Courtesy of Wikipedia

GOD’S GRANDEUR
— Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

DISTURBING similarities between the landowning peasants in the Soviet Union and today’s “unvaccinated” are described here.

Junius Brutus Stearns/Dayton Art Institute

ON THE morning of December 13, 1799, when it was snowing heavily and about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, George Washington toured his estate at Mount Vernon, Virginia on horseback. He was sixty-seven years old and in good health at that time, well enough to perform this daily ride and to supervise five farms. He had recently retired from politics, complaining that politicians had regard for “neither truth nor decency.”

The day before, he had also gone out in the wet snow. He returned home in damp clothes and, not wanting to detain guests, sat down to dinner without changing.

At dinner on the 13th, he was reportedly in good spirits but stated that his throat was sore. His secretary was concerned and suggested he take some medicine. Washington, as recounted in George Washington: A Life by Willard Sterne Randall (Henry Holt & Co, 1997), responded

“No, you know I never take anything for a cold. Let it go as it came.”

Unfortunately, Washington and his doctors, as the night and next day progressed, did not follow this non-invasive approach. If they had, the president may have lived into the 19th century. Instead, concerned about the extreme inflammation of the president’s throat, they resorted to the medical wisdom of the time. Before long, close to half the blood in Washington’s body had been drained by leeches and he was administered mercury, known now to be highly toxic, as well as other substances.

Three doctors were by his bedside, the youngest of whom, Elisha Cullen Dick, advised at one point an immediate tracheotomy to allow Washington, already considerably weakened by bloodletting, to breathe. The other doctors rejected this proposal and Dick pleaded with them to stop bleeding the president:

“He needs all his strength — bleeding will diminish it.” Read More »

PENELOPE writes:

The story of the 13-year-old boy in New Jersey who died on New Year’s Eve leads me to comment on something tangential, albeit very indicative of our society.

This is the what I like to term ‘Beggar Culture’ – every tragedy, every calamity, ever sick pet, sick kid, person with no health insurance, any excuse you can find now requires its own ‘Go Fund Me’ page. Read More »

Carlo Maratti, Holy Family: St Joseph with the Christ Child –

“O Almighty God, who hast given unto me my father and mother, and made them to be an image of Thy authority, and love, and tender watchfulness, and hast commanded me to love, and honor, and obey them in all things; give me grace cheerfully and with my whole heart to keep this Thy law. Help me to love them fervently, to honor them truly, to yield a ready obedience to all their commands, to comply with all their wishes, to study their happiness in every thing, and to bear with patience and humility all their rebukes. Deliver me, O God, from pride, rebellion, and wilfulness, from passion and stubbornness, from sloth and carelessness. Make me diligent in all my duties and studies, and patient in all my trials; that so living, I may deserve to be Thy child, who art our Father in heaven, through Jesus Christ, Thine only Son our Lord. Amen.”

Source

The Cold, Norman Rockwell

PEOPLE say there is no cure for the common cold.

But, I believe the cure was found ages ago, in distant history, and people just don’t want to accept it. They want drugs. They want something “scientific.” They want a quick fix that doesn’t disrupt their lives. And that’s why they have not found the best response to sore throats, coughs and stuffed noses.

The cure is rest. A pillow, a bed or soft couch, a glass of water nearby, maybe something light and entertaining to read or watch — that’s all that is needed.

A friend told me that she turned on the TV the other day and an “expert” was telling people to go to the hospital if they get “Covid” — a term of quackery for all kinds of respiratory conditions, including the common cold. What nonsense. Covid is pure invention, the re-branding of colds, flus, pneumonias and other illnesses for the purposes of social engineering on a global scale. Imagine all those who have needlessly and perhaps disastrously run to the hospital. (NOTE: Obviously some have needed acute care. I am not saying here that no one has gotten seriously ill or died.)

Getting back to the cure: resting at the very first sign of a cold, avoiding all stress and work for at least 24 hours when symptoms are still mild, will invariably, I have found, shorten the length and severity of a cold, except in those who are suffering from especially poor health, which is often the case today. Serious rest at any stage is good, but if delayed it will have less immediate benefits. The demands of life unfortunately make it impossible for some people to take this cure and they may end up with illness that lasts for weeks.

