If You Scorn This You're A Fool

 

I won't bang on.

Respect,

LSP

What Utter Idiocy

 

You may have noticed Air Force academy cadets in Colorado have been taking Diversity and Inclusion classes, D&I, which teach them to use gender neutral language. No more "Mom" and "Dad" for these future warfighters, via Fox News:

According to Fox, an Air Force Academy spokespersyn told the news channel that D&I training prepared the cadets for "warfighting effectiveness." That's right, inclusive language and diversity is key to force lethality, it wins wars.

Yes. Imagine the scene, you're flying low and fast in a rook through deep echelon air defense, somewhere in Eastern Europe. By a miracle you make it and deliver ordnance on target, more miraculously still you get it back to the airfield and there you are, alive, mission accomplished. And all because everyone in your team said "transgender service people" and wrote letters home to their caregiver guardian parents. 

No. They didn't say "Mom" or "Dad," and that's why they won the firefight, said no one ever until the advent of today's rainbow hued American Armed Forces. Leaving aside such total, utter idiocy, why this push to erase our identity as human beings, as Mothers, Fathers, men and women?

On the one hand, it comes almost honestly from people who believe these definitions are instruments of oppression and must therefore be abolished. No man, no woman, no Mother, no Father and at last we're equal, but equal as what? As sexless drones of the hivemind, serf beasts obedient to power. 

Unintended consequence for sure of an ideology which doesn't believe in the reality of humanity in the name of freedom, but there it is. And remember, everything the Left enacts produces the opposite of its intended result. 

And Big Money loves it. Let's rake in Raytheon diversity billions because gender inclusive, green munitions save the planet even as they rip people apart. Thank Gaia you don't refer to them as Mom, Dad, man, woman as you burn them down. 

In related news, California's legalized human fertilizer, not kidding.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

Junior LSP Roofie

 

I know, this is a family blog so all six of you readers get the news on my eldest son who's enjoying the Army. Well done, boy. But there's another son you've hardly heard of, a Junior LSP, who lives in the land of the ice and snow, in Calgary. What's he up to?

Roofing. That's right, up at 5 am and onto the roofs of Calgary and beyond, which is no small thing right about now with our Old Enemy the Weather about to get -40++ with the wind. You can imagine what it's like on the roofs.

So respect to the young 'un. Graduate from High School and get up on that roof instead of taking a "year out" as some kind of two-bit hippy. And, when college looms shortly he'll be able to pay for it, what with having a trade and all. Quite unlike, say, trannie theater collective majors.

Familial plaudit regardless, we spoke for the first time in a while this evening, "Dad, we were working on a roof in Cochrane for the RCMP, it was pretty cool, a big complex, and there was this noise, so we stopped and looked up. A bald eagle, soaring, I couldn't believe it was real, but it was."

God bless and keep our young men, wherever they are.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

All Hail Ladbroke Grove

 

Maybe space rock is the best rock, in the hall of the...

Mountain Grill,

LSP

Listen Up Heathen

 

Yesterday was the Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist. Here's the late great Canadian, Fr. Crouse:

The mission of the Church is to call us out of darkness; by word and sacrament to set before our eyes the vision of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. That is at the heart of liturgy, and all the Christian arts; the light of pure, transcendent glory must shine through, and that is essential to all our intellectual and moral and ascetical disciplines, too. Without that vision, all else so easily falls into deceit and craftiness; or perhaps, at best, narrowness of spirit, or just pedestrian nonsense. But even pedestrian nonsense, you know, if that's all there is, is a pretty nasty form of hell (my emph, LSP).

May we, along with Matthew - rejoicing in his fellowship, and aided by his prayers - be granted grace, that in this liturgy, and in all the images of earthly life, we may glimpse the face of Jesus Christ; and then, beyond all earthly images, "beheld with open face" that everlasting glory. That is, after all, our calling.

