Just marking time,
LSP
Just marking time,
LSP
You're not allowed to own a pistol in England unless you're a criminal or a cop, but you can in Texas. You see, free citizens are able to defend themselves whereas serf-slaves cannot. That in mind, here's a Sunday pistol.
This handy pistol comes with a Burris Fastfire 3 red dot, which I'll set up tomorrow. Then let's see how this diminutive beast performs. Fast, I'd wager. That in mind, I favor .45s with all their explosive power.
Still, I like this little fella.
#2A,
LSP
Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, clergy can roam across the internet in search of sermon material; you'll find, to be fair, all kinds of errant nonsense. For example, Jesus' meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well was an exercise in non-exclusionary feminist, anti-racist ethical imperative. Choke that down if you can.
Still, Harvard (Satan's Vatican) & Co. absurdity aside, you'll find an occasional gleam of ruby or diamond in the dust. I liked this, on Christ's famous statement in John 9, "I am the light of the world."
ὅταν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ὦ, φῶς εἰμι τοῦ κόσμου.
Hotan en to kosmo o, phos eimi tou kosmou
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world
A more literal translation of this short verse would be more Yoda-like: “As long as in the world I am, light I am of the world.” Although I use the phrase “I am” twice in the translation, Jesus does not use the formulaic ego eimi at all in this verse. Instead he uses the present subjunctive for “I am”: ὦ (o); and then the present indicative εἰμι (eimi), without the first person pronoun ἐγώ (ego). [I just saw some graffiti today that read, “Your ego is not your amigo”]. So here, Jesus is being ego-less (:
Jesus includes the “ego” when he first identifies as the Light of the World in chapter 8 verse 12, a statement which, as I suggested in a John-in-July post, was intended to reference Isaiah 9:1-2 in response to the Pharisees’ insistence that “no prophet is to arise from Galilee” (7:52). According to Isaiah 9, “God will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.” Jesus says, “You know that light Isaiah talked about in the context of Galilee? I am that light. I am the Light of the World (Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου).
So why does Jesus identify again as the Light of the World in this context, after likely quoting a Jewish proverb? Moreover, how does this serve as an answer or response to the question of suffering?
Johannine scholar Herman C. Waetjen writes, “According to Philo of Alexandria, the ‘light of the world’ is the light of the first day of creation, and it is an image of the divine Logos who makes itself intelligible by means of interpretation.’”[1] One does not have to agree with Waetjen’s argument that the Fourth Gospel was written in Alexandria to accept that Philo’s ideas were clearly in the air that the Fourth Evangelist breathed. On the first day of creation, the Word (Logos) of God proceeded from God and produced light: “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (1:3). For Philo, the light and the Logos become one and the same. So by calling himself the Light of the World, Jesus is saying that he is the light of the first day of creation, a manifestation of the Logos of God.
... the light and the Logos become one and the same. So by calling himself the Light of the World, Jesus is saying that he is the light of the first day of creation, a manifestation of the Logos of God.
Daniel Deforest London, you may very well be a Girardian, TECite heretic and for all I know lost in Ivy League heterodoxy, but that was beautifully put. Thanks.
Turn to the Light and utterly reject the works of darkness.
ἐν ἀρχῇ,LSP
Keen-eyed readers may remember brave GOP stripper Stormy Daniels and her crusade to get restitution from the Russian agent masquerading as a US President. Stormy lost that battle and had to pay a solid $300K to Team Trump, her totally not cocaine-fueled, Formula One lawyer Michael Avenatti ended up in jail.
Trump, presidential candidate and ongoing GRU asset, believes he will be arrested next Tuesday and has called for protests.
OK, enough of that, we can all read the news, such as it is, and it's amusing to reflect on the absurdity of media agitprop in support of our Ruling Elite. But serious question, if Trump was arrested in a fit of kabuki theater leftist posturing, would you protest?
Perhaps not, perhaps you wouldn't welcome that 4 a.m. knock on the door by an FBI SWAT Team. Maybe you wouldn't want to end up in solitary confinement for years without trial. And this raises another question, equally serious if not more so. What have we become?
Nothing good, >30T in debt, not counting all the rest, on the brink of nuclear war, inflation at 6%, an effectively open border, look out wages, and the apparent inability to parse even the most basic math. Viz. What's the difference between a man and a woman. Or, "Hey, let's give our kids puberty blockers while surgeons cut up their genitals. Because freedom." What utter Mengeles.
This is all apparently beyond us, and no wonder. A people that has rejected God will accept his opposite, Satan, a murderer from the beginning and the Father of Lies.
What is it about Stations of the Cross on Thursday evenings which invites ferocious weather. I don't pretend to understand the mystic corollary between the Via Dolorosa, Golgotha and our ancient adversary the Weather, but there it is, the battle between Good and Evil played out in the cosmos itself.
It started with brisk wind and slight rain, which fast escalated into a beating tempest. A lull, a calm, a quiet point as birds sang thinking it was Spring. And then? Clouds rolled in from the South, tornado watch, and it was time to capture the moment from the front porch.
Would this burgeoning storm blast our bucolic farming community or would Weather's wrath pass us by? Thank Gaia, our enemy the Weather chose to strike East and punish the Deep South, like Sherman's army. We pray our brothers and sisters survived.
Stand firm, resolute, and draw the moral of this story as you take it.
Your Old Pal,
LSP
Here in Texas, wolves have been shot out leaving coyotes without a natural predator. You can hear them howl, ascendant.
Cave Canem,
LSP
Huh, so-called LSP, we came to this mind blog looking for neat photos of tracer fire and all we got was another Waylon video and a poorly written mini-rant. Guilty as charged, so to make up for the deficiency here's some tracer.
Yes, I want this rig
Russkie tracer
US tracer
Sandy
There you have it, tracer. Word to the wise, mind how you go shooting these little miscreants in the dry heat of a Texan summer. Don't want to set the countryside alight, you see.
Shoot straight,
LSP
Christ teaches us then that all things can be used for our healing and benefit and salvation, but that they must first be touched by His grace.In this way our bodies, mere flesh and bones and blood, can become containers of Christ. Our souls activated, we can become lamps of the Holy Spirit; the eyes of our souls, the doors of perception, become seeing, and we see the whole of God's Creation as it really is. We see that every blade of grass and every hill, every tree and every cloud, every drop of rain and every ocean, all creatures and all people, are miracles of God's handiwork, signs of His sacramental presence among us, and we see that we live not in the banal, everyday world, but in potential Paradise, the world as it really is, as God made it first, for we see God the Creator behind all things and all people.And then we too, together with the man born blind, can say:'I was blind, now I see'.Amen.
Have you heard the prophecy, Moscow is the the third Rome and a fourth there shall never be. Hitler found that out the hard way. Putin has blasted the West and Anglicanism in particular:
"The Anglican Church is considering a gender-neutral God. May God forgive them for they know not what they do,” he said in February speech, “ ... They distort historical facts, constantly attack our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church, and other traditional religions of our country… Perversion, and the abuse of children are declared the norm. And priests are forced to bless same-sex marriages."
Is he wrong? And if not, does that make him a new Constantine and the Ukraine a Milvian Bridge?
LSP