ContemplataTradere's Xanga

Te Deum Laudamus, te Dominum confitemur...

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:07:02 GMT

Well, the Moment has come. "But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him..."

The Holy See has issued a Note relating to a forthcoming Apostolic Constitution enabling the reunion of Anglican Catholics with itself and, necessarily, all others with whom it is in Communion.

http://anglicancatholic.ca/documents/romeanglican.htm

That link above links to all the official Statements from the ACCC, TAC, and the Holy See.

The response from most Roman Catholics so far has been charitable.

Lord Carey's knickers are in a knot... as if anyone really cares what Archbishops of Canterbury (active or retired) say anymore... about all they can do is rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic as they bail. I heard Canterbury Cathedral repairs lately have been the duct tape and baling twine variety.

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On a personal note: I just returned from an Ignatian Retreat - the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola at a traditional RC Priory. I can hardly recommend them enough. If you desire spiritual growth you must make the time for the Exercises at some point. If anyone is considering a vocation especially.

Long long ago...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:38:49 GMT

This is what children and teenagers did before internet, super mario, xbox,pac man, and junk food.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krb1yGJe1i0

Saddam has WMD's..Iran has nukes... sure...and I've got a bridge...

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:06:27 GMT

This article sourced from: http://www.prisonplanet.com/g20-more-lies-more-deception.html

(This article seems to encapsulate the ongoing stratagem of demonising non-Israeli peoples of the Middle East to build support for further military aggression by the West. I encourage all peace-loving persons to consider the damage that false witness such as Obama has given, seconded by his sycophants, will cause to millions of innocent families in Iran - just as millions of Iraqis and Afghanis have been irreparably damaged financialy, emotionally, spiritually, and physically)

Paul Craig Roberts
Prison Planet.com
Saturday, September 26, 2009

"The G-20 ministers declared their meeting in Pittsburgh a success, but as Rob Kall reports in OpEdNews.com, the meeting’s main success was to turn Pittsburgh into “a ghost-town, emptied of workers and the usual pedestrians, but filled to overflowing with over 12,000 swat cops from all over the US.”

This is “freedom and democracy” at work. The leaders of the G-20 countries, which account for 85% of the world’s income, cannot meet in an American city without 12,000 cops outfitted like the emperor’s storm troopers in Star Wars. And the US government complains about Iran.

The US government’s complaints about Iran have reached a new level of shrillness. On September 25 Obama declared: “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.” The heads of America’s British, French, and German puppet states added their two cents worth, giving the government of Iran three months to meet the “international community’s demands” to give up its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty to nuclear energy. In case you don’t know, the term “international community” is shorthand for the US, Israel, and Europe, a handful of arrogant and rich countries that oppress the rest of the world.

Who is breaking the rules? Iran or the United States?

Iran is insisting that the US government abide by the non-proliferation treaty that the US originated and pushed and that Iran signed. But the US government, which is currently engaged in three wars of aggression and has occupying troops in a number of other countries, insists that Iran, which is invading and occupying no country, cannot be trusted with nuclear energy capability, because the capability might in the future lead to nuclear weapon capability, like Israel’s, India’s, and Pakistan’s–all non-signatories to the nuclear proliferation treaty, countries that, unlike Iran, have never submitted to IAEA inspections. Indeed, at this very moment the Israeli government is screaming and yelling “anti-Semite” to the suggestion that Israel submit to IAEA inspections. Iran has submitted to the IAEA inspections for years.

In keeping with its obligations under the treaty, on September 21 Iran disclosed to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is constructing another nuclear facility. The British prime minister Gordon Brown confused Iran’s disclosure with “serial deception,” and declared, “We will not let this matter rest.”

What matter? Why does Gordon Brown think that Iran’s disclosure to the IAEA is a deception. Does the moronic UK prime minister mean that Iran is claiming to be constructing a plant but is not, and thus by claiming one is deceiving the world?

Not to be outdone in idiocy, out of Obama’s mouth jumped Orwellian doublespeak: “The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.”

