Midweek Message - Peace Be Still

Listen up:

The holy fathers instruct us that God is not to be found in the storm or the noise of this life, but in stillness by awareness of our thoughts and the unceasing remembrance of Christ in our minds.  When we fill that sacred space, where God should abide, with material things, worldly cares, anxieties, and distractions including television, music, or idle conversation, God’s gentle presence is masked so that we are no longer able to perceive Him working within us.  If we desire to quell bad thoughts, habitual sin, we must strive after this peace and be still.  

The world offers us distractions that temporarily anesthetize the mind and deaden the nous all the while keeping God’s presence distant from us.  As Saint Seraphim of Sarov told his spiritual children, “Acquire a peaceful spirit, and around you thousands will be saved. Where there is God, there is no evil. Everything coming from God is peaceful, healthy and leads a person to the judgment of his own imperfections and humility.”

Peace, be still,

LSP

Free Falling!

 

Free falling or what? And then there's this. 

So very awesome.

Your Pal,

LSP

Roofy

 

The Compound doesn't have a tower, sadly, but it does have several roofs, and with roofs comes, ahem, responsibility. You have to keep them in order, or else an historic Texan house becomes an historic Texan ruin. To prevent that, I climbed up on the roof.

Trees needed cutting back, gutters had to be cleaned, and a malfeasant air conditioning exhaust somehow fixed. The evil beast was leaking water all over the roof and that had to be stopped before it caused catastrophic damage. 

miserable offender

Fortunately, it was a simple blockage and easily cleared, thanks to a couple of holes cleverly cut into the PVC for just that purpose. Well done, far-sighted HVAC tech of yesteryear.

Plumbing job over, I surveyed what's fast becoming a sort of double canopy (?) forest of Pecan, Crepe Myrtle and more besides. This is good, it provides shade, and that's no small thing when our Old Enemy the Weather does its level best to imitate a blast furnace.

sylvan groves of Olde Texas

Sylvan reverie over, I cut into the invading jungle with a vengeance, clearing the green invader from the very roof it was threatening to destroy. Take that.

infographic

Next step? Clean out the gutters. This is a nasty job, especially when you haven't bothered to do it in over a year. And you should, because if you don't, the backed up gutters will send water up under the roof, into the fascia, onto the soffit, and before you know it the whole leading edge of the thing is rotted out. And that's a nightmare.

typical Texan roof scene -- sort out the downspouts, LSP

Even more of a nightmare than the job itself, which got done, mostly. And that, punters, is the story of that. It was good to get up on the top of the world and survey the wonder of sylvan Texas. 

Good, too, to get some preventative maintenance done. It beat, let me tell you, reading about the ongoing, wicked clownshow that is the governance of what used to be Christendom.

I file this, vaguely, under country life in Texas and more specifically, under "roof."

Do good every day,

LSP

Mirror Mirror - Who's The Fakest President Of Them All?

 

Zeros

Surely not Joe Biden, because he got more votes than any other presidential candidate in history. He didn't even have to campaign! And he's a really good Catholic Christian, which is why he champions abortion, transsesxualism, and gay marriage. Such famously Christian doctrines.

Buffoons

Biden's also about helping the poor, so he's opening our southern border because a massive influx of cheap labor is guaranteed to bring wages up. Just you wait and see. Another thing Biden's famous for is his deep, personal, heartfelt concern for the African American, for blacks. They're almost as important to him as transsexuals. That's why Biden never, ever,  boosted a Grand Wizard.

Mountebank

He's concerned with the climate too, the "greatest existential threat" our nation faces. That's right, the weather. As opposed to a gang of self-serving crooks, shills, and hucksters inside the Beltway.

No Klansman in This Photo!

Joe Biden, easily the most popular President ever at 81 million votes, is a socialist with a mere fortune of $8 million. Where did all the rest of the cash disappear? Maybe he just spent it all. Coz, you know, living ain't cheap.

Chicanery & Fraud

What an utter, no-holds-barred, unmitigated fraud. And we have to ask, is anything about this huckster and the governing uniparty he's waxed large on, to the tune of millions, at any point honest or even held accountable?

I'd argue no, it's not. So who's the fakest president of them all?