I cannot add to that,

LSP

Cooking With LSP

 

Wow, you're gonna do that, cook with LSP? Good luck, brother. So they say, but it's not hard. Get out in the field, shoot some dove, clean the birds and let the diminutive breasts rest in brine overnight. Easy.

Next step? Buy some jalapeno peppers, they're cheap, slice 'em in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon or something, just don't wipe your eyes, obviously. Then fill the hollow pepper halves with cream cheese. Behold the evolution, well done, you've got this far.

The next bit's intuitive. Fillet the meat off the doves and place it on the cream cheese filled peppers, then wrap those bad boys in bacon. Yes, bacon. Secure the little rascals with toothpicks then put them in the oven at around 400, maybe 425's better, your call, there's no "rule."

Then lo and behold, 20 minutes later, delicious poppers. Stand back in amazement and fall upon your scoff.

Like a Warrior,

LSP

Just Get Out In The Field

 

"For an LSP you sure don't get out in the field very much," the people murmur, discontentedly. And they have a point, so to put things right I RV'd with some church ranch people and off we went against the avian adversary, dove, splitting into two groups.

Our section had a good setup. Imagine a dead tree by a stock tank and then, maybe 150 yards off, another dead tree pretty much opposite the first. And there it is, mojo decoys at the tank, clipons at the further tree, wait for the birds to fly and have at it.

Fly they did, especially at the tank mojos, those things definitely work, which is awesome. But I was at the second dead tree and stupidly didn't have mojo power, only clipon. Still, plenty of fast flying, wing shooting action.

OK, I missed more than I hit but still, plenty of sound and fury and the tankers did very well, with one shooter close to limiting out. You see, practice doesn't hurt when you come to these things, especially when the birds are fast, go figure, dove, and shot-savvy, which they are at this point in the game; just watch them dodge your hurtling hail of 1400 fps BBs.

Then dusk began to fall and we regrouped in a laager of pickups to clean a tailgate of birds, tell war stories and enjoy ourselves under the bright stars of a Texan night. No small thing, they shine brightly.

What a great evening. Shotguns, pickups, birds, great people and the open air of the Lone Star State. There'll be dove poppers tomorrow. Yum.

Remember to aim,

LSP

Rest in Peace Your Majesty

 

Did you watch the Funeral and Committal? Wow, hard to keep composure, at least for me. That in mind, perhaps you noticed the bird's eye shot of the Abbey's crossing. Here's this commentary:

I spent much of the day, along with several hundred million other people around the world, watching the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth on TV. It was full of remarkable, beautifully choreographed and often moving moments, as you would expect of an event which has been prepared for since the 1960s. A lot of things don’t work very well in Britain anymore, but this kind of pageantry is something we can still do well. We will not see its like again, I don’t think.

 I say ‘pageantry’, but this is a dismissive word. What happened today was a rolling, dense mat of symbolism, replete with historical meaning, anchored in a very particular nation and time period. What did it symbolise? Above all, I think, it symbolised something that our culture has long stopped believing in, and as such can’t really process effectively, or even perhaps quite comprehend. This was brought home to me by one particular moment in the ceremony.

You can see that moment in the photograph above. It’s a view from the height of the tower of Westminster Abbey, looking down onto the Queen’s coffin below. The Abbey is, of course, laid out in the shape of the cross, and the coffin was set down at the meeting point of the nave and the transept, where the two arms of the cross meet. At one point in the proceedings, the camera showed us this view, and then focused in on the scene, and the impression was that of some energy flowing down from above and into the coffin, then out across the marble floor and into the gathered crowd.

It struck me then that this was an accurate visual image of the world which this Queen’s death marks the final end of, and it struck me too that this must be one of the reasons why her passing has had such a huge impact - one way beyond the person she actually was. What we were seeing as the camera panned down was a manifestation, through technological trickery, of the ancient notion of sacral kingship.

