I gotta have my orange juice.

A husband is a care-taker. I’ve always thought of this in the sense of exercising care. But there’s also a sense of receiving and relieving care.

“We are not hoping to be saved from the physical world, but for the good of it.”—Duane Garner

Thanks to MHAJ 155 for reminding me of this quote:

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race — because he is so human. (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch.3)

Or: every man an integrated man. I think we can own that in order to be complete, every revolution, even the Reformation, needs to be harmonized with the good of what came before.

I’m still reflecting on ERH’s history of revolution. He summarizes past revolutions as establishing that every man is a priest, king, aristocrat, merchant. He sees this as an integrating sequence but it is at least as much a repudiating sequence: “there are no priests; there are no kings.” Perhaps the next stage is an integrating stage: every man a man.

“Grape juice is dead wine”—Duane Garner

If meekness is strength under control, perhaps modesty is beauty—or, pace Duane, glory—under control.

QE2 was likely the most prayed for person in history.

I was looking recently at coffee makers. I was disappointed to discover the existence of Keurig travel bags and mixed drink pod machines. But I was also fascinated to see this:

I could get behind this definition:

The Lord’s prayer has a formative effect on us. The more we pray it, the more we understand ourselves to be:

• Sons and daughters of the Father
• Members of and participants in a glorious and unshakeable heavenly-earthly kingdom
• Those who need not be anxious because we have adequate provision
• Those who are forgiven
• The kind of people who readily forgive
• Those who are protected from and strengthened against temptation and attack

Performing the Psalms is a lot like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia. Before too long—you spend your childhood doing that—you’re unable to live in the normal world the same way ever again. Why? Because you’ve actually inhabited a larger, grander, more glorious world; a world that’s even more real; a world that transcends everything you thought you knew. You have discovered by participation that there’s more to reality than meets the eye. (Trevor Laurence, Singing the Future)

I’m having great difficulty processing Eugen Rosenstock–Huessy’s Out of Revolution. He recognizes both a demonic but also a God–ordained character to revolutions, so that it is difficult to make a single value judgment or a clear prediction of what may happen. Of course, that is just how complex and multi-layered God’s world is. Here is one startling passage:

The great Revolutions break out whenever the power which has governed heaven and earth dries up at the fountain-head. The great Revolutions seem to destroy an existing order; but that is not true. They do not break out until the old state of affairs is already ended, until the old order of things has died and is no longer believed in by its own beneficiaries. (471)

By this token, what we are seeing right now is not a revolution but the last spasms of the Bolshevik revolution. It has run its course and is gasping its last breath. That is encouraging, though what comes next is not clear. ERH believes that a global economic revolution comes next, but to be fair, he writes this in 1938 and this may have already passed and run its course.

Wilson has recommended Zeihan lately, and while I have not read him, Wilson’s representation of Zeihan’s primary thesis seems like an interesting way to understand how the world might revert to a more tribal or at least nationalistic situation. It is interesting to contemplate a world in which the international exchange of information is cheap but the exchange of goods is costly.

Antonyms: wreck, rectify

Spelling correction of the week: virtually => ritually

From our VRBO lake rental:

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ composition for the coronation of QE2:

The pugcast crew points out yet another inconsistency in demonism: it has a kind of hyper-scrupulous natural law concerning nature (don’t touch) but not concerning humanity (abolition of man). Of course, the real underlying principle here is the escape from law and responsibility, and hypocrisy is the point. It is part of the terrorism of the anti-Normal.

They also point out the shift in the definition of equity: a move from defining it in terms of deserts to radical equality. A race to the bottom is the inevitable result. Make equity great again!

It astonishes me how few wise Turks understand this principle:

​In a multitude of people is a king’s honor,
But in the lack of people is the downfall of a prince. (Proverbs 14:28, NKJV)

ESG and resource actions and abortion and depopulation are great self-defeating ignominies. Whom the macrobes mean to destroy they first make blind.

Judging by publication dates, Everett Fox translated around one chapter of the Bible per month.

