something to remember

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

They came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Pastor Martin Neimoeller

What I told my kids about Christmas

Christmas is approaching, a time of year that I dread. It's not the religious significance that I don't like--it is, after all, the Celebration of the Nativity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It's the commercialism.

Yes, I know that sounds trite. But it's true.

Christmas has become chri$$ma$. All those dollar signs. All those purchases. Stimulate the economy. Buy something for them. Or just Buy.

So this year I decided to do something different. Their mother was taking them to the toy store this afternoon to look for a gift for their two-and-a-half year old little brother. They weren't particularly pleased. Their little brother routinely messed up their rooms, took their toys, stood in front of the television when they were watching it, made noise when they were trying to listen to something, cried a lot and got most of the attention from Mom and Dad. No, they weren't pleased at the prospect of spending an afternoon in a toy store where they couldn't get anything for themselves but had to find something for him instead.

So I told them something from the heart: the best part of Christmas is not in the getting of gifts, but in the giving.

They rolled their eyes.

"I know that, Dad," said my daughter.

"I know you do," I replied. "And do you know the name of that feeling you get when someone gives you exactly what you were needing, you were wanting, you were looking for, hoped for and missed not having so so much that you'd do anything you could to get it?"

"Like the Littlest Pet Show Zoo?" my daughter asked.

"Yep. Or the coolest Spiderman wrist rocket that shoots real webs," I told my son.

He nodded, eyes serious.

"Now, what's the name of that feeling you get inside?"

She thought for a moment, then responded. "Happy?"

I smiled. "That's right. Now, what Christmas tells us is that there is something that feels even better than that. That feeling comes when you give someone that feeling."

"Happy happy?" laughed my son. "Have a happy happy christmas!"

I shook my head. "No, we say have a MERRY Christmas. Only most people have forgotten what merry means. But now you two know."

With that I closed the door on the minivan and waved at them all as my wife backed the vehicle out of the driveway.

May you have a very, Merry Christmas.

There are four kinds of people in the world:

1. Those who read books.
2. Those who write books.
3. Those who sell books.
4. Those who ignore books.
   

Which are you?

something amazing

My good friend BZ sent this to me. He was pretty amazed by it, as was I.
I modified it slightly to remove the names. The photo on the left is of the flowers he is speaking about....

Dear family and friends...

Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the death of my mother-in-law. She was an amazing person in many ways, and she is greatly missed by all who knew her. I wanted to share with all of you something I believe is a special sign from her that all is well and that she's watching over us.

My wife and I have lived in our house for 17 years, and every year the space on the East side of the house would get overgrown with nasty, thick weeds. This year I was going to get the strongest weed killer I could find and spray that whole area, but for some reason I just haven't made the time to do so.

Two nights ago as I was messing with the grill, trying to get it lit, I happened to look back at the already overgrown weed patch and couldn't believe what I saw.

There in the middle of all that ugliness was a beautiful bunch of daisies!

Again, we've never had anything but ugly weeds back there, and here on this sad anniversary date we were treated to this amazing sight!... By the way, can you all guess what my mother-in-law's favorite flower was?...

something sad

Someone sent me this photo, along with a whole bunch of others who are heavily tattooed, pierced, scarred and otherwise voluntarily mangled. This one, however, is the one that caught my attention the most.

What happened to this person during the course of his or her life to cause them to wind up this way? At one time this was a little infant child, helpless and dependent upon the world. Cute and precious beyond anything. And now?

There is much sadness in these eyes. Just look for it. Beyond the piercings, the cuttings, colorings and distortions. Look in his eyes.

something funny

According to the newspaper article, a man named John Beahan sent them this:

A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier.

Because of hectic schedules, the husband left Minnesota and flew to Florida on Thursday, with his wife flying down the following day. The husband checked into the hotel. There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an e-mail to his wife. However, he accidently left out one letter in her e-mail address and, without realizing his error, sent the e-mail.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned home from her husband's funeral. He was a minister who had had a heart attack and died. The widow decided to check her e-mail, expecting messages from relatives and friends.

After reading the first message, she screamed and fainted. The widow's son rushed into the room and saw the computer screen, which read:

TO: My Loving Wife

Subject: I've Arrived

Date: October 16, 2004

I know you are surprised to hear from me.

They have computers here now and you

are allowed to send e-mails to your loved ones.

I've just arrived and have been checking in.

I see that everything has been prepared for your

arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then!

Hope your jouney is an uneventful as mine was.

