Tines of the season: all set but the garlic butter, Cheevers.

 It was a call to purest reason—that alma mater of those of resolution, taking up life as a matter itself—that one day that one was sitting at plain table, gazing at his meal.  That after due diligence to his conscience, bowing to his servants—seeming to admit, not perfection that merited service, but imperfection, acknowledging that their acts kept him alive via the feeding of the evening meal.

He was saying how it was all as such, similar: the bread dough and a well-prepared loaf were much the same.  Why, it was only appearances that seemed to differ, from the unattractive lump of dough to the natural conclusion before him: the loaf had browned nicely, and there were dispersions in the surface of the thing, “comely” he called it.

He went on so much made of exhalations of spirit; how emotions or company made much of it, it were only quantifiably simple chemical reactions in a very finite capsule of time.  I was thinking from the confines of my own capsule to give a call back, and say, “show me”, this focaccia he was going on and on about.

Likewise: baked, boiled and air-fried were the SEC, Sun Belt and ACC, and the three of them in the four times multiplied heat of Nebuchednezzar’s furnace, and a fourth among them that appeared to be the son of God.

All we needed was lemon and garlic butter.  And afterwards the great set of tines: Decision 2008.

"Types and shadow": Aquinas contra Sadie Hawkins

Bn posits the query:  "What would Aquinas think of the modern theory of black holes?"

Several points spring to mind:

As a type and shadow ourselves, 

we have only a "type and shadow" level of realization;  

our awe is proof of God's absolute dominion.  

Our astonishment reveals in part the gulf between man and the perfect God, 

marking our own reasoning facility as insubstantial.

That wonder and the impetus to address it, 

our presumption to contend with nature with reason

Reveals of what perfection whence we came.

Our astonishment over the phenomena is perhaps a kind of prayer;

Which might highlight a justification for some to make the matter plain,

As if to dispel and disperse anything like prayer,

And reduce all of the heavens and earth to mere data points.

But there are those that would grasp at the truth of the heavens

For the sake of not reason, but perfect communion with God.

Insufficient research(wonder) is proof of God.

Setting one's eyes towards the heavens is wonder about God.

Conducting empirical research is as seminary, learning of God.

Complete understanding through science is proof of God.

To study nature

Is to contemplate God.

And contemplating God

Is presumption from we unworthies,

Those yet paradoxically loved by God

All the perfections and flaws

Allowed to contest and contend our measure of Creation.

 

A bird in the hand.... is warmed from the existential chill. Content round-up: You-toob, Kamama Harris.

2 “data points” of interest.

1-a fake “breastfeeding tutorial” on Youtoob scooped-up 15k+ hits per hour, pervs and complainers included. The site, supposedly committed to keeping away such content, its algorithm picking up the keywords in the video and placing that in the “heads-up” feed of so many of the platform’s users, basically letting the automation “promote” the questionable content.

2-I found that the words “Kamala Harris” triggered spellcheck in the Facebook desktop version.   

"Cast about rather for some good which will abide.  But there can be no such good except as the soul discovers it for itself within itself.  Virtue alone affords everlasting and peace-giving joy; even if some obstacle arise, it is but like an intervening cloud, which floats beneath the sun but never prevails against it."

-Seneca

-One of the old philosophers said existence was like a river, constant change.  He observed this without knowledge of Old or New Testaments.  Proving him correct in that assessment, people continually disappointed God, "evolving" beyond his set of statues time and again, until finally the mercy of Christ, and Christ is ENOUGH FOR ALL.

From Marcus Aurelius to John Calvin to the bacchanal of social media.

Meanwhile, some content writer for NPR just coined the phrase "uncertainty is a gift".

-Let them turds promise you that Jesus is going to give you a dreamhouse. He only promised a mansion in HEAVEN in the pages of the book, and he said during our earthly time we are "lead to slaughter". But he is our hope. He yours?  Or are you like Barbie, only wanting a "dreamhouse"?

Meanwhile Paul, chronic medical conditions and all, told his benefactors that he was placid in spirit no matter outward circumstance--they put them in jail, God opened the doors, and not only that, they took a moment to apologize for the inconvenience visited upon the jailer. Would you?

On earth, in the meantime, we have Tim Scott's America where one's effort is directly proportional to success, we have the indefinite optimism of one Kamala Harris; I salute each. If you need that in order to get your stick-to-it to the sticking-place, "we've got that action". 

If we could combine that "go-for-it" attitude of the pure conservative and the "safety net" ideology of those adversarial political factions, we could have a go at anything! 

And furthermore, when you point your finger is it to say, "I don't like that", or is it to say, "I like that"?

 

Until all or one: pressing towards the mark.

“Real wealth is poverty set to the Law of Nature.” -Epicurus

Been put upon?

Preyed upon?

Set upon?

Made sport of?

You may have heard about….

You might tell yourself that you want to become a better Christian, or that you want to be closer to God: the riddle is that the very unction itself means you become, upon that wish, both a better Christian and closer to God, as well: because those two desires are the supreme motivations of all Christians.  

