A prayer request for my friend G.C. who is battling a recurrent cancer. I suggest the intercession of St. Peregrine of Forlì.
Why the title? No particular reason, really. I always wanted to use that title to honor Cordwainer Smith but I am running out of time and I may have to leave this old quirky planet sooner than later so, there it is! I could not think of a title for this rant. I might as well use it while I can. There! That’s a reason to use it.
By the way, read Under the Old Earth. Any similarity to our reality is pure coincidence, if you can believe that. The author [1] was a CIA officer if I remember correctly.
I was born “at a very young age” 😁 and with an uncanny ability to get in trouble. My lovely nanny told me how to read using a collection of letter-cubes. They came on a red, yellow and blue box. I used them as projectiles at first but patient Graciela introduced me to the power of letters and words. Some time later I mastered the art of combining those mysterious signs. I surprised my parents by reading the label of a wine bottle first and a chocolate box later.
I still remember those early reading experiences, I think. It may be an imagined memory. In those days the universe was a two bedroom house with a corridor and a living-room where my parents stored books they collected. Mom read about half the books she purchased, Dad read none, I read everything for the pleasure of putting words together understanding nothing. A six year old cannot make much sense of Balzac or Dostoyevsky but there I was: belly flat on the living room carpet with an open book reading after methodically picking the volumes from top to bottom, left to right.
My precocious reading got me in trouble. I was surrounded by people with deep insecurities. Many years later my own mother would confess she was truly scared that one day I would grow up and find out that my parents were not exactly literate. Those were the beginning of times of affliction for yours truly. Envy and jealousy are bad anywhere but how destructive they are in the family circle! Envy is a terrible poison that eats away at the envious heart. The worm of Cain devours its host.
Then there was grandma’s house. There were no bookcases there that I could find. There was the mystery of the Crucifix. INRI as I called Him back them, the man of bronze hanging under that label. “Quod scripsi, scripsi!” (John 19:22) The words contained in the INRI initials were authored by Pontius Pilate. It took many decades to understand that sign, many more decades than the wine label and the cover of the chocolate box.
Fast forward more or less four decades and I found myself under that very Cross by the baptismal pile. Someone was pouring water on my head, repeating the ancient rite of Christian Baptism. I am always under-understanding everything and I did not understand back then what I was getting into. I had been warned by my godfather, a saintly priest: “The corruption you see from outside is nothing compared to the corruption seen from inside.” Right he was. Years later he was mysteriously accused by a man he did not know, he lost his dear parish, he was sent away to die in a nursing home. He received from the Church the salary of the saints. Just as Padre Pio and so many others who had to endure the present enclosure of heresy, sodomy, ignorance and persecution. Pray for Fr. James. I heard he was exonerated of all accusations in a court of law. However, he disappeared without a trace, an innocent victim of the Sect of the Iscariots. His “sin” was to be a true Catholic priest.
NOTE OF SEPTEMBER 26, 2024: Please see this link about Fr. James news… Hard to believe. That man was so busy, I can’t imagine him having time to do evil. I give him the benefit of the doubt. The whole thing is completely out of character if you ask me. Let us pray for him, for the alleged victims and for the accusers as well. These news truly break my heart.
Today I was working on renovating the blog, making some changes on the right column. Please visit and read the various items. Some are new. It was an exercise learning to use the nonsense that passes for software these days. The maze of menus, disconnected options and rules can make one dyslexic in no time. The message was clear: “You are not wanted here.”
One change at a time all the joy of publishing is being erased. I was frustrated to say the least. After all was done, I thought that the world is becoming something of the sort. Surgeons mutilating children, angry maidens waiting in ambush for their knight on a white horse, steel stars in the sky confound the mariners, crime kills and maims the youth of nations, fentanyl kills the rest. Children are sent to die in futile wars
“Where have all the flowers gone?” — we sang long ago — “Gone to soldiers everyone”. They have gone to fight illiterate madmen who are ordered to kill by a book they cannot read. In the meanwhile, the voracious war peddlers plan more and more destruction. The order of the day is to consume life, to sterilize everything. The soldiers return to a country where their jobs are taken by hungry men lured from far away hellholes. Everyone is finally a victim.
