This is the best reaction I have read yet by far, and I have read a lot of them. Also interesting that even the New York Times has dipped its toes in similar water. See Ross Douthat, 'Donald Trump, Man of Destiny.' https://archive.ph/qxSh3
Good one. Yeah, definitely better. It's not so much whether Douthat's piece is good or bad. It's only significant because the NYT is a bellwether of sorts. If it's appearing there then you know something is up.
Yeah, yeah -- exactly, right. If the canary of the NYT just stopped singing its usual inanity mid-note, then maybe we're about to see a lot of other underground stuff scrambling for the sunlight, from its self-dug hole...
The dichotomy of being a beneficiary of Grace and declared righteous, yet still needing to be forgiven for our sins. Chosen yet in need of forgiveness. Alleluia, come Lord Jesus!
My suspicion of Constantine is that beneath the scum was also a river. I fully grown human soul. For good or I'll. But here I think there no there there. Jeffer's wrote in 1939 of dog-wrath cored to sick child's soul wailing in Danzig. This also isn't same same but something rhymes. There is more wisp than blood beneath wrap here and anything built on such an empty hollow will only make room for seven more to fill its wound-gape. Humanity is a togetherness and the crooked timber is tree body not a single leaf, especially one so eaten through to mere vein unto vain.
I imagine any sign we are given would be counter to the one we seek. Seeking a sign of which strongman or ideology can make us great is the augur asking the wing "when did you stop beating your wife." The sign given is no one man is anything, cure or disease. Change will be work by people in love with neighbors again and following that music or not all.
Andrew, this is really helpful and incisive: "I imagine any sign we are given would be counter to the one we seek" -- the unexpected, unforeseen, uncontrolled, unimagined inexplicable Thing that happens -- if our poetic vision can rise to it and see it and describe it, and our humility sink low enough to accept it -- can cleanse us of yesterday's idols, yesterday's wishes for ideological wish-fulfillment. I am with you on Constantine (and also Trump by analogy) -- surface scum, immense, moving human depths.
Yes! Peripheral vision. This is good. But don’t forget that once a year you can let go of the vigilance. #Purim I say let’s dance before the Ark! When things get crazy, I tend to get crazier. (Forgive me)
I saw the touch of angels, there. And really, for the first time I was impressed by the guy. That was the finest moment of that sordid man’s sordid life: his reaction to nearly just getting his head blown off was genuine reckless courage—no two ways about that.
Same here, Sethu -- right there with you. I was actually deeply moved, that he could feel the graze of the bullet and bleed, then stand up and yell FIGHT -- he was obviously emotionally moved himself. Deeply moved -- something way beyond just being spooked at the near touch of death, but viscerally triumphant. "Genuine reckless courage" as you said -- that was his instinct. I think we are in a moment in which we genuinely have the option -- in a way we haven't, for a long, long time -- to see this as divine protection, a sign from the heavens, in the old sense.
One thing that amazes me is how deranged some people have become in their hatred and disdain of the man, to the point that they've corrupted their own common sense, not to mention moral and aesthetic judgment. If they can't see the greatness in his response to what happened, I think that just suggests a certain ideologically induced, brainwashed blindness on their part. I have no particular affection for the dirtbag, but still, I believe in calling it like I see it.
Too early to make that call, if we are voting. It may an infamous response. I am unclear how a hunger for adoration and position strong enough to unbalance your sense of caution isn't simply a neutral fitting toward a goal. What the goal is, I would suggest, is where any greatness would be housed. Unless you treat infamy as a type of greatness which is fair, as many do. I with Voltaire on that score. This is not posted in any sense of contention. Text can be ambiguous, so I add that here. Just a honest take.
Hm, I'd say that "great" is more of an aesthetic qualifier than an ethical one; it's not necessarily the same thing as "good". And the notion of a person having evaded murder by an inch responding with a raised fist and a call to fight—well, I think that reflects a certain greatness in the human spirit, which some people might more readily see if it was anyone else.
Fair enough. I don't read it that way I guess. He didn't evade anything as much as stay breathing in the same way he entered wealth, seemingly by a collision of circumstances outside his own effort or ability. I guess aesthetic can be solely surface as seems here. There is a bravado that comes from the interbreeding of stupidity and expectation born of habit. I don't buy greatness as its moniker. The bar is low these days admittedly. This isn't ideologically driven. My son is former special forces so I have been around folks I found very far from my own ideals but recognized undeniable strength and will and principle. It's scent was wholly other. Great photo op and moment though for sure, in a Riefensthalian lens. The firefighter covering his fam. That is the real stuff.
