Motor(way) City

Life has a strange way of sending me to Detroit, but I'll spare you the backstory... regardless, after the trial of modern interstate air travel -- not dissimilar to catching a bus from Victoria Station to Canterbury in the '80s in terms of time and discomfort -- I clambered off the plane and into Motor City to see an old friend before going across the river to Canada.

'Red' was using a crowbar to jimmy up great slabs of concrete from his back yard when I arrived. He's fixing up his house you see, which is hard work at the best of times; till then it'll be a little bit Fight Club -- the house should look good when it's done though.

Remarkable city, Detroit; I'm in Windsor now, but if I get the chance I'll venture back across the river for a tour and some pictures, hopefully before the place reverts to wilderness.

Missing guns and horses -- must check out the local range, don't think there's much of a riding opportunity here, annoyingly.

Cheers,

LSP

Horse & Dog

Back in the far off, halcyon days of mid '90s London, when bushcraft and associated pursuits were still a concept in the mind of SBW (great blog) and King's Cross seemed like a good place to go dancing -- well, I would have raised a quizzical eyebrow if you'd said that I'd be a country parson in rural Texas. How things have changed, thank goodness.

These days I like nothing better than to get up for one more perfect sunrise, say the Divine Office and head off to the not so distant lure of...

ferocious dogs.

Highbrow Throroughbreds,

and a brisk workout in the equine way; good for mind, body and soul, especially when allied to guns of all sorts. But more of that anon.

Hunt 'em up.

LSP

Belloc - Modern Attack

Belloc -- the Anti-Crowley

From time to time I like to read to read Belloc, one of the more aggressive catholic apologists of the last century and a sort of 'bad cop' to Chesterton's good one. Here's what he had to say about modernism and the nascent secular state:

"The Faith is now in the presence not of a particular heresy as in the past - the Arian, the Manichean, the Albigensian, the Mohammedan, nor is it in the presence of a sort of generalized heresy as it was when it had to meet the Protestant revolution from three to four hundred years ago.

The enemy which the Faith now has to meet, and which may be called "The Modern Attack," is a wholesale assault upon the fundamentals of the Faith, upon the very existence of the Faith. And the enemy now advancing against us is increasingly conscious of the fact that there can be no question of neutrality. The forces now opposed to the Faith design to destroy. The battle is henceforward engaged upon a definite line of cleavage, involving the survival or destruction of the Catholic Church. And all, not a portion, of its philosophy."

You can read the whole thing here, from chapter seven of The Great Heresies (pub. 1938).

I think his analysis is pretty much on target, whether his conclusions follow remains to be seen.

In the meanwhile, horse training proceeds apace, with Jeanne Belle (Thoroughbred mare) making excellent progress -- lunges well, gaits are becoming smoother, there's increased collection and all 'round improvement in manners. Still, a long way to go for the pair of us; I'll post some photos when the camera decides to work again/is replaced.

Cheers,

LSP

Unholy Communion

Dog

The little ACoC (Anglican Church of Canada) is at it again. Desperate to bolster dramatically reduced numbers, Ontario clergyperson, Rev. Marguerite Rea, gave 'communion' to an Alsatian dog at St. Peters, Toronto. After a gentle reprimand from her bishop, Rea stated that her actions were "a simple way of reaching out."

ACoC

In the meanwhile, the strangely shrinking ACoC continues on its trajectory out of earth orbit, with the tacit approval of its richer southern cousin, TEC (The Episcopal Church) and its leaderene, Jefferts Schori.

Schori

All rumours to the contrary, TEC, ACoC and the COE (Church of England) are not about to implode into something resembling a black hole in the icy depths of space.

To the stars!

LSP

Happy Independence Day!

It's been an unusually hectic couple of weeks, what with worship,

teaching the faithful,

shooting,

training the horse (huge thanks to VS for training me...), working to some kind of deadline for the religious press, and reading Owen Chadwick's outstanding book, 'Spirit of the Oxford Movement.' Here's an excerpt, on Keble, who famously stated:

'If the Church of England were to fail, it should be found in my parish.'

And Chadwick's commentary:

'The stance is so squared and so real that it takes a moment to see how cloud-capped are the towers he defended.'

I fear LSPland isn't so very far from the same battlements; with that in mind, have a blessed Independence Day and stand vigilant for freedom.

Off to clean guns now.

Cheers,

LSP

Spurious Slice of Country Life

Managed to persuade one of the sisters to get on a horse. She had a good time.

I galloped about on Be-Bop,

and had a shoot.

Total enjoyment! At Camp Crucis now, teaching the St. Michael's Conference along with Apostolicity and Texanglican. Good result.

God bless,

LSP

Space Alien Face-Off!

