Monday, October 26, 2015

St Crispin's Day Fellowship

Yesterday a good day of fellowship from morning till evening. After Mass got to see some new friends again and talk about things like homeschooling, G.K. Chesterton especially his slim little volume of "Orthodoxy", the Narnia tales, the wonderful idea God had to make the sexes so unique from one another and how the culture seems hurriedly bent on erasing any distinction, the poetic power that is in God's paintbrush.... then in the evening with more friends for a St Crispin Day party where there were recitations of the speech, costumes of the Henry the V time period.... and then the Kenneth Branagh version of the film. And pumpkin martinis to watch the movie by. Well, autumn is a good time.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

As One Who is Technilogically Challenged

Well I am now thoroughly convinced (if there was ever any doubt) that I am severely, perhaps irretrievably, technologically challenged. This conclusion manifested itself in trying to merely print a receipt and send it to the PRINT TO PAY option from one of these Gordon College computers. After 45 minutes spent in downloading the receipt as a document, copying and pasting, opening up multiple windows, dragging from one window to another, getting passwords and PINs, searching ...for icons that would guide one who is more familiar with Middle English than with the latest WORD processing languages, all I had to finally do in the end was pointed out by the college girl at the help desk. She tried to hide her mirth at my helplessness in the face of such rocket science as printing a document. She pointed to the PRINT icon. "Perhaps you should press that?" She put it as a question which was thoughtful of her to not so highlight my ignorance. I thanked her for the 'suggestion'. Yes, hit PRINT again. Seems so intuitive, the kind of intuition that I evidently am almost completely devoid of. Well in less technological times where one just needed to locate a pencil sharpener (do these artifacts still exist anywhere but in museums of antiquity?) and sharpen the #2 and then set to copying. In the end, it seems to this Neanderthal that such an instrument as a primitive pencil is especially preferable to a keyboard and a tablet of paper to these flat screens. I do fervently believe if Dickens had not the pen but was saddled with such options as PRINT TO PAY he might never have finished even Pickwick.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Gender Uniformity

Gender uniformity is so pervasive that even those that are thoroughly aware of other nefarious novelties are unaware of this one. My post was inicidentally brought about by yet another post of a young woman in fatigues and sporting an automatic weapon. This grieves my spirit for I think even the conservatives have fallen for this unisex culture. Men should rise to the defence of women and not vice versa. I really believe this is so against our nature. Adam was negligent of his protection of Eve. This does not mean as the feminist's claim that the woman is inferior she needs protection. Could it not mean that she is of inestimable value just like the delicate stativarious is of even greater worth than the durable plywood guitar?

The Decry of Femininities in the Female and Diversity

It strikes me as odd that those that shout most vociferously for diversity seem to be so against it with regard to gender. So many these days seem to decry any femininities in the female as if femininity was a fatal flaw in them and that the more masculine they became the more liberated. Is not such an ideology an infiltrator that seeks to erase the gap of glorious uniqueness between man woman? Might there have been a time when the word 'unisex' would've been the most ridiculous notion? And yet now we seek to enshrine all that would make the girl more boyish and the boy more girlish as if the difference was only a mere cultural construct. Such a notion seems to me a most unfortunate and unnatural novelty that has been so repeated to us that we are completely unaware of our current lack of diversity here?

Random Nature Our Instigator?

In hearing that our life here is all there is and brought about by random Nature the question occurs to my mind: If randomness is the cause or the method by which we all came to be how does any order come about? Especially the order of the mind? How could order occur if disorder is the instigator? What credibility can we give a mere sentence defined as a complete thought? How does it happen that we are able to utter such ordered things and those that hear or read them are able to decipher them? In other words you have a mass of disorganized autumn leaves: do they order themselves unless helped by an intelligence at the end of a rake or leaf blower?

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Compelled

This is so evident in every day life: in the causes we are compelled to be compassionate for; in the ever new 'holidays' we are compelled to celebrate; in the compelling of the worship of the new transcendent testament of medicine and our new saviors, the men and women of science; of the new paradigms of gender we are compelled to consider; in the following of the secular faith with its determined dogmas, of the new orthodoxy that one must not transgress in lieu of excommunication by the established secular magisterium.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

A Fortuitous Set of Coincidences?

Can we look at the universe and decide that the proper mix of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, the proper distance of the sun and its production of light and heat and how it reaches earth and the atmospheric conditions that filter out the harmful ultraviolet rays but allow in the life-giving photosynthetic pleasures of the plants, that the way water behaves in its unorthodox way (compared all other liquids) where it ceases to contract and inexplicably begins instea...d to expand as it does when the temperature descends below forty degrees, that acorns the size of thumbnails grow into oak trees, that these same trees exhale oxygen while we inhale it and also complement each other in the case of carbon dioxide, that the various systems that cause biological being are in place in humans, squirrels, cats, birds, centipedes and cause us to reproduce, live; how is it that grass revives each spring? how is it that babies are born from the gift of man and woman, of male and female in all the species of living things? how is it that even the most rudimentary rock exists? What in the world, may I ask, gives the rock its rockness and its weight?

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Space Station

While out on the dock with the band playing our usual Tuesday night gig people sitting on the park benches began to look up at the night sky and there it was: the space station zipping across the black sky with the speed of a water skimmer skimming across still water. You could see its brightness, its odd shape different from a plane or satilite, its speed that was hurrying through the heavens. Sometimes you are upstaged. And sometimes you are upstaged by a space station.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

After Reading RLS's "Walking Tours"

Been a while since I've been able to get out into the woods but after reading RLS's "Walking Tours" I must get out to the Wenham woods and make a go of it. I've missed being among the birches, beeches, tupelo, and oak; pine and hemlock, the possibility of coming upon black water snakes sunning on the shore of Gull Pond, the chance to hear only the natural sounds of leaves played upon by a hesitant breeze, observing the golden rod and the brave bees that even in the chill still work the flowers; the path itself accepting the footfall as a contemplative offering.