The incongruity blows the mind. Here is Obama, with troops engaged in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan demanding that a peaceful nation at war with no one demonstrate “its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.”

It is the US government and its NATO puppet states, and militarist Israel, of course, that need to be held accountable to international law. Under international law the US, its NATO puppets, and Israel are war criminal governments. There is no doubt about it. The record is totally clear. The US, Israel, and the NATO puppet states have committed military aggression exactly as did Germany’s Third Reich, and they have murdered large numbers of civilians. Following the Fuhrer’s script, “the great democratic republics” have justified these acts of lawlessness with lies and deceptions.

Rudy Giuliani, the former US Attorney who framed high profile victims in order to gain name recognition for a political career, keynoted a rally against Iran in New York on September 25. According to Richard Silverstein at AlterNet, the rally was sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and an organization with connections to an Iranian terror organization (probably financed by the US government) that calls for the violent overthrow of the Iranian government.

The efforts to build pressure for acts of war against Iran continue despite the repeated declaration from the IAEA that there is no sign of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and despite the reaffirmation by US intelligence agencies that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago.

Meanwhile, the US and Israeli governments, who are so solicitous of international law and holding accountable countries that violate it, have moved to prevent the report of Judge Richard Goldstone from reaching the UN Security Council.

Why?

Judge Goldstone’s report found Israel guilty of war crimes in its massive military assault against civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

The continuous efforts of the world’s two militarist-aggressor states–the United States and Israel–to demonize Iran was addressed by Ahmadinejad in his speech to the UN General Assembly (September 23). Ahmadinejad spoke of the assault on human dignity and spiritual values by the selfish material interests of the US and its puppet states. Seeking hegemony “under the mantle of freedom,” the US and its puppets use “the ugliest methods of intimidation and deceit” to disguise that they are “the first who violate” the fundamental principles that they espouse and apply to others.

Why, Ahmadinejad asked the UN General Assembly, do the countries of the world sit there while Israel murders and dispossesses the Palestinian people?

Why, asked Ahmadinejad, do the countries of the world sit there while the US, from thousands of miles away, sends troops to the Middle East, “spreading war, bloodshed, aggression, terror and intimidation in the whole region,” while blaming the countries that are suffering the West’s naked aggression?

Ahmadinejad told the General Assembly what most of the UN representatives already know, that “selfishness and insatiable greed have taken the place of such humanitarian concepts as love, sacrifice, dignity, and justice. . . . Lies have taken the place of honesty; hypocrisy has replaced integrity, and selfishness has taken the place of sacrifice. Deception in foreign affairs is called foresight and statesmanship, looting the wealth of other nations is called development efforts; occupation is said to be a gift that promotes freedom and democracy; and defenseless nations are subjected to repression in the name of defending human rights.”

It could not be put any clearer. However, if Ahmadinejad’s speech is reported by the US print and TV media, statements will be taken out of context and used to enrage the conservatives and Christian Zionists in order to unify them behind the Obama/Israeli assault on Iran.

America will not be satisfied until, like Rome, she has more enemies and more wars than she can survive."

It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's a...?

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:30:09 GMT

Twinkle twinkle... how I wonder what you are...

More disappearing lights in the sky this evening. It appeared to be a high altitude sort of thing. No noise at all. Well above commercial flights. travelled in a south easterly direction after noticing it directly overhead. It vanished within 20 seconds, like a dimmer switch being turned off. Gone, but not on the horizon, it visibly dimmed and vanished.

Alex Jones Sits Tall in the Saddle...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:11:59 GMT

The last couple of days have been pretty intense...I listen to these broadcasts often and could feel the urgency...

Monday: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2A80DDFBE3564815

Tuesday: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=862F73B77ABC422A

Sept 19 - First Frost...

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:32:16 GMT

And a doozie too. Sad tomato vines all withered and black; wrinkled corn rapidly greying emitting a sort of death rattle in the breeze; squash, cucumber, and pumpkin leaves black and limp...

