Vivaldi Gloria at La Pieta, Venice

This is pure beauty. And they seem to have (with one notable exception) selected the most beautiful women: women with true, pure, natural beauty. 

The Greatness of Bach and the Glory of the Lord

Enough has been said about Bach's genius, and I can add nothing to it. I am no musicologist, nor even an especially knowledgeable amateur. But I was thinking this morning about the universality and transcendence of it, and of the other great works of Christendom. There is good art in many cultures, that speaks to the heart and moves the soul. But there is that something in these works that touches the universal, the infinite, the transcendent, the sublime, that nothing else can match. It is this which gives the works of artists like Bach, Handel, Dante, Shakespeare, Raphael, Donatello, Donne, Hugo, and Tolstoy that aetherial power which moves the human spirit and not just the soul. It is Truth, and not just human truth, but Divine Truth.

Listening to this, the opening of St. John's Passion, is like gazing, with Dante and Beatrice, from the Crystalline Sphere into the High Empyrean. Listen to the music, look deep into this image by Gustav Dore (but don't just see a monochromatic image: bring the glorious pictures of the heavens you've seen from the Hubble telescope to mind, to bring it to life in your mind's eye), and recall the opening words of St. John's Gospel: 

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

Soli Deo gloria

"When someone in need tries to push you away, you have to find the strength to hold on tighter."

-- Unknown

Vieni, vieni in questo seno

"You are to me an object intensely desirable--the air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy."

-- John Keats

"To be near something beautiful or precious but to be unable to experience it is the subtlest possible form of torture."

-- Robert Johnson, The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden 

"She whom the heart loves best is always the most beautiful."

-- Armenian proverb

Forsake your fear, and do what you believe is right, and what your heart desires. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the will to act in spite of it.

And the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda

"What happiness it is to love one woman only! This is both a heartfelt expression and the result of reasoning and observation; for I can analyse you with the most perfect coolness, and I perceive with glad conviction that no one else can be compared to you. I know not in the world such another perfect intelligence, a more noble heart, a more sweet and charming temper, a more upright character, a sounder judgment, nor anyone who is so wise and reasonable."

"...You must believe me when I say that even yet, after all these years, I have not become accustomed to knowing you. Centuries would not suffice, and life is so short! You saw the fact in those two months. I was in the same state of ecstasy and bewilderment when I went away as I was the first day I beheld you."

-- Honoré de Balzac, to Countess Ewelina Hanska

"I love you more than it is possible to imagine...all my moments are consecrated to you...to think of any other woman has never entered my head--they are all in my eyes without grace, wit, or beauty...you, you alone, such as I see you, such as you are, can please me."

Napoleon, to his wife, Josephine

"Put my passion under the utmost restraint, send me as distant from you as the earth will allow, yet you cannot banish those charming ideas which will ever stick by me whilst I have the use of memory. Nor is the love I bear you only seated in my soul, for there is not a single atom of my frame that is not blended with it; therefore don't flatter yourself that separation will ever change my sentiments, for I find myself unquiet in the midst of silence, and my heart at once pierced with sorrow and love."

-- Hester Vanhomrigh, from a letter to Jonathan Swift

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-- Shakespeare

Ye tradeful merchants! that with weary toil
do seek most precious things to make your gain,
And both the Indies of their treasure spoil,
What needeth you to seek so far in vain?

For, lo! my love doth in herself contain
     All this world's riches that may far be found;
If sapphires, lo! her eyes be sapphires plain;
     If rubies, lo! her lips be rubies sound;

If pearls, her teeth be pearls, both pure and round,
     If ivory, her forehead ivory ween;
If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground;
     If silver, her fair hands are silver sheen:

But that which fairest is, but few behold,
Her mind, adorned with virtues manifold.

-- Edmund Spencer

Dr. Jordan Peterson on Masculinity, Heroism, and the Integration of the Shadow-Self

This one follows strangely synchronously with the last. I have only discovered these two thinkers very recently, but have been profoundly affected by what I've heard so far. The thing is, I've felt so incredibly intellectually alone, very nearly absolutely so, my entire life, that I had very much given up on the world. That is, I have always believed and stood for a set of ideas which have been so radically different than those of virtually everyone I have ever spoken to, that I've been driven to the point of complete intellectual and emotional exhaustion by beating my head against the stone wall of what has seemed to me to be the world's total insanity. The primary opposition, of course, has been from those on the modernist, neo-marxist, "progressive" side of the ideological spectrum. But neither have I found much acceptance amongst those on the conservative, traditional side, even among Christians, because I have such a strong vein of unconventionality and nonconformism, especially when it comes to metaphysics, mysticism, and spirituality.

But finding that these two extremely intelligent, very educated, and highly accomplished men have so many ideas which are so very like my own has breathed fresh inspiration and hope into me. Especially because they not only hold these ideas, but are speaking them publicly, and are fighting the good fight against the Ideological Inquisition and the Thought Police so successfully. And what really impresses me, with Peterson in particular, is that he does so with such grace, sensitivity, nuance, and composure, rather than being simplistic and polemical like Limbaugh or Coulter.

