Off I Go - Pt. 2

I can report, gentle reader, that the morning of major surgery to resection my liver is far different than it was two years ago when I was having my left kidney removed. I scanned my usual web and blog sites this morning and felt an enormous gap between my priorities and those heralded by the purveyors of all-things-crucial-to-blog-about.

Of course, this may be influenced on my part having fasted yesterday on a clear-liquid diet and doused my system with magnesium citrate (a quick way to lose 3-4 pounds), and no liquids at all since midnight.

So, for what it is worth - and, in the words of my esteemed mother, "Consider the source" - I will leave you as I journey to Johns Hopkins with the following.

Corpus Christianum +

Fail - Hyundai Duh

The automaker Hyundai - you know, the Korean manufacturer that, at first, couldn't find any automobile insurance companies that would cover their cars, so they created their own insurance company - is taking heat big-time for blaspheming the Sacrifice of the Mass in their recent ad campaign.

I'm not surprised. They mocked the singing - and singers - of Christmas Carols year before last, too.

Books to Cherish - MacDonald & Lang

WHEN IT COMES TO George MacDonald, do not read or entertain any critic's "good" advice, but go to the source. First read his Phantastes, then Lilith. If you have lived longer than half a century, (or if you have had a life-threatening illness, lost a parent, a spouse, or a child at any earlier age), you should first read C. S. Lewis's introduction to Phantastes in the edition I linked to (above).

Read these books in a spirit of lectio divina, and forgive their lack of adherence to the Magisterium of Mother Church (the way you forgive an uncle who has lived an adventuresome life, has great stories to tell with gusto, and who loves you enough to spend/waste all the time you want with him over a strong beer or glass of mead). Keep to the Magisterium, but let MacDonald re-enchant the world for you. Why? I was hoping you would ask!

The third book I cannot recommend highly enough is an absolutely essential read for all modern and post-modern denizens is David P. Lang's Why Matter Matters (NOT Simon Basher's book of the same name). Amy Welborn recommended it to me, and it is a vital part of the Catholic counter-culturalist's library.

Besides being a thorough-goingly orthodox Catholic book, it will unequivocally disabuse the reader of all the semi-Gnostic and full-blown Gnostic falderal we all have accrued living in our bland secularist landscape of dumbed-down wonderment in which the only end-point, apparently, is Freudian (a six-second promiscuous rush of rattling a ladle in a bowl ... ).

In actuality, MacDonald and Lang accomplish the same feat: both re-enchant and valorize this wondrous world and make one realize that if we can trust in the Providence that placed us in this world, we can trust that same Providence to help us safely, surely, and meaningfully into the next world as well.

Tripe and Piffle - NYT

Carl Olson relates the imbecilic typings of this poor critic. Which, all in all, says that the writer's editor was of like level of historical mindedness, as opposed to, say, this writer and historian or this one.

Dear old Hilaire Belloc had to deal constantly with the historical blatherings of his English revisionist brethren, so we should not feel too put upon. Yet the fight to stand our ground and set the record straight is a long and tiresome business; sort of like listening to this chap.

Pax et Bonum

"Hello, beastie."

As I have alluded, my "beastie" with which I had a spot of bother two years ago has returned, now in my liver. A renowned surgeon at Johns Hopkins will endeavor to resection my liver on Wednesday, two days from now, God willing. And then, after that ordeal, I will begin a regimen of general chemotherapy.

I am grateful for the renewed number of prayers, petitions, intentions, and good thoughts folk have offered up for me. I am reminded that I would not be published had this "terrible beastie" not entered my life in the first place, and I received the gift of the awareness of my mortality in a way that was longed-for in the high days of Christendom.

So, posting may occur if it strikes my fancy. But I will endeavor to keep you abreast of matters on the other side of Wednesday in any case. Pax et bonum. +

O'Connor - Quote of the Day

Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when, of course, it is the cross.

- Flannery O'Connor

Act like a Dhimmi ...

For the record: Victor Davis Hanson offers Raymond Ibrahim's important essay, What Did You Say About the Scimitar's founder?