Who is the Catcher?
Last night Barack Obama gave his first State of the Union address, a celebrated affair in which he boasted about what a great president he is at fixing things. It was peppered with lots of Americanist platitudes meant to inspire, and I guess there's that. I just wonder if he's so Johnny-on-the-spot ready, willing, and able to make this country oh-so-wonderful again, what is it precisely that he's going to do that gazillons of potentates through the ages have failed to do already? How'd he get so wise? I didn't exactly hear that part.
Ironically this is the week the finance bigwigs from all corners of the globe are gathering at the Davos pow-wow to hash out economic things. If there was a place where the truly helpful wisdom would emerge, this has to be it. But, yeah, they've been having it every year for however long. We still had bad bad economic things happen very very recently, certainly since their last meeting. Oh well.
As I browse all the World punditry about what's really to blame and what's really the thing to do, as I frequently do, I am struck by the exhausting redundancy of it all. Here is a smattering, if I may.
From Newsweek was this piece by Rana Forooher called "May the Best Theory Win." (And I'm not going to link it, I'm just too lazy--sorry. Hey, you can Google it and it'll be there, really, it will.) It was about the goings-on at Davos and how everyone is appearing a bit more shellshocked than they were before. So now's the time for the really really smart econowonks to step up to the plate, the Paul Krugmans and the Joseph Stigletzes, to shine their shininess on things once and for all.
Whups, seems like they're already off to a shaky start, bumbling and stumbling, still clutching that ludicrous idea that there is actually anything that's irrational. Yes, behavioral economics is all the rage now, and I imagine they want to use its spiffy divining rod to figure out why people jerk others around--people jerking others around, oh my, how irrational.
Well, yeah. Once they start there they will be eternally stumped. Everyone does everything they do rationally, even if their rational decision is based on a lie. In fact, much of what the World System tells its followers must be a lie, and it does this quite rationally. So they all get to yabber at their fancy Swiss resorts and what we all get is theater. Quite important for the World, it is, but it is only theater, lots of grand pontificating about how this or that latest theory is the one everyone should consider.
Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote in the New York Times that there is--the title of his piece--"Still Needed: A Sheriff of Finance." He mentions that renowned financier George Soros made this point at Davos two years ago, before Bear Stearns and all the rest of it. Oh my.
Thomas Friedman followed this the next day with his take, "Adults Only, Please," in which he lights into those who behave with "situational values" as opposed to the Mother Teresa Bishop Tutu Mahatma Gandhi types who live by "sustainable values."
Excuse me, but we all live by situational values. Sorry, but if the situation requires me to run a red light to get to a driver in a burning vehicle, I'm going to do it. No, what Friedman is talking about is not situational values, but fearful people stripping other people of their own value, and it is something all World inhabitants do. It is nothing other than human sacrifice, and those who have not appropriated the sacrifice of God's only begotten Son must do human sacrifice.
Rahrrr rahrrrr RAAHHRRRRR Friedman screams in his piece. When are we going to start behaving like adults? We're all children around here, being so greedy and selfish. Friedman seems to be really steamed about this state of affairs. Yet all he does is echo the call for a better, leaner, smoother sheriff. Seems to me sheriffs are for people who dick with other people in some way. Seems to me people who call for a better leaner smoother sheriff are confessing that they themselves dick with others on a regular basis, and if not for the sheriff things would be really nasty.
God knew this. He put a sheriff in place already. It is Cain, and all the other sheriffs who've followed after him through the ages summarily cracking heads as sheriffs often do.
The fact is these guys, the Sorkins and Friedmans and all these guys blithering through the World's megaphones, just don't like it. At least they say they don't, but they're in on the lie just as much as the rest of them.
Barack Obama's up there wagging his finger too, but he's just one of the stars of the show. What a fabulous performance he had last night, wasn't it boffo?
Thing is, it won't do dick to actually make people free.
Only Christ can do that.
Funny, today J.D. Salinger passed away. I will tell you I loved Catcher in the Rye. It spoke so much to me, and it wasn't just the fact that it was about exposing the phonies. It was so eloquently articulated and rich with the meaning of what sincerity really is. It was a clarion call for the most beautiful probity.
What's that? Probity? That's a word never used anymore.
It simply means being so honest that it shows, so authentically honest that you can't help but allow others to see you for who you really are. It doesn't mean pusillanimous transparency or milquetoast vulnerability.
It simply means being true. It means being true to the point that you make yourself available, available to uplift and build and grow among all those in a community. Indeed this whole idea is the seminal part of The Catcher in the Rye.
I really think Salinger wanted that so much, and he wanted so much to be around such people, but so repulsively did he see how it couldn't happen in a World submerged in willful deceit that he became the sad recluse we all know that he was. He laid out the World for what it was, but didn't have a clue what to do about it. He may have known about Christ, but I'd venture to say the only Jesus he knew was one of the many World counterfeits the Catholicist Nation has vomited up.
I see so many of them, too. And I see all too well the product of those Jesuses. It is what I am all about, telling people about the Jesus who Actually Frees in contrast to the phony ones. And I very selfishly (but quite rationally, I think) want to hang with others who know Him.
Thing is, the only way I can do that is to out there, out there in the rye.
And that Catcher is there, with His mitt. Yeah, it's not even me. I'm nowhere, except caught in the webbing, there next to the small blood stains. There I can shout out to someone running past.