P.S. Sure is freaking hot down here!

something funny

Received via e-mail, original author unknown:

A man in Phoenix calls his son in New York City two days before Christmas.

'I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing,' he says. 'Forty-five years is enough.'

'Pop, what are you talking about?' the son screams.

'We can't stand the sight of each other any longer,' the father says. 'I'm sick of talking about this, soyou call your sister in Chicago and tell her.'

Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone.

'Like heck they're getting divorced,' she shouts. 'I'll take care of this!'

She calls her parents immediately, and screams at her father, 'You are NOT getting divorced. Don't do a single thing until I get there. I'm calling my brother back, and we'll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don't do a thing!'

The father hangs up his phone and turns to his wife.

'OK,' he says; "the kids are coming for Christmas and paying their own way.'

say something, anything

The word made its way slowly through the gossips and within a few days we all knew he had returned.

By then the crowds had begun filling the market street. His pilgrims were hot and dusty from their trek into Capernaum, and the sheer number of them made it difficult for me to keep an eye on any one of them. Marlev demanded I pay him extra to work into the afternoon, but I didn't put up much of a haggle. It was quite clear that even after paying him an additional shekel or two, I was still going to make quite a profit.

By midafternoon my stall was empty and I had closed for the day. Marlev got his pay and I took the rest to Eldorn the money changer for safekeeping. The pilgrims were everywhere, and the closer I got to home the more there were. The street was packed. People were standing shoulder to shoulder and I could barely get my way through. Children were perched on their father's shoulders to avoid harm else they might get trampled. They were a nuisance, dirty and I couldn't wait to get through them and into the safe and quiet of my home.

Across the way I saw Marlev fighting through the crowd, coming towards me. He began shouting my name and calling me over to him. His face was flushed and his clothes were dusty.

"We need your help," he shouted over the noise of the crowd.

I shook my head and waved him away. He fought the crowd and was able to get closer.

"No," he said. He paused for a moment to catch his breath. "You must help us with Shaphan. We've got to get him inside."

He turned and pointed to a doorway of a house just up the street. The doorway was open but I couldn't see into the building because of the people who were standing near the entrance. I could see that there was no way anyone, let alone Shaphan, was going to get in there.

I shook my head. "I've got things to do. Find someone else."

Before I could turn he grabbed my shoulder.

"This is important," he exclaimed. "He is inside, the one they are calling the Messiah. He can heal Shaphan."

I shrugged.

He reached in his pouch and pulled out the three coins I had paid him earlier. "Help me for this then." He put the coins in my hand. "It's all I have."

I hesitated for a moment then quickly pocketed the coins before he could change his mind. "Alright," I replied. "Where is he?"

Marlev turned and began pushing his way back through the crowd, crossing the street. I followed in his wake as best I could. He stopped near a pair of men who were standing over Shaphan, who was lying on his mat.

Shaphan and I had been friends once, back when he could walk. After his fall, however, I didn't have much company with him. I wasn't much fond of beggars, which was all Shaphan did since he could no longer do a normal man's work. I didn't know the other two men, but by their ages and the excitement in their eyes I could see that they were infected with the same fervor as Marlev. They talked amongst themselves. One of them wanted us to carry Shaphan on our shoulders and march through the crowd as a group to get him to the doorway. Marlev disagreed. By the looks of the crowd we weren't going to be going anywhere.

Suddenly, Shaphan spoke up. "The roof. Drop me through the roof."

I looked at the roof of the building we were trying to reach. Like the rest of the block, it had a thatch and roped cover. If we could find a way onto the roof, we might be able to break through the thatch. We could then lower him down....

By the time we were able to get Shaphan on the roof, I had realized that Marlev had gotten the better part of the deal. Shaphan was heavy, it was dusty and I was getting hot. We quickly pulled apart the thatch roofing and made a hole big enough to fit Shaphan through. With a heave we were able to get him through the hole and begin to lower his swinging body down onto the crowd. He was heavy.

"He's down," whispered Marlev. "And there's the Messiah."

I brushed one of the other two men away from the opening in the roof and looked down on the head of a man who was standing before the temple crowd.

"Why are you thinking such things in your hearts?" I heard the man say.

He pointed at the scribes one by one. "Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise, pick up your mat and walk'?"

He went over to Shaphan, who was up on one elbow, watching.

"But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth," he said loudly, still facing Shaphan. "I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home!"

The room was still as we all watched Shaphan, reclined upon his mat.

There was silence.

Even the bugs had stopped their chirping outside.

From my angle, I could see his eyes. They were wide, gazing in adoration at the figure standing above him.