I am going to try and salvage some tomatoes this week and can them. The corn will be left to dry down and then shelled for seed. I have some ornamental corn too which will dry down quicker now - which is good...very pretty stuff. I picked a whole bunch of punkins today for the stand, and they add a cheerful autumn touch to the corn stalks etc I have decorating it. Sadly, the baby pumpkins still green on the vine are doomed

Anyone have a good way to preserve and use green tomatoes??

Tinfoil Hat Konspiracy Kook rides again!

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:27:19 GMT

"Do you hear the drums Fernando?" ...

I take comfort in the fact that no one ever reads my blog anymore, and so so it is safe to post certain things which will identify me as completely kooky and off my rocker.

September 14th/2009: There were chemtrails in the afternoon. A mix of sun and cloud gave way to a clear evening with a brisk breeze from the north west. The sky was covered with east/west trails as far as the eye could see to the north and south, and beginning directly above me were north/south trails extending away to the east (following the prevailing wind) slowly "smearing" their way into a hazy twilight.

I live under a main air traffic route, and I know what regular contrails look like people. In fact, at this same time there were commercial jets flying out of the sunset towards my location emitting normal contrails - vapour which disappears within 10-20 minutes. The grid of trails above me were not normal vapour trails. For one thing, there are no commercial north/south flights as there are no airports north or south of me anywhere. I have lived here for 15 years and never noticed any north/south commercial air traffic.

We do have one of Canada's busiest military bases a half hour away to the south though...CFB Trenton. Hmmm...

Every day there are C-130 Hercules flying at low altitude (terrifying my horses at inopportunt moments - they almost ran away with me on the disk this spring as the noise of the disk clanking disguised the sound of the approaching plane until it was overhead, then the noise broke in like a thunder clap and they took off almost throwing me off my seat). They also fly low at night. Literally the middle of the night the whole house will tremble as a low flying Herc thunders over above the treetops. Thanks a lot.

So, I know what the sky looks like. I spend a lot of time outside looking at the sky during the day and during the evening - I'm a farmer and farmers watch the sky. The old "weather eye" cocked as it were.

The next strange item I want to bring up is strange flying lights. This sounds bizarre I know. Last week I was doing chores in the evening, just after the stars had come out, and was out in the barnyard when I noticed a light travelling overhead towards the east. Farther off in the distance to the east there was a similar light almost out of sight. This bright light looked a lot like the search lights which search and rescue craft use at night. However the craft made no noise; none at all. It moved at what seemed to be twice the speed of regular commercial jets off into the east at a VERY high altitude and then simply disappeared. I must have stood there for 2 or 3 minutes repeating "holy shit... I've never seen anything like that in my life" over and over while scanning the sky.

I live under the main east/west commercial jetliner route from Toronto airport to all points east like northern Europe, Britain, etc, so I am used to a steady stream of winking colourful lights overhead all night. This was not flashing, it was not red, blue, green or white. It was too high, too fast, and constant and bright, almost dazzlingly intense, and whatever sort of craft it was attached to, it was noiseless. It could not have been a chopper, as we have lots of choppers, both civilian and military, and they all can be heard miles off, nor could they fly at the speed at which this light moved. If commercial airliners fly - let's say - at 500 mph, then this light and whatever was propelling it were moving at twice that speed. It is a mystery to me...

The last thing is a happy reminder: Jupiter has been shining happily off to the south east in the evening sky for months now, and I wonder if he is bringing jollity? Let's hope.

To Be or Not To Be, That is the Question.

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:21:30 GMT

Well, it has been a long while since I had time to write anything down here even vaguely interesting.

Life is going fine given the circumstances.

There. Doesn't that tell you a lot?

Summer is winding down, longer cooler nights, shorter cooler days, trees beginning to tinge and turn colour. The garden was a mixed success due to a very cool and wet summer. Ripening was delayed on those crops that require heat and yield was suppressed somewhat. Altogether I cannot complain. I had a problem with weed control though due to excessively wet soil and a lame horse - you figure that one out.

