Fixing Our Gaze on The Immaculate Conception

A most blessed Feast of the Immaculate Conception to you!

In this clip from The Song of Bernadette we see Bernadette fixing her gaze on the beautiful lady who has been appearing to her at Lourdes.  In answer to Bernadette's request to learn her identity, the lady responds, "I am the Immaculate Conception."

Watching Bernadette in the opening scene as she knelt there on the ground, I was impressed by the purity of her expression as she looked upon the most pure Virgin.  How rare it is to see that kind of innocence today!  And I thought about the Catholic concept of custody of the eyes and what a daily battle we must fight to practice it.

It's frightening, but much of what we should guard against today, we may not even be aware that we see.

Let me explain.

I just finished reading a transcript of a Solari Report podcast on entrainment technology, a form of mind control.  In it, Catherine Austin Fitts interviews Adam Trombly, a scientist/physicist, about how this technology is used and what you can do to minimize its influence on your life.

Basically, the entrainment relaxes/pleasures you and puts you in a state of openness to suggestibility.  The suggestibility part is where they implant the subliminal message they want you to act upon.  Entrainment is used surreptitiously in all kinds of media--dvd's, cd's, radio, movies in the theaters, etc., but it seems television paved the way for the others starting way back in the 1950s.

Maybe I've finally discovered why Catholics accepted the New Mass in 1969.  They had been lulled to sleep by gathering in front of the TV at home instead of kneeling in front of the Immaculate Conception and the Crucifix.

John Senior was so right when he admonished Catholics to "smash the television," in his classic book, The Restoration of Christian Culture.

Of course now the television has morphed into all kinds of different screens that we must guard ourselves and our children against.  We haven't done such a good job.  Just look at how we fell for the notion that public school children needed computers in the classroom to be able to keep up with technology and compete in the modern world.

After reading about entrainment techniques, I firmly believe that the so-called "snowflakes" are a product of it.  Previously I had thought it odd that Hillary Clinton had called on pop singers to boost her campaign.  But now I understand that their music and videos are powerful vehicles for entraining listeners.  The raw emotion from the melting snowflakes finally makes sense.  At first I thought it was all the coddling they received in school and a lack of critical thinking skills.  And, of course, a lack of the True Faith.

As I thought more about the idea of how we, like Bernadette, should "fix our gaze" on the Immaculate Conception, I became aware of the double meaning, as "fix" also means to repair.  We do need to constantly fix our gaze by avoiding as much as possible the things the world wants us to see.  And we must pray the Rosary, which Our Lady gave us as the most efficacious weapon for our battles against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The Rosary, with its beautiful mysteries, gives us lovely pictures to contemplate and incites the imagination to holy thoughts, which makes us more human, more alive, more able to create.  All this is in direct opposition to the sounds and images that the world wants us to consume.  Look around, and you will see the results--zombie-like people who are consumers, not creators.

Interestingly, entrainment technology takes advantage of God's design for our brains.  As  Mr. Trombly explained it, "Entrainment technology basically is the technology that exploits a neurological function called frequency following response. And, frequency following response was discovered in the earlier part of the 20th century and in terms of this type of entrainment was a matter of when the brain hears a repetitive pattern.

"It can be a repetitive pattern of words, it can be a repetitive cadence of rhythm, or in modern times it can be a repetitive acoustic sound coming across the loud speaker. It can be in a certain wave form, a certain frequency, the brain will follow that sound. The brain will follow that sound whether it’s monaural or binaural or surround sound; the brain will fall into rhythm with that sound." 

My conclusion from that explanation?  

God hard-wired our brains for the recitation of the Rosary with its repetitive pattern of words and repetitive cadence or rhythm!  Without fixing our gaze on the Immaculate Conception and praying the Rosary, we leave ourselves open to conquest by the Powers of Darkness, the enemies of Christ.

Three Steps to Follow

Fix your gaze  
Pray the Rosary and
Entrain your brain to follow that sound to Heaven.

Advent: The Cross and the Crib

The painting of the Sacred Heart commissioned by Gabriel Garcia Moreno for the consecration of Ecuador

The aftermath of the presidential election revealed to me in a startling way how desperately this country needs to be Catholicized.  How much better the Catholic way when faced with situations one finds disagreeable: practice resignation and embrace one's cross!

Instead, it seems as if the country has been taken over by toddlers in their terrible twos.  Such whining and temper tantrums I've never before witnessed on a national scale.

The experience shone a light on my own weaknesses in this regard and gave me pause.  How often, I, too, whine and complain!  And how unattractive it must be for those around me!

Consequently, on St. Andrew's feast I decided to start saying St. Andrew's prayer, O Good Cross, every day in addition to the St. Andrew Christmas novena during our Advent wreath prayer time.  The idea of being led to both the cross and the crib by St. Andrew is one I hadn't considered before now.  I find it enormously helpful, and it has given me reason to be thankful for the Trump protestors.  May their unhappiness work toward their conversion and the establishment of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

What I Noticed in the Toy Kitchen Ad

I was flipping through a Costco catalog recently and came across the toy kitchen ad above.  It struck me as odd, and I spent some time studying it to see if I could figure out why it gave me that impression.  I decided the main thing that puzzled me is that the children seem so detached from any involvement with the kitchen.  The girl especially seems to simply be passing by.  She steadies herself by holding the countertop.  She is equipped with a cell phone.  Perhaps she is going to order a pizza and re-heat it in the microwave? The boy appears to be holding on to the back of the refrigerator with his right hand while he half-heartedly reaches for the handle of the refrigerator.   Both children may need to hold on to something because, if you notice their feet, they each have one foot turned on its side.  It's not a stance that lends itself to taking action.   It seems really odd to me that both children have their feet placed this way.

An alternative explanation of the detachment from activity is that the photographer needed the children out of the way to be able to showcase the kitchen.  However, this could have been overcome by showing the girl putting something in the sink and showing the boy in the act of filling a glass from the water dispenser in the refrigerator door--or many other options.

