“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
Mark Twain
(the mayor thankfully on the mend / Julie Cook / 2018)
Having been gone for nearly three weeks, I walked into the seemingly empty house
putting down my bags while grabbing a different smaller bag and immediately headed to
Atlanta in order to see the Mayor.
Jet lag??!!
What jet lag???
So what was to be a few days stay to help out during schedule changes and
overlapping work hours which came before the daycare lady opened her doors,
actually turned out to be a week
of nursing.
When I got to Atlanta, I was met at the door by a set of worried parents noting a sudden
spate of tiny little red spots covering two tiny little legs and arms coupled
with a puny little girl.
The following day a slight fever developed so an after-hours visit to Urgent Care was
in quick order.
A lingering sinus infection mixed with severe teething woes made for one miserable little
girl and several troubled adults.
She refused to take a bottle and shunned her applesauce.
Sleep was something that alluded us all as laying down exacerbated the difficulty in
breathing and the throbbing little gums.
When the Mayor is awake, all of her aides are awake.
Gone was the happy perky little girl which was replaced with a very fussy miserable baby
who only wanted to held and rocked.
(an ailing little Mayor / Julie Cook / 2018)
Yet blessedly today, finally, I could tell the antibiotics were kicking in as breathing
was no longer regulated through a tiny mouth agape while the angry tugging at ears and hair
had happily abated.
A smile sporting two tiny little teeth replaced the upturned frown and protruding bottom lip.
As she and I sat outside this afternoon, actually enjoying the sun and a crystal blue sky
following yesterday’s ominous stormy weather thanks to the passing of a monster named Michael,
I simply marveled over what I held in my lap while basking in the moment of engulfing peace.
No Right
No Left
No hate
No news
No crime
No fear
No lawlessness
No bashing
No distrust
No disrespect…
It was the only thing that really mattered…just she and me…
a rare moment of simple care and simple peace.
There was nothing outside of the moment…because right then and there, life was that moment.
No cries from Democrats about kicking hard and low at the Republicans.
No issues over preferring to be moralistic while eschewing the current cultural push
for all-inclusiveness total acceptance of whatever floats one’s boat.
No ridicule over desiring to live a Christian life.
No persecution for believing in the traditional family.
No news media pushing personal liberal agendas…
And so it dawned on me…
since this culture of ours is now all about lifestyles that are
basically asexual—meaning our society wants so badly to be gender neutral,
not male, not female, but simply whatever one chooses at the moment…
Why then not opt for what is a-political…meaning…
to hell with politics and politicians??
Who needs them?
Because I for one have grown weary of the hoopla and the hype that screams for our
attention each time we turn on a television, open a paper, click on a computer…
The latest idiocy over the Kavanaugh hearing was such a travesty of humanity…
of what it means to be a decent human being to another human being,
that I really wish I could just cut all of the politics and politicians
out of our lives.
Which reminded me of our recent trip to Rome.
We had the opportunity to visit a relatively infamous oddity—
the hauntingly odd Bocca della Verità—otherwise known as
The Mouth of Fate.
(Bocca della Verità / Rome, Italy / Julie Cook / 2018)
According to those in the know,
Long before the modern lie detector and its harmlessly jittering graphs and
wires were invented,
the superstitious and untruthful faced a much more severe fate between the jaws
of the Bocca della Verità, or Mouth of Fate, an ancient carving which is said to bite
the hands off of liars.
While no one is exactly sure when or why the frieze was created,
there are a number of theories.
Dating back to around the 1st century CE, the Mouth of Truth is a tall stone disc carved
into a humanoid face with hollow holes for eyes and its gaping mouth.
The original purpose of the large medallion has been theorized as everything from a
ceremonial well cover, to a piece of fountain decoration, to a manhole cover.
The face itself has been said to represent a pagan god although exactly
which one is up for debate with scholars guessing at everyone from forest god Faunus,
to sea god Oceanus, to a local river god.
While the origin is up for debate the one unifying legend surrounding the stone carving is
that if one were to stick their hand inside the disc’s mouth and tell a lie,
the rocky maw would bite the offending hand off.
This belief seems to have originated during the Middle Ages when the disc was supposedly
used during trials having the accused put their hand in the slot and if found to be untruthful
a hidden axeman would lop off the appendage.
While this use seems to be apocryphal, the superstition persists to this day.
The Mouth of Truth, which now rests outside the doors of the Santa Maria in Cosmedin church,
has been used as a whimsical lie detector in a number of movies and video games,
most famously in the 1953 romance, Roman Holiday, in which the carving was a major plot device.
Excerpt from Atlas Obscura
So with this notion of a Mouth of Truth in the works, how many then of our current
mob mentality, rabidly progressive politicians, bounty hunting news media
and hateful cultural demigods would be willing to place a hand into the Mouth of Fate?
How many would emerge with hands intact?
How many of the lies that are thrown at us on a daily basis would then not simply be
cut out of our lives?
My life has been so grossly full as of late, in so many areas of this tiny world of ours,
that I have fallen woefully behind in my reading of the good Bishop Gavin Ashenden
and of our friend the Wee Flea, the Scottish Pastor David Roberston.
But for all of my negligence, these brave Christian men are continuing to the fight
the good fight.
So much so that the good Bishop was actually recently banned from Twitter for
hate speech…hate speech because the good Bishop noted that the seemingly endless revelation
of the pedophilia plague unraveling within the Catholic Chruch actually has its roots
stemming from that of homosexuality…an observation that the Gay community took to task
and didn’t much find to their liking–and therefore crying foul…
while Twitter acquiesced.
While we must remember that before he was an ordained Anglican priest,
our friend earned degrees in, practiced and taught both law and psychology.
Archbishop Cranmer on Twitter censoring Gavin Ashenden for describing the facts…
And yet it was what I read today from Bishop Ashenden’s take on the Kavanaugh confirmation
that I wish to also share.
Wisdom from across the pond concerning our latest American dirty laundry.
The presumption of innocence saves both bodies and souls in this civil war with ‘Identity Politics’.
So I must confess that I have gravely missed those voices of reason and Spiritual groundedness
throughout my recent travels and nursing duties while the madness has simply been allowed
to run amuck.
May we pray for those who continue to sound the bells of Truth, fighting the good fight
during these such dark days of falsehoods and lies…
And here is to a happy and healthy Mayor!!!!
cookiecrumbstoliveby 