Hay is all baled, grain is combined and straw is baled and in the barn.

I'm not working very much at my day job, which is both good and bad: bad for the Bank Account, good for everything else on the farm. I have been a bit short-handed staff wise for a part of the late summer also, and so have not had my vegetable stand open very often. Hopefully the next few weekends will allow me to open up.

Earlier this year my scoliosis was really bothering me, and so I decided to try and do some targeted exercises to strengthen the muscles in my back and side in hopes of alleviating the chronic "stress throb" I had. It seemed to help. In fact, it has gotten me back into working out and lifting weights in a disciplined way. I have never felt better between eating right and greatly increased strength. I no longer feel chronically weak or exhausted at the end of the day. Tired, yes; but not exhausted or weak.

I think one of the greatest incentives to achieving any fitness goal, whether it be weight loss or bulking up, is to see great results. It is finding the motivation to begin and to stick it out until the initial resistance is overcome and your body begins to respond positively that many people lack. It may be discouraging to initially see zero results, or results different than what we expected (see my entry previous to this), but if we stick to it the results will come. When you can look in the mirror and flex rippling muscles, while regularly adding weight and reps to your routine, then you are propelled almost invisibly onward to success - it is like a "second wind" or a "rush" that almost makes you want to jump right back into the machine and throw on an extra 10 pounds of resistance. Everything I do is easier, lifting, carrying, etc takes less effort and this increases my productivity each day, giving me further satisfaction.

I have been eating tons of vegetables this summer, obviously, and I think this has contributed to my overall health - this and lots of good ol' sunshine and fresh air. I'm trying to consciously consume more water, and eat smaller meals more often - which is difficult when you have more to do in a day than just eat special little mini-meals six times a day. I have doubled my protein intake, and see this as crucial to any weight lifting success, although I am no expert. All in all I hope to be able to maintain this upward plane of fitness throughout the coming winter. I have gained back all my initial weight loss plus two pounds - all of it lean muscle mass.

Here's a question for the Nutrition Gurus out there: What is the best way to take vitamin supplements? One a day? Several different? Capsules? Pills/tablets? Gel capsules? Powder? Liquid? Any recommended brands that are available in Canada? I have not taken vitamins for years, and when I did it was a one-a-day type vitamin that seemed to cost a lot.... I have also read on the internet that hard pill forms tend to go underutilised as they pass through the system undigested. So any help or suggestions in this regard are welcome.

The Rosary Crusade presently under way at the Fatima Center, www.fatima.org , is in its third month now, and I hope to be a more faithful participant now that the hectic summer is past. I would encourage all Catholics to get out their Rosary and contribute to this labour of love for souls and the peace of the world.

KA - BOOOOMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:02:20 GMT

Just kidding...

Trying out my new Pressure Canner tonight. two quarts of peas, two quarts of beets, and a quart of carrots. This is my first time using a Pressure Canner. I turned it on from a cold start at 9:40. At 9:50 it began venting steam. I'm supposed to let it vent steam for ten minutes, then place the weight on the valve stem, throttle back the stove, then time it for 40 minutes, so if this goes well I should be done the first stage of the process by 10:40 and letting it cool. I'd like to just shut it off and let it cool off overnight so I can go to bed, but I think I will do it "by the book" and wait around until the pressure drops and remove the jars to cool. It says in the booklet that it takes under an hour to cool enough.....

The jars looked cute with their shiny colourful veggies swimming...like an aquarium....purple, orange, and green.

-Okay, weight ON.

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Update:

Canning going well; shelves slowly filling up with colourful mason jars. Canner seems to work well. I have tons of stuff to process this week, mainly peas and beans and beets. Anyone want to help? :)

Roadside Veggie Stand is going okay. I have been open for the past two Fridays and Saturdays, plus a couple of other days, and have sold a fair amount. Everyone stops looking for sweet corn... Mine hasn't yet formed cobs. I swear that next year I'm going to plant my corn on earlier ground, and plant earlier. I could sell truckloads of sweet corn if I had it on the stand.....

