The Arrow's Path

"You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." -Charles Buxton I have not the foggiest idea what Charles Buxton this quote is referring to. I found the quote in a poorly referenced book. There were several of that name in history. One of a beer brewer and entrepreneur. Another, whom I am inclined to believe is the Buxton quoted above, was a radical off-again, on-again Member of British Parliament in the early 20th century from World War I to the late 1930s. He would win his seat for a while then lose his seat and win it back again several times. This Charles Buxton was a bit of a radical. For a while, member of the Liberal Party and later the Labour Party. He opposed both World Wars. In fact, he was one of the few voices in Parliament with the moral courage to advocate for a negotiated settlement with Germany that allowed everyone to save a little face while stopping the mass killings and not continue fighting to the bitter end so as to get an un...

 "Who can grasp the Lord’s meaning in his creation and beyond it? Who can tie up with a short string the unbounded bouquet of wisdom? Who can tame the jungle of his incomprehensibility? See how man’s spirit and whole being lies, like the bowl of an impetuous fountain, under the downpour of so many mysteries. Let it gush! By letting it gush you will grasp what you can, and what you can is to be a bowl for the flood. Open up heart and brain and do not attempt to clutch tightly. By being washed out you will become purified. The strange thing that flows through you is precisely the meaning you seek. … Everything must enter this current, like icefloes that crack open under the sun with a roar and lose their own shape and roll out to the sea in a mighty tumble. But this movement is produced by the heartbeat at the Center, and what appeared to be a chaotic impulse is the blood circulating in the Body of the cosmic Christ. This is the body in which you are to flow, letting y...

Someone on a Facebook group I admin for passed this along for discussion in the group. My response follows:  "Protestant Friend: We are all born sinners but baptism does not cleanse sin, it’s the next step of obedience from repentance and belief. The age of accountability differs between each child, there’s no set age, it’s just when they can say they believe in the gospel (Mark 16:16) The Baptist church is not Protestant because we never protested the Catholic Church, everything we believe comes out of the Bible which is why scripture needs to back up everything. Being saved is by grace through faith and not of works, it’s not something we have to earn or work for, it’s a gift given by God. There’s no Limbo There’s no purgatory And of course we worship the saints and Mary." My general response: Firstly, just a general reminder that we need to operate in charity. Even with what seems to be very close-minded people who are saying things that are factually untrue, we still h...

 

 An assistant priest at my parish wrote this very amazing piece about the death of his nephew that he got to baptize before he died. It is worth a read. It was basically the homily he preached for Good Friday this year.

 

 Father, look with love upon your people, the love which our Lord Jesus Christ showed us when he delivered himself to evil men and suffered the agony of the cross, for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. — Amen. -Closing prayer from the Office of Morning Prayer, Catholic Breviary. 

I have discovered in the last year that I love board games. I had to largely give up video games because I have been getting occasional migraines, and sometimes starting at flashing computers screens can trigger them. When I say board games, I do not the moldy oldies that everyone has played (and probably hates) like Monopoly or Clue , but a lot of the new wave of games that have been published in the last 10 years that are amazing. Many even come with Solo player modes now where you can play by yourself. There are some really amazing ones out there like Terraforming Mars and Spirit Island . I discovered a really fun one last week. It's cheap and small called Beaver Creek . It is a bit hard to find, but you can find it as of this writing on gaming sites like boardgamebliss.com or the Jungle River (I don't advocate buying from the 'Zon, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do to find some items.) This game is sort of a combination of Jenga and Pick Up Sticks . Y...

    The significance of the palms in the reading from Mark’s Gospel (11:1-10) that we heard at the beginning of Mass is not merely symbolic. The palms carry profound spiritual meaning for us as followers of Christ. Palms were a symbol of victory and triumph in ancient times, often waved to honor heroes and conquerors. As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah, the crowds recognized Him as their victorious King, the one who would deliver them from oppression and usher in the Kingdom of God.     The palms, however, not only represent victory but also humility. Jesus, the Son of God, chose to enter Jerusalem not on a    magnificent steed befitting a worldly king, but on a humble donkey, embodying the humility and meekness that characterize His kingdom. His choice of transportation was a deliberate proclamation of His mission: to bring salvation not through earthly power and might, but through sacrificial love and hu...

 

😅 I have no use for Luther, but credit where credit is due to LutherSatire.

