This seems appropriate, right about now.
All hail Prokovief,
LSP
The flags are out in force in this small country town as people get ready to have fun with family and friends around the grill. Quite right too, and I'll be firing up the Compound's Weber in short order, but as we behold delicious burgers, toothsome brisket and juicy steaks (what, you can afford that?!? Ed.) remember those who gave and give their lives for our freedom and country.
But today is Memorial Day, 2022, when we mourn the fallen of the United States Armed Forces who died for our liberty.
And because it is Memorial Day, not burger and beer day, not sports day, not play video games day, not chips and dip day, there is one tradition I hope we try our best to keep.
It involves us taking time out to think hard and long about a soldier’s poem and the poppies, row on row.
“In Flanders Fields” is that soldier’s poem, written in World War I by Col. John McCrae, a man who’d seen the devastation of war, and hopelessness. Yet with clear eyes and a clean heart he wrote of poppy blossoms as rebirth of hope, those bright orange/red papery thin blossoms, as delicate as dreams, waving in the breeze over the freshly dug graves of the dead.
Lest we forget,
LSP
Christ prays, "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." There it is. As the Father lives in the Son and the Son in the Father in a perfect donation of self, in an act of love which is the Holy Spirit, so too may the followers of Christ live in God and He in them.
On the strength of this Our Savior continues, "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am..." Where I am. We know where this is, in heaven, we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension on Thursday, and so in the strength of our union with Christ we pray:
O God, the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless, but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Savior Christ is gone before; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
Exalt us unto the same place whither our Savior Christ is gone before. Yes indeed and in the affirmation ask, was Christ's prayer answered? Yes, it was.
God bless you all,
LSP
Rightly moved by small town Itasca's war memorial, Wild commented:
I once heard Chris Matthews pontificating on his tee-vee show trying to explain the xenophobia of the red state hick by saying the little guy loves his country because that's all he's got. Meaning, the more enlightened portion of the populace would not be such fools... Not only did he miss the point, he put his Oldsmobile in reverse and drove off the bridge a second time.
Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing, say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful.
The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence.
Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
GKC and Wild, I'd argue, are right in the X Ring.
Your Patriotic Pal,
LSP
All the world knows that a killer teen shot up an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. What a hideous, heartbreaking massacre of the innocents. Everyone knows this.
What they don't know, because our honest, objective, truth seeking, humble, public spirited media haven't reported it, is that the killer was a tranny. That's right, the murderous teen was a gender dysphoric cross dresser. Have a look.
You can imagine the lyrics, "The killer awoke before dawn and put zhir skirt on." Like no fooling, with deadly result. Long story short, this isn't a gun problem, it's a mental health problem and a sickness that's being pushed at every level on our young people in the name of "freedom" and so-called compassion.
Free to be what? A blasphemous parody of a man or a woman, doomed to a lifetime of surgery and Big Pharma infusion. Curse on those Satans who gild their private jets on the backs of our children. They will have their reward.
In the meanwhile, according to the repellent Forbes magazine, over 50% of trannies contemplated suicide in 2020. The pathetic, spurious and misguided Forbes thinks this is because the trannies were rejected as opposed to having a serious mind problem. Let's cut to the chase.
We have a mental health issue, not a gun issue. There was a time, not that long ago, when kids would bring firearms to school and there weren't mass psycho killings. Now there are. What's changed? Here's a closing infographic.
Out Demons Out,
LSP
I'll just let this repost stand as it is except to say that when I was a very junior LSP I asked a WWII vet "what was it like" when they surrendered. We were in a Morris Minor on the way to Oxford where he taught and I possibly pre-school learned. He replied, "They were incredibly disciplined, even in defeat." That's stuck with me over some 50 years.
Again, a babysitter from Germany in Texas (!) 1972, who had been in Berlin around the end. "What was it like?" She replied, "The Fuhrer would speak to us in the underground from speakers, 'Fight! We will win!'" Maybe it was Goebbels instead of the Fuhrer, and we know how his family ended. Again, an old, hoary and civilized diplomat, "I heard Hitler many times and never thought him anything other than absurd."
Make of this what you will, and if you want something uplifting check out Love The One You're With by the unwashed CSNY.
Cheers,
LSP
WE are told in an Old Testament tale, how an angel of God having appeared to man disappeared again by going up in the flame from the altar. And in the same way Elijah, when he could no more be found, was believed to have gone up on the crests of flaming horses. The flame which carried Christ to heaven was the flame of his own sacrifice. Flame tends always upwards. All his life long Christ’s love burnt towards the heart of heaven in a bright fire, until he was wholly consumed in it, and went up in that fire to God. The fire is kindled on our altars, here Christ ascends in fire; the fire is kindled in the Christian heart, and we ascend. He says to us, Lift up your hearts; and we reply, We lift them up unto the Lord.
The fire is kindled on our altars, here Christ ascends in fire; the fire is kindled in the Christian heart, and we ascend. He says to us, Lift up your hearts; and we reply, We lift them up unto the Lord. I can't add to that.
Habemus ad Dominum,
LSP
Yes, you see that right, the Ukrainian colors have been added to the Trans Pride flag. All those Ukrainians are fighting and dying for Joe Biden's "greatest civil rights issue of our time," trans rights. Because, you know, getting a sex change is a really important civil liberty thing.
You'll note the original Rainbow Banner of Gayness is shrinking under an aggressive assault by forward moving chevrons and we have to ask, what will be left of the Rainbow Banner's fruity cheery colors as the West lurches into stainless steel, liberal Fascism. Intuition says stay tuned for the caring, tolerant, laughing face of Sonnenrad. But don't worry, in the meanwhile we have NATO, i.e. the US:
The U.S. Army is reportedly proposing a new policy that would allow soldiers to request a move to a new base if they believe they face discrimination from local or state laws on the basis of gender, sex, religion, race or pregnancy.
The move would change an existing policy that allows personnel to seek a move to help them cope with family problems.
In effect, it would allow soldiers to declare certain states to be too racist or homophobic for them to live there.