I decided to look at vintage ads for toy kitchens to see what I could learn by comparison.  I chose to study the one below.

Of course the pink appliances are noticeably different from the first picture and imply that the kitchen is the girl's/woman's domain, but the main thing I notice that is different from the modern ad is that each unit is open, implying active participation.  I can't tell if the girl's hand is actually touching the refrigerator handle, but the door is open, and she is holding something in her other hand--maybe a plate--definitely something to do with kitchen play.  She is clearly happily involved in her pretend world.   And look at her feet.  Both are flat on the floor.  I notice that she doesn't lean on anything.  After looking at her and seeing how upright she is, I recalled how good posture used to be emphasized to children.  I even remember being instructed in proper sitting posture in first grade in 1966, which included both feet being firmly planted on the ground.

With this insight, I went back and looked again at the children above with their turned feet.   I think the modern girl looks more confident than the modern boy.  She gets the more upscale outfit and shoes; he gets the sneakers and jeans.  The oversized untucked shirt gives him a soft look overall.  

Looking back at the pink kitchen, I notice the emphasis of time.  See the big clock above the stove?  This girl is going to get meals cooked on time.  She is productive.  I don't get that impression from the modern children.  

Maybe "hanging out" is the new play.

An Exciting Evening with the Disturbing Mary Poppins

Crazy girlies!

I went with Emma and some of her friends to the musical version of Mary Poppins last night in Houston's Theatre Under the Stars. I had no particular interest in seeing the show, other than realizing that I desperately needed to get out for an evening, and going somewhere with Emma and her friends always rejuvenates me. They're amazingly sweet and, as you can see in the photos above and below, crazy funny.  It's a special treat to do things with them.

Aaron and Angela ham it up after the show.

Michelle had spent the night with us.  She and Emma really pitched in to help me so that I could go, taking care of all the grandparents' evening rituals for me while I directed a crew of furniture movers until 6:15.   Talk about cutting it close!  The show was to begin at 7:30 and was a 45-minute drive away.  And I had to change clothes first.  If it hadn't been for Emma and Michelle steadfastly encouraging me to go, I would have given up and collapsed on the couch.  It had been a really long day in a series of long days.

Thanks to Emma Jo Go-go's high-speed driving skills we zipped in and out of traffic, narrowly missing a stalled vehicle in the middle lane of Hwy. 90 and skirting major congestion with two fire trucks at the scene of a burning vehicle on I-10, where we briefly shot toward the closest exit but then ricocheted back to our former lane when it was apparent we could get by the disaster relatively quickly.

I'm convinced Emma's guardian angel rocks a jetpack.

Michelle was following us in her car, poor baby!

"Come on, Mich," Emma would whisper under her breath when she lost sight of her in one of our fantastic maneuvers.  We arrived at the theatre with the warning bell signaling ten minutes till showtime.  By then I felt like I had already had enough excitement for the evening and was ready to go back home.

The usher directed us to take one flight of stairs to get to our seats in the mezzanine.  I should have asked her to define "flight".  My leg muscles turned to silly putty by the time we reached our destination.

"You've got to be kidding me," I thought, as each new stairway appeared before me.

Finally we arrived at the mezzanine and found our seats.  We met Angela and Aaron there.  I dropped into my chair and anticipated an evening of light entertainment.  Unfortunately, I could never get into the show.  I was constantly trying to figure out why much of it made me uncomfortable.  I don't know if it was because I was so tired or what, but I couldn't come to a conclusion about it as a whole, other than something was not right about it, and there were a lot of things that really disturbed me.  One of the things was the occult-like symbols that were flashed in the background when Mary Poppins put some kind of spell on the children.  I think it was to get them to go to sleep.  I tried to focus on the symbols to see if I could recognize anything definitely of the occult, but I couldn't.  Casting a spell of any kind was serious enough to grab my attention, though.

I searched my memory trying to find if I had ever read anything about the author of the book or the original story itself, something that would help me understand my discomfort.  I realized I knew nothing other than the Disney movie, and I haven't seen it in years, certainly not since I have developed a Catholic worldview. I kept thinking, "Who is Mary Poppins?  Nothing is ever explained about her or her unusual relationship with Burt, the chimneysweep.

Then there was this song, "Anything Can Happen if You Let It."  I felt like it was conveying a twisted message, but I couldn't quite pin it down.  One line of it that really caught my attention was Mary Poppins' praising of free thinkers.  I couldn't understand the rest of the song, other than the refrain.  I looked up the lyrics this morning.  It promotes being open minded to the point of being able to "see the world more upside-downish," so that you can "turn it on its head then pirouette it."  Hmmmm.

After reading the lyrics, I decided to just google Mary Poppins and occult.  I found a post on the Women of Grace site that explains that the author of Mary Poppins, Pamela L. Travers, was into the occult and theosophy.

Although the Disney film (which Travers apparently hated) was clean, her books are quite dark and mixed with many occultic elements from magick to reincarnation, all of which came from her association with theosophy. 

Needless to say, things started making a lot more sense.  Clearly, the musical draws more from the book than the Disney movie, not that I'm making a case for Disney.  I'm definitely not.

One of the things that really bothered Emma was Mary Poppins' saying that she was "practically perfect." There was a song about this idea, and Emma and I talked about it on the way home.  In the Women of Grace post, there is a quote which addresses this issue: Mary Poppins as the Great Exception:  Helene Vachet of the Theosophical Society’s Quest Magazine clearly describes the theosophical meaning behind much of the symbolism and story of Mary Poppins.

“Mary Poppins, one could say, resembles a guardian angel, demon, or cosmic being who comes from time to time to visit Earth,” Vachet writes.

The sky and wind bringing Mary Poppins to Cherry Tree Lane refers to a “walker of the sky” described in theosophic writings as a siddhi, or spiritual power to which a yogi joins himself to “behold the things beyond the seas and stars” and to “hear the language of the devas”.

