Almost Christmas

 

The great Feast of the Nativity is almost upon us and lights went on at the Compound after a traditional trip to Walmart for last minute Christmas essentials. 

Now look here, punters, some traditions are good and we love them, they add depth, meaning and continuity to our fleeting lives. But other traditions are bad, like going to Walmart right before Christmas.

I tell you, and I'm no snob, don't laugh, it's true, that it was rough in there tonight and this is a country Walmart. Parse that as you will, while recalling that the rule of law is comparatively new here.

Speaking of which, could someone please make a law banning people from wearing pajamas in public, at the supermarket? But I won't neck-tattoo-bang-on, you get the picture. That in mind, let's recall the opening words of the governing Prayer (Collect) for what's left of this season.

Cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of light. Needed, eh?

Stand Fast Against Leviathan,

LSP

Advent

 

Advent, the coming of Christ. Here's a prayer, from the 1928 BCP, obvs:

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the

works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now

in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ

came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when

he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the

quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through

him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost,

one God, now and for ever. Amen.

think yourself exempt? maybe think again

Bless you all, dramatic Dies Irae notwithstanding,

LSP

Putting Up Christmas

 

Here we are in Dallas, putting up Christmas and it's pretty minimal this year, maybe less is more. But I tell you this, more was more when it came to this morning's storm. Thunder and crashing sheets of rain, all hail Texas and the Eschaton.

Next step? Marvel at the speed at which the storm passed by, someone must've paid their tax, and find yourself at Lowe's in search of a tree. We found one, a smallish one, took it back home and set it up.  Nice.

In other news, SBF's been arrested, the freakish nuclear power guy's been fired and drag queens are invited to the White House to celebrate the, ahem, Defense of Marriage act. Like, what? 

Are we at peak degeneracy and is this a function of being people of the lie? A people so invested in deceit that anything else becomes unbearable or to cut to the chase, have we been driven insane by Satan.

Your call and in the meanwhile we get get ready to celebrate the birth of the Savior.

God bless,

LSP

Cambridge Trans Christ?

 

Worshipers at Evensong in Trinity College Cambridge were scandalized by a sermon claiming that Jesus was trans, with some leaving the chapel in tears and calling the college's Dean a heretic.

The sermon was given by junior research fellow Joshua Heath who reportedly stated from the pulpit, 'In Christ's simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body.'

According to the Daily Telegraph, Heath used the 15th century painting Pietà with the Holy Trinity by Jean Malouel to prove his point, blasphemously likening the wound in Christ's side to female genitalia. In response to outraged churchgoers, Trinity College explained Heath's sermon was simply an exercise in art philosophy and didn't imply Jesus was trans.

So that's alright then, except that it isn't. That Trinity's Dean and his unfortunate homilist would be so spiritually tone deaf is bad enough in itself, much less the subject matter. For the record and now that we're in Advent, the Word was made flesh as a man.

Out demons out,

LSP

Pictures of War

 

Ukrainians at Bakhmut

And more

Verdun on left

The people driving this slaughter deserve the greatest penalty. UKR forces at Bakhmut have, apparently, been given several hours to surrender by end of play tomorrow.

That would be the first Sunday of Advent. Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy. And as we pray this, pray too that we don't descend into the same hell. I mean that most seriously.

Pax,

LSP

Adveniat

 

Are you incapable of serious thought, so-called 'LSP'? Yes, but Fulton Sheen's different. Here's an Advent reflection:

 

If, in those days, the stars of the heavens by some magic touch had folded themselves together as silver words and announced the birth of the Expected of the Nations, where would the world have gone in search of Him?

The world would have searched for the Babe in some palace by the Tiber, or in some gilded house of Athens, or in some inn of a great city where gathered the rich, the mighty, and the powerful ones of earth. They would not have been the least surprised to have found the newborn King of kings stretched out on a cradle of gold and surrounded by kings and philosophers paying to Him their tribute and obeisance.

But they would have been surprised to have discovered Him in a manger, laid on coarse straw and warmed by the breath of oxen, as if in atonement for the coldness of the hearts of men. No one would have expected that the One whose fingers could stop the turning of Arcturus would be smaller than the head of an ox; that He who could hurl the ball of fire into the heavens would one day be warmed by the breath of beasts; that He who could make a canopy of stars would be shielded from a stormy sky by the roof of a stable; or that He who made the earth as His future home would be homeless at home. No one would have expected to find Divinity in such a condition; but that is because Divinity is always where you least expect to find it.

Divinity is always where you least expect to find it. I'd second that and Guinea on the monkey, what?