Shapah lifted his head.

Then stood.

The crowd gasped.

Shaphan looked down at the people seated on the floor. At the scribes seated before him. Then he bent down and picked up his mat. He didn't say a word. The crowd was silent. Shapan slowly made his way through the crowd to the door.

"Shaphan," I said.

He stopped.

Everyone looked at me.

The man they called the Messiah looked at me. Right in the eyes. And He knew what I was thinking. And He knew what I wanted to say even better than I did.

He saw my heart.

He saw my secrets.

He knew it was I who had pushed Shaphan off the wall.

My mouth went dry.

Everyone was looking at me.

Waiting for me to say something.

Anything.

something funny

Emailed to me so don't know the original source:

A farmer named Clyde had a car accident.

In court, the trucking company's lawyer was questioning Clyde.... "Didn't you say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine,'" asked the lawyer?

Clyde responded, "Well, I'll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favorite mule, Bessie, into the..."

"I didn't ask for any details", the lawyer interrupted. "Just answer the question? Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, "I'm fine!"?

Clyde said, "Well, I had just got Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road...."

The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."

By this time, the Judge was fairly interested in Clyde's answer and said to the lawyer, "I'd like to hear what he has to say about his favorite mule, Bessie".

Clyde thanked the Judge and proceeded, "Well as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into the trailer and was driving her down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side. I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other. I was hurting, real bad and didn't want to move. However, I could hear ole Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans.

Shortly after the accident a Highway Patrolman came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning so he went over to her. After he looked at her, he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes. Then the Patrolman came across the road, gun in hand, looked at me, and said "How are you feeling?"

Now what the hell was I supposed to say?"

What the Shi'ites are fighting for

Found this article in today's London Times (03 October 2006) :

Waiting for the imam's return to Earth

THE followers of Moqtada al-Sadr believe that the US invaded Iraq to prevent the return to Earth of their sect’s messiah-like figure, the Mahdi, or 12th imam.
Hojatoleslam al-Sadr claims that his militia is preparing for the day when the Mahdi, the last direct descendent of the revered Shia figure Ali, reappears. Shia believe that the Mahdi, who disappeared in 868, will bring justice to Earth.

At a prayer service in the central Iraqi city of Kufa on September 15, the cleric told a crowd of thousands that the Americans were collecting a dossier on the Mahdi to prevent his return. “Did you ever ask yourself about why all of this, the bloodshed and the prisons? Why are the brothers fighting each other for a political game planned by the Americans? This all happened because they (the Americans) are waiting for the Mahdi. This planning started ten years ago. They have a big file for Imam Mahdi and they just need his picture to complete it.”

Hojatoleslam al-Sadr and his advisers are convinced that the Americans want to destroy Islam and stop the Mahdi. “The Americans are trying to hijack Islamic movements. They think that these are serving the Mahdi’s interests. Whatever they did in Afghanistan and Iraq are all attempts to hijack the Mahdi’s return.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2385384,00.html



I did find this in the Christian Science Monitor about Iran:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1221/p01s04-wome.html

But nothing else. Hmm.. how come we don't see anything about this in the Des Moines Register? Or any US paper, for that matter?

The Rules for Being Human

I found The Rules for Being Human crumpled in the corner of an envelope full of papers I brought back with me from my travels in Asia. While a google search came up with a number of other sites which purport to have the "true" rules, I noted that many of them were slanted towards or against some political or religious entity.

These, on the other hand, are just as I received them. Incidently, I myself did not come up with the rules. My copy is unfortunately not attributed. It would have been interesting to see who claimed to have been the first person throughout humanity to discover the rules.

The Rules for Being Human

1. YOU WILL RECEIVE A BODY

You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2. YOU WILL LEARN LESSONS

You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.

3. THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, ONLY LESSONS

Growth is a process of trial and error: experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately "works."

4. A LESSON IS REPEATED UNTIL LEARNED

A lesson will be present to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

5. LEARNING LESSONS DOES NOT END

There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6. "THERE" IS NO BETTER THAN "HERE"

When your "there" has become a "here," you will simply obtain another "there" that will, again, look better than "here."

7. OTHERS ARE MERELY MIRRORS OF YOU

You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

8. WHAT YOU MAKE OF YOUR LIFE IS UP TO YOU

You have all the tools and resources you need, what you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. YOUR ANSWERS LIE INSIDE YOU

The answers to life's questions lie inside you. All you need do is look, listen and trust.

10. YOU WILL FORGET ALL THIS!

Why I am an undecided.


I still don't know who am I going to vote for this coming election.