Travers’ Mary Poppins is referred to in the books as the “Great Exception,” which Vachet says means that “she has gone beyond the evolution of humanity and her life now stands in contrast to those who have not yet reached this stage.”

My goodness.  And at first I thought Mary Poppins was just a lot of fluff!

Now that you know all the background, you can really appreciate this picture from St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha, Nebraska, that I found in the March 14, 2016 online edition of Omaha.com. 

Are you starting to "see the world more upside-downish?"  Apparently this display of Mary Poppins is just to celebrate "culture."  It puts me in mind of a parody of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven.  I'm sure it's just a coincidence, though.

Striving to Be Catholic in the Land of the Green Dragon

One can be a citizen of the USA (that is, CUSA) and be a Catholic, and most CUSAs are Americans. One cannot be a Catholic and an American. To be an American is to believe in American principles before the teachings of the Church, or in other words to accept the Enlightenment ideals as superior to the teachings of the Faith.  ~ David Wemhoff, "Joseph Ratzinger's American Mind"

Although I do not agree with Mr. Wemhoff's contention in the full article that the Conciliar church has not changed doctrine, I heartily agree with this quote.  It sums up all that I have figured out in my studies over the last few years.  Listening to two of Wemhoff's interviews on how Americanism was purposely inserted directly into the circulatory system of the Church, finally helped me see how John Courtney Murray, an American Jesuit priest and "theologian", was able to get Religious Liberty approved at Vatican II, an idea that had always been condemned by the Church.  The interviews are based on Wemhoff's book, John Courtney Murray, Time-Life, and the American Proposition.  I haven't read the book, but the Amazon description of it is helpful background for listening to the interviews.  Here's a portion of it:

In 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his famous "Four Freedoms" speech. In that speech, FDR set forth a vision for the reengineering of societies around the globe. The means was psychological warfare, involving the manipulation of ideas, words and symbols to divide target societies and convince these societies of the ideology that formed America. The most important society America targeted was the Roman Catholic Church. Media mogul Henry R. Luce, founder and publisher of enormously influential magazines like Time and Life, used the CIA's doctrinal warfare program to turn the Catholic Church into a promoter of American ideas. This struggle reached its culmination at the Second Vatican Council with the promulgation of the document Declaration on Religious Liberty.    

The first interview I listened to was this one, "David A. Wemhoff on Henry Luce and the American Century."  Chilling.

The second interview that I listened to was this one:

The introduction by host Peter Helland is slow going, but once Wemhoff starts talking, it's good.  One of the more startling revelations he makes is that John Courtney Murray actually wrote "The American Proposition" speech for Luce, a fact that lends credence to the assertion by one of the Time reporters who covered Vatican II that John Courtney Murray was part of a conspiracy.

The American Proposition speech set forth the American principles for a good society based on no established religion.  I found it interesting that it was delivered in 1953, the same year that Cardinal Ottaviani, head of the Holy Office, delivered his speech on the Duties of the Catholic Confessional State, which directly contradicted the principles of The American Proposition.

Reading Solange Hertz's, The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism finally wove the last threads together for me into a recognizable pattern, as she lays out the sordid history of the heresy of Americanism from its beginnings in revolutionary America among the Catholic hierarchy.  I thought I knew a good deal about that, but I truly was shocked by the quotes she used from these so-called Catholic churchmen.

It's quite disheartening.  However, it is a great advantage to know the problem.

Without a Catholic confessional state, we do not serve Jesus Christ.   We must recognize Him as King, and the Church He established must be free to ensure His reign over our affairs and provide a check on the government.  If we do not serve Jesus Christ then we serve Mammon.   That is why everything revolves around money in America and why it does not matter who gets elected to office.  The founding principles of America are in direct contradiction to Catholic doctrine.

In the very heart of the Passion He [Christ] was pleased to show us “democracy” in action, manipulated by the instruments of Satan. Pilate, turning to the people in hopes of saving the Prisoner he knew to be innocent, asks, “What, then, am I to do with Jesus who is called Christ?” And they answered, prompted by their leaders, “Let him be crucified!” (Matt. 27: 22-23) and elected Barabbas. Thus was our Lord’s death demanded and ratified by Jews who had espoused the democratic process, preferring human rule to God’s. Let there be no mistake. The real objective of the liberty, equality and fraternity touted by the forces of humanism is always the death of God.  ~ Solange Hertz, The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism

I've really benefitted this Lent from doing the Total Consecration to Mary according to St. Louis de Montfort while also reading The Star-Spangled Heresy: Americanism.  It's made the contrast between Catholicism and Americanism much clearer to me.  True freedom lies in Holy Slavery to Our Lord through His Blessed Mother.  It is not in the American idea of freedom, which is of Satan.  (The American founders met in a Boston tavern called The Green Dragon, which Daniel Webster called the “Headquarters of the Revolution”.  It was the seat of Massachusetts Masonry's Provincial Grand Lodge, according to Mrs. Hertz.)

I will close with a gorgeous recording of Ave Maris Stella.  Saying that prayer every day is a requirement of the Consecration.  I have found that if I sing it, it will come to me on its own frequently throughout the day.

Attention, European Union Readers

My dear friend Mr. Google has advised me that I am required by European Union law to give its citizens information about cookies.  (And here I thought I was just a simple little mom blog in rural Texas.  I had no idea that my ramblings had drawn the attention of so august a body as the European Union!)

I sincerely regret that I have neglected this serious duty so far and make haste now to correct it:

Dear European Union Readers,

Greetings from America!  I hope that you are well.  It is indeed my great honor to provide you with information about cookies.  Please know that in America we love cookies exceedingly, especially Chips Ahoy, Oreos, and Fig Newtons.  These are manufactured in huge factories with ingredients produced by industrial farming and a variety of chemicals.  This combination ensures that cookies make big dollars for the food corporations but also for the medical and pharmaceutical industries, which in turn bankroll our politicians.  You can see that cookies are an important player in the Gross National Product.  And I do mean gross!