Adveniat,

LSP

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

 

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here,

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free

Thine own from Satan's tyranny;

From depths of hell Thy people save,

And give them victory o'er the grave.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Dayspring, from on high,

And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh;

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death's dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come

And open wide our heav'nly home;

Make safe the way that leads on high,

And close the path to misery.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Adonai, Lord of might,

Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height,

In ancient times didst give the law

In cloud and majesty and awe.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

God bless and watch over you all,

LSP

Advent Reflection

 

Here's an Advent reflection by Austin Farrer, from Crown of the Year:

Our journey sets out from God in our creation, and returns to God at the final judgment.  As the bird rises from the Earth to fly, and must some time return to the Earth from which it rose; so God sends us forth to fly, and we must fall back into the hands of God at last.  But God does not wait for the failure of our power and the expiry of our days to drop us back into his lap.  He goes himself to meet us and everywhere confronts us.  Where is the countenance which we must finally look in the eyes, and not be able to turn away our head?  It smiles up at Mary from the cradle, it calls Peter from the nets, it looks on him with grief when he has denied his master.  Our judge meets us at every step of our way, with forgiveness on his lips and succor in his hands.  He offers us these things while there is yet time.  Every day opportunity shortens, our scope for learning our Redeemer’s love is narrowed by twenty-four hours, and we come nearer to the end of our journey, when we shall fall into the hands of the living God, and touch the heart of the devouring fire.

Advent brings Christmas, judgment runs out into mercy.  For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God.  We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God.  What is it that will break our hearts on judgment day?  Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return; how, when we came before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills?  But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does.  Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity.

Advent is a coming, not our coming to God, but his to us.  We cannot come to God, he is beyond our reach; but he can come to us, for we are not beneath his mercy.  Even in another life, as St. John sees it in his vision, we do not rise to God, but he descends to us, and dwells humanly among human creatures, in the glorious man, Jesus Christ.  And that will be his last coming; so we shall be his people, and he everlastingly our God, our God-with-us, our Emmanuel.  He will so come, but he is come already, he comes always: in our fellow-Christian (even in a child, says Christ), in his Word, invisibly in our souls, more visibly in this sacrament.  Opening ourselves to him, we call him in: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; O come, Emmanuel.

...we shall fall into the hands of the living God, and touch the heart of the devouring fire and judgement runs out into mercy. 

God bless you,

LSP 

Lights On

 

I went for a walk to the old Shamrock tonight, and nothing much had changed except for the lights. They were on, in all their Christmas glory. Hold on, this is Advent, but they hadn't got the memo.

Still, the Holy Family, and I like that. Mary, Joseph and the infant Christ. There it is, salvation, come into the world. Beautiful.

The church, on the other hand, looked a bit shaky. We must hope that'd not be some kind of metaphor. And if it is? Draw the moral as you take it.

God bless,

LSP

Operation Tree

 

The drive to Dallas was easy. Roadworks, three lane to one lane traffic jams, and being stuck behind a Commie Jeep with COEXIST on its bumper. COEXIST? Idea being that all people of all religions can just agree to get along. Good call, sounds so reasonable.

But what if you worship the Owl God, Mictlāntēcutli, what then? Or Kali? What about that? Of course they never stop to ask the question, and so we drove on to Dallas.

Its towers were shrouded in mist, like the Andes, and so was the 'sprawl itself. I made it to Ma LSP's place by instinct. Right, left, forward, get to the objective. Which we did, and  the mission? Get a tree. Easier said than done. Hardly a fir to be found.

Still, we found one and set it up. It's gleaming now, like a colonizer. 

Friendsgiving Forever,

LSP

Judgement Runs Out Into Mercy

 

I always post this short reflection in Advent because it's awesome. From my Godfather, Austin Farrer:

Our journey sets out from God in our creation, and returns to God at the final judgement. As the bird rises from the earth to fly, and must some time return to the earth from which it rose; so God sends us forth to fly, and we must fall back into the hands of God at last. But God does not wait for the failure of our power and the expiry of our days to drop us back into his lap. He goes himself to meet us and everywhere confronts us. Where is the countenance which we must finally look in the eyes, and not be able to turn away our head? It smiles up at Mary from the cradle, it calls Peter from the nets, it looks on him with grief when he has denied his master. Our judge meets us at every step of our way, with forgiveness on his lips and succour in his hands. He offers us these things while there is yet time. Every day opportunity shortens, our scope for learning our Redeemer's love is narrowed by twenty-four hours, and we come nearer to the end of our journey, when we shall fall into the hands of the living God, and touch the heart of the devouring fire.

Advent brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy. For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God. We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God. What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day? Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return ; how, when we came (as now) before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills? But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does. Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity.

