Marcus Aurelius on How to Face Adversity

From Psychology Today:

The path to indifference and unconditional acceptance of life as it comes is by no means an easy feat. It requires years of intentional practice. Stoicism was not primarily about books and theories but about a way of living. You became a stoic not by memorizing its doctrines but through living like a stoic. Given that it is primarily a way of approaching life, the stoics had various practices and techniques that one could apply to acquire the level of indifference that helps one to cope with even the most severe adversities in life.

Accepting your own mortality and the mortality of those around you was one. Marcus advised us to remind ourselves about that ”natural event” of life regularly, until it no longer scares us but becomes as trivial a part of the lifecycle as grapes turning from unripe to ripened to raisins:

”In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial.
Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.
To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint.
Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on.”

Another technique Marcus Aurelius offers is to examine whatever is bugging you and break it down into small constituent parts so as to make the whole thing trivial. He gives the example of a song. If you want to be indifferent to the effect that a song might have on you, "analyze the melody into the notes that form it, and as you hear each one, ask yourself whether you’re powerless against that. That should be enough to deter you." He recommends this same strategy to whatever is moving you: "Look at the individual parts and move from analysis to indifference. Apply this to life as a whole." (Read more.)

Share

The White Rose and the Stuarts

Charles I on his way to Execution

King Charles I

Some articles by Charles Coulombe. I have invited him to supper with us but he is in Austria. But maybe some day. From Crisis:

The persecution of the English Church by Henry, Elizabeth, and company resulted in a small, secretive minority in England (and daughter colonies, such as Maryland and Kentucky). They were forced to forego a demonstrative liturgical life, instead focusing on personal piety and holiness. Living a sort of dry (and occasionally wet) martyrdom and—especially after the defeat of the last Jacobite attempt in 1746—having to forego any hope of influencing the external political order, English Catholicism became ever more secretive and inward-looking. 

Meanwhile, inside and outside the Established Church, English Protestantism became ever more chaotic. Nevertheless, as early as the 17th century under King Charles I, a “Catholicizing” element appeared within the Church of England, paradoxically spearheaded by the king himself. The so-called “Caroline Divines” attempted to establish an Anglicanism in continuity with pre-Reformation Christianity, while the Cavalier Poets not only praised Charles and his adherents while attacking their Puritan opponents in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms but also evoked those elements of English life unchanged by the religious upheavals. The King’s judicial murder by the Roundheads was to a great degree because of his refusal to accept the abolition of bishops in the Church of England, as well as his sporadic negotiations for reunion with Rome. (Read more.)

From Musings of an Old Curmudgeon:

In addition, Catholic SKCM members should cultivate devotion to the 18 Catholics martyred by Parliament “under” Charles I – who in essence shared their parliamentary murderers with him, most especially Anglican converts William Ward and Henry Morse. Tyburn Convent, a shrine to the martyrs near Marble Arch, should become as much a place of Pilgrimage for Catholic SKCM members as it was for Queen Henrietta Maria (she also played a role in the propagation of devotion to the Sacred Heart). So too should it be with such Martyrs’ shrines as Ladyewell in Lancashire. Indeed, all the English and Welsh, Scots, and Irish martyrs should be foci of our devotion. There is also the approved cultus of Bl. Karl, who, as noted earlier, shares so many traits with the Royal Martyr, and already boasts Ordinariate members among his clients. (Read more.)

From Catholic Today:

The White Rose – for all that Yorkshire is still called the white rose and Lancashire the red rose countries – will ever, in British history, be most associated with the House of Stuart. Well it should be. For if James can never be the figure of Romance that his mother was, his son, Charles I, surely is. The martyred “White King,” who tried to restore the Church of England to a more Catholic stance and negotiated with the Holy See for reunion, lost throne and life in the “Wars of the Three Kingdoms” against truly venomous foes. His adherents, the “Cavaliers,” were about as romantic a set of folk as fighters can be – one even speaks of the “Cavalier Poets,” and in religion, the “Caroline Divines.” In the latter sphere, Charles is considered a saint by many in Great Britain and America (more of the latter in a moment). 