I hope you have found this information helpful, and that this explanation satisfies the requirements of the European Union.  If you ever come to America, please come to my house.  We'll have raw milk and homemade cookies and a lovely visit, I am sure, despite not contributing to the GNP.

May God bless you and keep you and restore Christendom in your land.

Love ya!

Wendy

Your Diagnosis, Please (Part 3, Final)

Continued from Part 2

I arrived at the hospital to find my dad in an ER room, pulling himself up repeatedly by gripping the side rails of the bed, only to drop back breathlessly on the pillow, accomplishing nothing.  His eyes searched the ceiling for curiosities only he could see.  When he did take a break from pulling himself up, it was to reach longingly for these things and to beg me to help him get them.  Then it was back to the heartbreaking pull-ups.  I watched helplessly each time as his abdominal muscles clenched down with the effort.  I drew close to his head and called to him.  He turned his head and focused his eyes on me.  I asked him what he was trying to do by pulling himself up over and over again.

"I don't know," he said, then turned his eyes back to the ceiling, gripped the handrails, and struggled up again.  I asked him to please stop because he was pushing himself gradually off the end of the bed, which had no footboard.  Again, he looked at me when I talked to him and seemed to understand, but as soon as I was finished talking, he resumed the pull-ups and ceiling searching.

Finally a nurse came and collected a urine sample to be sent to the lab.  The results were announced enthusiastically by the ER doctor, "Your dad has a RAGING urinary tract infection!"

I immediately thought of my friendly redheaded EMT.

"And he has pneumonia in two lobes of his lungs," the doctor finished.

After more waiting, Dad was admitted and transferred to a hospital room where they finally began the IV antibiotics he so desperately needed.

I spent the night in the bed next to him, as this tiny country hospital had no aides to help the nurses.  Wearily I climbed into bed about 11:15, only to be asked questions by the nurse until midnight about Dad's medical history but also personal information like his tv watching habits.  "Maybe I am dreaming," I thought to myself.  "No, welcome to the world of government medical care," my rebel self replied.  Finally she finished her questioning, and I fell asleep.  I awoke several times during the night when the nurse came in and talked to Dad.  I could already hear the difference in him.  He could answer questions coherently.  Relieved, I would drift back to sleep.

Dad happily enjoying a cup of coffee before breakfast.

By the following morning, he seemed his old self.  I went home for a while and returned that afternoon.  I had noticed in the ER that one of Dad's sandals was missing.  Now I saw that it had been returned.  I suspected the ambulance crew had found it.  I decided to go look in the ER driveway and see if the redhead was there with the ambulances.  I busily formulated in my mind how I would instruct her--with all charity, of course--in the fact that she was an idiot and a danger to society.  I got as far as the glass door at the exit.  I stood there and watched as the redhead in her manly navy blue uniform repeatedly drew deeply on an e-cig and blasted giant clouds of vapor into the air around her co-workers.  I thought again about what I could say to her, and this time I tried to think along the lines of something that Christ would want me to say.  Confronted overwhelmingly instead with my own weaknesses and failings, I turned and walked back to my Dad's room, determined to pray for her.

I pondered the situation.  Maybe she had returned the shoe herself.  Maybe she had asked the nurse for his diagnosis and discovered how wrong she had been and repented.  I don't know.  I just knew that I was not yet the person who could tell her.  We had had a happy outcome.  I counted my blessings and brought Dad home the next afternoon.

Your Diagnosis, Please (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1

I told the dispatcher the pertinent details about my dad, then told her about our electric gate at the entrance to our driveway and asked if I should go down to the road to open it for the ambulance.  She said, "No, give me the code."  I gave her the code and told her that the EMT's would have to get out and re-enter the code to close the gate as soon as they came in, because we have a milk cow who does not generally miss an opportunity to escape.  She assured me this was not a problem and would be communicated to the ambulance personnel.

With great difficulty, I managed to get Dad across the house and back in his recliner.  Emma arrived, which was a great comfort to me.

The ambulance pulled in, plus one EMT in his own Dodge diesel truck.  Soon the EMT's crowded into the family room where Dad was sitting.  I think there were three guys and one lady.  The lady, a redhead, began firing questions at me.

"What's his diagnosis?" she demanded.  I struggled mightily to figure out how to answer that question.  My dad has numerous health issues.  But she seemed to want one diagnosis that summed him up completely--one neat little label that would de-humanize him but efficiently generate a code and a treatment plan.  At least that is what ran through my mind.

I was at a loss.  Her stressful tactics were making it difficult for me to organize my thoughts.  "I can tell you what medications he is on," I volunteered weakly.  I started enumerating them, and one of the guys interrupted.  "He's also taking these," indicating several prescription bottles that he had rounded up from a basket in the breakfast room.

I went over, read the labels, and told him that Dad was no longer taking those medicines.  But the stress of the questions from the lady EMT, the effort of thinking about the prescriptions, and the sinking feeling I got from realizing that he had gone un-invited into another room and rifled through my parents' things just seemed to suck the life out of me.

Then the redhead asked me more questions and asked for Dad's ID and insurance cards.  I got them.

I began to wonder if the dispatcher had sent a SWAT team by mistake.  Maybe this was a drug raid, not medical assistance.

One of the guys asked my dad what year it was.

"1972," Dad answered.  I remembered that was the year Dad bought my mom a Volvo station wagon.  He gave me lots of talks back then about the built-in obsolescence he was seeing in American cars.  That's why he bought the Volvo.

"Who's the president?" the guy continued.

"Oh, I know," Dad said confidently.  "That colored fella."  I stifled a giggle.  He grew up in Alabama during the Depression.  He never has gotten the hang of calling negroes "black."

I tried to tell the redhead that I thought Dad might have a UTI and that his temperature had been slowly creeping up.  She was dismissive of my suggestion about a UTI and told me that they would now take Dad into the ambulance to evaluate him.