I am no expert so you can disregard what I say. At least I’m not selling you anything. I’m not seeking to control you. I don’t get a sick thrill out of decimating your creative energies for the sake of power. Years of observation and trial-and-error have simply taught me this cure, which has ZERO harmful side effects. Did you read that? No harmful side effects. Read the warning labels on your Tylenol and Sudafed or some of the outrageous treatments being proffered today for colds, even in the alternative media, and consider the difference. The cold, being very common and profitable, has spawned an empire of sales gimmicks, all of them costly failures.

Again, rest is the cure. Not rest for an hour. But sustained rest and avoidance of all mental and physical activity that is in any way taxing or stimulating. (Working in bed or watching a thriller while in bed do NOT count as rest. Trying to solve personal problems on the phone while in bed does NOT count as rest.) What a mind-blowing, radical idea. Hell will freeze over before the World Health Organization, which couldn’t care less about your health, tells you the importance of rest. That’s a lesson that has no benefits for its sponsors — for governments or “philanthropists” or major pharmaceutical companies.

The psychology of a cold is an interesting, related subject. A cold can be made worse by a dread of slowing down and doing nothing, but also by the neurotic belief that a cold is a bad thing, that it is an interference or an unnatural occurrence. Dread and anxiety can be self-fulfilling.

Colds, though unpleasant, are necessary to the sustenance of existence. They detoxify the body, the respiratory organs being used for excretion. It makes sense that rest would aid this work. So intelligently are our bodies designed that they possess different processes of elimination. The sneeze, the cough, the runny nose — they are synergistic reactions to our environment and the substances we absorb, some of which we must expel in order to survive. Our bodies are eliminating what they don’t need and what could be harmful. Sadly many people resent their own bodies and are disastrously alienated from them, believing they are machines that should “function” at all times. So they are ticked off when they get colds. In the history of the human race, people have probably never embraced this mechanistic and ungrateful view of the body as completely or enthusiastically as they do now.

Colds are cyclical, happening more often in the darkness of winter, which makes sense because then the crops are harvested and human beings can afford to expend some effort to throw off a build-up of wastes. Like trees shedding their leaves at the same time, people living under the same conditions get colds at the same time. They are eating and breathing in the same things. They are experiencing the same light and the same air, the same fabrics and the same detergents, the same chemtrails and electromagnetic waves. If they all got sick at different times, these recuperative processes of elimination would be much more disruptive of society.

We don’t live in spite of colds. We live because of colds. A cold is the road to health. If we accept its demands with rest and light, proper nutrition (another subject), we will find ourselves only stronger after it is gone. Read More »

Madonna of Loreto, Raphael Workshop; 1509

“O FATHER of mankind, who hast given unto me these my children, and committed them to my charge to bring them up for Thee, and to prepare them for everlasting life; assist me with Thy heavenly grace, that I may be able to fulfill this most sacred duty and stewardship. Read More »

PLEASE put this in your “It’s Okay to Be Happy” file.

Thanks.

TOO sad for words.

My sympathy goes out to this family, which has been so deeply betrayed. Read More »

FROM an article by Dawn Lester, co-author with Dave Parker of the excellent book, What Really Makes You Ill: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Disease Is Wrong:

It is a fundamental principle that the burden of proof lies with those who propose a theory. Yet in the case of the ‘germ theory’ that ‘proof’ does not exist; there is no original scientific evidence that definitively proves that any ‘germ’ causes any specific infectious disease. Although this statement will be regarded as highly controversial and even outrageous, its veracity can be demonstrated.

There are a number of sources that provide a corroboration of the assertion that the ‘germ theory’ lacks any original scientific proof. One of these sources is Dr. M.L. Leverson MD, who, in May 1911, gave a lecture in London in which he discussed his investigations that had led him to the conclusion that,

“The entire fabric of the germ theory of disease rests upon assumptions which not only have not been proved, but which are incapable of proof, and many of them can be proved to be the reverse of truth. The basic one of these unproven assumptions, wholly due to Pasteur, is the hypothesis that all the so-called infectious and contagious disorders are caused by germs.”

Dr. M Beddow Bayly also exposed the lack of any scientific basis for the ‘germ theory’; in his 1928 article published in the journal London Medical World, he states that,

“I am prepared to maintain with scientifically established facts, that in no single instance has it been conclusively proved that any microorganism is the specific cause of a disease.”

