Good Time Had By All

Had a great time at a parishioner's place the other evening, there was plenty of land and an interestingly twisted tree.

A cacophany of pick-ups

Delicious BBQ and an all round good time thanks to the hospitality of Bud & Jimmie Monroe both of whom are one time rodeo champs (bronc & barrel riding) but now do something with cattle and, happily for me, support the Church. They're also supporting a colony of hogs who're swinishly breaking into the acreage to root about along a creek bed, so they'll be baited and brought to BBQ justice - but first I have to go to Anaheim to write about the General Convention of The Episcopal Church (TEC). Nightmarish prospect and an unwelcome hiatus from the riding and shooting regimen, still, duty calls.

More anon.

LSP

PS. Check out the excellent Rabbit Stew for a good riff on the perniciously Manichean PETA.

Independance Day

I know its strange but I was reading Chesterton - does a little go a long way? - and came across the following:

"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog."

Again

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man."

Good man, GKC.

Have a great Ind. Day.

LSP

"The Cause" or "A Tale of the South"

Inspired by moonshine posts on various sites my mind ran to a friend of the family who lives in Oxford, England, the 'City of Screaming Tires.' He's a literary critic and writes books, which is a fine job if you can get it, but his American forebearers in the 1920s weren't so grand. No, one of them was a bootlegger with a mobile still which he'd move about from location to location in his old Ford truck.

All well and good, business boomed and the product was good, so good that its purveyor felt compelled to sample his 'product' from time to time. You know how it is, quality control is key, and the quality in question was excellent, it really worked, so much so that still, truck and bootlegger ended up driving full tilt into the Courthouse in the center of town. Serious offence and what was he charged with?

An illegal still? No.

'Moonshine'? No.

Reckless drunken driving? No.

Destroying the Confederate War Memorial? Yes.

I'm sure he got time for that and doubtless well deserved. Enough 'Memorials' - off to say Vespers, shoot + ride about on horses.

God bless,

LSP

Pro Patria

On my way to the stables I get to drive through Itasca. It has a Main Street.

It has a sign.

It has a Memorial.

And a little over a thousand people.

God bless Texas.

LSP

This Is Not LSP.

It is the gun totin' Pastor from Kentucky, Ken Pagan o. As you probably know, Pastor Ken's organising an 'open carry celebration' in his Louisville church on Saturday, July 27th. As I understand it, this is to show support for 2nd Amendment rights and register a little grass roots, Assemblies of God protest against any attempt by TPTB to take away our guns. The service will evidently feature rousing patriotic music, a potluck picnic and a $1.00 handgun draw, which is a bargain for sure. It all sounds vastly entertaining and, were I in Louisville, I'd probably tip up for the picnic in the doubtless vain hope of winning the handgun. But I like guns - of all sorts, others are less keen and remind me that a "gun service" doesn't sound too Christian, after all, we're supposed to be a religion of peace; Jesus, despite having an especial fondness for members of the professional Roman Army, wasn't a scimitar weilding desert warlord.

So what's to be made of Ken's celebration of the gun? Should we follow his example and take our pistols to church? I have to admit it sounds a little strange, but there is precedent - the Present Arms by an Honor Guard at the Consecration, the sacramental bestowal of Knighthood with a sword, to name several instances of weapons in church; I'd be surprised if Raymond didn't enter the Sepulchre armed to the teeth, alongside Bishop Odo and his fearsome Club. The list goes on, but...

Leaving aside the theology of thing, and there's a fair bit of it, I'm not about to start getting the parishioners to take the sidearms and rifles they're currently leaving in the truck into Mass on Sundays. You see, tempers can get strangely overexcited in church, and I'll leave it at that.

On a completely different theme, someone, or thing, has been ripping off the OBS - see Albert Rasch's excellent Outdoor Chronicles - and for an interesting take on Mein Kampf, Moonshiners and more, have a look at the enormously enjoyable (to me at least) Boomers & BS site.

Cheers,

LSP

Just Tell It Like It Is.

Metropolitan Jonah

Spent the last couple of days holed up in the Press Room at St. Vincent's Cathedral, Bedford, developing carpal tunnel syndrome and trying to put out something meaningful about the first Provincial Assembly of the new 'Anglican Church in North America', or ACNA for short. Well, its not shooting, riding, or vicariously connected with your friends catching huge great fish but it was a bit of history in the making - especially Metropolitan Jonah's address this morning. He called for the full communion of Orthodoxy with the new Province. Excellent but what would Anglicans have to do to make this happen? Jonah pulled no punches:

"Full affirmation of the orthodox Faith of the Apostles and Church Fathers, the seven Ecumenical Councils, the Nicene Creed in its original form, all seven Sacraments and a rejection of ‘the heresies of the Reformation.' His Beatitude listed these in a series of ‘isms’; Calvinism, anti-sacramentalism, iconoclasm and Gnosticism. He went on, the ordination of women to the Presbyterate and their consecration as Bishops has to end if intercommunion is to occur."

Nice one Jonah, all good grist for the LSP mill, not that I have a problem with the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, you understand, but what about ACNA?

Scary New York Boy Bishop

The last I heard more than a few had a perverse regard for Calvinist anti-sacramentalism - but at least they're not dismal devotees of the Sharia peddler that occupies the throne of Augustine, or fans of the Boy Bishop in New York either; maybe that will save them in the end.