Suddenly, I remembered the gate and asked Emma to go check and make sure that they had closed it. They had not.  Luckily, Fiona had not seen it.

The redhead came back in to give me her report on Dad's evaluation.  "Everything checks out fine," she asserted.  "He is not a diabetic; his lungs are clear; his temp is 98.7.  The only thing wrong is his blood pressure is very high.  Of course, we can't do labs in the ambulance, so we'll go ahead and take him to the ER."

I wanted to tell her, "Why, thank you very much!  The only reason I called you was for you to take him to the ER!"  But I bit my tongue.  I told her that his normal temperature was around 97.4 and that 98.7 was not normal for him.  I mentioned again that I feared he had a UTI.

"Has he had a foul smell to his urine?" she asked.

As Dad has some trouble with incontinence, and I wash all his clothes and clean his bathroom, I knew the answer to that.

"No," I said.

"Any burning while urinating?"

"I don't know for sure, but he has not complained."

 "You know, he's 82.  At some point you're going to have to consider that he has Alzheimer's or dementia," she pronounced authoritatively.

Disgusted, I thought to myself, "Ah, she finally provided the single diagnosis that she was looking for,"

Aloud, I said, "But this is a night and day difference with my Dad.  He wasn't like this yesterday.  And one of the new medications he is on can cause UTI's."

She didn't roll her eyes, but she managed to convey the same idea with one condescending glance.  I felt sick, humiliated, and angry all at the same time.  She turned and left.  Feeling slightly disoriented, I walked to the kitchen window to watch them leave, only to find that they had backed the ambulance across our large gravel parking area and into the soft ground of the pasture.  They were stuck.  Big time.  I walked away, shaking my head.  This was a nightmare.

Later Emma told me that she saw the redhead get out and point to our hangar, directing one of the guys to go in there and get a board to put under the driver's side rear wheel.  He did as he was told, but he did not get the ambulance unstuck.  Eventually the EMT with the Dodge truck, who had left earlier, was called to come back and pull the ambulance out.

The ambulance finally left, and I talked with the guy who had pulled it out while he put away his chains.  Emma jumped on her bicycle to go check the gate.  It was open.  She grabbed Fiona on her way back.  As the guy with the truck was leaving, he met Emma returning, and they exchanged a few words.  She was leading Fiona by the haltar.

I went back in the house to collect my thoughts and the things I would need for my sojourn in the ER.  This took about 20 minutes.  As I drove down our driveway, I saw that once again, the gate had been left open.  The EMT in the truck exited the gate without closing it.  I called Emma and told her.  She couldn't see Fiona anywhere on our property, so as I left for the emergency room, she left in her car to look for Fiona.  What a day.

And it wasn't over yet.

To be continued.

Your Diagnosis, Please

Last Sunday was one firecracker of a day.

At breakfast my dad was extremely agitated--complaining about severe pain in his left shoulder and weakness in his legs.  He was shaking all over.  I took his blood pressure, and it was 210/104.

I was afraid he was having a heart attack.   I asked him if the pain in his shoulder was the usual pain from his arthritis or if it was different.  He said that it was different.  I told him that I was going to call an ambulance.  By his reaction, you would think that I had told him I had made an appointment for him to be castrated.   He got so upset, it scared me.

I asked him if he had already taken his blood pressure medication.  He checked his pill organizer and said, "Yes.  Looks like I took all my morning meds and all my evening meds too."

"Oh. My. Gosh," I thought, as my mind raced.  "What the heck is going on here?" I asked myself.  I mentally reviewed the medications that he takes in the evening and decided he would be ok.  It was just disturbing that he had done that.  He is usually careful about his prescriptions.

I was removing the blood pressure cuff when, before I realized what he was doing, he took a hydrocodone (pain killer and narcotic) and a Clonozapam (anxiety).

Because the idea of me calling an ambulance made him so much more upset, I decided to wait a little on calling 911 and focused on getting him calmed down and comfortable.  I put a Lidocaine pain patch on his shoulder and helped him get to his recliner.  With a little coaching on deep breathing and meditation, he soon relaxed.  I was happily surprised and encouraged by how receptive he was to this.  I'm sure the meds were beginning to kick in too.  He asked me to take his blood pressure again.  It came down about 40 points in ten minutes.  He was quite pleased.  He smiled at me and said he felt fine.

Much relieved, I sat down on the couch near him to observe and wait.  He was watching tv, like he normally does.  After about 30 minutes, he asked me to turn on some lights.  The only problem was, he was pointing at an area where there are no lights.  I explained this to him and offered to turn on the ones that were actually there.  Then he asked me, "Do you see those three columns over there?"  He pointed his index finger at the east wall.  I said, "No, Dad, I don't see any columns, just the two windows."

He began carefully describing the three columns to me, and I repeated what I saw: just the two windows.  I began to wonder if the combination of the evening meds, the hydrocodone, and Clonazapam were making him delusional.  They certainly made him cheerful.  And he assured me that he was feeling no pain.  I sat back down.

Emma, on her way to church, texted me to see how Grandpa was doing.  I told her the latest developments.

A little while later Dad asked me if I saw the numbers on the wall and the ribbon that was woven in between them.  I told him that I did not.  I noticed then that although he had the tv on, his headphones that allow him to actually hear it were in his lap.

"Dad," I said.  "Do you know what year it is?"

"2065?" he asked.

"Oh, dear.  That makes you very, very old," I replied.  Because you were born in 1933."

He smiled.  "I think you need to keep asking me questions like that," he told me pleasantly.

At that point I decided I could probably rule out a heart attack.

Emma called me and said that she had spoken with her friend, Angela, who is a nurse in a geriatric psychiatric ward.  Angela said it sounded like a urinary tract infection (UTI).

"Of course!" I thought, remembering a similar reaction by my mom several years ago when she was hospitalized for a stroke.  But I still wasn't sure.  Dad didn't have a history of UTI's and there was still the question of a possible drug reaction.