Thanks, Mike -- that is reassuring, as I just sat down and rattled this thing out on a feeling, then sent {so fast I mispelllt one of the only words in the titel of the email}, whereas I normally ponder for days and days...
Not only does it strike me as on the money but it was a balm to me personally as I, an old hippy lefty, so often feel a cognitive disconnect with the right leaning embraces of so many in the orthodox orbit.
Yes, God works with “the crooked timber of humanity”. Something is brewing. The word among some Pentecostal prophet types is that the USA going into a very rough storm followed by a time of fair weather. A correction, chastisement but not utter judgment.
Man, I hope they're right -- correction and chastisement, a time to wake up and fall down in humility, rather than the self-annihilation that we have comin' for us...that would be a mercy.
The shelf life for the prophecies is within the next decade or so I believe. They also typically include Trump becoming president again. An absurd Cyrus I admit, a ruler prophesied in the OT as being beneficial to Israel. Let’s check back on this in ten years. He
Grateful here, too. And my default thought, too, was "just a miss" (and now, knowing a bit about the shooter, maybe the miracle is he even got that close). However, we're in this time of relearning how to think as ancient Christians (or ancient *anything* -- just ancient something, not the Orwellian amnesia of the left), and thinking of it as something like a lucky miss -- i.e. the "normal" way to think -- is not how the ancients would have seen it. So, the question is: How should, or at least could, we see it -- if we really wanted to make serious progress in leaving the enlightenment behind...
This is the best reaction I have read yet by far, and I have read a lot of them. Also interesting that even the New York Times has dipped its toes in similar water. See Ross Douthat, 'Donald Trump, Man of Destiny.' https://archive.ph/qxSh3
Man, thanks so much, Henry. Similar and even better than the Douthat piece, is N. S. Lyon's: "The World-Spirit on a Golf Cart": https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-world-spirit-on-a-golf-cart
Good one. Yeah, definitely better. It's not so much whether Douthat's piece is good or bad. It's only significant because the NYT is a bellwether of sorts. If it's appearing there then you know something is up.
Yeah, yeah -- exactly, right. If the canary of the NYT just stopped singing its usual inanity mid-note, then maybe we're about to see a lot of other underground stuff scrambling for the sunlight, from its self-dug hole...
Very well said Graham!
The dichotomy of being a beneficiary of Grace and declared righteous, yet still needing to be forgiven for our sins. Chosen yet in need of forgiveness. Alleluia, come Lord Jesus!
Love this! What a little smarty pants you are:) https://youtu.be/YeP8bvZn3Fg?si=Z18qyN5bGwlGWuI0
Ha ha ha!!! Thanks for that, Shari!!
My suspicion of Constantine is that beneath the scum was also a river. I fully grown human soul. For good or I'll. But here I think there no there there. Jeffer's wrote in 1939 of dog-wrath cored to sick child's soul wailing in Danzig. This also isn't same same but something rhymes. There is more wisp than blood beneath wrap here and anything built on such an empty hollow will only make room for seven more to fill its wound-gape. Humanity is a togetherness and the crooked timber is tree body not a single leaf, especially one so eaten through to mere vein unto vain.
I imagine any sign we are given would be counter to the one we seek. Seeking a sign of which strongman or ideology can make us great is the augur asking the wing "when did you stop beating your wife." The sign given is no one man is anything, cure or disease. Change will be work by people in love with neighbors again and following that music or not all.
Andrew, this is really helpful and incisive: "I imagine any sign we are given would be counter to the one we seek" -- the unexpected, unforeseen, uncontrolled, unimagined inexplicable Thing that happens -- if our poetic vision can rise to it and see it and describe it, and our humility sink low enough to accept it -- can cleanse us of yesterday's idols, yesterday's wishes for ideological wish-fulfillment. I am with you on Constantine (and also Trump by analogy) -- surface scum, immense, moving human depths.
I'm pretty sure that Trump took *Citizen Kane* as a playbook rather than a cautionary tale, all the way down to building a personal palace in Florida.
Grumpy pants.
Ha. But I am actually joyful just now. Ha! I will try to go toward the Merri as Martin says.
Optimism friend! God is good!
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
Oh I see wonder everywhere. Just not looking on to that center but out to the circling deserters and outliers everywhere.
Yes! Peripheral vision. This is good. But don’t forget that once a year you can let go of the vigilance. #Purim I say let’s dance before the Ark! When things get crazy, I tend to get crazier. (Forgive me)
Man those words resonate with my gut. Scintillating glimpse of the Ruach Hakodesh. History was changed with the turning of the head.
I saw the touch of angels, there. And really, for the first time I was impressed by the guy. That was the finest moment of that sordid man’s sordid life: his reaction to nearly just getting his head blown off was genuine reckless courage—no two ways about that.