Code Pink took exception to their leader the other day, hurling abuse and 'things' at 'Speaker' Pelosi. 'Speaker' appeared to be in the grip of some disease, stating, "You have made your point, you have made your point", but the sub-aliens weren't buying and the "Go home to Gaza" jeers only intensified.

Speculation continues as to whether 'Speaker' is in the throes of Mogadon addiction or merely malcircuiting.

This site stands against the alien/robot invasion.

LSP

Horse Sunday

Nice Flag

After Sunday's Masses I drove through the pastoral idyll that is Brandon to visit the new horse and begin her training, and mine, in groundwork. For Geniebelle this is important because she's been left to her own devices for seven years and hasn't been ridden in that time.

Green Broke Thoroughbred

This means that she has to learn yielding, manners, leading, longeing and various basic skills, such as not trying to use humans as a scratching post, or attempting to jump over fences she's tied to... After a high-strung start she did well, and began to show signs of respect/obedience -- standing still when tied with far fewer incursions into my space. She longed fairly well too and didn't act out on the trot when I was in the saddle.

16 Hands

It was hot work and for me the beginnings of a new skill -- I tell you, you've got to be fast on your feet. Big things, horses, and powerful with it. They're not pets, you see.

Must work out a systematic training program for the beast - - I'm looking forward to that; GB's certainly got the potential.

God bless,

LSP

PS. Check out Buesun's site - I was moved by the story of the baseboards - and SBW has a neat post about bear hunting.

Gone to the Dogs

There's a good new tradition here - ecumenical dog trials, which take place at the local Cowboy Church's arena. Our Mission provided the food; pulled pork and brisket today and very tasty it was too.

So was the canine action, with plenty of sharp work between the hooves. The average score came in at around 7 minutes and 30 points, with the best achieving double that in the same time. I'd say the skills are similar but it's altogether more high energy than the sheep variant, not that there's anything wrong with that either.

After the dogs it was down to the hospital to visit the sick, say Evening Prayer then visit the horses. They seemed well; I'm looking forward to working with the new mare tomorrow after Mass.

Cheers,

LSP

Texas is Great

Why is Texas great? Well, simply because it is. I like the guns, dogs, horses, BBQ, farms and general sense of freedom, the religion's not bad too - at least from a trad Anglican perspective; lets hope all that increases instead of the opposite. Speaking of farms, here's a picture of Bonnie shifting bales out of her pickup. I offered to help but she just grinned and fired away till they were all sorted in no time flat - Bonnie's 70 - I probably would have slowed her down...

Apologies for not visiting the blogs - life's been strangely busy...

God bless,

LSP

Trinity Sunday

My philosopher sportsman friend, GWB, sent me this picture. He's proud of his Bass and who can blame him; makes me want to buy/borrow a Jon Boat and get out on the lake...

But in the meanwhile, it's the Feast of the Trinity today, so here's some Aquinas on "The Trinity of divine persons and the unity of the divine essence":

"We must conclude from all we have said that in the Godhead there is something threefold which is not opposed to the unity and simplicity of the divine essence. We must acknowledge that God is, as existing in His nature, and that He is known and loved by Himself.

But this occurs otherwise in God than in us. Man, to be sure, is a substance in his nature, but his actions of knowing and loving are not his substance. Considered in his nature, man is indeed a subsisting thing; as he exists in his mind, however, he is not a subsisting thing, but a certain representation of a subsisting thing; and similarly with regard to his existence in himself as beloved in lover. Thus man may be regarded under three aspects: that is, man existing in his nature, man existing in his intellect, and man existing in his love. Yet these three are not one, for man's knowing is not his existing, and the same is true of his loving. Only one of these three is a subsisting thing, namely, man existing in his nature.

In God, on the contrary, to be, to know, and to love are identical. Therefore God existing in His natural being and God existing in the divine intellect and God existing in the divine love are me thing. Yet each of them is subsistent. And, as things subsisting in intellectual nature are usually called persons in Latin, or hypostases in Greek, the Latins say that there are three persons in God, and the Greeks say that there are three hypostases, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

You can read the whole thing here if you like, or have a gaze at a nicely restored and ready to fire LMG (Bren) over at Boomers. Great weapon.

Cheers,

LSP

New Horse

A very kind person donated a horse to the cause today, a nine year old thoroughbred mare called Genie who was trained for the track but never raced. We worked her out a little on the lunge line and she did well, then rode her about after being told she hadn't been ridden in seven years and, you never know, I geared myself up all kinds of trouble. It never came, though there'll have to be some work on forward movement and she had a tendency to toss her head about...

My feeling is that she'll go fast, which is fine, and people who know about such things say she could work well at dressage.

So we'll see; I'm looking forward to getting to know a new horse.