Bush or Kerry.

There doesn't appear to be much difference between the two, when you get right down to it.

Bush and Kerry are both Yale Grads who belonged to the Skull and Bones club. Both are wealthy, connected through bloodlines to countless past presidents and the current royal family of the U.K. They own planes, drive large boats and have houses all over the country.

They are no more similiar to you and I than a zookeeper is to the orangutans he tends.


The military appears to be split between Bush and Kerry.

Some of those with whom Kerry served has said that he is a hero. Others have called him a liar. Everyone has taken a side in the issue.

I thought about voting for Nader. He has identified the real problems in the world. His only difficulty is that no one really wants to listen to him. Yes, Ralph, we all know you are right but practically speaking, it ain't never gonna change....

Whomever is elected president will face a United States at war, under attack from well-funded Islamic terrorists who despise our way of life and very existence; a United States with a sagging economy, a health insurance collapse and comprised mostly of lazy fat people.

It's a hell of a job, being the President of the United States.

And I can't decide which of these two poor bastards truly deserves it.

An Interview with Mr. Hilaire Belloc

Some have considered Mr. Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) to be one of the most famous and influential Catholic historians of the past two centuries. In 1938, he wrote what many maintain was his greatest book, The Great Heresies. In that work, he reminded us all of the need to remember our history:

"Today we are accustomed to think of the Mohammedan world as something backward and stagnant, in all material affairs at least. We cannot imagine a great Mohammedan fleet made up of modern ironclads and submarines, or a great modern Mohammedan army fully equipped with modern artillery, flying power and the rest. But not so very long ago, less than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, the Mohammedan Government centred at Constantinople had better artillery and better army equipment of every kind than had we Christians in the West. The last effort they made to destroy Christendom was contemporary with the end of the reign of Charles II in England and of his brother James and of the usurper William III. It failed during the last years of the seventeenth century, only just over two hundred years ago. Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history--September 11, 1683." The Great Heresies, Hilaire Belloc, Tan Books and Publishers, Inc. (first published 1938, reprint 1991) , pp. 70-71. (bold and red color added.)

During the course of The Great Heresies, Mr. Belloc discussed what he believed to be the final heresy that the Catholic Church will confront, the "Modern Attack." While reading it, I was shocked and somewhat frightened by Mr. Belloc's description of the Church's final enemy. What he referred to back in 1938 as the time of the "Anti-Christ" was strikingly similar to our present day. I only wished that he was still alive and would be interviewed on EWTN so that more people would hear what he had to say.

This got me thinking and the end result is this faux interview. I did not interview Mr. Belloc. He has been dead for more than 50 years. Instead, I took chapter 7 of his book, The Great Heresies, and converted it to his responses to my questions. The answers are almost entirely taken word-for-word from Mr. Belloc's book. So as to cause no question, any additions I have made to his response (other than convert parenthesis to dashes) is in blue. While I have done my best to ensure everything has been typed word-for-word, any errors are with me and not Mr. Belloc or the text.

It is my hope that this interview will get you to read the entire work and purchase a copy or two for your friends and family.

* * * * * *

Niko: These days it seems socially acceptable if not "politically correct" to attack Catholicism and the Church, be it in the press, movies or just daily conversation. Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" or movies such as "The Matrix" have revived the old Gnostic heresy. Is this just my imagination or is something going on?

HB: Well, the Catholic Faith is now in the presence not of a particular heresy as in the past--the Arian, the Manichean, the Albigensian, the Mohammedan--nor is it in the presence of a sort of generalized heresy as it was when it had to meet the Protestant revolution from three to four hundred years ago. The enemy which the Faith now has to meet, and which may be called "The Modern Attack," is a wholesale assault upon the fundamentals of the Faith--upon the very existence of the Faith.

Niko: Are you saying that war has been declared on the Catholic Church?

HB: The forces now opposed to the Faith design to destroy. The battle is henceforward engaged upon a definite line of cleavage, involving the survival or destruction of the Catholic Church. And all--not a portion--of its philosophy.

Niko: But I thought the Catholic Church was to be eternal?

HB: We know, of course, that the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed. But what we do not know is the extent of the area over which it will survive; its power of revival or the power of the enemy to push it further and further back on to its last defences until it may seem as though anti-Christ had come and the final issue was about to be decided. Of such moment is the struggle immediately before the world.

Niko: So it's not just my imagination, then, something is going on....

