in turn, who now believe that they cannot afford to lose everything
they’ve invested into and with their personalities—in turn leaving an unbridgeable divide.
Thus we are witnessing, when pushed or perceived to be threatened, a volatile
outcome by the uber-aggressive feminists or Marxists or whatever the flavor
of the day may be toward those who refuse to be “immersed” into this new and dangerous
form of identity politics.

It is the notion that folks are no longer listening with their souls but are
rather vetoing such, preferring to yield to “the will to power”
or that being what they have now allowed themselves to become—
which in turn creates a tremendous internal conflict.

And we’re watching this conflict boil over nearly daily and sadly…
We’re watching it boil over even within the church as She wrestles with what she now
accepts and believes falsely as truth…and we’re seeing this from top leadership.
All the while as ideologically motivated human beings continue to find it difficult,
if not impossible, to communicate one with one another.

In his post from over the weekend, the good Bishop tells us that
“Truth has been one of the casualties of the growth of the influence of the
post-modern in our culture. It has been knocked down the hierarchy of values by
different narratives, particularly those that have to do with a redistribution of power.

The whole safeguarding culture, which began as a sensible and responsible response
to decades of irresponsibility, has become inflated into a tool of power itself;
but re-distributive power.
The power that intends to dethrone the old agents of influence in society
(mainly white, Christian, elderly men) and redistribute it to those
perceived as their victims.

There is no doubt at all that people who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of predators
are indeed victims. But the whole dynamic of safeguarding culture has exploded into
something far beyond taking more sensible protective steps to diminish
the opportunities for predators.
It has become a tool of control in itself.
You only have to adduce ‘safeguarding concerns’ in any context within the Church or society
to exercise complete power.
No one can challenge you.

And this shift of re-empowerment of the victims which began easily enough with the egalitarian
insistence of equality of outcomes between the genders in the Church in the face of
both Scripture and tradition, got extended to homosexuality too.
Once again, still in the face of Scripture and tradition, gay pride
(didn’t the pride give just a clue as to the spiritual flavour of the movement?)
and gay rights began to take precedence over the virtues of chastity and continence,
enjoined on all people, straight, bi- or homosexual, outside Christian marriage.

When Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus made a pact with the devil,
he knew what he was doing. But the disaster that befell him as the devil came to claim
his soul in return for the exercise of power that Faustus has enjoyed, undid him.

“The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah my Christ—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ;
Yet will I call on him—O spare me, Lucifer!”

The tragedy for Faustus was that although he had once served Christ,
he had consciously changed masters. He knew what he was doing,
which is why having called on Christ as a reflex,
his final fruitless beseeching is to Lucifer – his real master.
Gavin Ashenden

The questions which now sit plainly before us today are:

What cost are we willing to pay in order to stay the course of following
the Truth found in Christ Jesus…?

Will we capitulate to the growing maelstrom of society and culture?

Will we allow the mass growth of the uber-aggressive feminists and Marxists
to rule the day?
Those who possess closed ideology and refuse to even listen to that which
runs counter to their own manifesto?

Will we bend to a society that has chosen to rewrite God’s Law and Will into a totally
unrecognizable policy of tolerance and acceptance thinly veiled as a mandate of
the people’s will… as such rewriting is at odds with God’s original intent?
That being God’s Word versus man’s word.

There was a time when we knew the enemy of Christianity.

He walked, as he still walks this earth…as Earth remains his dominion.

He came in the form of ruthless empires such as Rome or any other number of bloodthirsty regimes
that have vied for power down through the ages. Empires and regimes which attacked
tortured and persecuted the faithful.

Just as we still witness today those current ruthless powers who hide behind the curtains
of Communism or radical Islam or any other ideology, as well the various forms of dictatorships,
which refuse to accept the rights of human beings to live and worship freely …

Christians knew exactly who the enemy was…just as some still clearly recognize him and it today,
Yet for many of us in the West, our persecutors are not as recognizable or definable as
those often found in the annals of history.

Today our persecutors are actually within the very walls of the places we find sacred and holy.

The time has come that we must carefully choose our Truth—that of God’s or that of man’s.

Anglican Unscripted – Jordan Peterson, Cathy Newman & Justin Welby

Welby’s Will-To-Power:   Pride & Ego- Sanity & Sanctity, in the Saga of George Bell.

Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

“Sin is the distance between us and God”
Bishop Gavin Ashenden

(this poor cherub or putti’s feet have frozen off / Julie Cook / 2018)

I think I’ve used the above quote before…
However, it doesn’t seem any less important or any less relevant than say, the other day…

The other day when listening to Bishop Ashenden’s rather reflective homily,
as well as the latest installment of Anglican Unscripted,
the good Bishop was reflecting on having been asked in an interview
“what is sin?”
or it may have been more along the lines of “what is your understanding of sin?”

Either way, the Bishop was about to be taken to a very public task, or so thought the
interviewer of all things cultural…

The very secular interviewer, after asking the Bishop the question regarding his take on
what sin actually was, in turn, told the bishop that he did not feel at all “sinful”
and so the notion of what a sin was, was totally irrelevant to him and therefore obviously
anyone else who wasn’t feeling the least bit sinful.

Well, this is where the good Bishop clearly demonstrates that he knows his ‘stuff’…

He tells the interviewer that “coming to God is not something that one can do cerebrally
or rationally”

He then goes on to explain, as I shared in my post the other day, that there are actually
two types of sin—
there is the sin that the Christian recognizes—
that being the distance between himself and God.
And then that of secular sin which is anything that runs counter to the current culture’s
perception of the normative.

Bishop Ashenden goes on to note that all the recent hashtag business, the #metoo etc,
frenzy is, plain and simple, nothing more than secular sin.

The Bishop watched the Golden Globes, I did not.

He has some choice words for those who, draped in black, captured the stage in an attempt
to make a pitch to their “dewy-eyed acolytes.”

Bishop Ashenden explains that as our society has become besotted by sex,
it has become simply our very present focus.
For it surrounds us in almost every aspect of our daily lives—
through advertising, entertainment, books, music…it is an obsession.
An obsession, that many have gotten quite good at ignoring.

Society has created a secular apocalypse with women like Oprah Winfrey and Meryl Streep
rising to the occasion of rounding up the feminist troops while intimidating and
crushing any questioning, or opposition or competing intentions…
a frenetic feeding frenzy of destructive shaming.
There is no room for remorse, healing, redemption or hope.

Yet oddly there are years of images with both of these women in cozy photos with the likes
of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton, and Roman Polansky…
women who had chosen to ignore truly bad boy and even illegal behavior.

And so we are now left wondering…
What is it now that makes things different from then…?

Is it now somewhat advantageous?
Has the time of championing feminism come into its own as it is now the popular
cultural bandwagon.
Is #metoo putting the ‘me’ in all of us dangerously closer at the center of our own universe
at the expense of common sense, grace and mercy?

Or is it simply the bravado of self-deception found in a society steeped in the notion of
its own sense of self-righteousness?
Found in its notion of the importance of the ‘we ourselves’…
Never mind answering to an authority greater than ourselves…for there is none…
because we are the demigods who have no need of anything or anyone greater.

The Bishop notes that in this secular societal self-righteousness, there lies a deeper problem.

Pure hypocrisy.

And the thing is…none of the rallying cries or the saber rattling or the
rabble-rousing allows for or has room for the utter forgiveness and redemption
found only in Jesus Christ.
For found in the sinfulness of the secular, there is no way back for the sinner.
No hope for the fallen.
And no hope equates to immediate death.

A stark contrast to the mercy, forgiveness, redemption, and life found only in the hope
of Jesus…

And thus he leaves us not with the damnation found in the current culture’s angst but
rather with the hopeful words of William Blake

“To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.”
William Blake

Talking to LBC (London Radio) about sin, sex and God -(as captured by an Australian website.)

‘Operation Opra’: Secular self-righteousness – a mixture of morality, hypocrisy and revenge.

lord of the flies

“From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.”
Denis Diderot

“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.”
William Golding, Lord of the Flies

(I used this image back in June, but it fit so well today)

I suppose the reading of certain books during our time spent in high school
lit classes is all a part of the adolescent right of passage.

Most folks my age read such books as Animal Farm, Catcher in the Rye,
A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Crucible,
1984 (yes published in 1949 and I read it long before 1984),
The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men…the list goes on and on.

Some books I enjoyed.
Some books I loathed.
Some books left me unsettled.

