The One Is Indivisible
The Truth Is The Whole
The answer, sufficient if not complete, is the family — husband, wife, children — the primal structure of existence, who make the whole perishing thing work and happily.
The family is the indicated and necessary ecclesial polity, the one persisting ecclesial institution. It is monastic. There are the churches in institutionibus. De-industrialized, de-tyrannized, de-secularized, de-conflicted, de-centralized.
We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
There are as many churches as there are families and as many religions as there are minds.
Parents are the clergy, children are the congregation. Want a more numerous congregation? Produce more children. It is easy, and one is fairly built and born to do it.
We blew up in the 1960s over abuse of the draft, not over the draft per se. We all watched Jack Webb’s The D.I. and took its point to heart: be worthy of trust by legitimate higher authority. We also got that there are noble and ennobling loyalties more important than to our selves, country being one of them and God another. We valued the established order, we could see its benefits and reason for being. Governmental power we knew was needed and appropriate and should be justly and intelligently deployed and administered. We knew our country’s and communities’ affairs were not clean as a whistle, that neither we nor our fellow citizens, young or old, were moral paragons nor were expected to be, or could be, and we were confident soot regularly would be scrubbed from our institutions and that we would do the same to our own lives and persons.
We got all that, we who blew up in the 60s.
We accepted the use of power in and for national affairs. But we knew the 50s and Korea. By the early 60s (Mario Savio) and, far more widely, the late 60s (David Harris), we saw that The Establishment, who had legitimate authority to use power, were misusing power. We figured that misuse of power is abuse of power and of us. We were right about that.
We tried telling them. As we said after, they did not listen. Meaning, they refused to stop misusing power and thereby abusing us, much as an unjust father and mother refuse to stop beat their children. Korea entailed a gigantic misuse of power by civilians in Washington D.C. Vietnam was coming clearer and clearer as more of the same. We blew up. We were not against defeating Communism. We were against not defeating Communism.
GOA MacArthur wanted to defeat Communists and did defeat their Red Army in Korea. But he was sent in under false pretenses, that he was supposed to defeat Communists. After GOA MacArthur was relieved of command — for defeating the Red Army in battle — it turned out that defeating Communists was not the mission intended for him by civilian command in Washington D.C. Vietnam turned out that way as well, except there even military command accepted, without saying so, not to defeat Communists and their Red Army, just push them around the countryside. Their successors and their civilian command did likewise decades later in Afghanistan, between 2001 and 2021.
We were never unpatriotic. Quite the opposite. We blew up because our patriotism was being misused, and thereby we were being abused. We knew enough history to have had quite enough of that. So we blew up.
The children of some of us did not get the message because their parents never taught it to them. They went for power and thought it does not matter if they misuse power, that power is their inalienable possession. The rest of us and our children are giving those children and their parents — to include Bill Ayres — a compelling lesson in statecraft.
I doubt few others will spend the time required to fully comprehend this truthfully great insightful work with its refreshingly dazzling, snowflake-swirling-in-the-rays-of-a-free-born-sunbeam brilliance, clearly written by an original intellectual soul yet fatally hindered by a total lack of any forewarning of the lack of any structure whatsoever; so no need for me to forward to anyone else.
If he rewrites this, or perhaps simply adds a preface stating it is meant to be like a dazzling, flaming, full-color leaf caught in a fall breeze, or a snowflake sauntering to earth through the transcendence of the brilliance of a free sunbeam refracting the magnificent and unpredictable unlimited transformations of light as it shines through nature’s prism of said snowflake, please resend. Otherwise this is DOA.
So far, that is the finest OER/PR I have received in 77 years. A United States service academy graduate wrote it, in reference to this.
Glenn K. Beaton: Many colleges should close permanently
Glenn Reynolds: If the public decides that basically all our institutions are garbage and wants to burn them down, based on the last few years I’m going to find it hard to argue to the contrary.
Fighting racism and obesity is code for conforming to Communists’ latest vision. They are not transforming anything. They are conforming everything to an a priori plan details of which can change at any moment.
Not Democratic Party, Autocratic Party. Not Democrats, Autocrats. Not DNC, ANC, which also is an acronym for a near-relative based in a different continent.
What these Autocrats talk about, however scientific, informed, or peer reviewed, is misdirection, obfuscation, fancy clothes covering their actuality as common thieves with a thief’s Principled Conservatism.
They demonstrate again and again that they could not care less about the demos. The proper response to their pronouncements is BS, spelt out. Neo-Royalists . . . . Mercantilist Globe Rulers Governors.
Call them Celts or Angles or Persians or Indians or whatever, these are names for the same people at different times and climes.
Communism doesn’t just kill. It psychologically scars entire nations for years and years after the Communists have finally been deposed.
The difficult art of institutions is more than psychological. It is spiritual. Communists illuminate that fact with their preference for getting into enemies’ minds to torment them rather than, as Fascists do, murdering them outright.
Institutions of the Christian religion Fascist and Communist Socialists call their enemies. Christians they mark as enemy, and behind them, Hindus. But institutions inspired by Christians and Hindus are the specific targets of Socialists. Salafi and Shiite Moslems as well as Socialists share the same enemy: Christian-and Hindu-inspired institutions.
Jews — Talmudists is more accurate — do not practice a religion other than a sort of straggling unitarian Christianity. Jews often are Judeo-Bolsheviks.
Fascists fancy themselves treating of Christianity-inspired institutions by replacing them altogether. Germanic and Japanese Fascists, for example, claimed to found new religions derived from Germanic and Japanese folklore, respectively.
