Strange Notions - Or Not!

There are some really strange notions and ideas to found on the net. Some are so strange they actually make a bit of sense.

For the record, I will state that I am not an anarchist nor am I a Libertarian (though I happen to agree with a few points of their platform, but by no means all). I simply found this to be rather intriguing.

The following is taken from a 2001 lecture by Roderick T. Long, a teacher of Philosophy at Auburn University.

Given the vast inequality in authority between the state apparatus and its subjects — given, for that matter, the vast socioeconomic inequality between them — how is it that so many who think of themselves as dedicated above all to human equality so readily become apologists for the state?

... how those who appear so sensitive to constraints on choice, and to differences in bargaining power, when these derive from market factors, become so amazingly oblivious to the constraint on choice, and differential bargaining power, represented by the armed might of the state, empowered to enforce its demands by legalized violence.

The fifth-century B.C. Chinese philosopher Mo-tzu once remarked that if someone can recognize an act of unjust aggression when it is perpetrated by one individual against another, but not when the same act is perpetrated by an organized group of individuals, such a person must be confused about right and wrong.

Socioeconomic egalitarians, then, must likewise be under some sort of confusion. But what, and why?

A cynic might respond that socioeconomic egalitarians are not confused at all; their supposed devotion to equality is simply a disguise for powerlust, and they exempt the state from their criticisms because they plan to wield its reins, or at least to get in good with those who do. This strikes me as a fair analysis of some, but only some, socioeconomic egalitarians. Most of the socioeconomic egalitarians I know personally are sincere in their egalitarianism and well-meaning in their statism.

I don't mean by this that they are entirely innocent; after all, an innocent statist would have to be one who says: "I recognize—as who could not?—that the coercive subordination of individuals to the state by the means of systematic legalized violence and the threat thereof is a great evil. But this evil is, unfortunately, necessary in order to prevent evils still greater." A statist who took this point of view could not be cheerful about her statism, but on the contrary would have to conduct herself with the tragic solemnity of Agamemenon sacrificing his daughter to save the fleet.

The innocent statist, too, could hardly permit herself to reach this grim conclusion without first investigating possible alternatives—which, for a statist in the academy, would have to involve carefully researching and trying to refute (and desperately hoping to be unable to refute) the wealth of libertarian literature arguing that most of the other evils she cites can be prevented through nonstatist means. By these criteria, few statists qualify as innocent. To seek for alternatives to inequality in authority would be to acknowledge that statism involves such inequality before ascertaining that alternatives are available, and this would force upon the statist an unpleasant choice she prefers to avoid. Hence I regard statism as being, at least in most cases, a moral vice, rather than a mere cognitive mistake, in much the same way that racism and sexism are moral vices, not mere cognitive mistakes.

But, again like racism and sexism, statism is the kind of moral vice that tends to enter the soul through self-deception, semi-conscious osmosis, and a kind of Arendtian banality, rather than through a forthright embrace; it is a form of spiritual blindness that can, and does, infect even those who are largely sincere and well-meaning.

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Eternal Memory or Eternal Life

Having just seen the movie Avatar (I rarely see movies at the cinema house anymore), I have to say it is one of the most amazing films I have ever seen. Visually stunning, thrilling and a timeless story: an indigenous, holistic, technologically primitive people rising up to defend and preserve their way of life against a technologically advanced aggressor. That would be us, by the way (humankind, that is). This is what we have been doing to ourselves since the Fall. One person or a community of persons who are not able to defend what they have will have it taken from them by the stronger. This is a simple and unavoidable fact. It may not be right but it nevertheless happens.

The most fascinating thing here, however, is the concept of transference of human consciousness into a genetically compatible alternate body. This is an age-old concept that has been presented in many varieties of science fiction, from the old TV series The Twilight Zone to Star Trek and many others. It is a very exciting and attractive concept, considering that many of us (who are willing to admit it) are not very happy with the bodies we have been given; we would much prefer to be some one or some thing – other. Hence we have movies, video games, the Society for Creative Anachronism, etc, all of which are avatars of a sort that provides temporary means of escape from reality.