Same here, Sethu -- right there with you. I was actually deeply moved, that he could feel the graze of the bullet and bleed, then stand up and yell FIGHT -- he was obviously emotionally moved himself. Deeply moved -- something way beyond just being spooked at the near touch of death, but viscerally triumphant. "Genuine reckless courage" as you said -- that was his instinct. I think we are in a moment in which we genuinely have the option -- in a way we haven't, for a long, long time -- to see this as divine protection, a sign from the heavens, in the old sense.
One thing that amazes me is how deranged some people have become in their hatred and disdain of the man, to the point that they've corrupted their own common sense, not to mention moral and aesthetic judgment. If they can't see the greatness in his response to what happened, I think that just suggests a certain ideologically induced, brainwashed blindness on their part. I have no particular affection for the dirtbag, but still, I believe in calling it like I see it.
Too early to make that call, if we are voting. It may an infamous response. I am unclear how a hunger for adoration and position strong enough to unbalance your sense of caution isn't simply a neutral fitting toward a goal. What the goal is, I would suggest, is where any greatness would be housed. Unless you treat infamy as a type of greatness which is fair, as many do. I with Voltaire on that score. This is not posted in any sense of contention. Text can be ambiguous, so I add that here. Just a honest take.
Hm, I'd say that "great" is more of an aesthetic qualifier than an ethical one; it's not necessarily the same thing as "good". And the notion of a person having evaded murder by an inch responding with a raised fist and a call to fight—well, I think that reflects a certain greatness in the human spirit, which some people might more readily see if it was anyone else.
Fair enough. I don't read it that way I guess. He didn't evade anything as much as stay breathing in the same way he entered wealth, seemingly by a collision of circumstances outside his own effort or ability. I guess aesthetic can be solely surface as seems here. There is a bravado that comes from the interbreeding of stupidity and expectation born of habit. I don't buy greatness as its moniker. The bar is low these days admittedly. This isn't ideologically driven. My son is former special forces so I have been around folks I found very far from my own ideals but recognized undeniable strength and will and principle. It's scent was wholly other. Great photo op and moment though for sure, in a Riefensthalian lens. The firefighter covering his fam. That is the real stuff.
Agreed on the last line.
Macrina the Elder and Gregory Thaumaturgus
Macrina of the persecuted tribe.
High-born and hiding,
Enduring the elements,
Waiting out the
Falling destinies of Rome
With the prayers and precepts
Of Saint Gregory
On the tip of her tongue,
Awaiting a Constantine
Or second coming.
Are we not her contemporaries,
Envisioning her,
Holding her magnification
On the tip of our tongue?
Let us then venerate
Macrina and Gregory
Though we be lesser and
Low-born, we are
Similarly exposed
To a violent wind from Rome.
That poem smashes, Stephen. I love it.
Wisest, truest reaction I’ve read.
Thanks, Mike -- that is reassuring, as I just sat down and rattled this thing out on a feeling, then sent {so fast I mispelllt one of the only words in the titel of the email}, whereas I normally ponder for days and days...
Not only does it strike me as on the money but it was a balm to me personally as I, an old hippy lefty, so often feel a cognitive disconnect with the right leaning embraces of so many in the orthodox orbit.
Yes, God works with “the crooked timber of humanity”. Something is brewing. The word among some Pentecostal prophet types is that the USA going into a very rough storm followed by a time of fair weather. A correction, chastisement but not utter judgment.
Man, I hope they're right -- correction and chastisement, a time to wake up and fall down in humility, rather than the self-annihilation that we have comin' for us...that would be a mercy.
The shelf life for the prophecies is within the next decade or so I believe. They also typically include Trump becoming president again. An absurd Cyrus I admit, a ruler prophesied in the OT as being beneficial to Israel. Let’s check back on this in ten years. He
I thought about Constantine last night. And his giant statue of himself in his New Rome. And wishing for the protection of old.
And, God forgive me, I didn’t imagine seraphic winds deflecting the bullet. Just a miss. Nevertheless grateful for that miss.
Grateful here, too. And my default thought, too, was "just a miss" (and now, knowing a bit about the shooter, maybe the miracle is he even got that close). However, we're in this time of relearning how to think as ancient Christians (or ancient *anything* -- just ancient something, not the Orwellian amnesia of the left), and thinking of it as something like a lucky miss -- i.e. the "normal" way to think -- is not how the ancients would have seen it. So, the question is: How should, or at least could, we see it -- if we really wanted to make serious progress in leaving the enlightenment behind...
My only answer to that question is my conversion to orthodox Christianity: a re-orientation of my perception of reality and a coming home.