Wonderful Matters

Wait! I forgot to add a critical component of The Great Big Club George Carlin famously riffed on a number of years ago in his viral routine. In my last post I'd mentioned that all the rich and powerful people are in a big club and "You aren't in it." I'd added that the club is really the Roman Catholic Empire and that whether you like it, tolerate it, or revile it to the point of wanting to blow it up, you're in it if you aren't in The Kingdom instead.  The emphasis was on the fact that even if you are part of the noble crusade against the evil oppressive imperialist fascist hegemony, you are a Roman Catholic,  merely because you are being delightfully played to do all the resisting and rebelling and obsessively intoxicating revolutioning so many thrill to do because they absolutely despise having their concupiscence called out by any judgmentalist forces. And Rome is there to respond in kind. "Don't box me in, copper!" -- Rome gleefully re...

Today is March 13, and two years ago, a Friday no less, they shut down our school campus. They essentially established a formal segregation policy dividing students from their teachers because of a firmly institutionalized and largely fabricated dread of an illness. Public schools are still reeling from this as it has been used to further rationalize the unabashed and pronounced instruction related to socialism (it is fine for the disadvantaged to expropriate wealth from the privileged with all due impunity), sodomism (it is fine for people to express their novel sexual proclivities no matter how immoral many consider them), and racialism (it is fine to furiously censure certain people for being inherently racist). I recently posted a home page piece at my webzine opening with a remark about that date and the present moribund condition of a popular discount movie theater I'd frequented before. I thought I'd share some photo shots of the other movie posters that were still ther...

The Mary Poppins tale is an extraordinarily enticing one. Last night during our Christmas season vacation downtime I went with my family to see the latest film, the first real Disney sequel to the original. 54 years later, they put together one they thought would be a worthy offering. It wasn't. It was long, dry, and tedious. The music was utterly forgettable, quite unlike the genius score of the 1964 classic. The acting was uninspired, with the exception perhaps of Emily Mortimer -- and no, Emily Blunt as Mary was so affected it took away from the genuine charm of the character. Julie Andrews' rendering drew no attention to herself even though she never denied who she authentically was. Blunt's character, meanwhile, was always looking at herself in the mirror and while there may have been some point to that, it only made her appear uncomfortably vain. This was merely a re-imaging of the original, and I was afraid of that. I was hoping for something fresh and invigo...

One of the most pronounced of the Gnostic creeds is "Knowledge is power." Those in the World trudge along by this, trying harder and harder to know in order to find their salvation. Salvation for those in the Kingdom--and along with it, genuine power--comes from one source, the Creator of the entire universe, Jesus Christ. I thought about that for a moment, and thought, couldn't one feasibly ask, "What about knowledge of Christ? Couldn't it be the case that one must have knowledge of this One Who Saves? Wouldn't he then derive his 'power' from the knowing of that One? And isn't that then the result of some effort put forth by the know- er , making it just as much a Gnostic endeavor as anything?" Wow. That's a fine challenge, and I'm sure one that has been considered before many times by many others in many ways. My answer may also be one that's been previously considered, but I really don't hear it much because the World i...

Shortly after I wrote my last blog post, we left for my sister-in-law's for Thanksgiving. Driving our van on the way there, I had a thought that I'd had before in some form, one I'm certain that others have also had. Here's Thanksgiving, the time when we are supposed to give thanks. The question is, to whom are you giving thanks? I mean, really, what do atheists do when they give thanks? What do Eastern mysticists or even devout Catholicists do? Who exactly do they give thanks to? Atheists may say that they are "thankful." I'm sorry but that is completely meaningless. Thankfulness implies that you are feeling good about something and you are appreciative in some sense for that. But why would you have anything good to begin with? From where did it come?! The Eastern mysticist is what many today would call a "New Ager." Convinced all is illusion, or that we are all just part of the Great Cosmic Oneness, who exactly does one address when saying tha...

After my last blog post, I felt I had to write a bit more about what I'd written. First, one may wonder why I don't know the spiritual condition of my stepbrother. The reason is that I'm not really close to him. Physically he lives near Seattle, and I've never had the opportunity to really interact with him. Last summer (2005) we did get more acquainted at my father's 70th birthday party. Shortly after that he discovered his medical condition. We have communicated a bit since then, sending a card, exchanging emails, those sorts of things. Second, I have only referred to him as "my stepbrother," because I have this nervousness about throwing names around on the web. I think I'm invading the privacy of others in doing so, however, in many ways that too is a Catholicist-based fear. People reading this may want to genuinely pray for him. With that in mind, his name is Randy. In fact, his fine blog is here . I can make a pretty good guess about what his spi...