I understand the desire for this all too well. I have never had much liking for my own reality. I would much prefer to live in the Shire with the Hobbits, with the Elves in Rivendell or on one of the Jedi worlds. Not because I consider these to be utopian worlds but because life there would have a different character, based on a different dynamic, or so I imagine. So while we fantasaical-minded folks have to live in this reality, we ignore as much of it as possible, allowing our fantasies to translate our lives into a manner of perceiving that views this reality as highly abstract. In other words, we don’t belong here.

Of course this reality and our fantasy world both share a common element that is inescapable and cannot be ignored no matter how much we want to: the reality that all things die. Death is the hardest and most frightening reality we face and we either face it with hope or we face it with dread. But our technology is advancing so much (along with our immorality and arrogance) that the idea of a constructed immortality is no longer confined to the realm of science-fiction fantasy. To wit:

An Introduction to Transhumanism

Attempting to Make a New Type of Person

By E. Christian Brugger

WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 21, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The ideas of the young international movement known as "transhumanism" are beginning to characterize the thinking of an increasing number of clinicians and bioethicists. I thought therefore that our readers might profit from a brief introduction to them.

Transhumanism is really a set of ideas that has developed in response to the rapid advance of biotechnology in the past 20 years (that is, technology capable of and aimed at manipulating the physical, mental and emotional condition of human beings). Conventional medicine has traditionally aimed at overcoming disorders that afflict the human condition; it has prescribed leeching, cauterizing, amputating, medicating, operating and relocating to dryer climates, all in order to facilitate health and militate against disease and degeneration; in other words, the purpose has been to heal (i.e., has been broadly therapeutic).

Technology is now making possible interventions that in addition to a therapeutic aim are intended to augment healthy human capacities. There is a gradual but steady enlargement-taking place in medical ideals from simply healing to healing and enhancement. We are all too familiar with "performance enhancing drugs" in professional sports. But biotechnology promises to make possible forms of enhancement that go far beyond muscle augmentation.

Germ-line gene therapy, for example, still in its infancy, aims to genetically modify human "germ cells" (i.e., sperm and eggs) in order to introduce desirable intellectual, physical and emotional characteristics and exclude undesirable ones. Since the modifications are made to cells in the "germ line," the traits would be heritable and passed on to subsequent generations. Drugs to improve mental function such as Ritalin and Adderall are increasingly being used by the healthy in order to enhance cognitive abilities. One study has shown that close to 7% of students at U.S. universities have used prescription stimulants for enhancement purposes. [1] That number appears only to be increasing.

Research is rapidly progressing on advanced technologies such as direct brain-computer interfacing (BCI), micro mechanical implants, nanotechnologies, retinal, neuromuscular and cortical prostheses, and so-called "telepathy chips." While it is true that each of these technologies may play a role in transforming the lives of disabled patients to enable them better to communicate, manipulate computers, see, walk, move their limbs and recover from degenerative diseases; transhumanism sees them as potential instruments for transforming human nature. The 2002 version of the Transhumanist Declaration states: "Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth."[2]

Their most radical proposal is to overcome death. Although the aim sounds fanciful, there are influential scientists and philosophers committed to it. The prominent transhumanist scientist and inventor, Dr. Ray Kurzweil, argues that for most of human history death was tolerated because there was nothing we could do about it. But a time is rapidly approaching where we will be able to isolate the genes and proteins that cause our cells to degenerate and reprogram them. The assumption of death's inevitability is no longer credible and ought to be retired [3]. Michael West, the CEO of one of the largest biotech companies in the U.S., Advanced Cell Technology, agrees. He argues that "love and compassion for our fellow human being will ultimately lead us to the conclusion that we have to do everything we can to eliminate aging and death."[4]

Although I think the majority of people in the Western world do not yet share transhumanism's more radical ideas, the assumption concerning human autonomy that underlies the transhumanist philosophy is practically universal in secular medicine and bioethics today. Living wills enshrining people's right to refuse life-sustaining treatment for practically any reason, even if they are not dying, are becoming as routine in our hospitals as informed consent forms. Oregon, Washington and Montana have legalized physician assisted suicide each using as a rhetorical bludgeon the argument that autonomy guarantees a person's right to exercise self-determination not only over his life but also over his death. If autonomy extends to these things, then surely it guarantees the liberty to enhance my capacities.