This notion was the rock which the political structure of all medieval societies was built, and in theory at least it is still the architecture which supports the matter of Britain, whose bishops still sit in parliament with the power to amend laws, and whose monarch’s crown is adorned with a cross. Authority, in this model of society, flows downward, from God, and into the monarch, who then faces outward with that given power and serves - and rules - his or her people.

Forget for a moment whether you’re a Christian, or a monarchist, or indeed whether you just think this is so much humbug designed to disguise the raw exercise of power. I’m not trying to make a case here: I am trying to understand something that I think at least partly explains how we have got here.

The point of the model of sacral kingship is that all true power resides in and emerges from the great, mysterious, unknowable, creative power at the heart of the universe - the power which we call, for want of a better word, ‘God.’ Any power that the monarch may exercise in this temporal realm is not ultimately his or hers. At the end of the funeral today, the orb and the sceptre, symbolising the Queen’s spiritual and temporal authority, were removed from the top of her coffin, along with the crown, and given over to the care of the church. At that point, Elizabeth became symbolically what she had always been in reality, and we all are - small, ordinary people, naked before God.

This notion - that any power exercised by a human ruler ultimately derives from the spiritual plane - is neither British nor European. It is universal. Pharaonic Egypt recognised it, and so did Native America. The Anglo-Saxons believed it and so did the Japanese Emperors. Cultures large and small, imperial and tribal, on all continents over many millennia, have shared some version of this understanding of what the world is. Power, it tells us - politics, it insists - is no mere human confection, because the world is no mere human confection. There is something - someone - else beyond it, and if we are silent, in these cathedrals or in these forests, we can hear it still. Those who take power in this world will answer to it at the end. It is best that they know this now.

What is meaningful about this royal death is that the late Queen really believed this. So, I think, does her son, the new King. But the society around him very much does not. The understanding now is that authority flows upward from below, from ‘the people’ and into the government, which supposedly governs on our behalf. In this model there is no sacred centre, and there is no higher authority to whom we answer. There is no heavenly grant of temporary office which will one day be returned, and a tally made. There is only raw power, rooted in materiality, which in itself has no meaning beyond what we ascribe to it. There is only efficiency. There is only management. There are only humans.

And yet: watching the vast, snaking queue that all week has spreadeagled across London, as the crowds came to bow their heads before the coffin; watching the emotions on display today, and the massed crowds again across the country, bringing something to this event that perhaps they didn’t even understand themselves, I thought: no. We don’t really believe that there is nothing else. It is just what we think we have to say. Look: we believe in a bigger story. It is still there. It never left.

y point is not to argue for the return of medieval monarchy. Like I say, I’m not making an argument here. Still, like Jonathan Van Maren, who makes a similar case in a moving essay today, I feel that this death is meaningful to so many because, whether we know it or not, it marks the final passing of this worldview. There is no sacral kingship now, and our leaders don’t even bother to pretend otherwise. Perhaps, as some do, you celebrate the passing of such an antiquated notion. What I am thinking this evening though is something I reflected on many months ago as I began my essay series here.

I am thinking that there is a throne at the heart of every culture, whether we know it or not, and that if we cast out its previous inhabitant - and the entire worldview that went along with it - we had better understand what we plan to replace it with. Someone, or something, is going to sit on that throne whether we know it or not. I can’t think of any societies in history which have believed - as ours does - that all that matters is matter. That nothing resides above the spires of the Abbey. That there is no throne. If there were any cultures like that - well, they didn’t last to tell us about it.

As I say, I am not making an argument. I am just watching. I am just looking down from that height, onto the nave and the transept and the coffin draped in the standard, and I am thinking: I have just heard the last post sounded for Christian England. We are in a new land now. We should pray that we find our way.

Right in the X Ring, eh?

LSP

Sunday Sing Song

 

I used to do that until... I didn't.

Let's hear it for the beautiful and remarkable Emmylou.

Willy, you may be a nasty old hippy from Abbott, but we love this song. And thanks for fixing up the courthouse, good man.