HB: The truth is becoming every day so much more obvious that within a few years it will be universally admitted. I do not entitle the modern attack "anti-Christ"--though in my heart I believe that to be the true term for it: No, I do not give it that name because it would seem for the moment exaggerated. But the name doesn't matter. Whether we call it "The Modern Attack" or "anti-Christ" it is all one; there is a clear issue now joined between the retention of Catholic morals, tradition, and authority on the one side, and the active effort to destroy them on the other. The modern attack will not tolerate us. It will attempt to destroy us. Nor can we tolerate it. We must attempt to destroy it as being the fully equipped and ardent enemy of the Truth by which men live. The duel is to the death.

Niko: What can you tell us about this new or, as you put it, modern attack?

HB: Well, we find, to begin with, that it is at once materialist and superstitious. There is here a contradiction in reason, but the modern phase, the anti-Christian advance, has abandoned reason. It is concerned with the destruction of the Catholic Church and the civilization preceding therefrom. It is not troubled by apparent contradictions within its own body so long as the general alliance is one for the ending of all that by which we have hitherto lived. The modern attack is materialistic because in its philosophy it considers only material causes. It is superstitious only as a by-product of this state of mind. It nourishes on its surface the silly vagaries of spiritualism, the vulgar nonsense of "Christian Science," and heaven knows how many other fantasies. But these follies are bred, not from a hunger for religion, but from the same root as that which has made the world materialist--from an inability to understand the prime truth that faith is at the root of knowledge; from thinking that no truth is appreciable save through direct experience.

Niko: As opposed to scripture, which would be divine revelation...

HB: It has been well remarked that nothing is more striking than the way in which all the modern quasi-religious practices are agreed upon this--that Revelation is to be denied.

Niko: Can you give us an example of how this modern attack is taking place?

HB: First, we are witnessing a revival of slavery, the necessary result of denying free will when that denial goes one step beyond Calvin and denies responsibility to God as well as lack of power in man--

Niko: Sorry to interrupt, but you said a revival of slavery?

HB: Yes. The two forms of slavery which are gradually appearing and will as time goes on be more and more matured under the effect of the modern attack upon the Faith, are slavery to the State and slavery to private corporations and individuals.

Niko: Give us an example of what you mean by slavery to the State. I mean, after all, slavery was abolished by the XIII Amendment to the US Constitution.

HB: When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated. And if it be continued for, say, three generations, it will become so thoroughly established as a social habit and frame of mind that there may be no escape from it in the countries where State Socialism of this kind has been forged and riveted on the body politic. In Europe, England in particular--but many other countries in a lesser degree--has bound itself to this system.

Niko: So you are refering to "the dole" or welfare, as we call it here in the US?

HB: Below a certain level of income a man is guaranteed a bare subsistence should he be out of employment. It is doled out to him by public officials at the expense of losing human dignity. Every circumstance of his family is examined; he is even more in the hands of these officials when out of employment than in the hands of his employer when employed.

Niko: What about slavery to corporations?

HB: Of modern "wage-slavery" one can only talk by metaphor; the man working at a wage is not fully free as is the man possessed of property; he must do as his master tells him, and when his condition is that not of a minority nor even of a limited majority, but of virtually the whole population except a comparatively small capitalist class, the proportion of real freedom in his life dwindles indeed--yet legally it is there. The employee has not yet fallen to the status of the slave even in the most highly industrialized communities. His legal status is still that of a citizen. In theory he is still a free man who has contracted with another man to do a certain amount of work for a certain amount of pay. The man who contracts to pay may or may not be making a profit out of it; the man who contracts to work may or may not receive in wages more than the value of what he produces. But both are technically free.

Niko: Technically free, perhaps, but still chained to their jobs due to the need for health insurance and the need to repay their thousands of dollars in credit card debt. Interesting. Is this economic based slavery the only sign?

HB: These are the first fruits of the Modern Attack on the social side, the first fruits appearing in the region of the social structure.

Niko: It's almost like things were reverting back to as it was before Catholicism was on the scene.

HB: Well, we came, before the Church was founded, out of a pagan social system in which slavery was everywhere, in which the whole structure of society reposed upon the institution of slavery. With the loss of the Faith were turn to that institution again.

Niko: You've told us about the changes in the social system. What else?

HB: Next to the social fruit of the Modern Attack on the Catholic Church is the moral fruit; which extends of course over the whole moral nature of man. And throughout this field its business so far has been to undermine every form of restraint imposed by human experience acting through tradition.

Niko: You're talking, of course, about sex.