It is clear that evidence to support the ‘germ theory’ remained conspicuous by its absence many decades after it had been proposed by Louis Pasteur. However, the situation has not been rectified; the germ theory of disease remains unproven with overwhelming evidence to demonstrate that it also remains a fallacy.

Despite the authoritative nature of the assertions of the medical establishment that ‘germs’ cause disease, there are no explanations for the mechanisms by which microorganisms produce the wide variety of symptoms in varying degrees of intensity that are claimed to occur when a person becomes ‘infected’. This represents an immense knowledge gap, although not the only one we discovered.

It is claimed that ‘germs’ multiply within the cells of the host and that this can precipitate an excess level of ‘cell death’ that is said to be an indicator of disease. It is commonly assumed that it is the ‘germ’ that caused the cell to die; but this is a mistaken assumption.

Read more.

The Three Magi, South German Workshop of Hans Thoman, ca. 1514-25. 

FROM “The Feast of the Epiphany” by Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger, 1876:

“I answer by the assertion that love for truth is, in general, rare among men. They love darkness better than light,–delusion, which flatters them, more than the truth, which points to the exercise of duty, which teaches the spirit of Christian self-denial, which inspires contempt of human consideration, united with that fidelity which assures for us perseverance unto the end.

The gospel for today affirms that Herod, and with him all Jerusalem, was terrified at the message of the three Magi, that the Saviour, the King and Deliverer of the human race, was born. Herod was afraid, and trembled lest he should lose his throne. The scribes and Pharisees also, those whitened sepulchers of evil, as Christ called them, instead of rejoicing, were filled with alarm; for they felt, and truly, that the promised Messiah would penetrate their interior, and censure their hypocrisy and malice. Read More »

THE WISE MEN
—- G.K. Chesterton

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity. Read More »

Here, on this Feast of the Epiphany, are the London Symphony Orchestra and various choral singers performing British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The March of the Kings from his Christmas Cantata Hodie (“This Day”). The text was written by the composer’s wife, Ursula.

From kingdoms of wisdom secret and far
come Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar;
they ride through time, they ride through night
led by the star’s foretelling light.

Crowning the skies the star of morning, star of dayspring, calls:
clear on the hilltop its sharp radiance falls
lighting the stable and the broken walls
where the prince lies.

Gold from the veins of earth he brings,
red gold to crown the King of Kings.
Power and glory here behold
shut in a talisman of gold. Read More »

The Adoration of the Magi, Quentin Massys; 1526

“WHAT right had ingots of ruddy gold to be gleaming in the Cave of Bethlehem? Arabian perfumes were meeter for Herod’s halls than for the cattle-shed scooped in the gloomy rock. The myrrh truly was in its place, however costly it might be; for it prophesied in pathetic silence of that bitter-sweet quintessence of love, which should be extracted for men from the Sacred Humanity of the Babe in the press of Calvary. Yet myrrh was a strange omen for a Babe who was the splendor of heaven and the joy of earth. How unmeet were all these things, and yet in their deep significance how meet! The strange secrecy too, with which this kingly oriental progress, with picturesque costumes, and jewelled turbans, and the dark-faced slaves, and the stately stepping camels, passed over many regions, makes it seem still more like a visionary splendor, a many-colored apparition, and not a sober mystery of the humble Incarnate Word. It is a bright vision of old heathen faith, of the first heathen faith that worshipped Mary’s Son, and it is beautiful enough to give us faith in its own divinity. Yet it almost makes Bethlehem too beautiful. It dazzles us with its outward show, and makes the Cave look dark, when its oriental witchery has passed away. They, who dwell much in the world of the Sacred Infancy, know how oftentimes meditation on the Kings is too stirring and exciting for the austere tranquillity of contemplation, too manifold in the objects it brings before us, too various in the images it leaves behind. Truly it is beautiful beyond words! a household mystery to those eagles of prayer, to whom beauty brings tranquillity, because they live in the upper voiceless sunshine! With most of us it is not so. They who feed on beauty must feed quietly, or it will not nurture the beautiful within them.”

— Fr. Frederick Faber, Bethlehem (Tan Books, 187-88)

JOHN M. sends a donation and writes:

It’s that time of year when I need to catch up on blogger appreciation. You put a lot of work and care into your writing. And I believe you affect people in a positive way, probably more than you realize. Please keep doing it. Faith, sanity, personal integrity, memory, strong families, and the ability to discern truth from lies are all needed now more than ever. Read More »