You, the reader, be the judge,

LSP

A World Of Clowns Crooks And Mountebanks

 

Clowns & Crooks

There they are at the G7, the most powerful politicians of the world, clowning it up  for the cameras with "arm-bumps," only to hug and back slap off stage. What a venal crew of mountebanks, to say nothing of the agitprop arm of the State, corporate media, which laps it up.

Is anyone fooled? Yes indeed they are, note the Left, which is now firmly on the side of Big Pharma, Big State, and big loss of freedom. Wear your mask! Our sponsors demand it! Speaking of which, surely it's time for BLM/ANTIFA to put corporate logos on their riot gear, like Nascar but radical revolutionary with it. 

Mountebanks 

You can imagine the gushing reportage, "Today's peaceful protest burned down Baltimore's Inner Harbor in an act of solidarity with oppressed transsexual people of color everywhere, brought to you by Bank of America and Pfizer." Pan out to eatery on fire and a rainbow flag waving gaily in the victorious dollar-driven winds of profit.

Maybe the Enemy will die Laughing

But not to worry, our military's finally being repurposed to face the greatest threat facing America. Not China, Russia, Islamic terrorists, space aliens (what? stay tuned...), inflation, poverty, ballooning crime, stagnant wages, a pathetic standard of education, 5th Column nihilist revolutionaries, the breakdown of the family, and a government run by corrupt, multi-millionaire, self-serving, stooge oligarchs of the NWO. Is that the threat? No, that's it is not, it's climate change and a lack of "diversity."

Well Done Nottingham

What utter, shameless, errant,  bought-and-paid-for malfeasance. Still, in the midst of this florescence of chicanery, Nottingham appears to have got it right. Thanks, Jules, for the uplift.

Cheers,

LSP

Bonnie Blue

Notice General Lee's discomfort. But regardless, a battle for local rights, autonomy and freedom against the dead hand of DC tyrants. Today? Where will it end? Your call.

Deo Vindice,

LSP

Roman Art

 

I know what you're thinking, just what was the quality of imperial Roman art, the aesthetic sign of that civilization's soul or ethos. Good question and worth asking, not least because it's interesting in itself, and because history rhymes, we can draw lessons from it. 

That said, we don't have much pictorial art to work with, it's mostly gone because of its perishable medium, wood, parchment/vellum and other materials. Still, we have wall art, mostly from the cities entombed by Vesuvius and a few examples elsewhere, like Nero's Domus Aurea, his Golden House. What do we see?

Several dimensions of artistry, from trompe l'oeil architectural painting, to landscapes, depiction of mythic themes, portraiture, military Triumphs and more. Although Pliny decries the descent of art from realism to a kind of impressionist decadence, we're nonetheless left with the impression that Roman artists were concerned with painting things and people as they were, albeit to effect.

And what an effect it was! Heroic, mythic and classical, yes, but also garish to our eyes. They would think us bleak and starved of visual uplift, a drab, monochrome society. We would think them, I think, in bad taste. Too much bourgeois ebullience?

But here's the rub, the Romans, for all Pliny's criticism, produced art to please the eye and uplift the mind. We don't. Our art destroys the eye and depresses the soul. It's filth. So who's the decadent in this equation?

Your call, but don't say Rome.

SPQR,

LSP

Wisdom

 

 I was struck by this today, by Romano Guardini:

He simply commands us to follow his instructions. Only from the depths of a great faith is it possible to obey. One must be utterly convinced that such obedience evokes a divine reaction in our relationship with God, that when we act according to his will we participate in the divine creation, in the forming of a new world, for it is creative conduct that is commanded here.

When man so acts, he not only becomes good in himself and before God, but the divine goodness dormant in him becomes active power. This is what the Lord means when he speaks of "salt" that has not lost its flavor, "light" which lights the whole house.

 

The divine goodness dormant in him becomes active power; the seed of grace, God's life, unfolds with tremendous, unfathomable, brilliance in the souls of the faithful. Those with eyes to see will have have seen this light.

God bless,

LSP

A Parable

 

Have you noticed that an Italian artist has sold nothing for 18k? Make of this parable what you will. In the meanwhile, here's a random all hail Lord Curzon.