I told Emma that as soon as she got home to stay with Grandma, I would take Grandpa to the Urgent Care clinic we frequent.  He is much more amenable to going to Urgent Care than to the hospital emergency room.  I can't blame him.  The emergency room is a nightmare for the elderly.

Soon after Dad got up and walked to the bathroom, using his walker as he normally does.  He was in there a long while.  I went to the door several times to inquire if he was ok.  He assured me he was.

When he finally came out, I saw immediately that he was not ok.  He could barely walk, and he was panting heavily.  I told him to sit down on the seat of his walker.  He did.  Whereas he usually picks up his feet when I push him in his walker, this time he let them drag.

I knew my window of opportunity for getting him into the car had slammed shut.  I called 911.

To be continued...

On My Refrigerator: Handy Dandy Guide to the New Religion of Vatican II

I was cleaning out a kitchen drawer on Tuesday and discovered this long-lost treasure that I had clipped from one of Fr. Zendejas' "blue papers" several years ago, before he left the SSPX and became a Resistance priest.  I had thought of it many times and wanted to review it but could not remember where I had stashed it.

My heart thrilled with its re-discovery!  "Look what I found!" I crowed to Emma.  She immediately whipped out her phone and took a picture for safekeeping.   She knows too well that just because I find something doesn't mean that I won't lose it again.

I began seriously looking over the list last night and started typing it up in chronological order, so I could see the process better.  That's when I realized that a really important change was not even on the list, that being the new rite for Episcopal Consecration, which was instituted in 1968 at the same time as the new rite for Priestly Ordination.

As for the last item, I'm not sure what Fr. Zendejas was trying to say about the New Evangelization of 2013, as John Paul II and Benedict XVI had touted it during their reigns.  I'm guessing he was trying to communicate something about Bergoglio actually implementing the things that JPII and BXVI only dreamed of.  But that is only a guess.

It's quite heartbreaking to ponder the individual items on this list, especially when you know that most Conciliar Catholics have no idea that their religion is not the same one as practiced by Catholics before Vatican II.  Maybe this list can rectify that.  It's a great outline for starting an investigation into what happened to the Church.  I recommend the sedevacantist site, Novus Ordo Watch, as a solid resource.  But by all means, read far and wide.  To get you started, here's a link to NOW's extensively documented post on the new rite of episcopal consecration.

When Father's Day Was Every Day

I have long been interested in the ways that the Industrial Revolution affected family life and how our society might facilitate the return of the patriarchal family.   To my way of thinking, if you really want to do this, you not only have to bring mothers home, you have to bring fathers home as well, because home loses its importance when its head spends the best part of his day elsewhere.

About six months ago I discovered an article titled "Industrialization and Marriage" by Robin Phillips. 
Its main premise is that industrialization fundamentally changed marriage, and this paved the way for our modern de-functionalized homes and even the feminist movement.

Phillips writes that "prior to 1800, the vast majority of people lived and worked in the same place.  Whatever else a couple's relationship may have involved, they were quite literally in business together.  The home, in turn, was not a place where people 'lived' as a passive activity when they were not doing other things.  Rather the home was a small factory, a bustling hub of productivity."  This is how the wife felt part of something important, and she could truly fulfill her role as helpmeet.  I know that I feel  peaceful and am much more focused on what I need to do when my husband is home the whole day.

This idea of the husband and wife being in business together prior to the Industrial Revolution made me think of how we now have "bedroom communities", "media rooms".  Keeping rooms were a mainstay of Colonial houses because inhabitants lived and worked in them.  Keeping implies activity, as in keeping house.  

Here's the part of the article that really stopped me and made me think:  "The geographical proximity of home and work had an impact on how couples thought of their relationship to each other.  A man and wife did not think of their relationship as something that could be abstracted from their mundane life together in the world." He explained that marital relations and earning a living "were closely bound together, and both were situated within an ecosystem of obligations, responsibilities, priorities and expectations that were bigger than the couple's relationship.  Because marriage was understood to be bigger than the relationship itself, this helped to anchor marriage in a narrative external to the two participates (sic)."

Of course this "in business together" relationship extended to the children as well.  I am listening to an audio book on rhetoric by Professor Michael Drout.  He says that in Sanskrit, the word for daughter means "one who milks the cow".  The professor says that it is believed that Sanskrit and Greek and Latin sprung from a common language, so you can see how deeply-embedded these home-supporting roles were in our culture before Capitalism came along.

 I was stunned to learn about the role government played in promoting modern housing.  Silly me, I thought people just got tired of farm life and wanted to move to the suburbs, but no, the "Industrialization and Marriage" article reveals that "the concept of the family room originated from guidelines that the government issued in the middle of the 20th century when specifying how homes could qualify for insurance.  A new model of the home emerged which deliberately detached it from labor and functionality.  Government planners urged architects and home-owners to get rid of walls and doors, to eliminate various work rooms like the sewing room and the pantry and to focus the house instead around the type of domestic bonding that was supposed to occur in rooms like the family room."

Gee, this sounds like what happened to architecture in the Catholic Church after Vatican II.  The functionality of divine worship that was expressed by things like altar rails was destroyed in order to promote "community".

In the case of housing, this change was necessary to convert independent producers into dependent consumers of industrial goods.  It has taken a long time to accomplish, but we are there.  State governments implemented compulsory schooling to speed this along.  I imagine that once dad was gone from home, taking the children was a lot easier, especially as classical education was swept aside and replaced with the memorize-and-regurgitate-textbooks method.

Clearly we have been duped into destroying God's plan for the family.  If only we could see it.

Secession in Catalonia: The Good News

The Confederate South has been criticized for too long for choosing to secede.  It's wonderful and downright inspiring to see secession movements in other parts of the world:

Six days ago, the people of Spain’s most prosperous region, Catalonia, voted overwhelmingly for parties favouring the breaking away from Spanish rule. As a result, almost two out of three seats in the Catalan parliament are occupied by politicians who want an independence referendum.