I fear that the only thing presently preventing wide-scale affirmation of the transhumanist imperative is an emotional "yuck" factor, which we can be sure will gradually subside under the gentle and inexorable prodding of secular opinion. When it does, our rationality insulated by this extreme notion of autonomy will find itself helpless against the technological imperative which says: if we can design our perfect child [5], if we can be smarter, stronger, and more beautiful [6], if we can extend human life indefinitely [7], then we should do it. If embryos are sacrificed through the experimental process required to perfect this technology, or if inequalities are introduced to the advantage of some and disadvantage of others; these are the costs of progress!

The 2008 Vatican Instruction on bioethics, "Dignitas Personae," addressing the use of biotechnology "to introduce alterations with the presumed aim of improving and strengthening the gene pool," strongly cautions against the "eugenic mentality" that such manipulation would promote. The mentality likely would stigmatize features of hereditary imperfection generating unfair biases against people who possess them and privileging those who possess putatively desirable qualities.

The instruction concludes saying: "It must also be noted that in the attempt to create a new type of human being one can recognize an ideological element in which man tries to take the place of his Creator" (No. 27).

Endeavoring to manipulate human nature in this way "would end […] by harming the common good" (No. 27).

This is nothing short of a new manifestation of The Great Lie first told in the Garden of Eden – ‘You don’t need God; you can become a god without God.’

Or at least, you can become immortal.

The quest for immortality has been active since we lost it in the Garden. We comfort ourselves in this quest for the unobtainable with the idea that we live on in the memories of those who love us. In other words, no one ever really dies as long as someone remembers him or her. This idea is not necessarily and entirely false. Our remembering surely does count for something. But keeping someone alive in our memory is not the same thing as actual eternal life.

God’s remembering causes existence.

Our remembering does not.

We want to be immortal but we are not, so modern man has put his faith in science and technology to achieve this ‘pearl of great price’. We desperately want eternal life but we want it on our terms and under our control, not according to God’s conditions. We reject God’s conditions not because they are harsh or beyond our capacity but because they require an absolute answer to the question: Who do you say I am? Many have turned to science simply because it does not ask this question and accepts all answers.

Seeking the answer to that question will always lead one into a confrontation with Religion (usually within the meaning of institution not of virtue). That confrontation produces more questions: Which one is right? And which sect within which one is right? Some grow weary of trying to figure it out and opt to create their own. Others let the answer be relative to each one’s perception. Both cases allow us to imagine ourselves as masters of our own destinies and agents of our own change, enabled by the attitude, which says, “I refuse to be led around by the nose by dogma!” I wonder if they realize they are indeed being led around by the nose – by the arrogance of their own opinion, which they value more than truth (and we know who’s holding the stick with the carrot).

The character of Dr. Walter Bishop on the TV series Fringe said, “All destinies lead to the same destination.” In a certain sense that could actually be true but that is not to say that free will is an illusion. We are all destined to stand before the Judgment Seat of Jesus Christ but the willful choices we make on that journey determines if it will be a judgment of condemnation or of absolution; a resurrection to eternal endurance or of enduring Communion.

This is our ultimate destination. Whether we be in the Shire, in Rivendell or on Pandora; whether we be a Jedi or in the body of our avatar, and we had best be ready to give an answer to Him who is Uncreated Reality.

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The Power to Tax

The following is taken from a recent essay by Mark Alexander, Editor of The Patriot Post.

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation." --John Marshall

On December 16th, 1773, "radicals" from Boston, members of a secret organization of American Patriots called the Sons of Liberty, boarded three East India Company ships and threw into Boston Harbor 342 chests of tea.