Beautiful and true.

God bless,

LSP

All Lit Up

It all starts off at the Tree Gulag, where captive conifers languish beneath the harsh glare of sodium arc lights. There they are, lined up for inspection and roll call as you stride along wondering at their short and spindly aspect. But we found one that seemed to have potential and took it home.

First things first, wrangle the liberated fir into a stand and move back to ponder it's bizarrely potbellied shape. Then put as many lights on the thing as it'll bear, around a 1000+ for a small tree like this. You may have a different method and that's OK, there's no system. 

Lights on, get the Angel up and ask yourself why this one from Germany holds a scroll of plainsong notation proclaiming "Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata  mundi." Gloria in excelsis Deo!, surely.

Leaving aside the hint of oddly wry Tuetonic humor, start decorating the tree and if you're me, recall  Christmases past when you've done the very same thing with the very same ornaments stretching back into childhood. 

Nostalgic, but of course some decorations get "old, tired, pathetic and depressing. Look, here's a plastic bag, throw it away." Thus spake Ma LSP, and she's right, what's the point of holding on to some piece of broken rubbish just because you've had it forever?

That in mind, some ornaments are better than others, which goes without saying, and you admire them the most, they inspire and uplift. Then it's done, an Advent miracle, the tree's lit up, the ornaments gleam, glint and sparkle and all's well in a raucously Victorian Christmas tree kind of way.

Well done, mission accomplished, pour yourself a glass of the right stuff. Maybe, for you, that's cocoa, a onesie and a frothing pumpkin latte, maybe it's something more fortifying. Your call.

Cheers and God bless,

LSP

Magnificat

If you follow the strange new modernistic lectionary you'll have heard the Magnificat this morning at Mass, Mary's exultant hymn of praise to God. My soul doth magnify the Lord, sings the Virgin to Elizabeth.

Consider the depth and power of the canticle and while we're at it, here's an Advent carol from the Cambridge crew.

Some argue that the West won't defeat the twin jihad of Secularism and Mohammedanism until its people recover their faith, which is the ancient, unconquerable Faith of the Church. 

It takes Spirit to defeat spirit or to put it another way, Charles Martel didn't forge his hammer in a vacuum. 

Magnificat anima mea,

LSP

Advent

It's the first Sunday of Advent, and we're getting ready to celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas and preparing to meet Him on the Last Day, the second Advent. Here's a prayer, the governing collect of the season:

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

The armour of light. The Apostle teaches us (Rom. 13:11-14) that this is nothing less than Christ Himself.  Austin Farrer illuminates:

Advent brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy. For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God. We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God. What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day? Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return; how, when we came (as now) before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills? But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does. Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity.

If you're a bit slow on the uptake, like me, you might want to read the above several times. In the meanwhile, Paris burns.

God bless,

LSP

Light It Up

This small farming community's all lit up, literally and figuratively; I know this because I've seen it. And you know what? I like it.

So don't be a sad puritan killjoy, light up the town instead and get ready to celebrate the Nativity. Just don't jump the gun and detract from the enjoyment of the Feast. This should be maximal.

With that in mind I drive around the town at night enjoying the lights. It's uplifting and given that Baptists weren't to keen on Christmas, 25 December not being in the Bible and Roman Catholics do it, encouraging. We've moved on and up in this shiny buckle of the Bible Belt.

So light it up.

God bless,

LSP

Advent Reflection

With Advent we look to the past in wonder, to the coming together of God and man in the person of an infant, Gloria in excelsis Deo! And we look to the future, when the Lord returns in His glorious majesty to judge the quick and the dead and raise up the faithful. Likewise to the present, Christ dwells in us and we in Him, Advent is here and now.

With that in mind, I find this helpful, from Austin Farrer's Essential Sermons:

None of us can be let off being Christ in our place and our station: we are all pygmies in giants’ armour. We have to put up with it: it’s the price (how small a price!) paid for the supreme mercy of God, that he does not wait for our dignity or our perfection, but just puts himself there in our midst; in this bread and this wine: in this priest: in this Christian man, woman, or child. He who gave himself to us as an infant, crying in a cot, he who was hung up naked on the wood, does not stand on his own dignity. If Jesus is willing to be in us, and to let us show him to the world, it’s a small thing that we should endure being fools for Christ’s sake, and be shown up by the part we have to play. We must put up with such humiliation of ourselves – or better still, forget ourselves altogether. For God is here: let us adore him.

Here endeth the Lesson,

LSP

Make His Paths Straight

If you follow the newfangled innovation that is the lectionary cooked up by "experts" in the '60s, you'll have noticed that today's Gospel is all about John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."