Lord of the Flies was just one such book.

No happy ending there.

It was a tale that left me terribly unsettled.

Any sort of story showcasing those who are oh so civilized one minute while
quickly falling into barbarism the next,
when all the trappings of modern life suddenly disappear,
leaves me less than happily settled—

Perhaps because it is a blatant reminder of how thin is the veil that separates
modern man from his animalistic alter ego …
and yet that was indeed the author’s intent…
A stalk reminder…..

I was in high school just past those heady days of Woodstock and Flower power.
The early 70’s were to be a time of reemerging.
We were coming up for air from an unpopular war, grave national unrest,
sit-ins, love-ins as a president was preparing to leave office in disgrace…
people wanted to reset and move forward.
Our naiveté was long gone.

Sounds as if I could be talking about today….

We read the works of writers who addressed such feelings..some being current, some
simply ahead of their time.

And it appears as if I am not alone in my recollection of my required reading
of such a tale…

The newly consecrated bishop of the Christian Episcopal Church of Canada and the US,
The Rt. Reverend Dr Gavin Ashenden, also recalls reading Lord of the Flies.

I found his post Wednesday to be most timely as he touched on an issue I’ve been
referencing in just these past many days…

That being the Nazis and their obsessive need to plunder, loot, and burn millions of books… in an all out attempt to control the thought processes of those they
wished to manipulate and rule while at the same time obliterating an entire
swarth of humanity.

“I can understand why the Nazis burned books.

One book can subvert a whole culture.

Perhaps one of the most subversive books I’ve known was “Lord of the Flies”
by William Golding.
I must have read it when I was 14 or 15.

It tells the story of a group of schoolboys whose plane crashes onto a remote island.
They survive the crash, but descend into violence and chaos and finally murder.
They lose all the trappings of civilisation, inside and out, in a very short time.

This was and is a shocking book.
It called the bluff of moral progress and ethical evolution.
Our civility is just skin deep Golding was saying.
From the moment I finished the book,
I knew that Golding was right and that progressive politics was based on a
misjudgment of human nature.
Our ethical progress was just skin deep, and could be lost in an instant.

I keep on being haunted by images of Nazi book burning and the smashing up of
Jewish shop fronts from Germany in the 1930’s.
Something like a collective madness came on the people of Germany.
It really seemed to erupt almost out of nowhere.
How could such a civilised people, the children of Goethe and Beethoven,
so swiftly become the breeding ground of Nazism, with its book burnings, thuggery
and ultimately the horrifying and very Golding-like final solution?”

The good Bishop goes on to explore the similarites he sees between the current acts of violence taking place on both sides of our collective pond in regards to the
progressive liberal groups and their lack of tolerance, or perhaps allowance would be a better word, with the more conservative and Christian groups over the current battle
lines.

Bishop Ashenden notes in particular a rather nasty incident taking place in Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park when several protesting groups converged.

It seems that a 60 year old feminist sort of protester was punched in the face by a transgendered male dressed as a female type individual,
who after punching said 60 year old woman in the face and knocking her to the ground,
then ran ran off.

Ashenden makes a rather stalk comparison between a now and then sort of moment:
“Mindless thugs beating their opponents in public were not the preserve only of the Brown Shirts in Berlin, of state apparatchiks in Moscow, but it’s odd to find gender activists demonstrating in favour of love, peace, tolerance and inclusion, beating up elderly feminists at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park.”

Ashenden goes on…
“A great deal is made by the left that the threat of violence comes from the
‘far Right.’ In fact the press and media don’t bother with the ‘Right’ any more.
Anything less than socialist is called ‘Far-Right, – or Nazi.
There is no near-right, or middle right, or further right; just Far-Right.’

You may read the full post here:

‘Far-Left’ and ‘Far-Right’ need to be replaced by ‘Far-UP’.

The irony of our current thuggery groups behaving so terribly badly while they shout
for rights, proclaim justice, preach love, and of all things, demand tolerance….
all the while commencing to malign and beat to a pulp those who oppose their current
trend of senseless thoughts……

They might do well to reread a book or two from their day’s in lit class.

Barbarism is but a step away from the the civilized…..

“You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.
He was a murderer from the beginning,
and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.
Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature,
for he is a liar and the father of lies.
John 8:44