"Hey, over here, come here." They may get caught here in the mitt.
Who is the Catcher?
Would you be willing to give the deepest assent to the highest probity and allow yourself to see Him there?
To even be caught by Him?
Ironically this is the week the finance bigwigs from all corners of the globe are gathering at the Davos pow-wow to hash out economic things. If there was a place where the truly helpful wisdom would emerge, this has to be it. But, yeah, they've been having it every year for however long. We still had bad bad economic things happen very very recently, certainly since their last meeting. Oh well.
As I browse all the World punditry about what's really to blame and what's really the thing to do, as I frequently do, I am struck by the exhausting redundancy of it all. Here is a smattering, if I may.
From Newsweek was this piece by Rana Forooher called "May the Best Theory Win." (And I'm not going to link it, I'm just too lazy--sorry. Hey, you can Google it and it'll be there, really, it will.) It was about the goings-on at Davos and how everyone is appearing a bit more shellshocked than they were before. So now's the time for the really really smart econowonks to step up to the plate, the Paul Krugmans and the Joseph Stigletzes, to shine their shininess on things once and for all.
Whups, seems like they're already off to a shaky start, bumbling and stumbling, still clutching that ludicrous idea that there is actually anything that's irrational. Yes, behavioral economics is all the rage now, and I imagine they want to use its spiffy divining rod to figure out why people jerk others around--people jerking others around, oh my, how irrational.
Well, yeah. Once they start there they will be eternally stumped. Everyone does everything they do rationally, even if their rational decision is based on a lie. In fact, much of what the World System tells its followers must be a lie, and it does this quite rationally. So they all get to yabber at their fancy Swiss resorts and what we all get is theater. Quite important for the World, it is, but it is only theater, lots of grand pontificating about how this or that latest theory is the one everyone should consider.
Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote in the New York Times that there is--the title of his piece--"Still Needed: A Sheriff of Finance." He mentions that renowned financier George Soros made this point at Davos two years ago, before Bear Stearns and all the rest of it. Oh my.
Thomas Friedman followed this the next day with his take, "Adults Only, Please," in which he lights into those who behave with "situational values" as opposed to the Mother Teresa Bishop Tutu Mahatma Gandhi types who live by "sustainable values."
Excuse me, but we all live by situational values. Sorry, but if the situation requires me to run a red light to get to a driver in a burning vehicle, I'm going to do it. No, what Friedman is talking about is not situational values, but fearful people stripping other people of their own value, and it is something all World inhabitants do. It is nothing other than human sacrifice, and those who have not appropriated the sacrifice of God's only begotten Son must do human sacrifice.
Rahrrr rahrrrr RAAHHRRRRR Friedman screams in his piece. When are we going to start behaving like adults? We're all children around here, being so greedy and selfish. Friedman seems to be really steamed about this state of affairs. Yet all he does is echo the call for a better, leaner, smoother sheriff. Seems to me sheriffs are for people who dick with other people in some way. Seems to me people who call for a better leaner smoother sheriff are confessing that they themselves dick with others on a regular basis, and if not for the sheriff things would be really nasty.
God knew this. He put a sheriff in place already. It is Cain, and all the other sheriffs who've followed after him through the ages summarily cracking heads as sheriffs often do.
The fact is these guys, the Sorkins and Friedmans and all these guys blithering through the World's megaphones, just don't like it. At least they say they don't, but they're in on the lie just as much as the rest of them.
Barack Obama's up there wagging his finger too, but he's just one of the stars of the show. What a fabulous performance he had last night, wasn't it boffo?
Thing is, it won't do dick to actually make people free.
Only Christ can do that.
Funny, today J.D. Salinger passed away. I will tell you I loved Catcher in the Rye. It spoke so much to me, and it wasn't just the fact that it was about exposing the phonies. It was so eloquently articulated and rich with the meaning of what sincerity really is. It was a clarion call for the most beautiful probity.
What's that? Probity? That's a word never used anymore.
It simply means being so honest that it shows, so authentically honest that you can't help but allow others to see you for who you really are. It doesn't mean pusillanimous transparency or milquetoast vulnerability.
It simply means being true. It means being true to the point that you make yourself available, available to uplift and build and grow among all those in a community. Indeed this whole idea is the seminal part of The Catcher in the Rye.
I really think Salinger wanted that so much, and he wanted so much to be around such people, but so repulsively did he see how it couldn't happen in a World submerged in willful deceit that he became the sad recluse we all know that he was. He laid out the World for what it was, but didn't have a clue what to do about it. He may have known about Christ, but I'd venture to say the only Jesus he knew was one of the many World counterfeits the Catholicist Nation has vomited up.
I see so many of them, too. And I see all too well the product of those Jesuses. It is what I am all about, telling people about the Jesus who Actually Frees in contrast to the phony ones. And I very selfishly (but quite rationally, I think) want to hang with others who know Him.
Thing is, the only way I can do that is to out there, out there in the rye.
And that Catcher is there, with His mitt. Yeah, it's not even me. I'm nowhere, except caught in the webbing, there next to the small blood stains. There I can shout out to someone running past.
"Hey, over here, come here." They may get caught here in the mitt.
Who is the Catcher?
Would you be willing to give the deepest assent to the highest probity and allow yourself to see Him there?
To even be caught by Him?
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