When the Roll Is Called up Yonder, I'll be Here - LOTR 75
Nothing Comes From Nothing (Nihil omnino in nihilum redigetur)...But It Still Helps to Have a Gallows Sense of Humor
Author’s Note: These are lagged, originally published Here. But we are resuming things, here, as it remains a good time to “adapt”. Bee season is here, and after that, mushrooming…it’s the little things that will survive the collapse of the American Empire, which came up fast, and will go down even faster, Trump’s heroic efforts notwithstanding (although he is buying us a respite/reprieve, which should be taken advantage of).
C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute
("It's worse than a crime, it is a mistake.") - Talleyrand
The road home, over the battlefields, to The Shire, was difficult to behold. To truly behold, is to understand, to understand is to know, to know is transform, to transform is to manifest & act. There were many devastations and ruins, many missing people or homes, and many memories. How many young babies did Gollum devour on the edges of Mirkwood? How many Rohirrim never returned to their horse meadows? How many dead Ents and Huorns? When will Gondor be cleaned up? How many more Elves are leaving Middle Earth, never to return? And why are there "Sherruffs" abroad in the Shire, trying to arrest the four weary travelers? How much more of this are we to expect?
It's time to Reverse Uno. Or pull a Tombstone or a Winter's Bone. But it has to originate "high up", in the spiritual sphere, so it can flow down and effect and transfigure these rough lower regions. We are "refusing the line". It is the "one thing necessary", but it begins in the deep heart. You may have to read up on Valentin Tomberg or Boris Mouravieff to get a handle on what's going on "inside". Christ is always born in the dark manger, on a cold winter night, with an angry King looking for Him.
Only Rivendell escaped unscathed, and most of them...are leaving. Who will carry the torch?
When it all seems like "too much", remember that we have already won, and are on the right side of not just human History, but Cosmic Time and Galactic Space. There isn't any possibility of actual failure, defeat, or death.
One can make it real, by meditating upon Scripture, and then letting that "seep into" one's psyche and daily life:
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:38-39
Saint Paul was "persuaded". That is, he the item in question (not really an "Item" like other 'items"), was made "thoroughly sweet" to his psyche. He had "read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested" the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness which he contemplated. One could also say, he was "convinced". That is, he "conquered with" the thing that conquered him. The "Item" and he both conquered each other.
One can be intellectually convinced and persuaded, or existentially convinced and persuaded (which includes, but is far beyond and much deeper than, the intellect alone).
What does Cirdan the Shipwright contemplate? Something deep, and beautiful no doubt
I could have also titled this piece, "It Ain't Over Till the Fat Lady Sings". And this is because, there is still a Grand Denouement a'playing out, with a story arc that encompasses millennia. Rome wasn't built in a day, and America won't be resurrected in the five minutes it takes to place a drive through order.
We aren't "saving" America, because America has been dead for some time. We are Resurrecting Her. The time for Resuscitation was after the Civil War or WWI. This will be an outright Resurrection. So it isn't just Renaissance, Reformation, and Revival all at once (we need all that too), but rather, Life from the Dead. "Reconstruction, Regeneration, or Renovation?" would have been good questions in 1865 or in 1918, maybe even 1945. Unfortunately, our national predicament runs much deeper. All we have in America is "Residual Electrical Activity", flickering over the cardiac muscle of the heart. The soul and spirit have (temporarily) departed. One might even argue that the body, "it begins to stink".
That's why it's "so hard" and also why conservatives have been losing ground for almost two hundred years in this country, since before the Civil War, when our enemies gained the whip hand. It isn't just our culture that is dead (it is), or our government and institutions (they are too). Our civilizational armature is crumbling, too. The bad news happens apace, every day, in an increasing torrent.
With each wantonly corrupt step, the Democrats are undermining the nation’s already-fragile trust in ‘Democracy’. People are becoming awakened like never before to the naked sham of the country’s political process. It has been exposed as nothing more than a moneyed pageant for a detached class of elites, unbeholden to citizens’ interests or any principles—moral or otherwise.
One is tempted to confess the Gospel of Leonard Cohen -
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Leonard Cohen – Everybody Knows
Now is a great time, the best time, to be a Christian. Never better.
It'll be a true, ground up, hands-on, support-your-local-sheriff affair. We will "retrace the Ungrund", & Keep Calm and Carry On.
That's just our game, as Christians. Our specialty, you might say. The Christian, the true believer, the "knight of Faith", is a Centaur: he is "in the world, but not of the world". Therefore, he is the one, true, only and also ideal bridge between the two realities of "this world" and "that world". He is the one called to restore the markers and boundaries, and rebuild the temple. If these people can see that, why can't everyone? Curtis Yarvin is certainly working on the problem. But you have to do some house-cleaning, in order to take advantage of it (maybe he needs to, to....)
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 2 Cor. 4:4
The education of Achilles by Chiron: just as the Christian is taught by a guardian angel. Not everyone is lucky enought to be "home-schooled"...
Meanwhile, the "World" has worked through its good Luck, & started in on its Bad. Have you ever seen such Mass Delusional Psychosis, as we've had over the last (say) 5-10 years? It's Epic. The World was always filled with bad news, but there was always some silver lining. It's clear from our current bad news, that we are going to have to drink from a firehose of Lunacy. It's the days of Denethor! (But still not as bad as ancient times, somehow...)
“In Middle-earth Men and Elves became estranged in the days of darkness, by the arts of the Enemy, and by the slow changes of time in which each kind walked down their sundered roads.”
History, it finally appears, has finally happened to America, too. But the good news is, things are moving even faster than our enemies have dreamed of! They've already lost, and their cause is Kaput. I've heard it called Dying Fly Syndrome. This defeat ultimately goes back to the Resurrection, and not to anything we are doing, but they'll be angry when they finally figure that it's hopeless for them. Meanwhile, for us, it's hard (though) for humans to act as if all depends on them, but know inside that it all depends upon The Lord. There is a great incentive to do so, however, because we are just at the "End of the Beginning" with all this, & only the good Lord knows all the pieces in play.
“It’s only going to get weirder. The level of contradiction is going to rise excruciatingly even beyond the excruciating present levels of contradiction. So, I think it’s just going to get weirder and weirder and weirder and, finally, it’s going to be so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is….” -Terrence McKenna
Link Just know that you didn't create it, & so God will preserve it!
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time. But it's hard to fool all the people, all the time.
Looking Out for You, and Doing All the Good
We are Here, in the Shire. Which is where we will be, even through the ending of the World. At The Squire, if we can shift the Shire into the Primordial State, we are getting warmer, warmer, warmer...you will start to escape the Black Iron Prison, and the current Anarcho-Tyranny. But we also wish to shift The Primordial State, into the Shire. To build Grace into Nature (Joel Salatin).
Since anywhere in the world, can be the center of the Cosmos. God cares about "the shields of the earth". About the logoi. And the "little people".
What if the plan, all along, was to get the Hobbits to "come into their own"?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Father Time, and Mother Cosmos, are on the side of God. Hang on to your hats...
Therefore, stop boasting in men. All things are yours, 22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future. All of them belong to you, 23and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. I Cor. 3:21-23