So says Dominic Sandbrook in this Times Online article.

Mr. Sandbrook seems to think this will end badly.  I think it is exceedingly good news for the world, and I wish the Catalonians all success, not because I am a revolutionary but because it is the only answer I see to fighting the atheistic New World Order--the only hope for ever re-establishing Christendom.  

While Texas has quite the reputation for being ready, willing, and able to function as a republic, I have read that Austin would secede from Texas if the state actually declared its independence.  I am assuming this is because the city's inhabitants are more welcoming to the homosexual agenda than the rest of the state.   Whatever the reason, Austin's secession would be fine as well.  Let birds of a feather flock together.  As for me, I pray that I may one day live in a Catholic confessional state.  Then I wouldn't have to live the compartmentalized life that this strange separation of church and state requires.  Besides, I have seen nothing to beat the fruit of Christendom, which was none other than Western civilization.  

Pre-Order "For Greater Glory"

I've secured mine!

You can get it from Wal Mart or Amazon.  Or go to the movie site HERE for information on all the other viewing options.

For a wonderful review, including an explanation of how the Cristero War was not fought for religious liberty, read Tradition in Action's "A Historic Lesson: The Danger of Compromise".  It includes a link to another article that gives an accurate biography of the young martyr José Sánchez del Río.

A Pilgrimage and a Procession: The Cabalgata of Christ the King

I never fail to be inspired by Catholic men making an exterior act of faith.

Via Tradition in Action: "From throughout the State of Guanajuato - as well as many other states of Mexico and the U.S. - the pilgrims meet two days before Epiphany to ride together on pilgrimage to honor Christ the King."  Read the entire post HERE.

Chicks and Schemes Hatched

Yesterday we discovered that five chicks had hatched.  Apparently they had hatched a couple of days previously, but I never heard or saw any signs.  So one of them expired shortly after we found them.  Big lesson learned.  Go ahead and put chick food and water out when you don't know how long the eggs have been incubated.  It's good to be back in the chick business.

Emma and I are reading a lot about the financial crisis and are trying to guess what the most likely scenario will be after the collapse.   It's hard to know what to do.  I see a lot of people are emphasizing vegetable gardens.  I am not so concerned with vegetables as I am with having grassfed meat, eggs, and milk because they are densely nutritious, and the body can easily assimilate the nutrients, which is not always the case with vegetables.   Plus you need high quality protein to make neurotransmitters, and you need animal fat for satiety and to make sex hormones from cholesterol.  And after living on raw milk exclusively for ten days and feeling great, I just feel that animals are the more important food source to secure a good steady supply of.

What scenario do you envisage after the financial collapse and how are you preparing?

A Nun Speaks Out: "Leave the Syrian People Alone"

Our government is funding and training the rebels, which means the USA is working alongside the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda against Christians and other innocent civilians.  Yes, even babies have been brutally murdered.  I read about one in particular who was killed out on the street right in front of his family.  Both presidential nominees and their running mates support the continued military interference of the United States in sovereign countries.

Here is the story, via American Everyman, of the nun in the video as explained on Information Clearinghouse:

A NUN who has been superior at a Syrian monastery for the past 18 years has warned that media coverage of ongoing violence in that country has been “partial and untrue”. It is “a fake”, Mother Agnes Mariam said, which “hides atrocities committed in the name of liberty and democracy”.

Superior of the Melkite Greek Catholic monastery of St James the Mutilated in Qara, in Syria’s diocese of Homs, which is in full communion with Rome, she left Ireland yesterday after a three-day visit during which she met representatives of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Maynooth.

She told The Irish Times she was in Ireland “not to advocate for the (Assad) regime but for the facts”. Most news reports from Syria were “forged, with only one side emphasised”, she said. This also applied to the UN, whose reports were “one-sided and not worthy of that organisation”.

UN observers in Syria had been “moderate with the rebels and covered for them in taking back positions after the withdrawal of heavy equipment, as seen so tragically in Homs”, she said.

When it was put to her this suggested the whole world was out of step except for Syria, Russia and China, she protested: “No, no, there are 20 countries, including some in Latin America” of the same view.  Read the rest HERE.

The Pro-Life Movement: I Plead the Fifth

Adam and Eve grieve over the death of Abel in "The First Mourning" by Bouguereau

 After the 2008 presidential election, I resolved to ignore politics, deciding that it really was not compatible with my place as the heart of the home.  I was much happier in this mode:  Ignorance truly is bliss in this regard.  However, after I watched the Cristero movie earlier this year, For Greater Glory, I realized how dangerously close Americans are to having a Cristero-type scenario with our government.  I decided that I could no longer keep silent, that I had a duty to speak up.

This I have done on Facebook.

I have pointed out the dangers of the military-industrial complex, the immorality of our wars, the hypocrisy of the "conservative" movement, and the Masonic agenda in both the major political parties, etc., etc., etc.

I don't think it has made a bit of difference.  As soon as Paul Ryan was chosen as Romney's VP, many of my Catholic friends jumped on board because Paul Ryan is Catholic and says he is "pro-life".

I really don't understand.

The man is big government all the way.  He supports all the wars and even wants more military spending.  He voted to make the Patriot Act permanent.  He voted for all the bailouts.  He supports NDAA, the indefinite detention of Americans without trial if suspected of terrorism.

Even his pro-life credentials are suspect to me.  He sees the protection of the unborn as a social issue.  Poverty is a social issue.  Murder is not.  And in 2010, he supported calling a "truce" on the pro-life fight until he was called to task by others in the movement.  Then he flip-flopped on demand.  He is just exactly the same as Romney.  He'll do or say whatever he needs to in order to get elected.

I think Catholics keep getting tricked into voting for candidates like Paul Ryan because of a faulty definition of what it means to be pro-life.  We wear "American baby in the womb" blinders and never consider that the pro-life movement in America today is just one part of the Fifth Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Kill".  It commands us to live in peace and union with our neighbor, to respect his rights, to seek his spiritual and bodily welfare, and to take proper care of our own life and health; controlling one's anger.  It forbids all willful murder, suicide, abortion, euthanasia, artificial contraception, sterilization, cloning, endangering life and limb of self or others, fighting, anger, hatred, revenge, and bad example.