I hope so, much as I dislike the 'heresies of the reformation' and the various detestable enormities of Sola Scriptura, infantile hymns and slavish devotion to Puritan 'divinity'. Despite all that, and far more, I'd like to see ACNA succeed because I think they really do want to believe the Faith, which is no bad thing. Only time will tell if they find it.

More of that anon. Looking forward to another episode of 'Horse & Stable' tomorrow a.m.

Cheers,

LSP

Shoot the Lee!

I've been saving a couple of boxes of .303 British thinking, for some reason, that they were hard to come by, which they're not. This foolishness had stopped me firing my Lee Enfield for the last month or so until today, when the scales fell from my eyes. "Don't be stupid, LSP,'" I thought to myself, "take the SMLE out for a spin, you can always get more ammo."

Struck by this ammunition epiphany, I loaded up some weapons and drove off to my Treasurer's farm for a shoot. First off I stalked the acreage with a .22 looking for rabbits - no joy, doubtless because they were 1/2 a mile away gorging on vegetables in the plot behind the barn.

Nothing daunted I set up a target by some hay bales and fired off a box of .45 ACP to decent effect, somewhere in the region of 3 inch groups at around 20 yards. Shot lower left of target initially but got things together after a time and pulled up close to the center.

Then it was off to the combine harvester with the Lee. The advantage of the CH being that you can sit up high on the machine and shoot safely down on the target from appx. 60/70 yards.

Despite ammo paranoia induced lack of practice, the rounds grouped well, albeit a little low. Used battle instead of peep sights - perhaps an error. But that was less important to me than the sheer enjoyment of the action of the rifle, which I find robust and well engineered.

Shoot over, it was back to church for Vespers and a conflab with parishioners who were setting the hall up for a Father's Day reception after Sunday Mass. They figured it should have a theme and chose "On the Beach." I don't know why and didn't ask, but did congratulate their ingenuity.

Have a great Father's Day.

LSP

Stay on the Horse, Mate!

Lamenting the dismal failure of The Administration to do more than give a handringing rebuke (worse the French for goodness sake) to the barbarians in Tehran - and the breakdown of AC in the parsonage, I decided to leave the Sweat Lodge and head for the stables. Several miles of dirt roads later I was there, welcomed by assorted flags, not least the Union Jack. Good to see that flying.

And by 'BeBop', who put up with my novice horsemanship for a few hours while I posted, practiced two point and generally horsed about. It felt good, probably because I'm beginning to get the rythm of the horse and sensibly managed not to fall off. Total enjoyment; the ultimate goal being to go really fast for a long time while jumping over high obstacles. Well, progress is being made.

BeBop looked after, it was advance to contact at the Stock Tank where the opposition were suppressed by a furious hail of bolt action lead. Great fun - message to market: Don't stay at home reflecting on political and air conditioning failure when you can ride and shoot.

God bless,

LSP

The Great Offender

This doesn't work anymore, so what looks like a pleasant place to live is in fact...

An Oven.

New compressor coming in on Friday. In the meanwhile experimenting with prising open windows sealed by decades of paint and seeing how they coped in the olden days. Forunately the house was built well before AC - 'climate control' = big windows & the hope of a breeze. Its bearable, just, but roll on Friday. In the meanwhile I console myself with this good comment from Simply Outdoors:

I honestly pray at the start of every hunt; I pray for a safe hunt; a fun hunt; and if something happens to walk by and I am fortunate enough to be able to put it on the dinner table....sweet!

Great intentions which I'll use for sure - unless I melt, which seems likely.

LSP

Huge Great Fish 2

The small shark went back in the water but the rest...

...ended up on the plate. Tasty.

LSP

Huge Great Fish

Here's GWB with a sizable fish. He'd gone off to Galvestone for some angling action and got it, by the look of things. The catch ended up on the grill. Nice. I understand he caught a small shark too; I'll post the picture when I get it.

This reminds me to stop being lazy and get out on the water - excellent relaxation, exciting when you get something (rare for me) and tasty with it.

Good result GWB.

Cheers.

LSP

Theology, innit.

I know this isn't about guns, horses, dogs, the failed modernist liberal humanist secular project et al., but it is about God, or rather one of His followers - St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. Maritain has this to say:

"Between Aristotle as viewed in himself and Aristotle viewed in the writings of St. Thomas is the difference which exists between a city seen by the flare of a torchlight procession and the same city bathed in the light of the morning sun."

Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy

Here's an excerpt from one of Thomas' hymns, the Pange Lingua, which he wrote for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, in the 13th C. Some believe that the rythm of the hymn comes down from a marching song of Caesar's Legions: "Ecce, Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit Gallias."

PANGE, lingua, gloriosi

Corporis mysterium,

Sanguinisque pretiosi,

quem in mundi pretium

fructus ventris generosi

Rex effudit Gentium.

The translation doesn't do justice, but...

SING, my tongue, the Savior's glory,

of His flesh the mystery sing;

of the Blood, all price exceeding,

shed by our immortal King,

destined, for the world's redemption,

from a noble womb to spring.

As the legend has it, "Thomas, you have written well on the Sacrament of my Body."

Have a blessed (late) Feast of Corpus Christi.

LSP