And not only do they want those two things, but more and more; their virtue is that very thirst for the Divine—that cosmological thread that binds us and calls down to us in the form of that old German paraphrase, “Gott”, or the Ancient Hebrew word, “YHWH”.

By participating in the promise, our faith establishes access to that same grace in which we now stand, and we rejoice in hope bearing witness to the glory of God.

~believe as hard as you can in the power of kindness, and yet, be prepared for mischief. Do not become so hostile that you become those who hurt you in the beginning. And you will find there are times when that Inner Citadel has not "angry torch-wielding villagers" at the gates, but one awaiting entry in whom you are emotionally invested.

~we celebrate irregardless of sufferings, knowing that suffering creates fortitude, and fortitude nourishes character, and character glows the light of hope, and hope banishes disappointment, because the love of God is within our hearts through the spirit which has been imparted to each of us.

~instead of recalling being set upon, put upon, made sport of: remember who helped when you needed them.

Sincerely and without a shred of personal dignity, in consideration of the avid reader: The one they call “The Rone Langer” from a mountain endowed with everyday mystical wonder that some sneer at as common “magic”.  We are all—each one--miracles.

 

Barbara Stanwyck, and the down-south tradition of finger-pointing among spiritual persons.

Waylon and Merle.

Wayne and Earl.

Penta and Fenix.

Leopold and Loeb.

Vomiting and Diarrhea.

Pardoner and Summoner, just as peas follow carrots, chair-shot to the back of Kevin’s head begets pain, grits lead to gravy, and there’s this one donut, just one—and we are not exactly certain about it, anyway—the scorpion’s tail and the uppercut—never much sure, to the extent we can and very much do lump those doubts upon our familiars, our friends, and even the stranger in the grocery store.  Do not eat the donut, of course—a minute on the lips leads to its own burden.  Sweet, sweet nectar: you want the donut, oh yes.  But no.  He probably ate the donut, the fat f*ck, and yet I’m broader, myself.   (Baptist sin debt, to be continued.)

A lump of leaven services the entire loaf, as the Apostle states: a dab, as it were.  I had something along the lines that “the Gospel is so good that it sells itself!” Yet neither discounts nor coupons for something given so freely, and yet, also precious.

“Gospel don’t cost.”

And then:

The Miracle Woman(Barbara Stanwyck)

One of those things of the human condition in which we naturally impute some of our own sin debt towards others, and who but the loudest of the bunch?  (Of sin debt, formerly of the Southern Baptist persuasion, in which one mistrusts himself and assumes as much that anyone else has the same disreputable inclinations, so he curses them, too; and that even in the face of existential forgiveness.) A ministry inherited and taken up in earnest; the second to that one actually a disabled man, who finds his groove staring vacantly across the courtyard listening to a dressing down of a professional driver. It was something about a sort of open-eyed sleep, and the busy hands—the very avarice of inaction, the false nobility of laziness and the busy hands are the only ones that have the rank possibility of accomplishing anything, be it positive or negative.

We might say, like the Jews and the Greeks, some folks have their John Wick, while yet others have their Barbara Stanwyck, the Greeks alternatingly labelled “barbarians” or “uncircumcised”.

So even while clang-a-langing about on the freedom of the Gospel, what?

The old story of poaching the preacher: dispossessing the only one trying to deliver the uninformed from the cloud of darkness of ignorance.  Projection, the psychologists say.

Anyway, that was a theatrical defrocking as much as a ministry one, in the sense that Baby Face herself was cast against type, Stanwyck having been the fresh young innocent face of Hollyweird.  Continually, the creep of the skirt up the hip, and other, you know?  Those nudges by the studio executives that have become so known as to be cliché in the popular parlance—until what? 

The Big Valley.

It sounds like schizophrenia, I know—disparate elements, pyrite and so forth, a bar of soap supposedly pitched as having a prize inside.  The real prize, circa 1870, was taking the time to wash one’s rear end.  And the true impetus of the studio heads was a continued mystery about the whole thing.

Such is life as we know it. 

“We have found life!” 

"injuctional ignominy", and the reek inheriting the mirth: a word to the prokopton Lucius.

I mention something to you, on your love of ships and funky little boat races and so forth.  Good fun for what as always appears an innocent king made more of for lack of his own chattel and ribald stains—in that same sense, I knew a Pentacostal church, the only one among them who happened to understand Romans 5-7 was made the leader of the church, and trusted thenceforth in all matters.  Or in my own background, as a prokopton novice, made a Sunday school teacher after only several months of Biblical readings.

Of the ship we are told two things of particular peculiar individual import:

*Even the mightiest of vessels is turned, and easily so, by the tiniest of tillers.

“Stonn, it is not logical, but it is often true.”

Such is, as in Christology, the “meek inheriting the earth”, or in other parlance, “the mouse that roared”, the forgotten and shed having a go at the high poo-bah muck-a-muck, why, it is the forgotten and ignored having a go at posterity, a distinguishment or extinguishment, no obligation per injuctional ignominy.  We shall all someday.  

Or better yet, the absolute salad bar among us shall have some of the most important and opportune moments in which all depends upon that unique dismal bleating of the least among common denominators.