HB: Those who would point to the modern break-down of sexual morals as the chief effect of the Modern Attack on the Catholic Church are probably in error; for it will not have the most permanent results. Some code, some set of morals, must, in the nature of things, arise; even if the old code is on this point destroyed. But there are other evil effects, which may prove more permanent. Now to find out what these effects may be, we have a guide. We can consider how men of our blood carried on before the Church created Christendom.

Niko: So in looking at the past you can get a glimpse of what the future may bring. What do you see?

HB: What we chiefly discover is this: That in the realm of morals one thing stands out, the unquestioned prevalence of cruelty in the unbaptized world. Cruelty will be the chief fruit in the moral field of the Modern Attack, just as the revival of slavery will be the chief fruit in the social field.

Niko: Given the history of humanity, with over two thousand years of armed conflict, massacre, judicial tortures, horrible executions, the sack of towns and all the rest, I would think that cruelty existed more in the past than today.

HB: There is a capital distinction between cruelty exceptional, and cruelty the rule. When men apply cruel punishments, depend on physical power to obtain effects, let loose violence in the passions of war, if all this is done in violation of their own accepted morals, it is one thing; if it is done as part of a whole mental attitude taken for granted, it is another. Therein lies the radical distinction between this new, modern, cruelty and the sporadic cruelty of earlier Christian times.

Niko: It's just business as usual--

HB: The proof lies in this: that men are not shocked at cruelty but indifferent to it. The abominations of the revolution in Russia, extended to those in Spain, are an example in point. Not only did people on the spot receive the horror with indifference, but distant observers do so.There is no universal cry of indignation, there is no sufficient protest, because there is no longer in force the conception that man as man is something sacred. That same force which ignores human dignity also ignores human suffering.

Niko: And how we ignore the millions starving in Africa. As if we could care less....

HB: I say again, the Modern Attack on the Faith will have in the moral field a thousand evil fruits, and of these many are apparent today, but the characteristic one, the one presumably the most permanent, is the institution everywhere of cruelty accompanied by a contempt for justice.

Niko: Any other signs of this modern attack on Catholicism other than economic slavery and the indifference to cruelty?

HB: The last category of fruits by which we may judge the character ofthe Modern Attack consists in the fruit it bears in the field of the intelligence--what it does to human reason.

Niko: Of all ages, ours is certainly one of technology. I would think its foundation would be human reason.

HB: When the Modern Attack was gathering, a couple of lifetimes ago, while it was still confined to a small number of academic men, the first assault upon reason began. It seemed to make but little progress outside a restricted circle. The plain man and his common-sense--which are the strongholds of reason--were not affected. Today they are. Reason today is everywhere decried.

Niko: In what way?

HB: The ancient process of conviction by argument and proof is replaced by reiterated affirmation; and almost all the terms which were the glory of reason carry with them now an atmosphere of contempt. See what has happened for instance to the word "logic," to the word "controversy"; note such popular phrases as "No one yet was ever convinced by argument," or again, "Anything may be proved," or "That maybe all right in logic, but in practice it is very different." The speech of men is becoming saturated with expressions which everywhere connote contempt for the use of the intelligence.

Niko: But how does this effect our Faith?

HB: Faith and the use of the intelligence are inextricably bound up. The use of reason is a main part--or rather the foundation--of all inquiry into the highest things. It was precisely because reason was given this divine authority that the Church proclaimed mystery--that is, admitted reason to have its limits. It had to be so, lest the absolute powers ascribed to reason should lead to the exclusion of truths which the reason might accept but could not demonstrate. Reason was limited by mystery only more to enhance the sovereignty of reason in its own sphere.

Niko: So you are saying without reason there is no Faith?

HB: When reason is dethroned, not only is Faith dethroned--the two subversions go together--but every moral and legitimate activity of the human soul is dethroned at the same time. There is no God. So the words "God is Truth" which the mind of Christian Europe used as a postulate in all it did, cease to have meaning. None can analyse the rightful authority of government nor set bounds to it. In the absence of reason, political authority reposing on mere force is boundless. And reason is thus made a victim because Humanity itself is what the Modern Attack is destroying in its false religion of humanity. Reason being the crown of man and at the same time his distinguishing mark, reason is their principle enemy.

Niko: What do you think will be the end result of this attack? Will it succeed?

HB: The modern attack on the Faith has advanced so far that we can already affirm one all-important point quite clearly: of two things one must happen, one of two results must become definite throughout the modern world. Either the Catholic Church--now rapidly becoming the only place wherein the traditions of civilization are understood and defended--will be reduced by her modern enemies to political impotence, to numerical insignificance, and, so far as public appreciation goes, to silence; or the Catholic Church will, in this case as throughout the past, react more strongly against her enemies than her enemies have been able to react against her; she will recover and extend her authority, and will rise once more to the leadership of civilization which she made, and thus recover and restore the world.