This iconic event, in protest of oppressive British taxation and tyrannical rule, became known as the Boston Tea Party.

Resistance to the Crown had been mounting over enforcement of the 1764 Sugar Act, 1765 Stamp Act and 1767 Townshend Act, which led to the Boston Massacre and gave rise to the slogan, "No taxation without representation."

The 1773 Tea Act and resulting Tea Party protest galvanized the Colonial movement opposing British parliamentary acts, which violated the natural, charter and constitutional rights of the colonists.

In response to the rebellion, the British enacted additional punitive measures, labeled the "Intolerable Acts," in hopes of suppressing the burgeoning insurrection. Far from accomplishing their desired outcome, however, the Crown's countermeasures led colonists to convene the First Continental Congress on September 5th, 1774, in Philadelphia.

Near midnight on April 18th, 1775, Paul Revere departed Charlestown (near Boston) for Lexington and Concord in order to warn John Hancock, Samuel Adams and other Sons of Liberty that the British army was marching to arrest them and seize their weapons caches. While Revere was captured after reaching Lexington, his friend, Samuel Prescott, was able to evade the Red Coats and took word to the militiamen at Concord.

In the early dawn of that first Patriots' Day, April 19th, Captain John Parker, commander of the Lexington militia, ordered, "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they want a war let it begin here." That it did -- American Minutemen fired the "shot heard round the world," as immortalized by poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting British Regulars on Lexington Green and at Concord's Old North Bridge.

Thus, by the time the Second Continental Congress convened on May 10th, 1775, the young nation was in open war for liberty and independence, which would not be won until a full decade later.

Today, the tax burden borne by most Americans, even those who pay no direct federal taxes but at the least pay a great hidden cost in federal regulation, is far greater than that which incited our Founders to revolution.

Thus, some 221 years after the ratification of our Constitution, Americans are once again at a crossroads with oppressive centralized government -- a point at which we must choose to turn up toward liberty or down toward tyranny and anarchy.

Those at the helm of the federal government, by way of generations of overreaching executive orders, legislative malfeasance and judicial diktat, have abandoned their sacred oaths to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic," and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same."

Although our Constitution provides the People with an authentic means for amendment as prescribed in Article V, successive generations of leftists have, by way of legislation, regulation and activist courts, altered that august founding convention well beyond any semblance of its original intent.

Consequently, they have undermined constitutional Rule of Law, supplanting it with the rule of men.

They have done so in order to win the allegiance of special interest constituencies, which then ensure perpetual re-election of their sponsors in return for political and economic agendas structured on Marxist-Leninist-Maoist collectivism.

How have leftist politicians succeeded in this assault?

They accomplished this through direct taxation on an ever-smaller number of Americans for the benefit of an ever-larger number of Americans -- "progressive taxation" and "social justice" as the Left so self-righteously calls it.

So, shouldn't those who have more give to those who have less?

Well, yes, in my humble opinion, but individuals should rightly be left to decide how best to use their resources for the benefit of others. And in this respect, Americans are the most generous people on earth and from any time of human history.

However, Barack Hussein Obama believes that government should be the ultimate arbiter for the redistribution of wealth. Indeed, he said as much on the campaign trail in 2008.

Obama claims our economy is "out of balance," and our tax policies "badly skewed."

To resolve this, he says we need a "tax policy making sure that everybody benefits, fair distribution, a restoration of balance in our tax code, money allocated fairly..."

"Fair distribution"?

By this, of course, he means "redistribution."

It's not enough that 20 percent of Americans are already forced to fund 80 percent of the cost of bloated government largess; if Obama can saddle them with 100 percent of this cost, then he could anoint himself king.

Never mind that progressive taxation constitutes, in effect, a "Bill of Attainder" as outlawed by Article I, Section 9, of our Constitution. Who in Washington these days pays that venerable old parchment any mind?

As devoted socialist George Bernard Shaw acknowledged, "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul," which is the template for a bloodless socialist revolution.