A stray word may indeed set to rights entire paragraphs, books, or yet further, full libraries—or yet bring ruin much beyond proportion.

*In the similar fashion of the jelly-neck, doing a kind of turkey periscopic turning even to perforate himself along the peripheral.  Such a simple spit of minutia turns so much, as of the chickens and the red wheelbarrow.  Provenance being reductioned down to the full of awe status of the Preacher Bird and deep fried Muggelfish:

We are bidden also to remain near that great ship, because we know not when fate and destiny may once more call us to accounting—that is the second part, and from Epictetus the slave philosopher.

“Hark, hark, tis the quartermaster sounding!”   It is not to be deferred or ignored, by choice or circumstance, when every particle of the body is in abeyance to the universe.

Adieu, mon ami, garcon, Lucius: both a youngard, and a king.  Cheap-skate.  Gentleman.  Prokopton.  Magnamity.  Eudaimonia. Equinimity.

 

Sin-eater, Worrier Princess, and Judd Benedict: Spun River Anthology.

I was watching Angel and The Badman, The Bicycle Chiefs, and "The Christopher Hale Story".

"No better nourishment for one’s own soul than to give a hungry rogue a bowl of gruel, and if he still whimpers, love him up. Why the answer to our ills sometimes is to service the ills of others, almost as of working penance, but if not penance, tightening a common thread among so many of us.

As of the olden days, applying one’s mouth to the wound of another and bluntly sucking-out the poison.  

Figuratively, ingesting the innocuous sin of another."

Not "Tooth and Claw", but "Thorn in Paw."

A flagrantly sus world ardently taps barabajackal on my medial deltoid, and chirps:

"Mister, sir, be more clear."

I say, giving my unction a quarter-turn to the rich:

"Read harder, young king."

As she saves the world, one horny drug-addict at the time,

I find it a Turn of the Screw of Middling Meddling in the most revolting but undistinguished sense.

 

Cup of Hope, a Sidewinder, and AI assisted writing, editing, appraising.

One can avoid for-pay "AI writing assistants" like Hemingway, Quillbot, Grammarly and other tools by using a generic AI interface, like GPT4, GPT3, Cortana, or Meta.ai

Here's how:

Simply have your text copy+paste into the prompt with a separate question/statement like, 

"please analyze this copy" or "provide statistics on this text copy".

*You can ask the AI to edit, smooth or paraphrase your text.

*You can specify the format of the writing, like email, blogpost or social media post.

*The generic AI's won't give Readability or Grade Level states on your copy, but will:

-word count

-sentence count

-length of sentence count

-thematic appraisal.

-Vaguely guess the reading difficulty/density of your copy.

ADVANCE TIP: 

Re-using the prompts you use most often: 

take the actual question or command part of those prompts and put them in a text file somewhere handy.  

You can copy/paste the question, then copy/paste the text copy, making the whole process fairly quick.

"The Sidewinder"

….several regular citizens, real flesh-and-blood imperfect people, just like the rest of us in so many ways.  Capable of the same mistakes as the rest of us, but also, blessed in that same way as us too, to have stupendous moments of inspiration, moments of unity, joy and peace.

They step forward for the chance to give four years of their lives for the service of their country.

"The Cup Filled with Hopeful Anticipation."

We live, even in the dismal shadow of the Prince of the Power of the Air, in hopeful anticipation and hope of future transformation, because our true identity as children of God has yet to be realized, but on Christ’s return, we will be made like Him.  Until then, when all are one, we live in a state of subjugation to the service of God, and instead of carried by worldly patterns, we are exhorted and nudged into refreshing our minds to discern God’s will, to align with a more perfect plan.  It is all, even in trouble and despair, a cup filled with hopeful anticipation.

"It's a journey of transformation, and we're not alone. Let's refresh our minds, discern God's will, and trust that He's working everything out for our good. Every cup is full of hope, even in trouble and despair. Let's hold onto that hope and look forward to the day when all will be made new and we'll be made like Him!" -Meta24(Meta.ai)

The needy will not always be forgotten; hope will never perish. -Psalm 9

Every man is a friend to him that bears gifts. -Proverbs 19

The invisible or insensible things of Him from the time of the creation are clearly realized, being understood by the things made, of God’s power and supremacy.... -Romans 1 

Simplicity Day 2024. This and precipitous other.

Dragon Wain in the Cooper Smith Must Be Destroyed long line of allies and affiliates:

Lloyd Corchoran Stand-Up Comedy and Facilities Management Sunshine Boy.

30 followers on a Meta page.

posts are pushed to 2 of those followers

1 engages.

Meta then conveniently suggests paying $14 to advertise post, for greater reach.

"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of.  Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf."  -Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau, birthday July 12, was a giant of non-violence, once a schoolmaster, and then a house servant for Ralph Waldo Emerson("he thought it nothing to be made a servant...").  Studied later by men like Gandhi and Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

The local chapter of the Usual Suspect Hobbyist Motorcycle Riders had decided they would help fund a synagogue.  They chose a parcel between the riverfront and a knoll(rumored to be haunted by a voodoo priestess).  Culver Oren Alouisius and Tasha Raleda were among the notables.