Niko: So the Church will either become a useless and ignored entity or will bring salvation to humanity. Talk about an either/or situation. Is there anything we can do other than "have faith"?

HB: That mood of faith has been largely ruined, ruined certainly for the greater part of men, all will admit. So true is this that already a majority--and I should affirm it to be a very large majority--do not know what the word faith means. For most men who hear it, in connection with religion, it signifies either blind acceptance of irrational statements and of legends which common experience condemns, or a mere inherited habit of mental pictures which have never been tested and which at the first touch of reality dissolve like the dreams they are. The whole vast body of apologetics, the whole science of theology (the Queen exalted above every other science) have for the mass of modern men ceased to be. If you but mention their titles you give an effect of unreality and insignificance.

Niko: Although we are seeing a rise in people such as Scott Hahn and Jeff Cavins, so perhaps apologetics and theology are not yet dead. Do you think the Church as we know it will survive?
HB: The Catholic observer would deny the possibility of the Church's complete extinction. But he must also follow historical parallels; he also must accept the general laws governing the growth and decay of organisms, and he must tend, in view of all the change that has passed in the mind of man, to draw the tragic conclusion that our civilization, which has already largely ceased to be Christian, will lose its general Christian tone altogether. The future to envisage is a pagan future, and a future pagan with a new and repulsive form of paganism, but none the less powerful and omnipresent for all its repulsiveness.

Niko: Okay, enough of the doom and gloom. What's Catholicism have in its favor?

HB: Well, on the other side there are considerations less obvious, but appealing strongly to the thoughtful and learned in things past and in experience of human nature. First of all, there is the fact that all through the centuries the Church has reacted strongly towards her own resurrection in moments of deepest peril.

Niko: Such as?

HB: The Mohammedan struggle, for example, was a very close thing; it nearly swamped us; only the armed reaction in Spain, followed by the Crusades, prevented the full triumph of Islam. Or consider the onslaught of the barbarian, of the northern pirates, of the Mongol hordes, which brought Christendom to within an ace of destruction. Yet the northern pirates were tamed, defeated and baptized by force. The barbarism of the eastern nomads was eventually defeated; admittedly very tardily, but not too late to save what could be saved. The movement called the Counter-Reformation met the hitherto triumphant advance of the sixteenth-century heretics and even the Rationalism of the eighteenth century was, in its own place and time, checked and repelled. It is true that it bred something worse than itself; something from which we now suffer, but there was reaction against it; and that reaction was sufficient to keep the Church alive and even to recover for it elements of power which had been thought lost for ever.

Niko: So historically, the Church has been able to defeat her foes. What else?

HB: Next, let this very interesting point be noted: the more powerful, the more acute, and the more sensitive minds of our time are clearly inclining toward the Catholic side. They are of course of their nature a small minority, but they are a minority of a sort very powerful in human affairs.

Niko: And you believe this minority can make a difference?

HB: The future is not decided for men by public vote; it is decided by the growth of ideas. When the few men who can think best and feel most strongly and who have mastery of expression begin to show a novel tendency towards this or that, then this or that bids fair to dominate the future.

Niko: For example, Mel Gibson and his movie....

HB: The conversions which strike the public eye are continually the conversions of men who lead in thought; and note that for one who openly admits conversion there are ten at least who turn their faces toward the Catholic way, who prefer the Catholic philosophy and its fruit to any others, but who shrink from accepting the heavy sacrifices involved in a public avowal.

Niko: Is this unique to Catholicism or Christianity in general?

HB: There is no such thing as a religion called "Christianity"--and there never has been such a religion. There is and always has been the Church, and various heresies proceeding from a rejection of some of the Church's doctrines by men who still desire to retain the rest of her teaching and morals. But there never has been and never can be or will be a general Christian religion professed by men who all accept some central important doctrines, while agreeing to differ about others.

Niko: Thanks for taking time to talk with us. I understand that our readers can either pick up a copy of your book, The Great Heresies, at Amazon.com or find a .txt version at EWTN. Is there anything else you'd like to add, some words of wisdom to end on?

HB: We are now in the presence of the most momentous question that has yet been presented to the mind of man. Thus are we placed at a dividing of the ways, upon which the whole future of our race will turn.

