Abstain, even from fears...  Even fears, unnecessary to us.  A sinful indulgence, resulting from a lack of faith...  This is what I tune into when I finally get up, a priest with a Jamaican accent and a Southeast Asian name.

Tired today.  A lot of rest.  Not feeling so hot, still.  The cough is holding, and I reflect on how tired the body has been, in an atypical way, in that I'm up early, awake, but not much energy, and little desire to exercise, to go for my favorite walk in the woods.

Mom calls, and she is coping with the blizzard that came.  She calls later than noon, around two, but my mind has attempted to be vigilant when she calls in need of someone to talk to.   Last night I tried to help her get her cable up and running again, so she could see the Weather Channel's pictures from the New England coast, the seas blowing up over the rock seawalls last evening, then on her iPad.  TV helps her.  More snow came.  I encouraged her to order out from Canale's, just down the street from her, and today there are leftovers, and fortunately enough wine.

A dream:  Mom and I go to New York City.  There is a grand department store with a sort of zoo in it, live animals, and a fancy wrought metal staircase, of work that reminds of the old elevators in Europe that rise through the staircase.  Going through the department store (I remember not looking at a single item) one could cross through the great city from one main side to the other, as if it were like a great tunnel.  Out on the street, it is impossible to find a particular person, a princess type, a needle in the haystack, in such a great city of many many many people.  I find parking on the street.

My horoscope today, says, good causes are crying out, "crying out for someone with your skills, especially your talents for communication, so get involved and find ways to help make the a better place.  You CAN make a difference, Capricorn, IF you start today."




Forty days and forty nights he was alone.  Meaning, without a woman.  Meaning, a long time.  Comes with the job.  And Jesus did not mind it.  He was already whole, and had no use for Satan to tell him otherwise what he might need, as he had it all, the real stuff...

A reflection on the Garden of Eden.  All fruit was good, (except that at the very center of the garden), and we were innocent, unashamed to look upon each other, naked without lust and desire.   There was no creepiness, no hidden lustful meanings in our speech and in our actions.  We had no desire to know everything.  We had enough.  We did not need to self-critique ourselves, to say, we should be more this, or more that.  We were fine and perfect already.

Is it possible, can we take another by the hand and go back to that.


But lust and vanity get in the way of that.

(I seem to lack imagination today.)

Fear, fear of not fitting in...  To hell with not fitting in.  To hell with fearing you might look odd for being strong enough to be true to yourself.  That's the harder thing, not the easier thing.  That's the sort of thing you need to join in, the resistance to the main body of culture and vanity, the wish for more and more, more security, more fear, more pleasure, more material things....

Look at him, Jesus;  he wasn't fearful, he didn't mind being sad at all, sadness or none of that being anything to fear, rather a gift.  He knew what was coming to him, and even with that he didn't have fear...  He didn't seem to mind being alone...  things like this were treasures.

What can you do today, my friend...  you can look at things such that it's not all a disaster, but rather something to the contrary, a way toward grace and kindness and love, and those good things, those things which are not necessarily a part of this world we live in, but must be engaged in, like forgiveness of sinners like ourselves, misguided youths who are honestly repentant of their err of their ways....

Start today, yes.  Today.  Right now.



When you start to look for, to examine, to question, to see the sinful nature you have been in contact with, not attempted to run from, it suddenly becomes a rather rich garden.  From two dimensional words it becomes three dimensional and more, vivid as it could be, personified by persons in multiple ways, over and over.

Is it necessarily bad to be there, seeing all that?   It is not what goes into a man that is sinful, but what comes out of him, Jesus says.

But in seeking to know anything, you should, rather like a scientist, go and seek it, examine it, keep observational records, check in on it, so as to describe in your own working scientific knowledge...

Then you sort of think to yourself, "Man, I've seen it all."  (And maybe that's what Kerouac was up to, describing all the madness he saw firsthand, or, if not the madness, the humanity of people, the base character...)  That is the knowledge I was seeking, you say to yourself.

Songs of experience.

What better way is there, but to be a barman server in a major city of a nation whose faith is teetering.


Thus, the instructional nature of Jesus.  He had a lot to do as far as teaching us, as far as awakening, instructing, inspiring, tending us.

Mother Angelica:  Politicians are not my shepherd.  Jesus is my shepherd.  Good point.  We should not confuse the two.  One is meant to be the ultimate leader, to inform, and the other is or can be a rank business man of great ego.


It would have been hard for a young man, a college graduate, to come out as an all-knowing Christian form of a person.  If he had said, "wist ye not, I was at my father's business," everyone would have laughed and laughed at him.  Or they would have presented to him some very stiff options.  It was better for that young man to try it on his own, to follow the path of wisdom...

(About "feminists":  it is possible that they are New Age-ers.  Pagans.  Obviously it depends on the self definition, the broader definition of the term.  Does it make one stubbornly unable to accept the wisdom of Christian thought?)

Believe me, the trends of the educational world I encountered was a strange one, slanted in a way to accept everyone and all behaviors, about law, laws about upholding the laws of perfect equality...  Kafkan, worse than Quixotic... The elites justifying by making sure that we all must help out the minority, and thereby justifying themselves as elites.  Which other people considering themselves just as worthy will of course come along and set themselves against, in argument and in war.  The battle to be the top of the food chain, deciding how to give out their own form of justice.

I wanted to break free from it.