Rev. "Rachel" Mann

Make his paths straight, what would Archbishop Justsin say about that? Let's find out, here he is in an interview with GQ as reported by Lifesitenews:

Justin Welby, the Church of England’s Archbishop of Canterbury, was asked point-blank, “Is gay sex sinful?” by GQ on Monday.

“You know very well that is a question I can’t give a straight answer to,” Welby answered, then added, “Sorry, badly phrased there. I should have thought that one through.”

According to GQ, Welby paused and looked “mildly embarrassed” after his response.

Asked why he couldn’t answer the question, Welby responded: “Because I don’t do blanket condemnation and I haven’t got a good answer to the question. I’ll be really honest about that. I know I haven’t got a good answer to the question.”

"I haven't got a good answer to the question," tell us, Justsin, is that you or the Chinos talking? Regardless, what would the Baptizer say? 

Welby's Chinos

I think we know and it doesn't take any great leap of the imagination to picture the Forerunner's career trajectory in today's Church of England. From nothing to nothing, springs to mind. 

The Baptizer

Or if the unfortunate prophet found himself within the beast itself, the CofE, where would it end. With his head on a platter at the request of a dancing girl? Or some other thing, like the curiously named trans Canon of Manchester Cathedral, Rachel Mann.

Quite

Whatever the case, I don't see the Baptist backing down. Sorry, Justsin.

Make his paths straight,

LSP

Advent Poetry, Innit

One of the Team took time off from cleaning his FNFAL to send this in; pay attention, heathen:

Coming with the shepherds to this mystical crèche, joining Mary and Joseph in holy meditation, and seeing this child in the straw – what do we see? St. Maximus the Confessor said that we see the holy child playing at the boundary of earth and heaven, of infinity and finitude. Standing at the crèche, seeing “this thing that has happened”, we see God’s victory, and our salvation, what the devil and the rulers of this world’s present darkness could never have expected – the infinite having become a finite fact – the foolishness and weakness of the eternal God, dwelling beyond the limit of grammar but having become intelligible; dwelling beyond the building blocks of logic, language, and math, but now having become a discreet reality, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.

In his great poem Ash Wednesday, T.S. Eliot wrote:

"If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
the world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word."

And the speaker in the poem asks “Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound?” And he concludes: “Not here, there is not enough silence…” and adds, “No place of grace for those who avoid the face / No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny / the voice.”

___________________________________

CS Lewis hated TSE. Whatever, I like everything about that.

God bless,

LSP

Judgement Runs Out Into Mercy

Listen up, you lot. It's not Christmas yet, it's Advent, and you've probably forgotten this so I'm posting it again. Wisdom, from Austin Farrer:

Our journey sets out from God in our creation, and returns to God at the final judgement. As the bird rises from the earth to fly, and must some time return to the earth from which it rose; so God sends us forth to fly, and we must fall back into the hands of God at last. But God does not wait for the failure of our power and the expiry of our days to drop us back into his lap. He goes himself to meet us and everywhere confronts us. Where is the countenance which we must finally look in the eyes, and not be able to turn away our head? It smiles up at Mary from the cradle, it calls Peter from the nets, it looks on him with grief when he has denied his master. Our judge meets us at every step of our way, with forgiveness on his lips and succour in his hands. He offers us these things while there is yet time.Every day opportunity shortens, our scope for learning our Redeemer's love is narrowed by twenty-four hours, and we come nearer to the end of our journey, when we shall fall into the hands of the living God, and touch the heart of the devouring fire.

Advent brings Christmas, judgement runs out into mercy. For the God who saves us and the God who judges us is one God. We are not, even, condemned by his severity and redeemed by his compassion; what judges us is what redeems us, the love of God. What is it that will break our hearts on judgement day? Is it not the vision, suddenly unrolled, of how he has loved the friends we have neglected, of how he has loved us, and we have not loved him in return ; how, when we came (as now) before his altar, he gave us himself, and we gave him half-penitences, or resolutions too weak to commit our wills? But while love thus judges us by being what it is, the same love redeems us by effecting what it does. Love shares flesh and blood with us in this present world, that the eyes which look us through at last may find in us a better substance than our vanity.

I love that.

LSP 

Put Some Lights on The House

"So what do you do, when you go to the big city, so-called 'LSP'?" I hear you asking, with an edge in your voice. Good question, and I'll tell you.

These days, I mostly put up Christmas lights. That means clambering about on the porch roof to get the wreath in position.

Ground level is easier. Just put the lights on the hedge. Simple, and I think they look good. But that's just me.

Have fun getting your place ready for Christmas.

God bless,

LSP