To make being "pro-life" a litmus test for acceptability as a political candidate while ignoring his stance on the totality of the Fifth Commandment is morally wrong and completely illogical.  It is compartmentalized thinking, a hallmark of modernism.  How can supporting the wars in the Middle East (and elsewhere around the globe) be compatible with being pro-life in particular and with the commandment not to kill in general?  We kill innocent civilians there every day.  There are estimates that as many as a million Iraqis have died at our hands, even though there were no weapons of mass destruction and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

I guess Middle Eastern babies do not count.  They are not exceptional.  They are not from the shining city on the hill.

I know.  We will never forget.  Almost 3000 Americans died in the twin towers!  So that gives us the right to destroy the Middle East, even the Christian communities.  Because America is exceptional.  Our people are more valuable than other countries' people.  As Christopher Check says in Dropping the Atomic Bomb:

My Country, Right or Wrong

Americans have another blind spot when it comes to evaluating our country’s political actions—perhaps especially our military adventures, because these are seen as patriotic events. The blind spot is nationalism. Patriotism, love of one’s native land, is a genuine virtue, to be sure. But when it becomes nationalism—an excessive veneration of one’s country and its government—it becomes a vice.

This vice is nothing less than a heresy condemned by Pope Leo XIII in 1899 as “Americanism.” Americanism, no less virulent in our day than it was in Leo’s, combines a collective sense of Christian exceptionalism (America as the “Shining City on a Hill”) with the hubristic conviction that America can draw up her own moral code. 

Catholics today seem mortally infected with Americanism.  I guess that is understandable.  We Catholics want to fit in.  I have often wondered if that is why American Catholic women ditched their veils in the '60s, despite no instruction to do so.  Was our desire to fit in the reason why we gave up so easily the Tridentine Mass?  Because we wanted to fit in and be American Catholics instead of Catholic Americans?  Whatever the reason, we have been assimilated.  As far as I can tell, there is little difference in the thinking of Catholics and other Christian Americans of the same socioeconomic group.

Now Catholics rally together with Protestants in opposition to the HHS mandate in order to fight for the "value" of religious liberty, rather than naming abortion and contraceptive use as immoral acts under the Fifth Commandment.

And every election, we put on our pro-life blinders and play the voting game.  Abortion continues unabated, whether we have a Republican in the White House or Republican control of Congress.  We let our enemies write the rules; we get beaten over and over again, but we keep playing anyway.

Homework: Helping to Make Round Pegs Fit in Square Holes

"Homework may be the single greatest extinguisher of children's curiosity that we have yet invented."

This quote comes from the video below.   I agree wholeheartedly with its message.

When my eldest was approaching kindergarten age, we lived in a subdivision with a school within walking distance.  It was actually right in our neighborhood.  Sidewalks from our front yard led straight to it, and every day I watched streams of my neighbors' children flow there and back.  They were so cute!  I loved watching them every day.  However, talking with their parents about the day-to-day expectations of the school convinced me that I didn't want my children to go.

One of my main concerns was the homework.  They had loads of it.  They even had science projects in kindergarten!  This sounds impressive to a lot of people, but I soon realized that the parents were the ones who were bringing the science projects to fruition, not the children.  The pressure to get the homework and the projects done in the limited amount of free family time caused a lot of tension between the parents and the children.

I saw that the school was reaching into the home and robbing the parents of their right to direct the children's after-school time.  And even this was not enough.  Nationally, movements to keep the children in school year-round re-surfaced on a regular basis, on the false assumption that if the system used to educate children wasn't working well, the solution was to add more hours to that system.  At least that was the reason given.  I think the real reason is that the government wants to be the primary influence in our children's lives, so the less time at home, the better.  It wants all the children to think the same, to be predictable, and submissive.  Having free time gives children the opportunity to become individuals, to discover what their interests are and develop them, even if those interests are not going to channel them into college, which has been set up as the path that must be followed to "SUCCESS".  Of course success is narrowly defined as something that will allow you to get a "good" job at a place that provides "good" benefits.  This is usually not going to be self-employment.  It is going to be a corporation.  The corporations with the best benefits are usually the multi-national ones.  This means that they have a cozy relationship with the government.  They will provide all the social "training", otherwise known as indoctrination, that the government regulations require, through programs on sexual harassment, affirmative action, etc.

And it all starts with a little worksheet.

New Disney Cartoon Scares the "Stuffins" out of Me

I never read the New York Times, but I decided to this morning just on a whim.  As someone who has long been disturbed by the way Disney twists classic stories and promotes sexuality to children,   this article about a Disney cartoon caught my interest.  First, I studied the picture.  I noticed several Masonic symbols.  On the bed are two pillows.  One is in the shape of a pyramid, and the other is a pentagram shape.  There is an all-seeing eye right at the middle of the girl's stethoscope.   In the background there is a table with the doctor's equipment.  Take a few seconds and look at it.  It's clearly a workbench with tools on a pegboard.  My gut reaction was that this is about torture, not healing.  On the second page is another picture of  McStuffins toys for sale .  On the top right corner of the package it says, "Doc really makes Lambie Talk".  Spine-chilling.  The doll says, "Time for your checkup!"

I have never seen the program.  The points I made were based solely on the pictures in the article.  For those readers who think I am imagining things and overreacting, here's a description of the show that you can feel good about:

Disney Junior’s “Doc McStuffins,” an imaginative animated series about a six-year-old girl who runs a clinic for stuffed animals and broken toys out of her backyard playhouse, was the #1 most-watched preschool series launch in cable TV history in Adults 18-49, which means moms and dads were tuning in and making sure their kids got to see the little female African-American doctor who was helping her stuff animals feel better about visiting their physician.