Hitler lost the war? Is that what you think? The Allies were the hammer and the Axis powers were the anvil but what came out of that forge was this world: a concentration camp from pole to pole complete with poisonous food, medicine that does not cure, schools that erase knowledge, air that clogs the lungs, made to order epidemics … a satanic symphony of chaos where no one is a citizen but just meat meandering towards the slaughterhouse.
This is the absence of Christ in the world. “Any religion is the same” says the Man in Rome (while sacrificing a white chicken at midnight.) When you don’t know where you’re going every road will take you there. The wide highway to Hades is easy to find in your free GPS. “Look at the screen!” they shout. “Don’t look around you!” Yes, because around you there are others like yourself and you may see the common plight and “have ideas” of recovering the days of former freedom and glory. You may find the straight and narrow path and return to order. “That would be dangerous!” as the Instrumentality would say.
If you feel you don’t know who you are, simply ask the Search Engine: you are what Goo-goo says you are even if you aren’t. There you can see the proof, the Russia Dossier, the videos of “Donald Trump urinating on hookers dressed as nuns”. Is it him? Of course not. Everyone can be video-depicted doing anything nasty and later be cancelled out of human society, family and neighbors (running from the poor sap in horror.) It was done through Artificial Intelligence they will say later but … the damage is done. How smart. And… it was all like a joke “for political purposes.”
The Orwellian future is beginning to take shape. “We can destroy you, so you better behave.” They do not need proof or a legal process. A few fake images, a hired porn actress, and you’re done. Really done for good. A tax audit may be added for good measure.
Years ago a street preacher in Boston asked me: “What are you going to do if Jesus comes today?” and I now ask all of you: What are we we going to do if Jesus does not come soon?
A part of me is wanting to go back to that warm tiny house at the edge of my old hometown. From the window, the Andes Mountains looked unmovable, giant blocks of granite with eternal snowcaps crowning them. Even that old simple order in fact, all order appears to be gone. What can a simple sinner do now but look confused and homeless.
I am not wanted here. This is not a planet for free men anymore. We are all under surveillance no matter how small we may be. I feel I am that man affixed to the bronze Crucifix, immobilized, bleeding life drop by drop under an unforgiving sunless iron sky. The hour of the antichrist is approaching.
Lord Jesus, come forgive us and save us. You are the only way.
______
From the visions of A. C. Emmerich
“I see the Church alone, forsaken by all and around her strife, misery, hatred, treason, resentment, total blindness. I see messengers sent on all sides from a dark central point with messages that issue from their mouths like black vapor, enkindling in the breast of their hearers rage and hatred. I pray earnestly for the oppressed! — On those places in which some souls still pray I see light descending; but on others, pitchy darkness. The situation is terrible! May God have mercy! How much I have prayed! O city! O city, (Rome) with what art thou threatened! The storm approaches—be on thy guard! I trust thou wilt stand firm!”
“Then, I saw that everything that pertained to Protestantism was gradually gaining the upper hand, and the Catholic religion fell into complete decadence. Most priests were lured by the glittering but false knowledge of young school-teachers, and they all contributed to the work of the destruction.“In those days, Faith will fall very low, and it will be preserved in some places only, in a few cottages and in a few families which God has protected from disasters and wars.”
“For when the Blood of Christ is no longer offered on the Altars of our churches, then the blood of men will have to be spilled on the asphalt of our streets.”
[1] Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger (July 11, 1913 – August 6, 1966), better known by his pen-name Cordwainer Smith, was an American author known for his science fiction works. Linebarger was a US Army officer, a noted East Asia scholar, and an expert in psychological warfare. (Wikipedia)
Quod scripsi, scripsi 