Niko: Thank you, and God bless.

we are the hollowmen

we are the hollowmen
living out our lives
our heads are stuffed with straw
our mouths are laced with lies
and though we'd like the truth
our hearts deceive our eyes

we are the dead men
living in disguise
we dress in business suits
to corporate our lives
and if you want the truth
we love to terrorize

we are the father men
teaching you the lies
and if we seem to care
well, don't believe your eyes

when I was young

When I was young
my mother
asked me what I wanted to become.

I told her anything at all.

But I'm different now and
if she'd ask me once again
I'd say, "all I want to be is small."

As the nights are growing tales
and months swift pass me into years
I cannot see too well
my knees are weak
my heart is cold
but still I search the way back home.

the other self I

In the cafe of my mind we sit, my fingers wrapped around a glass of water while you clutch a cigarette. Our eyes are locked and for an instant I know how the bird feels when the cobra catches its eye.

You are deadlier than a cobra, my friend, my brother. But so am I.

"What are we fighting for?" you ask with a laugh and a smile that has charmed them all. I cannot answer--I never can--only reply, like a bad chessplayer.

"Me."

Boddhisattva

After the flower has opened and you see the world with new eyes, pause.

You have not reached the end. You are standing on the doorstep.

That love you feel? The Oneness and Happiness, the awe of Life? This, too, will pass once you step across.

That is what is meant by enlightenment.No desires, no purpose; desirelessness, purposelessness.

At this point, before crossing, stop and think. You are now a Boddhisattva. You have one desire in your heart, to show others the path, and that you will wait until you are the last before you cross.

Still, the desire is strong -- so strong! -- to step over the doorstep. You will know the way, the breath. Yes, even it too passes....

Once you step across, you are fully enlightened, a truly great being... but perhaps the one
on the other side of the door is greater.

annica

One is one is one
and all I see,
all I feel and think
make what is me.

Still, I react
to the feelings deep inside
the things that I own
and the memories I hide.

Anicha, all is change.

Feel the breath and
watch, you'll see
you'll witness everything
that you call "me"

It's easy, be still,
just don't notice the pain
and then the truth
will be perfectly plain.

Anicha, all is change.

the path

It's simple: just see
without seeing, hear
without hearing, taste
without tasting, smell
without smelling, feel
without feeling.

It's as simple as breathing.

flowers, never sold

Red cap snug over ears,
he watches his competition:
a fat old lady selling newpapers.
Both cater the rush hour, the man
selling peace, the woman, grief.

She is far more successful.

For ever ten papers sold perhaps
one flower is noticed; for every
twenty, one bought. Still, he
sits, patiently smiling, as
the flowers scan the headlines.

I wish I spoke his language,
but I don't. I know just
enough to buy one, but not
enough to ask what happens
to the flowers, never sold.

poem to myself

The problem we have
is that we are fighting each other
using the same weapon,
the same ammunition,
the same body.

Neither can win, so why do we fight?

To continue is to be as the rest, a house divided.

Acceptance, not violence, is to be our path.

Nuages (For That Which Passes, Passes Like Clouds)

This poem is known as a villanelle, which is a particular layout of sounds and cadences. The most famous villanelle, IMHO, is Dylan Thomas', Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (which is awesome if you haven't read it.)

nuages (for that which passes, passes like clouds)

Across your eyes, a veil of sleep, a shroud
Holding Heaven to your view; gaze deeply,
Son, for that which passes, passes like clouds.

Listen to the teachings told to the crowd,
But beware the wolves, for they'll weave gently
Across your eyes a veil of sleep, a shroud,

To wrap the truth in silky lies. The proud
Don't carry crosses and peddle meekly,
Son, for that which passes, passes like clouds.

And when the summer sun comes spinning 'round
Whirling rainbows whirling eyes completely,
Across your eyes, a veil of sleep, a shroud

Of Turin across your body as loud
As Roman wine. Birthdeath eternally,
Son, for that which passes, passes like clouds.

Into the lust of the sensual bowed
Your sweet soul, son, trapped. And kept distinctly
Across your eyes, a veil of sleep, a shroud,
Son. For that which passes, passes like clouds.

the peaceful art of killing flowers

My undergraduate work was in creative writing. I recently ran across my poetry collection from my senior year at university, in 1988. It's fun to look back and see the influences I was under. This first one in particular. Gotta love E.E. cummings!

The Peaceful Art

of Killing Flowers

my son)

softly

ever so softly

bend the flower's stem

(beware of thorns)

with a knife

cleave

the tiny tree trunk

do not be afraid

it makes no noise

but

a silent sea of sap

will sound

(its death