before heading back down to where life is full of blissful madness–the calm before the storm

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds;
our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


(The Biltmore House / Asheville, NC/ Julie Cook / 2020)

Ok, I simply couldn’t go back to my self-imposed isolation, aka my never-ending
unpacking and sorting, without first offering my dismay at having caught a recent news popup
that showed up on my phone yesterday.
It seems that Madame Speaker never ceases to amaze me…and that is…
amaze me in a not so positive way.

The news tag read “The enemy is within
It seems the Speaker is afraid of her GOP colleagues—calling them ‘the enemy within’
Madame Speaker is afraid of those Republicans who have gun permits…
in particular those members who might be ‘packing heat’ while on the job—
And given the recent precarious events of insurrections and occupations by
“enemy combatants” I would think those with permits might feel as if they
need a bit of personal security.

But to call one’s colleagues ‘enemies of the state’ takes this whole undercurrent push
for a one party state a step further into the surreal Twilight Zone we now call reality.

Yesterday, always in timely wise fashion, our friend Kathy, over on atimetoshare, noted that
Mr. Kerry is back to his typical pompous bombastic self by calling middle Americans
“the little people”…

Reminds me a bit of a Marie Antoinette sort of personality…let those hungry
little people eat cake.
Ode to those “little people” and ode one’s supposed colleagues.

A one party state
Little people
enemy combatants
the enemy within
security vs paranoia
pomposity
arrogance
disregard
double standards
hypocrisy

The underground is looking pretty peaceful for the time being…
I imagine it is the calm before the storm.

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.
Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another,
for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

1 Peter 5:5

Think of and seek…God

“O man, when the world hates you and is faithless toward you,
think of your God, how he was struck and spat upon.
You should not accuse your neighbor of guilt,
but pray to God that he be merciful to you both.”

St. Nicholas of Flue


(tulips at The Biltmore House /Julie Cook / 2020)

“This world is filled with many vulgar and dishonorable things that will claw and tear
at your Christian purity if you allow them to.
Don’t let them!
Seek instead the things of God.
He will purify you and free you from your slavery to profane and inconsequential things.”

Patrick Madrid, p.1
An Excerpt From
A Year with the Bible

not of this world

“We are Christians, and strangers on earth.
Let none of us be frightened; our native land is not in this world.”

St. Augustine


(etching of a Rhinoceros by Albrecht Dürer / 1515 / The Biltmore House/ Julie Cook / 2020)

“Christian life is a retreat.
We are ‘not of this world’,
just as Jesus Christ is ‘not of this world’ (John 17:14).
What is the world? It is, as St. John said, the ‘lust of the flesh’,
that is, sensuality and corruption in our desires and deeds; ‘the lust of the eyes’,
curiosity, avarice, illusion, fascination, error, and folly in the affectation of learning,
and, finally, pride and ambition (1 John 2:16). To these evils of which the world is full,
and which make up its substance, a retreat must be set in opposition.
We need to make ourselves into a desert by a holy detachment.
Christian life is a battle …
We must never cease to fight.
In this battle, St. Paul teaches us to make an eternal abstinence, that is,
to cut ourselves off from the pleasures of the senses and guard our hearts from them…
it was to repair and to expiate the failings of our retreat,
of our battle against temptations, of our abstinence, that Jesus was driven into the desert.
His fast of forty days prefigured the lifelong one that we are to practice by abstaining
from evil deeds and by containing our desires within the limits laid down by the law of God.”

Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, p. 17-18
An Excerpt From
Meditations for Lent