Although the Restoration brought Charles son, Charles II, back to the throne, as noted his younger son, James II was chased back off of it, culminating in the Battle of the Boyne. When he died, and James III succeeded him, the stage was set for the Jacobite Risings against the usurping House of Hanover and their attendant Whig Oligarchy; on their hats, the Jacobites wore the White Cockade, symbolic of the flower.  In 1715 and 1719, James and his followers in England and Scotland tried unsuccessfully to restore him to his three thrones. His son, the gallant Bonnie Prince Charlie, tried again in 1745, and came closest to success. But the defeat at Culloden ended that last attempt, and the Bonnie Prince was reduced by privation and drink to a shadow of himself, for all that his remaining followers called him Charles III after his father died in 1766. He died after 22 years on his phantom throne (and having refused the offer of the Crown of America from the Continental Congress), to be succeeded by his younger brother, Cardinal York – Henry IX. When he died in 1807, he was buried with his brother and father at St. Peter’s in the Vatican (you may see their monument and tomb to-day). It seemed that the cause of the White Rose was dead, for all that their rival cousin, George III, seemed to want to restore their kind of Monarchy without them – a desire frustrated by the defeat in the American Revolution. It was perhaps fitting that he gave a pension to Henry, thus in a sense being reconciled. (Read more.)

Share

A Surge in Virus Cases

At the border. From Daniel Horowitz at The Conservative Review:

We were told that the governmental interest in ensuring that hospitals aren’t overrun with too many COVID-19 patients was so strong that it superseded the Bill of Rights. All businesses had to be shut, masks must be worn, church services had to be canceled. As Chief Justice John Roberts said in upholding California’s ban on church services, “When those officials ‘undertake to act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties,’ their latitude ‘must be especially broad.’”

The very first action one would expect a government to undertake to stem the tide of a virus is to not purposely admit people sick with acute cases of the virus from countries with substandard health care. Cross-border travel is not a fundamental right like free movement within the country and from state to state or the right to earn a living, assemble, and worship. Plus, cross-border travel is the ultimate super-spreader.

Amazingly, at a time when politicians and media figures are pushing more lockdowns because of a rise in cases in some states, they fail to inform you that the biggest factor driving the most serious rise is coming from Mexico and is taking place in our southwest border counties. Thus, they are using the malfeasance of our government, which did not fully lock down the border, as a pretext to lock us all down within our own states.

As I’ve noted in recent days, most of the spike in cases is coming from the discovery of more cases through mass testing, antibody tests, multiple positives for one individual, reporting anomalies, universal testing of non-COVID-19 hospital patients and a new way of reporting “probable” cases. This is why, across the country, we are still seeing a decline in ICU admissions and fatalities. Most of the new cases are among younger and healthier people who are largely asymptomatic. However, there is one place where we have been seeing a spike in serious cases and even deaths since May: the border counties of California, Arizona, and Texas. (Read more.)

Share

The Mystery of Visual Perception

From Philos-Sophia Initiative:

Lord Kelvin made a crucially important point when he declared physics to be “the science of measurement”: it is this basis in measurement that proves definitive not only of physics and the physical sciences at large, but of the resultant Weltanschauung. Obviously measurement quantifies: reduces things in principle to “centimeters, grams, and seconds” according to the cgs system. The fact, however, is not that all is thus reducible, but that whatsoever happens not to be is “filtered out” by the modus operandi of the scientific process and eventually demoted to the status of a res cogitans, a mere “thing of the mind.” And it is this scientistic denial of the non-measurable that in a way defines our culture and moreover engenders that “chronic schizophrenia” to which I have often enough referred. 

It can hardly be doubted that the physical sciences have proved successful beyond the wildest dreams of the founders themselves: even Francis Bacon, I surmise, would be amazed to see what his celebrated “machine for the mind” has been able to accomplish! What as a rule we fail to grasp is what a physics-based science does not accomplish, what in fact its very modus operandi excludes. A physics-based science, first of all, cannot disabuse us of the belief that the world reduces to quantities: to the things brought into play, namely, by that Baconian “machine.” What is lost in the bargain are primarily the sensible qualities: the five kinds, that is, which render the corporeal world perceptible. These sensibly apprehensible constituents are now said to be “subjective,” not because some experimentum crucis has shown them to be, but simply because a science based upon measurement does not register such a thing as red or green. It thus came about that color per se has been officially declared to be a wavelength, notwithstanding the self-evident fact that what we actually perceive is not a wavelength at all, but red or green. (Read more.)

Share

A New Orleans Wedding

From Let Them Eat Cake: "Vanessa Van Vrancken and Matthew Dick said, 'I Do,' in front of friends and family on May 18, 2019 at the Academy of the Sacred Heart with a reception following at The Balcony Ballroom." Share

What White Americans Owe Black Americans

From The Resurgent:

Actual racism is provably smaller than it’s ever been in the U.S. It is magnified by those who generally have one of two motives: 1) personal ego or desire for political power or money; or 2) a sincere personal or institutional desire to totally eliminate racism, and therefore treat any outbreak like an epidemic. 

A third motive is more cynical and pernicious: a desire to damage the United States through racial strife. The old Soviet Union long engaged in a program to incite racism in the U.S. Even now, Russia is believed to be “stoking racial tension” in this election cycle. It’s a big problem, actually. But I’m not going to delve into that, because it has little to do with the actual debt white Americans owe to black Americans, which is my subject here. 