I listened to a conversation recently on nullification and selective enforcement where there was some libertarian hand-wringing over whether it would only be used in procedurally appropriate ways. Can we really have magistrates over-ruling both greater and lesser magistrates? Can we enforce this law but not that one? Yes, we must do so, and proceduralism be damned. When righteousness reigns, procedure and decorum are a blessing. When proceduralism reigns, it needs to be put in its place by some good old-fashioned righteousness. Sometimes that comes from the lesser magistrate and sometimes it comes from the greater magistrate. I am thankful for Dobbs but it would have been much better if the court had simply recognized that abortion was murder and directed all states to treat it appropriately according to common law.

LOL ERH as “one-punch man:”

In his lectures on the Marrow controversy, Sinclair Ferguson shared this quote from Scottish minister Robert Traill:

That which concerneth our case is that the middle way betwixt the Arminians and the orthodox had been espoused and strenuously defended and promoted by some nonconformists of great note for piety and parts; and usually such men that are for middleways in points of doctrine, have a greater kindness for that extreme to which they halfway go, than for that from which they halfway come.

I think about this from time to time. It is obvious that this is true in the case of compromise, even among many who have no conscious intention to compromise but are simply drawn or carried along. But this is also true of those who are making a genuine shift in their convictions. It generally represents a temptation that must be guarded against even if we are not remaining in the “middleway;” it is possible for us to be over-enthusiastic and cover more ground than we ought. Christians ought to have great aplomb, to be complacent in the good sense of the word; very like ents. It is rare that we ought to despise our beginnings or purposely scandalize the normies.

When Logres really dominates Britain, when the goddess Reason, the divine clearness, is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China—why, then it will be spring. But in the meantime, our concern is with Logres. (C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength)

How very postmillennial of him! I look admiringly at Logres and Holland and other places in my patchwork family tree, but me and my house must work to establish—I don’t know, what shall we call it? Roanoke?

Every time I reread THS I’m freshly impressed by how prophetic it is. This time I’m struck by the presence of depopulation and homosexuality. But I’m also surprised that abortion is relatively absent.

Wendell Berry is suspicious of movements.

Institutions in any sphere can easily stray from their purposes if they are not constantly renewed in repentance. As Ken Myers says, it is possible to institutionalize rebellion against Jesus. This seems especially true for big institutions. If big banks come to take on the job of money laundering, then surely big media comes to take on the job of news laundering.

Is there a better indicator against investment than ESG? Look at this list of companies that are not gonna make it if they don’t repent.

Herman Dooyeweerd developed Kuyper’s idea of sphere sovereignty, suggesting the presence of many additional spheres. The idea is helpful; as is his insistence on irreducibility, even though I think his taxonomy of modes is a little too precise. I think of it this way: if you can imagine its developing a guild, then it’s likely a kind of sphere.

It strikes me how often God gathers his enemies in one place. He likes to tempt them with a great victory and then deal with them decisively.

The deer are after our tomatoes. I’ve tried garlic spray and fencing to compartmentalize our garden into smaller sections, to no avail. I’m working on a 7-foot fence now.

In college I played in our orchestra and our symphonic wind band. We recorded two albums during my time there: Crosswinds and At the Strongholds.

From Jon:

Do not give your strength to women,
​​Nor your ways to that which destroys kings. (Proverbs 31:3, NKJV)

It struck me reading this today: how much more and greater could Solomon have accomplished if he had but one wife?

And, how much is the one-woman-man who is greater than Solomon going to accomplish?!

Ken Meyers describes culture as “a system that has the power to make you feel guilty.” Although this is partly tongue in cheek, I think he is right. Culture is the cultivation of a standard of goodness, truth, and beauty, and it is inescapable. This means that Girardian systems are inescapable. It is not a question of whether there is guilt or even a question of whether you deal with it by scapegoat, but who is your scapegoat.

My friend Dave notes that premillennialism makes the exact same error as second temple Judaism: it expects that the mission of God’s people will fail but Jesus will make up the difference by means of the physical sword.