Month: November 2019

BYCU

Pain x Resistance = Suffering.

That’s a mindfulness axiom. Pain is unavoidable, but our resistance to it is. If you practice yourself into complete acceptance, the result is no suffering. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. This obviously parallels Christian experience and practice, especially as taught in de Caussade’s classic.

Is there perhaps a drinking corollary? Hangover x resistance = suffering? A study conducted by the University of Salford has found that individuals who overly worry about the pain of a hangover can actually make their symptoms worse.

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Please support TDE and TWE by clicking through to Amazon from one of its Amazon links (like this one!)… Read the rest

“Thanksgiving Day originated in New England when the Puritans realized they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians.” Mark Twain

“Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.” Samuel Johnson

“Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.” Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Gratitude is characteristic only of the humble. The egotistic are so impressed by their own importance that they take everything given them as if it were their due. They have no room in their hearts for recollection of the undeserved favors they received.” Fulton Sheen

“Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” G.K. Chesterton

“Giving thank is not weakness but strength, for it involves self-repression.” Fulton Sheen

“How wonderful it would be if we could help our children and grandchildren to learn thanksgiving at an early age. Thanksgiving opens the doors. It changes a child’s personality. A child is resentful, negative—or thankful. Thankful children want to give, they radiate happiness, they draw people.” Sir John Templeton

“Gratitude is a species of justice.” Samuel Johnson

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.” Meister Eckhart

“When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.” St. Jerome… Read the rest

In 1927, G.K. Chesterton spoke in the Great Hall of University College, London. The topic: “Culture and the Coming Peril.” People probably thought he was going to talk about Bolshevism, but he didn’t. The peril isn’t Communism, Chesterton said, it’s vulgarity: “To put it shortly, the evil I am trying to warn you of is not excessive democracy, it is not excessive ugliness, it is not excessive anarchy. It might be stated thus: It is standardization by a low standard.” That was the “chief danger confronting us on the artistic and cultural side and generally on the intellectual side at this moment.” He went on to point out that politics could only remedy the social aspects of the problem. The “deeper remedies” were theological. … Read the rest

Many writers talk about religious “currents,” but I think that term is too generous. The term “current” implies something sustaining and capable of moving things forward in a meaningful way. It implies the existence of a stream or river—something steady, often deep—where it can run.

That type of symbol doesn’t fit today’s spiritual pond. It doesn’t fit the mega-church movements where ministers vie to aggregate large congregations with gimmicks and watered down religious messages. It doesn’t fit the feel-good messages of preachers like Norman Vincent Peale and his preaching descendants who treat prayer as a route to earthly riches rather than an avenue of grace. It certainly doesn’t fit the New Age religious movement, which is centered on the practitioner’s ego and the pursuit of pleasure. The term “current’ doesn’t even fit much of Catholicism, whose liturgy, in the wake of Vatican II, has been spiritually and intellectually “dumbed down” to make it accessible to the most casual pew dweller and nauseating to all but the sleeping.… Read the rest

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The Border

Let’s hope the war not spilleth over.

While American media outlets have been trashing the Trump administration over its abandonment of America’s “noble Kurdish allies” in Syria, they have paid little attention to an extraordinary and alarming development in Mexico. This week, criminals actually declared open season on the Mexican government—and won.

As part of an ongoing campaign against the country’s powerful cartels, Mexican security forces arrested two sons of former Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman in mid-October. Presently, the elder Guzman languishes in a maximum security prison in the United States. Mexican officials seemed to believe that taking his sons out of commission might sound the death knell for the rump Sinaloa organization.

It proved to be disastrous. Multiple battles soon erupted between government forces and cartel gunmen in the streets of Culiacan, Sinaloa’s state capital. The cartel attackers quickly freed Ivan, the eldest son. Ivan then launched an all-out siege of Culiacan in an effort to free his younger brother, Ovidio.

PSA

Rates for every streaming service. The death of cable?

PSA II

Wired magazine recommends 31 podcasts. TWE didn’t make the list. But we push on.

Podcasts are now big business. In this post-Serial audio world, journalists, celebrities, academics and yes, anyone else who owns a mixing desk and a microphone now has a regular show. The quality is generally very high but some efforts can still be hit and miss with dozens of podcasts popping up around the same themes or TV shows. To help you out here’s our guide to the best podcasts you should be listening to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast … Read the rest