I love what Dr. Peterson is saying here about being "dangerous", living one's life heroically, and integrating the shadow-self or one's own potential for darkness. I've spoken about all these things here before. I especially like when he describes our educational systems as being imposed and overly-domesticated, and by implication, emasculating, although he doesn't use the term. He does talk, though, about how they have been intentionally trying to socialize boys as girls to make them less dangerous. He describes many friends he knew who dropped out of school at 15 or 16 because they were already maturing and becoming men and were "Just done with raising their hands to go to the bathroom". That is exactly what I experienced. I felt, from the time I first started to form my identity as a boy becoming a man, like the culture in general (as expressed chiefly through media) and the school system in particular, were trying very hard to "demasculinize" me (and everyone else who showed any signs of genuine masculinity).

What I mean is that, if one has that air of being "potentially dangerous" as he calls it, which people can sense, then one is marked by the feminist "testosterone is poison" types as a threat and an evil, and treated accordingly. But being dangerous, in that sense, is an essential part of being a man. It's who we need to be in order to be self-fulfilled. And it's who we have to be, in order to be what women and children need us to be. In fact, it's the primary thing that women find most attractive in men: that elusive quality which draws women toward "bad men" and leaves "nice guys" wondering why they're always alone. Although I think that it's generally poorly understood by both men and women. Being a real man, a true hero, means neither giving in to nor denying that side of ourselves, but struggling with and mastering that potential for being dangerous, and using it for good. The self-actualized man is the knight: capable of astonishing violence, but completely in control of it, and only using it in the right cause and context. But also capable of great gentleness, sensitivity, and vulnerability.

I use "dangerous" here in the sense that Tolkien meant when he wrote:

"Dangerous!" cried Gandalf. "And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet, unless you are brought alive before the seat of the Dark Lord. And Aragorn is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers, Gimli son of Gloin; for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion. Certainly the forest of Fangorn is perilous - not least to those that are too ready with their axes; and Fangorn himself, he is perilous too; yet he is wise and kindly nonetheless."

And that Lewis meant when he wrote:

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” 

and:

“He'll be coming and going" he said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.” 

Anyway, to it:

part 1

part 2

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake on "The Science Delusion"

"The Science Delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle, leaving only the details to be filled in. This is a very widespread belief in our society. It's the kind of belief system of people who say, 'I don't believe in God: I believe in Science.' It's a belief system which now has been spread to the entire world. But there's a conflict in the heart of science between science as a method of enquiry, based on reason, evidence, hypothesis, and collective investigation, and Science as a belief system or worldview. And unfortunately, the worldview aspect of science has come to inhibit and constrict the free enquiry which is the very lifeblood of the scientific endeavour."

-- Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D


This is precisely what I have been saying about science vs. Science for a long time. Only it carries more weight when Dr. Sheldrake says it, as he is an actual scientist, with degrees from Cambridge and Harvard, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, an honor granted to such trivial contributors to science as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking. The Science as a worldview people dominate all scholarly and public discourse, and are as shackled and blinded by dogma as any Medieval Catholic or first-century Pharisee.

So, for instance take the lady scientist who discovered actual dinosaur DNA in tyrannosaur bones. Her findings were dismissed and attacked by the scientific community because it simply was "not possible", because dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, and no DNA can possibly survive for 65 million years. Logic, reason, and actual science would, when faced with the factual reality that she DID recover said DNA that either a) DNA can, in fact, survive for 65 million years in certain conditions or, b) Dinosaurs went extinct much more recently. And then, based on those two possibilities, would conduct further investigations to discover which one was the better hypothesis.

Or, for another example, look at the timeline of the Exodus. Historians have an "accepted" timeline for Egyptian history, and have dated the Exodus "if it occurred" at a certain point. Then they looked for archaeological evidence of the Exodus at that time, didn't find it, and therefore concluded that it did not happen. However, there is ample evidence for it at a slightly different time, by a few hundred years, which gets completely ignored because they are unable to even consider the possibility that their timeline is wrong (and also, I suspect, because they want very much for the Exodus, and therefore the Bible, to not be true).

When you summarily dismiss a line of inquiry without giving it due consideration, for the sole reason that it does not fit your already-fixed assumptions; when you label a field of study as "pseudo-science" not because its methods are flawed, but because its conclusions are ones that you do not allow to be possible in your belief system, then you have left logic, reason, and science behind and have entered the realms of philosophy, religion, and dogma.

"As my friend Terence Mckenna used to say, modern science is based on the principle, 'Give us one free miracle, and we'll explain the rest.' And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, and all the laws that govern it, from nothing, in a single instant." -- ibid.

More here:

The Dream

Dear Love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream,
          It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for phantasy,
Therefore thou waked'st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it;
Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreams truths, and fables histories;
Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best,
Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.

As lightning, or a taper's light,
Thine eyes, and not thy noise waked me;
          Yet I thought thee
(For thou lovest truth) an angel, at first sight,
But when I saw thou sawest my heart,
And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an angel's art,
When thou knew'st what I dreamt, when thou knew'st
          when
Excess of joy would wake me, and cam'st then,
I must confess, it could not choose but be
Profane, to think thee anything but thee.

Coming and staying showed thee, thee,
But rising makes me doubt, that now,
          Thou art not thou.
That love is weak, where fear's as strong as he;
'Tis not all spirit, pure, and brave,
If mixture it of Fear, Shame, Honour, have.
Perchance as torches which must ready be,
Men light and put out, so thou deal'st with me,
Thou cam'st to kindle, goest to come; then I
Will dream that hope again, but else would die.

-- John Donne