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Could someone please explain to me how a deliberate effort to build body weight and muscle mass could result in rapid weight loss?? A week ago I was at 145, today it is 140.

I have a home gym and used to work out fairly regularly, but since I was always skinny it was mainly weight training rather than weight loss as a goal. I decided recently to resume a more consistent weight lifting schedule and to eat a recommended body mass-building diet. I'm eating a bowl of oatmeal, toast, three boiled eggs, coffee and juice for breakfast, a protein rich lunch and supper and two or three protein shakes between meals, plus drinking more water. I have almost tripled my protein and doubled carbs while keeping fats the same. I'm also tearing around the farm weeding and picking veggies plus chores all day, plus weight training three days a week.

Five pounds a week seems to be the losing rate.....

Great definition though.....

Any nutritional experts want to weigh in and contribute?

The Beginning of an Ending...or vice versa...

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:18:09 GMT

The following talk was printed in our Diocesan Circular. It seems to me an apt summary..... "For if you demystify a mystery, you are not left with a something but only with nothing..."

TO REDISCOVER THE HOLY

Peter Mullen

(Some of you may be familiar with the TTMBO [That They May Be One] forum, co-ordinated by Charles Moore of Nova Scotia. A number of our ACCC members have belonged at various times; Jim Spencer, the Diocsean Secretary and Registrar remains a member. Fr. Roy Bowler, who will be known to many of us as well, sent this article to the forum.)

Perhaps you have been reading in the newspapers the depressing accounts of various splits in the church, even the prediction that the worldwide Anglican Communion is to collapse in a formal schism: traditionalists on one side, led by such as Bishop Michael Nazir Ali, and liberals on the other under the Archbishop of Canterbury. The causes of this split are popularly portrayed in the papers as the imminent innovation of women bishops and the decision by the American Episcopal Church - a branch of worldwide Anglicanism - to consecrate bishops who live in active homosexual relationships. But the true causes of this division in the church go back centuries and this is what I’d like us to concentrate on this morning. When I have told the story, I should like us to attend to the positive task of doing something to put things right.

The root cause of the church’s problems is the tragic loss of the sense of what is sacred, the loss of a deep feeling for holiness, for the apprehension of a world beyond the mundane and the material. The Bible calls this sense the fear of God. It doesn’t mean that we should go in fear of God as naughty boys used to go in fear of the policeman. The fear of God is that profound and disturbing sense of awe and wonder which the awareness of the divine presence creates in us. When did we begin to lose the sense of holiness, of what is sacred, of overwhelming otherness, strangeness, difference, the feeling of awe and wonder in the presence of Almighty God? We began to lose this sense five hundred years ago at the Reformation. And with the loss of the sense of the holy we also lost, inevitably, a big part of our humanity. Because we are creatures and a creature achieves its full identity only in acknowledging its Creator.

The Medieval Church before the Reformation had its faults: its administration was often corrupt and its rulers in high places were frequently mercenary and self-seeking. But one feature of the Medieval Church that rose above these faults and flaws was its unsurpassed power to convey the sense of holiness, of the divine mystery which is at the heart of things. How did the church do this? It did so by insisting that the Sacraments are not just signs and tokens, but miraculous signs and other worldly tokens. They are actual irruptions into this world of the beyond. So the bread and wine are the Body and Blood - not in any forms to be tested by chemistry - but they are the Body and Blood mysteriously because that is what Jesus Christ said they are. Baptism is not merely 'symbolic' in that modern sense of the word which means 'only pretend'. Baptism is Holy Baptism with real holy water. Marriages really are made in heaven. They are Holy Matrimony "signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church". Confirmation and Ordination are not just commissioning ceremonies: they are the actual descent of the Holy Ghost, supplying grace and power to allow us to respond to the call of God. The Medieval Church understood that the other world is really real, that "here we have no abiding city". And because the old church believed that the Sacraments mediate the other world - they are 'the beyond in the midst' - they are the most important, the most real, things we can apprehend. The Sacraments are the most reality towhich human beings can aspire.