The current state of race relations in America is, on a microcosm level, very good–we get along with our neighbors, white or black; our kids play together at school and on sports teams; we live, work, and even worship together more and more. Much of this has to do with socio-economic status, in that people don’t usually mix with those who live in different neighborhoods, go to different schools, and work at different jobs. (Read more.)

Share

300,000-year-old Elephant Skeleton In Europe

From Ancient Origins:

The fact that there were numerous elephants around the Schöningen lake is proven by footprints left behind and documented approximately 100 meters (328 ft) from the elephant excavation site. Flavio Altamura from Sapienza University of Rome who analyzed the tracks, told us that this is the first find of its kind in Germany. "A small herd of adults and younger animals must have passed through. The heavy animals were walking parallel to the lake shore. Their feet sank into the mud, leaving behind circular tracks with a maximum diameter of about 60 centimeters [24 in]." 

The Schöningen sites have already provided a great deal of information about plants, animals and human existence 300,000 years ago during the Reinsdorf interglacial. The climate at that time was comparable to that of today, but the landscape was much richer in wildlife. About 20 large mammal species lived around the lake in Schöningen at that time, including not only elephants but also lions, bears, saber-toothed cats, rhinoceros, wild horses, deer and large bovids. "The wealth of wildlife was similar to that of modern Africa," says Serangeli. (Read more.)

Meanwhile, in Mexico, mammoths have been found. Share

The Queen’s Pearls

From Royal Central:

In addition to the now-iconic double-and triple-strand pearl necklaces The Queen has frequently sported throughout her life as part of an unofficial uniform, she also has at her disposal many pearl pieces (necklaces, brooches, and earrings) that she wears with her outfits. Today, we’re going to look at some of the classic pearl pieces The Queen likes to wear.

The Queen received a demi-parure of pearls and diamonds from the Emir of Qatar during her state visit to the country in 1979 and also included a pair of matching earrings. The pearl and diamond necklace features six strands of pearls offset with smaller diamonds throughout that span two strands and features a large diamond plaque that spans all six strands. (Read more.)

Share

The Tyranny of the Revolutionaries

 From The Federalist:

Black Lives Matter as a political movement—as distinct from, say, thinking that black lives matter, which most Americans do because they aren’t racist—isn’t interested at all in ameliorating the state of black America, or fighting actual racism, or expanding liberty and justice for all under our constitutional system. This isn’t an evolutionary movement but a revolutionary one. It doesn’t draw on our tradition of constitutionalism but on Marxism. Its model isn’t the American Revolution but the French Revolution—hence the purges, which for now are confined to the workplace. It’s fair to say the movement’s power and influence are based on ideological purges. Exposing supposed racists is its modus operandi, and what began on campus has now percolated through into the mainstream of American life. (Read more.)  

From Return to Order:

The CHAZ wish list is an outrageous collection of impossible demands: Free benefits, no jails, dismantled police, eco-friendly policies, and citizenship for the country’s estimated 22 million illegal aliens. Its revolutionaries unite pro-abortionists, LGBT activists, socialists, and every other leftist cause hostile to Christian morality. They are dangerous because of the radical goal they represent.

CHAZ is also dangerous because the setting up of an autonomous zone is a symbolic action. Symbols have always been a powerful part of the revolutionary message. Like a giant loudspeaker, the existence of a “liberated” territory—however small—symbolizing the Marxist utopia of imposed “fraternity and love” projects the revolutionaries’ voice and influence far beyond their insignificant numbers. It creates a template that might easily spread to other places.  The only serious way for authorities to fight against this revolution is to deprive it of its symbols. It is then reduced to its real insignificance.

The final reason why CHAZ must be taken seriously is the most important. The greatest concern of the whole episode is not the militants. If given permission, any police force would take care of this motley group of radicals without major difficulty. The most dangerous element in the CHAZ development is the liberal establishment. It facilitates and legitimizes the actions of the leftist militants. Without the criminal complicity of authorities (dereliction of duty) and the propaganda blitz from liberal media, efforts like CHAZ would be doomed to fail. However, with support from establishment figures, the most audacious and outlandish things can be accomplished.

For example, CHAZ enjoys the support of Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan, who compared the occupation to a “block party” that might extend to become another “summer of love!” She ordered the police to stand down. She provides basic sanitation and other services that keep the zone functioning at taxpayers’ expense. To show her groveling support, she has pledged to spend $100 million minority communities. She has established a community-led Black Commission. The mayor is joined by the State’s governor, celebrities, and other key liberal figures. This kowtowing is the main strength of the CHAZ movement, not its anarchists and allied activists. (Read more.)

 More HERE. Share