Blurry Photographic Evidence for the Mystical Heart

For those who don’t know, this summer I’m working at University Townhouses Cooperative (UTC), a subsidized housing complex where I build fences and move appliances. Today was a particularly humid day, with an official temperature in the 80s but a heat index that felt well into the 100s. Most of the day was spent taking breaks from the heat, or filling water bottles, or wondering if a breeze will pick up, or wondering if it won’t.

At long last, the inevitable thrust of the day led us inside into the much more forgiving world of air conditioning. Under the shady branches of a cool electric fan, we spread our weary selves upon the oasis of swivel chairs that was my supervisor’s office.

How Vatican II Saved the World from Modernism (OR: How Traddies Are Modern)

I have been wanting to write this post for a while. Since Vatican II there has appeared among the Catholic faithful a division between “liberal” Catholics on the “left,” “traditionalist” Catholics on the “right,” and just plain Catholic Catholics who think both sides are absurd. I consider myself in the third group. In other words, I am Catholic.

Catholics of three varieties. Left: “liberal.” Middle: “conservative.” Right: Catholic.

A Realization (Or a Remembrance)

Our world constantly asks us to get “in touch with” ourselves. Even the old philosophers said “know thyself.” Yet, after millennia of supposedly doing just that, the human race still has no idea who/what it is.

The great thing about Christianity is it doesn’t ask the impossible of us. It asks the ironically easier task: “Know God, and let Him know you.” Yes, it is far more possible for the transcendent Divine Being to know us than for us to know even ourselves; and by Christ it is now easier – somehow, mysteriously – for us to know the Unknowable God than to know our selves. And that’s fine. In fact, it is – somehow, mysteriously – the way things should be.

Stargazing, Lost Ships, Screenplays, and God

I haven’t posted in a while. I tend to not get very personal in my posts – at least not explicitly – but allow me to talk about some things that are very relevant to my life and very non-theoretical. (You’ll read this post and think yeah right, this is ALL theoretical. It’s not. It’s personal).

The lesson of this last year can be summed up in one phrase: Everyone, everyone, is messed up.

The Sacredness of Pop and Pulp

If you want to know where a civilization is going to end up, all you have to do is look at the art that is most typical to that civilization. Our own Western commercial postmodern civilization is no different. Our art involves pop, pastiche, remix, and irony. And there is no better example of the art of NOW than the following mash-up by DJ Earworm. It perfectly expresses on every level the spirit of our times. Visuals, lyrics, message, meaning, tempo, medium, EVERYTHING is a PERFECT window into our times:

A Faltering Rebellion (A Meditation)

You indefatigable monster, you Shadow Brute! Let me alone! Quit your greedy hunger! I am my own person; you can’t have me! Stop chasing me, oh damnable hound of heaven. Stop your infinite movements toward my universe, oh lion-lamb. Stop! Desist! Cease your salvation!

Don’t you get it? I know you thirst, but I thirst too. I have needs, and they must be filled, and they can’t be filled by you. Can I drink of the cup, the new wine of the covenant, the gall of bitter aspect? Only you can bear it, oh Shadow Brute. I am too weak. I have my needs, and they must be filled. Let this cup pass from me and go your way. You are the Son of Heavens; let the will of heaven be done in you, and leave well enough alone in me.

20 Postmodern Movies

You can tell a lot about a culture by the art it produces. You can tell even more about a culture by the art it consumes.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Outermost Mansion Preview 1 – “Prelude: Consumed”

This is the prologue of the first book of my ever-in-the-works fantasy series. The book is The Outermost Mansion and the the series is The Trilogy of Trilogies split into three smaller trilogies or “Triads.”

More previews to follow.

© 2013 

You have spent your life in hard labor and devotion to study the depths of this world.

You have tried to sound the abyss with every intricate cord of your thought.

You have each of your tomes printed prudently in the meaningful script of memory.

All measure of your strength has been spent in trying to find the understanding.

You have your countless inventions, your myriad of theories like fruits on a tree, your numberless paintings of what your senses have whispered to you, and all these things are admirable. They are admirable, but they are yet childish. They are childish because they are only a palmful of sand from an endless desert of terror and beauty.

You have not even begun to find the understanding.

–          from The Zaidōkyō

by Teonoro, Anchorite of Kantō

Year 355 VR

Divine Unrest (A Meditation)

Divine unrest. I’m not sure what it means if you want a strict definition. I do not know of it, but I know it, right now. It’s that feeling of anxiety and restlessness that equals joy. It’s that call from Beyond, so close to your ear that it tickles and irritates you. It’s like the feeling in your muscles when you’ve been sedentary for too long, the strange yearning for lactic acid and soreness. It’s that boredom that produces yearning that produces possibility that produces mystical rapture. It’s when Something needs to happen, but that need becomes a deep, almost romantic love for the Something.

Academic-Speak: A Parody

I am fed up with how most academic scholars choose to write. You’ve all read something like it at some point: those pretentious articles filled with unnecessarily convoluted sentence structures and bizarre word replacements like ‘problematic’ for ‘problem’ or ‘crucialities’ for ‘important stuff.’ Some of the words they use don’t even exist.