Your Pal,

LSP

Hackerz?

 

Today's news cycle moves with all the slapstick, comedic speed of the Keystone Kops on meth, so you may have forgotten the infamous Colonial Pipeline hack, back in May.

This involved a sinister cyber gang called Barkside Darkside which took down America's largest oil pipeline in a ransomware attack. Pay us around 5 million bucks in Bitcoin, said the cryptic crims, and you get your pipeline back.

Sure enough, Colonial coughed up the crypto, and before you could say SPECTRE and CHAOS, this essential bit of American infrastructure was back up and running. Thank God for that, and yet another instance of those dastardly Kremlins messing with our great democracy. 

Thank God our patriotic sleuths in the FBI were on the case and wasted no time recovering the bulk of the missing millions. Sorry, Putin, foiled again. But how did these latter day Sherlocks get the cash? Easy, they followed the money, which was publicly traceable to an online wallet on a server in California. Hey, fire up your laptop, find the transaction, the wallet address, and boom, go to court and get that cash. Which is what they did.

So. Are we really supposed to believe that Cyber Spetsnaz are so laughably stupid as to store their ill-gotten digital currency in an online wallet, in America? You know, when they could've spent $50 for its offline hardware equivalent? Who knows, maybe Russian hackerz are incredibly, ridiculously stupid.

Speaking of which, it seems Colonial's cyber security was pathetically rubbish. Who knows, maybe some 13 year olds broke in for a larf. Possible. Then again, perhaps we're looking at an equally rubbish false flag, or simply useless pipeline tech, which bodes ill for the future. Or, surely not, USGOV feels threatened by BTC because, you know, USD$ is so totally sound.

Check out Zero for the lighthearted story.

Cheerz,

LSP

D-Day

 

There we were in the sacristy, getting ready for Mass. "What day is it, Padre?" asked the MC. "It's the second Sunday after Pentecost or Corpus Christi transferred," I replied, quick as you like but missing the point. "No, what happened on this day, 1944?" 

D-Day happened, and we stopped for a moment, silent, struck by the thought of all those kids who gave their lives. Words fail, at least for me. So we prayed for the fallen and gave thanks for the victory.

Honor the men who stormed those beaches by standing fast for what's right and true. Here endeth the lesson.

God bless,

LSP

Well Shoot

One of the things about this popular mind blog is that it's supposed to be about guns and country life, as well as anything else I care to think of. Fine, so where's the guns, so-called LSP? Good question, and to put the record straight I drove out to a churchman's ranch to burn some powder.

Some Guns

We started off slinging skeet and I wanted to see if the venerable Mossberg Ultimag was working, it'd had extraction issues. But hey, the gun worked flawlessly, knocking orange adversaries out of the sky like a good 'un. 

Next up, an over and under 12 made in Brazil under license by Stoeger, an unshot gift from a kind churchperson. Would it work? Magnum mysterium. It did, smoking clays with uncanny authority. Then on to a CZ 20 SxS. Great little gun and... I could've shot better. Obviously need some remedial 20 action.

Note 5 shot minute of Copenhagen group. Nice.

Next up, another unshot rifle, a Marlin .22 WMR. How would that perform under the big Texan sky, did its previous owner zero the beast in, and at what range? Was the rimfire weapon on? Turns out it was, with the best group hitting steel at 100 yards sub moa. Nice, especially with the Marlin's bizarrely stiff trigger. Whatev, compensate, and we took the target out to 200 yards, just for kix.

Yes, Freedom. #2A

Because awesome ballistic science, something like an 8" drop was on the cards, so I held at that and, after a few test shots got in the zone, putting rounds into center mass within minute of Copenhagen. Result. Then it was time to ride out on the quads.

What's This? A Tower!

First up, an inspection of a new-built ranch house. Note this, and note it well, all you house builders. This home wisely has a tower, which is awesome. Tour over, we roared about in a Polaris kind of way around the fields and trails of bucolic Texas. 

Look at this beautiful view from a TOWER.

What a lot of fun, and I really want to thank CR for a great day out. Powerful medicine. 

Shoot on,

LSP