Μακάριος,

LSP

Sunday Comms

 

There we were on the back porch, just me, Old Blue and a razor sharp kukri. Typical, maybe a glass of well chilled wine was involved. Then the sat phone rang. Yes, it was the Wolf.

"Are you able to pay full time clergy or is it all volunteer, like the Mormons?" I thought about this for maybe a second, "No, we're all good in this diocese, unlike, say, the Episcopalians. They're running out of cash to pay full time pastorenes. Go figure."

"Maybe this will help," offered LL with an infovid of PMC WAGNER recruiting out of some penal colony. "Good call. We'll bus those convicts straight to the homes of Episcopalien bishops. Kinda like sanctuary cities but house church."

"Exactly," said the Wolf, who proceeded to lay out preliminary plans for the operation. All well and good, then a rambunctious soldier burst through the back door, full of youthful high spirits allied to fitness, "Hey Dad, how's it going!" I stared into his EyePros. "Everything's good, kid, we're just fixing to solve a clergy staffing crisis. Working title? OPERATION MARTHA'S VINEYARD."

Have a beautiful Sunday.

Cheers,

LSP

You Can't Serve God And Mammon

 

Mammon. The name itself connotes a kind of vast deadness and it's typically translated as wealth or riches. Nothing wrong with those, may everyone have nice things, but when wealth becomes the logic, criteria and end of our lives, when it's served and worshiped as God? Then it becomes an idol and an enslaving beast.

St. John Chrysostom likens followers of this false deity to dogs chained to a tomb. Here he is:

For though none of these things should come to pass, says He, you will undergo no small harm, in being nailed to the things below, and in becoming a slave instead of a freeman, and casting yourself out of the heavenly things, and having no power to think on anything that is high, but all about money, usuries and loans, and gains, and ignoble traffickings. Than this what could be more wretched? For in truth such an one will be worse off than any slave, bringing upon himself a most grievous tyranny, and giving up the chiefest thing of all, even the nobleness and the liberty of man. For how much soever any one may discourse unto you, you will not be able to hear any of those things which concern you, while your mind is nailed down to money; but bound like a dog to a tomb, by the tyranny of riches, more grievously than by any chain, barking at all that come near you, you have this one employment continually, to keep for others what you have laid up. Than this what can be more wretched?

 

Infernal Mammon waxes large today, it's in the deadly air we breathe. Stand fast against it; fix heart and soul on the true God, pray to Him in adoration and contrition, loving Him simply for what He is in Himself. I find the Jesus Prayer helps, "Lord Jesus, I love you, have mercy on me a sinner." In the face of this the idol Mammon seems at best tawdry, repellent and absurd.

Then, from adoration of the Savior, ask for the illumination and discernment to use our wealth, such as it is, for the love of God and neighbor. Then do it, concretely, tangibly. For some, this means total renunciation of worldly goods. For all, the giving of our substance to the glory of God and the service, the love, of our neighbor. Do these things; break the power of the infernal idol and store up treasure in heaven. 

Here endeth the Saturday sermon.

Sicut erat in principio,

LSP

Off To The Vineyard!

Ever notice those espousing we give up a little so those without can have some (which is socialism) are rich? (WSF)

Have you noticed how Florida and Texas are sending their immigrants to sanctuary cities and the ritzy retreats of our beloved ruling class, like Martha's Vineyard? You know, the Vineyard, where all the prophets of climate change flooding set up in millionaire socialist mansions, by the sea.

Sure you have and so have they, and guess what? They don't want illegals in their backyards. Well you can't blame them, but you can say NIMBY, virtue signalling, corrupt, mendacious, profiteering, mountebank hypocrites. Right?

Go on, DeSantis and Abbott, let's see moar planes, trains and buses full of immigrants land right on the manicured lawns of their summer seaside mansions. Ship 'em in. And who knows, some might even find work as servants, maids, gardeners and beyond.

You can't serve God and Mammon.

Cheers,

LSP