The current debacle of progressive taxation is the result of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's class-warfare decree: "Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle."

We beg to differ. Roosevelt's "principle" was no more American than Obama's. Roosevelt was merely paraphrasing Karl Marx, whose maxim declared, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

At the time Marx was formulating his collectivist manifesto, classical liberal Claude Frederic Bastiat, a prominent 19th-century political economist, wrote, "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. ... Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve. But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another... Then abolish that law without delay; No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic."

Now, according to Heritage Foundation's , The 2009 Index of Dependence on Government | The Heritage Foundation "Despite the famed 1996 Welfare Reform Act and the more recent welfare adjustments in 2006, 60.8 million Americans remain dependent on the government for their daily housing, food, and health care. Starting in 2016, Social Security will not collect enough in taxes to pay all of the promised benefits -- which is a problem for all workers, but especially for the roughly half of the American workforce that has no other retirement program. Add in spiraling academic grants, flat-out farm socialism, and the swelling ranks of Americans who believe themselves entitled to public-sector benefits for which they pay few or no taxes -- and Americans must ask themselves whether they are near a tipping point in the nature of their government." (See Tax Day or Payday? How the Tax Code Is Expanding Government and Dependency | The Heritage Foundation)

Perversely, almost half of all American workers pay no income tax per the current tax code scheme, though under the Obama plot many now qualify for a tax refund.

Once a majority of Americans can be "protected" from a tax burden, they will ignore the constitutional, moral and civic implications of "progressive taxation."

The fact is that the only way to ensure fiscal accountability at the federal level is to directly spread the cost of government to a much broader number of taxpayers so all Americans "feel the pain." Of course, the Left understands that in order to escape any fiscal accountability, they need only ensure that the cost of government is borne by a targeted minority of income earners.

Obama is now poised to propose the implementation of a supplemental value-added tax, a national sales tax. Though this would seemingly spread the cost of government to all Americans (precisely what liberals want to avoid), Obama's VAT coupled with the myriad proposed exempt products and "rebates" to the "poor," would most assuredly be yet another avenue for the central government to use the tax code to bludgeon a minority of consumers in order to expand its authority and constituencies.

Vladimir Lenin asserted, "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."

And that is precisely Obama's political model.

But the problem with the socialist model is, as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher aptly noted, "they always run out of other people's money."

If I could emphasize but one point, it would be this: The Left has bankrupted the nation and the bill for freeloading on others is coming due. It will most certainly be paid back in the currency of liberty.

The time is at hand when we must inquire with a unified voice: "If there is no constitutional authority for most laws and regulations enacted by Congress and enforced by the central government, then by what authority do those entities lay and collect taxes to fund such laws and regulations?" (See The Patriot Declaration - PatriotPost.US)

Further, as Alexander Hamilton made clear in Federalist No. 81, "[T]here is not a syllable in the [Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution...."

Much less so is there any provision for the Executive or Legislative branches to rely upon interpretation of such language as that in the "Commerce Clause" to justify all manner of government intrusion, such as the newly implemented nationalization of health care.

James Madison, author of our Constitution, wrote, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents... If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one... The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. ... There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Similarly, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market. ... [W]hen all government ... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another. ... Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."

So, to all my fellow Americans who have been blessed with work, success and wealth ... do please remember to pay your taxes so that all those on the government dole can continue to receive free food, free housing, free utilities, free phone service, free healthcare, and anything else that falls out of Big Brother's goodie bag. And when you inevitabley run out of money take comfort in the thought that we shall all be finally equal.

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Not So Far-Fetched Anymore

A good friend brought this great old gem to my attention.
More relevent now than it was sixty-odd years ago.

Does Christianity Have Anything New to Say?

Christ Is Risen! Alleluia!

