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Thelema, or the Trouble With Marrying Will and Virtue

For what I shall sacrifice is my Will, my Thelema Let me go, or I shall commit to you like an unwilling sacrifice No, you couldn’t take any of that Or that you are a labor of love? Or that I forced myself to love you? But do you want me to say that I was made to love you? Anyone could I cannot say that I could not be made—I could be made I do not want that A matrimony of forced labor A unity of puritan starvation If it is, and I’ve got it turned, then a marriage of drudgery may await I think it may be It cannot be so—but in the pit of my heart Reminding them of the futility of their desires  Is this the calling of a Saint, to have one’s spouse as a thorn in their side? Or have I got it wrong? That the Will asks me to burn up all my loves, my peace, my life, for something I do not even like. I cannot believe, try as I might  That the Will asks me to burn up all my loves I cannot believe, try as I might  Again—let me go You are not mine, I cannot be yours Yet that is abhorrent Or I must
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Protestant Enlightenment-ism

Hi Like most, my childhood caricature of Protestantism (and in opposition to it, Catholicism) was that the former was an emotional, impulsive, and naive phenomena, while the latter was a somewhat jaded, objective, and rationalistic phenomena.  Even then, I knew this was a caricature--but it seemed to be true in broadstrokes, even to the opposition. Protestants, for the most part, decried Catholics for their subservience to human reason and works, while Catholics decried Protestants for their fideism and forgetfulness concerning the human. While this is absolutely true in the common egregore of Catholicism and Protestantism (and how can I fault anyone for paying lipservice to an egregore?) this is far from true concerning the historical Catholic/Reformed debate.  Far from true. I think, before getting into the deep, one must consider Catholic teaching on God/Revelation/Inspiration. The Church has continually maintained, sometimes to the surprise of Catholics, that all three of these sub
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Faith and Reason

Between two spaces. I've struggled recently with the Catholic Church's teaching on the relationship between faith and reason, especially as expressed in Vatican One. I'm not posting this to lead anyone astray--the Catholic teaching is the correct one, and any discomfort on my part is due to it being *on my part* and only on my part, due to my own human fallibility. The difficulty comes to me in three ways. 1. It would seem at first glance that nothing could be properly *beyond* human reason. I personally lean Hegelian, and from that I am coming to this discussion with the presupposition that truth always falls under the species of "concept" for the following reason:  if something is, it is true. If it is true, it exists as a concept, an abstract concept as found in a statement. Something intelligible by the intellect. Now, a Hegelian would probably say it exists first as concept and secondly as how it presents itself in individual experience. Maybe that doesn'
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Never Satisfied

I can't seem to please some people. Behind a thousand closed doors, a hundred coping mechanisms, and tens of pretense, the person is inaccessible. Kindness on their part, equal distributed, ever multiplying, seems to spread them thin even if it expands their spirit with a kind of infinitude. Or makes it glow. I don't know, I've been thinking of how to make Tomberg's "unfolding of consciousness" and Teilhard's "enfolding of consciousness" work together in tandem. So I don't know what to say about spreading kindness (an arm of the self) thin. I don't really know. So that's that.  How to reach people like that. Should I? -bjs
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No One Can Take Anything

Pressures.  I feel horrible about it. A hyperbolic comment, mostly in jest, about how someone's 'soothing voice' makes me more receptacle to their 'bad ideas' now has me as the bane of a social group. I was in a conversation about revising the folk songbook, and now people associate my opinions on the songbook with my opinions on someone's 'soothing voice' and 'bad ideas.' I also am frustrated that apostrophes go on the outside of the period, it's so dumb. I offered the person in question the freedom to be a part of the committee of revising the book, but either at the advisement of her friend or something else, this did not seem to satisfy my crime. Never mind, apologies were made. But now of course I feel awful about it. I wish I didn't immediately feel terrible after someone apologizes. It makes me feel like I'm in the wrong, and maybe I was. I suspect that most of this blog will be about subjects like this. Bleh. I wish I wasn'
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Christogenesis

I'm back. Crummily. The most intuitive response to the interrelationship of nature, man, and Christ would seem to be that the end of nature is man, and that the end of man is Christ. This would seem to be the intuitive, obvious response. And it was in the past. "Man is a Miracle" says Pico, quoting Hermes. Man is the microcosm of the macrocosm--the universe. His dignity is universally significant. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the end of man, be it by theosis or deification or whatever name you give to the process. The Christian path renews and raises man, and by extension nature, to a kind of godliness. Very well. That is not the commonplace conception at all. The most commonplace conception is of course the secular one, which is more suited to be the subject of another conversation. The second most commonplace conception of the "nature-man-Christ" trichotomy is some disjointed and strange placement of nature as a kind of open-world "canvas" where man act
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The Antiheroes of Modern Christendom

 24/09/21     Seeing (and reading) the timeless folk tale  Coraline  has made me consider in some depth the author of Coraline, Mr. Neil Gaiman--but not him on his own; but rather with the other Neil Gaimans of recent in the literary developments of Christendom. I am speaking of the Oscar Wildes and the Andy Warhols of our times--namely, those wild and wonderful artists who seem to have danced the line dividing heterodoxy and holiness throughout their entire lives, perhaps up to their respective deaths.     Odd, odd men. Neoliberals, homosexuals, minimalists, abstractionists... Artists on whom could be written two cent rags and tabloids. A quick Wikipedia search reveals more than one would desire to know. Yet I feel that each pulsates with a form of orthodoxy that perhaps once their souls were conformed to, and which, inadvertently or not, they cannot help but express. Souls who are so attached to their crooked ways, though look on fondly at the "lighter path" of Catholicism
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The Saga of Søren

 “Twas the night of the Lome, when all that was good, was smuggled away, away from the Wood, and the children, they scream, and the parents’ brows furrow, at every mink skin and every hare burrow. Every Mass sermon and every Church bell, tolls uneasy, with the thought of hell; the reminders of Bosch*, and his outlandish dreams, disrupts every sleeper, cuts holes in the seams, of every wall keeping the dark and surreal, away from our minds, away from our meals, and the Owl, she cry, and and the boar, outgrabe*; such was the night, when the Whale of the labe, would wake all the shroom, whose cry would alarm, and sound the doom, of the Beast of the Hills, the Valleys, and Mounts, whose very death cry was enough to flaunt, the rapier of Saint Volga, Anderson surname, whose name lasts the years and souls which had came, who tested the will of the Beast of the Hills, and struck him in chest; twas enough to kill. The eye will be found and the crowd will be quiet; the fact will be made so that
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Thoughts on the New Missal

Thoughts on the Nature of the New Missal The Catholic Church, given the divine mandate to convert all nations, was brought into existence in its wholeness at Pentecost--yet her most ancient and profound ritual predates this event noticeably. This ritual, as you may have guessed, is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass--the memorial and true reenactment of Christ’s Passion on the Cross for our sakes. The Holy Mass, defined as “...a true and proper Sacrifice” 1 by the Magisterium, is the peak and epitome of our faith as the Church Militant. It stands for and is truly the timeless redemption of man and our participation in that reception. The priest, in persona Christi, intercedes on our behalf to the throne of Heaven, where the outpouring of graces meet their recipients. The chalice, the bread--ancient symbols stemming from the first priesthood of Melchizedek--made into the blood and body of Christ at the first Eucharist at the Last Supper, as it was instituted by Christ to make present his
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