So the old church created a spiritual atmosphere around the Sacraments which was designed to emphasise their profound reality. There was a rood screen separating the nave from the altar - itself the very image of the division between this world and the beyond. There was the sacred language of worship, a language which people did not speak in the street but whose purpose they understood very well. There were colours and lights and incense and plainsong and statues. These things were art. And they were a divine artistry. In those days, art was not debased to mean anything that anyone says it is. Art meant something that was to the glory of God. Then came the 16th century and a savage self-hatred descended all over Europe. The coming of the iconoclasts. The breaking of the images. The ripping out of the chancels. They tried to dissolve the mystery. They felt compelled to make everything explicit. But the mysterious, the transcendent, the sacred, the glorious reality of the Being of God cannot be explained - precisely because it is beyond and above us. The reformers smashed the statues and images because they regarded them as idols. They then proceeded to make an idol out of their own words, their own explanations. And they worshipped this new idol with a banal literal-mindedness which was a parody of the piety of a Medieval Christian kneeling before the Crucifix. Worship is art. Liturgy is creative imaginative response. Worship is a gratuitous act. That is to say, it doesn’t have a utilitarian purpose. Worship is the imaginative attempt to realise the sublime in the mundane. When we worship wholeheartedly, sacramentally, mysteriously, God himself condescends to us and comes among us. The literal-minded reformers, the iconoclasts, effectively abolished worship and gave us theology instead. Of course theology is a good thing - as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. I can teach you theology but this by itself won’t bring you to a sense of the presence of God. Let me tell you a little tale to illustrate this. By general consent, one of the greatest of all the theologians was St Thomas Aquinas. He wrote millions of words of the most brilliant exegesis and exposition of the Christian Faith. But not long before he died, he was at the altar saying Mass when he was granted a vision. Later his colleagues asked him to write another great volume of theology. He refused and said, "By the side of what I have just seen, all I ever wrote is but as straw." Since the Reformation, this process of de-sacralisation has accelerated and intensified. Modern church leaders offer to explain the Faith to us, to demystify it and to demythologise it. In this they have succeeded and, in the places where they preside, they have obliterated the Faith. For if you demystify a mystery, you are not left with a something but only with nothing. The modern biblical scholars, beginning in Germany in the 19th century and soon catching on over here, tried to interpret the Bible in the way that they would interpret any secular text. Do that and you abolish the authority of the Bible. And, again, this is what has happened where the modernisers preside and rule. Moses and the prophets, and even Jesus himself, become - to use the despicable phrase of the modernisers - only 'men of their time'. In the 20th century, they next turned to replacing the special language of worship with the language of the office and the committee. In doing so, they destroyed the sacramental art work of liturgy and eradicated the vision of God. Let me teach you a word of Hebrew: “Ichabod” – it means ‘The glory hath departed.’ That is the wasteland into which the modernisers have led the church. Those who were meant to be custodians have turned out to be thieves and robbers. The modernisers have completely removed from the people’s consciousness the sense of the other world, holiness, the divine reality. So we must not be surprised to find that, this destruction being complete and utter, the morality and values of traditional faith have disappeared with it. As we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. So the modernisers have had to try to discover alternative values. And the values they have discovered and adopted are the secular nostrums of universal rights, equality, non-judgementalism, non-discrimination and the relativising of the old absolutes. Thanks to the modernisers, we inhabit a new Babel of opinion, every one as good as the next.

I began by mentioning the positive task of putting things right. We do this by participating in the imaginative world of sacramental worship, by refusing to demystify the mystery. Participation - not explication - is the key. How do we restore the sense of God’s presence? We do it only by participating, by practising the Presence. "Most ancient of all mysteries, low at thy throne we lie: have mercy now, most merciful, most Holy Trinity "

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.