I have to wonder just how many ways this central and penultimate Truth of our Christian Faith will be proclaimed in cathedrals, temples, sacred places and sanctified spaces all over the world today. I wonder how many will struggle to say something new about it; to put a fresh perspective on it. It is, after all, a two thousand year old message that never changes. Indeed, it cannot change. Because everything revolves around it and depends on it. The entirety of the Bible is focused on it. If one were to summarize the Old Testament in one sentence it could be: 'The Lord is God.' If one were to likewise summarize the New Testament in one sentence, it could be: 'Jesus Christ is Lord.' Similarly, perhaps the entire message of Pascha could be summarized thus: 'This I have accomplished because I love you and I want you to live in communion with me eternally.'

The singular event that effects all human history is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which we celebrate today. Some may not believe that, but non-belief does not make Truth not true. Jesus Christ is real and His Resurrection is real.

So in essence we're really not saying anything new today. We may have newer methods of expressing it, but the message is the same. It must be the same else we are experiencing not salvation but delusion. If the message needs to be infused with clever sayings of Buddha, highlighted with analogies and similarities to the Koran to make it seem as though Christianity and Islam share a lot in common (we don't), altered with inclusive language so as not to offend certain sensitivities ... then it would seem there is something lacking in the message itself, and this is most certainly not so. Communities and churches who do this sort of thing and call themselves Christian are not. It is simply an attempt, in most cases, to make a (seemingly) old Story more exciting and/or more 'relevent'.

It has been said that Orthodoxy never says anything new. We don't need to. The Beautiful Story of the Resurrection is all-sufficient.

The Story that begins in Genesis, which means 'origin', comes full circle in Revelation, which means 'to reveal' (sometimes Revelation is also referred to as The Apocalypse which means 'to uncover').

So what is originated? The Truth that the Lord is God.

What is uncovered and revealed?

The Truth that Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead and He is Lord!

What we celebrate today is the Triumph of Truth and the Reality of the Resurrection.

We celebrate today, in time, that which transcends time - the origin and uncovering of all things, the Beginning and Ending of all things.

This should be utterly astounding! It should arouse in us wonderment and awe!

Christ is Risen! Alleluia! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

Christ is Risen and we are risen with Him! Alleluia!

Our hearts should be overflowing with joy! Not necessarily an emotional high, but joy!

But what has happened? We hear the Resurrection Story and respond as if it were commonplace. We hear the same thing year after year. Nothing new.

We seem to be afflicted with an insatiable need for the next new thing:

"My phone works fine on the 3G network but now there's a 4G - gotta have it!"

"The computer I have is old and slow; I want a newer and faster one!"

"My car runs pretty good and gets me where I need to go ... but wouldn't it be sweet to have one of those hot new Mustangs!"

"The church I go to now is ok but I want to try this other church cause I hear they have this great musical program that will get you all pumped up!"

The awesome Mystery that is revealed here at this Altar and is lived out and proclaimed in the Liturgical life of the Church should enliven our hearts with love and cause tears of joy to flood our eyes. But we are dull. Why? Because the reality of the Resurrection is simply not as real to us as the reality we experience every day in our lives.

Our experience of God tends to be more virtual than reality. Of course we would very much prefer our pain and suffering to be virtual and that's understandable. I do not believe that anyone in a sound state of mind would actually want to be in a situation where they are liable to be shot, slashed or blown to pieces - but we'll watch it on TV!

We try to avoid actual contact with death and destruction but we pay to see movies that depict death and destruction - often quite realistically.

We would never (hopefully never) think of committing adultery but we simply must watch and find out who ends up in whose bed on Days of Our Lives!

At the same time we avoid coming to Confession we post our deep, dark secrets on Facebook and Twitter!

We have created our own personal virtual world that distracts us from the reality of God.

And we are very comfortable but we were not meant to live in these virtual worlds. God is Real and He alone is the Author of reality. He has come down to us and become one of us, taking us by the hand and pulling us out of the graves of our virtual worlds.

You may remember some years back, the myriad reports of repentance and conversion that took place after The Passion of the Christ came out. Ever wonder why that movie had such an effect on people? Because we have all been given a measure of faith and those whose hearts needed only a catalyst to initiate metanoia (change of mind), that film acted as the catalyst that enabled awareness of the reality of Christ and all that He did to save us. Whatever one may think of Mel Gibson, he did a good thing in making that movie.