     So, I finally went to the movie theater and watched the Cabrini movie. I was a little disappointed. It's well filmed and the cinematography is good. It's worth seeing if you like period dramas. I do not see a reason you have to catch it in the theater. In fact, I think it would be better to wait until it comes out on streaming or DVD (Do they still make DVDs? asking for a friend...) I say that because it's like 10 minutes longer than Dune 2, which I am not sure how or why that is even possible. I dislike films that go over 2 hours. I very seldomly encounter a film that needs that sort of length, and this film did not. So, unnecessarily length is my first gripe.     My other gripe is the lack of theological substance. Now, I was not expecting it to be overly preachy. This was a general audience movie theater film and not a documentary from EWTN. So, I get that. They were trying to make Cabrini's story accessible to all crowds, not just the religious Ca...

 I moderate a Facebook group for Catholic Converts. Someone posed a question today for the ground that I thought was very good. " What was the one thing you learned in RCIA that made such an impact on you, that you knew you had made the right decision in becoming Catholic?" The following was my answer... I don't know if it was so much actually in RCIA but in my personal conversion process as I was doing serious research on what the Catholic Church actually taught. My spiritual director at the time had given me a copy of the Catechism and told me to read it through and see if there were any "deal breakers" and go from there.    There was one series of sections about Catholic social justice in the middle that honestly scared me. Coming from the Episcopal church as clergy where terms like "social justice" were code words for extreme political agenda that were used to bludgeon opponents, I very much feared that that would be the deal breaker. B...

So, finally got around to seeing Dune 2 , which is a designation I don't care for. It's really not a sequel. It's just the continuation of the first movie, which stopped right after the Harkonnen attack House Atreides on Arrakis. Really, the first film only got to the very start of the good part of the novel when Paul Atreides first encountered the Fremen on Dune. So, really "Dune 2" is just the good part of the first novel. SPOILER ALERTS: I AM GOING TO NOW DISCUSS THE FILM. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.  I had mixed feelings about going to see this movie. I did not particularly care for the first one, but Dune is one of my all time favorite Science Fiction novels. I have read the entire series, as well as the expanded prequel universe his son wrote, the Butlerian Jihad trilogy being by far the best of his son's work. They got progressively worse as they went along after that.  Really, the first 4 original Frank Herbert novels are all amazing in their own right. Th...

  In 1890, a poem was published in England by a homeless man named Francis Thompson. He had submitted the poem to a magazine at the urging of a Catholic priest who had been counseling him for his chronic opium addiction and recognized the beauty of the man’s writings. The editor of the Catholic magazine was also so impressed with the poem that he went into the streets and searched out this homeless poet and found him lodging at a halfway house. The poem, entitled “The Hound of Heaven,” quickly became one of the most famous religious poems in the English language and had a profound impact on later writers like JRR Tolkien, GK Chesterton, and Robert Frost because the poem tells the story of a human soul who tries to flee from God. The soul thinks that it will lose its freedom in the company of God, but ultimately finds that only true freedom can be found in God’s loving embrace. This theme is at the center of today’s Mass readings. In the reading from 2nd Chronicles (36...

The podcast Journey to the Stage did a great interview with poet Malcolm Guite. Here is part two . He talks about poetry and Tolkien, etc. I had the great pleasure of meeting Guite when I was in Cambridge. He's a lovely chap and a true English National Treasure.

Today, the Gospel reading confronts the hearers today with a profound image of Jesus performing an act that seems out of character for Jesus. The act might seem excessive, or even violent. Did Jesus, in fact, act out of violence in today’s reading? This is a depiction of Jesus that would seem to be at odds with the more peaceful images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd or of the loving Son of the Father who dies for the world for the forgiveness of sins. To give a little background to the Gospel passage, the first reading is from the Book of Exodus (20: 1-17) . The story tells of the giving of the Ten Commandments, which form the foundation of God's covenant with His people. Among these commandments is the injunction, "You shall not kill." This commandment reminds us of the sacredness of human life and the inherent dignity of every person. It calls us to reject violence in all its forms and to strive for peace and reconciliation in our relationships. The Psalmist ( Psalm 19...

As I posted a few weeks ago, I follow politics and I vote (or at least try to). Being a leftover Jeffersonian agrarian, there is not much left on the Federal level that much enthuses me any more. We have a sham Federal election every 2 years, but the two headed uni-party has been in control of the American system for so long that they have rigged the entire system to virtually ensure one or the other of the so-called political parties always has power. These so called parties try really hard to spin the tale of the idea that we really have a choice as the American voters, but it is not really a choice. They try to spin is as Liberal versus Conservative, but there really are not any true Jeffersonian Conservatives any more on the Federal level. Republicans try to pretend to be Conservative, but they are really still the party of Lincoln. Lincoln was by far the farthest to the Left of all the candidates who ran for President in 1860. Most modern Republicans, despite howls to the contrary...