Cheers,

LSP

Fruits of the Spirit

Church of England Bishops

They say that the miter worn by Bishops represents the 'tongues of fire' that rested on the heads of the Apostles at Pentecost.

Make of that what you will.

Have a blessed Pentecost!

LSP

Ride & Shoot

Downtown Brandon

I've made a new resolution to ride and shoot more, which means going out on Tuesday morning, through the bustling little town that probably never was Brandon, and saddling up at a farm just outside it - less fancy than the last place, but a lot more room to ride.

A place to ride

And to shoot, so I unleashed the AR on some targets from around 50 yards and successfully killed a tuna can and some of its Arizona Ice Tea brethren. The latter give a satisfying explosion when full...

Arab

There's plenty of room to hunt too, but I've yet to scout it out. All in good time.

Two flyers, two on

Now back in the day I would've scoffed at the AR, because of plastic components and the 5.56 of the thing. For me it had to be solid wood and steel or it wasn't real. That changed with the L1A1 and I'm perfectly happy blasting away with the carbine - still, when budget permits I think 7.62 in the same platform would make sense, you know, because of all the walls you have to shoot through...

Cheers,

LSP

That Great Leviathan

Drove off into a storm with my Wittgensteinian friend GWB, an all 'round sportsman, to go fishing.

Got through the storm to the lake,

and caught some fish.

And for me, that was an excellent result. Must go fishing far more often.

God bless,

LSP

Good Sunday

Woke up to a beautiful morning and birds all over the church car park. They were quiet because of intense pecking after food. Then pick-ups arrived...

and the Mass was sung. Managed to get horses and guns into into the sermon, which seemed to go down well. Then it was on to the next Mission, where everyone seemed pretty fervently into the service. Had an interesting conversation about red-dot optics with one of the Ushers - I've discovered that mounting my Aimpoint copy co-efficient with iron sights brings the dot more sharply into focus. He found that the same thing made him see double, which is confusing, but I have to admit I don't know the biology of the thing. The proof, I suppose, is in the shooting.

With that in mind, have a blessed Sunday.

LSP

Ammo

Walmart's Finest

Interesting article about ammunition in Pajamas Media...

"Scan the ammunition shelves at sporting goods stores, your local gun store, or even Walmart and odds are that you won’t find what you are looking for. The most common cartridges are in short supply, and many stores ration ammunition a box or two at a time to spread their meager stock among their customers.

This isn’t new. But why is this nationwide ammunition shortage still happening?"

Why? Unprecedented demand, especially from LE here in the U.S. and, in China, a burgeoning market for raw materials; but still, millions of rounds are left unaccounted for -- stockpiled?

Maybe and you can read the whole thing here, but for myself, well, I tend to shoot them as fast as I buy them.

Cheers,

LSP

Hail the day that sees Him rise

After an invigorating evolution of strong coffee, Morning Prayer, and cantering about on the horse, I set my mind to the Feast of the Ascension. I liked this, from Austin Farrer's 'Crown of the Year',

“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.”

Farrer was, to my mind, genius and a holy man with it.

Have a blessed Feast,

LSP

PS. Some people have rashly supposed that this site is against Mr. Steyn. That is not true.

Ridiculously False Statement

Mark Steyn & Pamela Geller

Tom, of Boomers fame, sent me this quote from Mark Steyn:

"Most mainline Protestant churches are, to one degree or another, post-Christian. If they no longer seem disposed to converting the unbelieving to Christ, they can at least convert them to the boggiest of soft-left clichés, on the grounds that if Jesus were alive today he’d most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally friendly car with an “Arms are for Hugging” sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams."

There is absolutely no truth, whatsoever, in Mr. Steyn's absurd analysis of Ms. Jefferts Schori's thriving Episcopal Church and its tiny cousin, the ACoC (Anglican Church of Canada).

Cheers,

LSP

Roving About

A gun, one of Tom's

The last few weeks have been busy, taken up with guns - I need more of them, but who doesn't -

Church,

Bishop Iker, Good Man

horses,

dogs,

Cats on the porch - they're not allowed inside,

and plinking.

Horses have moved to new pastures, where there's far more space and plenty of opportunity for going fast, which I like. Opportunity for coyote hunting too - not to be wasted. More anon.

God bless,

LSP

Fire on the Mountain

Being a fan of Velikovsky, and catastrophism in general, I was struck by pictures of Iceland's volcanic eruption - of biblical proportion.

According to Ayatollah Sedighi, disasters like this (especially earthquakes) are caused by sin and the notoriously lax morals of Persian women.

That's ridiculous, everyone knows they're caused by Episcopalien Boy Bishop Jefferts Schori and her diminutive pelosian ally, ACoC.

In the meanwhile, ash is falling over Europe. Stay tuned for the next Ice Age - just you wait and see.

God bless,

LSP