Jesus Christ is real! He really suffered. He really died. He really lives!

He is really Present to us at all times but it is a struggle for us to be present to Him. Sometimes in the midst of that struggle we mistake emotion for awareness. Our emotions are God-given but to believe our relationship with Christ is deficient if there is not regular manifestations of emotional excitement is false. God is everywhere present and filling all things, no matter how, what or if we feel and we are invited to participate in an ancient mystery that is ever new ... because He Lives!

So, does Christianity really have anything new to say?

Early Christians, in some places of the ancient Roman Empire, called the Sunday of the Resurrection the Day of the Sun. The pagans used the term too but with a different meaning, obviously.

May our Risen Saviour grant us Grace to live the reality of the Resurrection - which is nothing short of our life hidden with Christ in God - and make each day hereafter our own personal Day of the Son. Then we shall never have to seek after anything new to say for we shall have become something new.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!     

The Thin Time of Emptiness

In a time of quiet reflection now, after having served the Liturgy of Good Friday with our local community, it occurs to me that I probably have not kept the discipline of Lent very well. At least, that's the way it feels. Looking back over these last forty days I not only wonder where did the time go, but also am made aware that my attempts at ascesis were a woeful failure. I do not 'give up' things like certain types of food during Lent because none of that seems like very much of a sacrifice. Even the traditional fish on Wednesdays and Fridays really does not provide much of a hardship, so rather than give up a certain food I prefer to try and add something to my daily activities - extra prayers, extra kneeling - something like that. There should have been more of these 'extras' than there was.

One traditional monastic discipline I truly wanted to observe with integrity was the 'Grand Silence' - no speaking for a prescribed period of time each day. A worthy spiritual discipline, not terribly difficult. That is, if you don't have lots of cats.

I have lots of cats and I was amazed to discover just how difficult it is to remember not to talk to them. Cats (and dogs too, I imagine) will have their presence acknowledged in some way or another. A stroke on the head here and a hug there will suffice for a short time but when they realize you are not talking to them, then it begins: everything they can possibly do to irritate you enough to yell at them. So my attempts at Grand Silence turned out to be decidedly not so grand. But I will keep trying.

Perhaps the one thing I had hoped to grasp hold of more firmly in my heart was the emptiness of Christ: Though He was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, rather, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave ...

I am still overwhelmed at the very thought of a Love that empties itself, pours itself out, dosen't seek equality or rights or honour and ultimately lays down its life.

I am still not able to absorb this Truth, not fully. I know what it looks like, but at the same time, I know how very far from it I am. Lord, have mercy!

In days of ancient Celtic yore, times that were frought with distress, death and mourning were called the 'thin' times.

Given that the entire season of Lent engages us in a spiritual thin time, it seems the Easter Triduum takes us beyond thin-ness into emptiness. Within this emptiness, to whatever degree one is experiencing salvation, our temptations and delusions become a bit clearer to us and we awake, like a sleeper, to the voice of Christ saying, Come forth! as He pulls us out of the depths that we didn't even realize we were in.

Out of the depths I cry to You, Lord, hear my prayer.

The road to Pascha must include a measure of emptiness, I think (at least it should), else how would we have room for the fullness of Pascha?

Pascha is the super-abundant fullness of Christ's Victory and the measure we receive of it depends on how well we have prepared our hearts. I know I have not prepared my heart as well as I should have or possibly could have and I am not worthy to celebrate the joyous fullness of Pascha. Christ has descended to the depths; can I descend with Him a little? Is there still time?

Now is the time of salvation.

Can I empty a little bit more of myself in some small way? When can I confidently proclaim:

My heart is ready, O God, my heart is ready ... ?

Transform my heart, I pray, O King of Glory, and make it ready for Thyself!

Then ...

I will sing, I will sing Your praise.

Awake, my soul, awake lyre and harp. I will awake the dawn.

O God, arise above the heavens; may Your glory shine on earth (Psalm 57). 

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