Of course, they did not actually do that. They thought they did, or wanted to think they did. But their actual effect was to elevate for faux reverence things everyone knew were self-promotion by a political party, not spiritual guidance from a religious personality or institution.
Communists fancy themselves treating of Christianity-inspired Institutions by subverting them from stem to stern. A Fascist puts a gun on the table and says, Now, the three of us are going to talk. A Communist puts a candy bar on the table and says, Now, wouldn’t you rather consume that while we discuss your future rather than the drug cocktail that is in my pocket?
Weaknesses of the flesh, as St. Paul puts it — and he means weakness in the bindings that hold one’s consciousness to the truth — make subversion of institutions easier than replacing them. The persistent success of Communist subversion vis-à-vis Fascist replacement makes the point.
After a relatively brief rampancy, a globe-wide Fascist movement sustained defeat in battle during 1945. A globe-wide Communist movement remains rampant more than two centuries after its seeding by Frenchmen.
Institutions inspired by Christianity struck Fascists hard, fast, and effectively. Meanwhile, time was bought for Communists to subvert those same institutions, by rendering them nearly incapable of striking Communists hard, fast, and effectively. Or so it seems.
The two most consequential institutions of a society are its religious and its educational ones. Communists targeted both over a century ago, and nearly all now that are of Christian inspiration are paralyzed from having accepted, sometimes fervently, Communist-inspired distortion of their scriptures and saintly personalities.
Communist subversion could twist and wring Christian-inspired institutions because leaders of those institutions permitted and sometimes favored doing so, usually in fear of commercial and governmental persecution, which is that drug cocktail Communists keep in their pockets against the day of meeting a difficult person.
From religious and educational institutions Communist subversion jumps to governmental institutions, whose taxonomy includes NGOs, broadcast networks, law firms, and their respective minions.
Not a few have remarked the success of Communist distortion of American religious, educational, and governmental institutions. The distortion’s seat is minions of those institutions. The minions are the institutions.
As their thinking turns to mush by imbibing blandishments of Communist dreams and visions, institutions’ minions populate institutions’ communication channels with distorted Christianity that harms persons and groups minions’ charters stipulate they help. This is the goal of Communists’ subversive activities: corrupt their institutions so as to degrade a society/country’s cohesion, their mutual loyalty, rendering them unable to self-defend.
Minions’ personal and group infidelity to truth is the problem. Minions in that condition evidence success of Communist subversion in America. Absence of loyalty to truth is the problem.
The question arises, to fix the problem, does one purify the institution, create a new institution alongside of or to replace the existing one, or perhaps, expand beyond direct address of Communist handiwork and treat instead of the problem’s meta-problem: weak binding to truth at the personal and family areas of operation, or in other words, inconstant personal and family self-confidence.
I commend all three but especially the latter course of action. It is doable. It lies within the power of virtually everyone to achieve and certainly the power of a leader cadre. It is underway. And its success is guaranteed by the experience of saints, sages, and the occasional avatar.
Add strength to strength. Where an institution is doing its job, lend a hand, and to strengthen, not to change it. Where an institution is not doing its job, ignore it and if need be, condemn it, while being very careful not to waste time, energy, or money essaying to improve or replace it.
Communist ideas are distortions of truths expressed in Christian theological terms of art. Without Christianity to pose against, Communist ideas cannot exist. Communism is a dependent, not an independent movement. Christianity unwillingly but unavoidably props up Communism just by existing. This phenomenon embeds in the dialectics of existence itself. We have to live with it.
In Vedic philosophy, Communist ideas are called avidyamaya. in Vedic philosophy, Christian ideas are called vidyamaya. Vidyamaya is recognized by its production of unity and rest. Avidyamaya is recognized by its production of disunity and agitation.
Both vidyamaya and avidyamaya appear to be knowledge, but the one faces facts, genuine knowledge (Greek gnosis = union of existential totality), and the other values visions, counterfeit knowledge (Greek utopos = no existence anywhere).
The correlate of vidyamaya in Christian terms of art is docta ignorantia (knowledge vouched for by anciently recurrent experience). The correlate of avidyamaya in Christian terms of art is indocilis ignorantia (knowledge made up, just narrative, blather, lacking repeated confirmation in experience).
The words maya and ignorantia in these formulations are significant. They signal that both true and false knowledge participate in the illusion — maya, ignorantia — called learning, but whereas learning/illusion from docta/vidya produces freedom and participation in divinity, leaning/illusion from indocilis/avidya produces diminishment and estrangement.
Calls for change or resistance indicate a subversive presence of Communist prattle, counterfeit knowledge. Calls for detachment and contrition indicate a nurturing presence of Christian preaching, genuine knowledge.
Communist ideas are the toxic content of Communist subversion, which Communist operators call active measures or simply activism. Communists invent and use their own language. They use it freely in the open. If you know its nomenclature and syntax, you can detect Communists’ language easily and call BS on it rapidly.
As they march through the institutions, Communists can be kept marching right through and out the back end of those same institutions. How? By persons, especially leaders, inside those institutions speaking truth to Communists, exposing them as the weak frauds and thieves they are. Communists can be made a laughing stock — because they are that — not only by exposure of their own cravenness but also by simple truth spoken directly to them in public session.
Truth is a search light. When spoken, it has divine power. Truth makes its own way in the world, throwing its enemies into confusion and befuddlement. This fact is trustworthy. Speak the truth and be safe. The truth itself will guard and protect you. Be loyal to Dharma and Dharma will be loyal to you. Deserve loyalty by giving it where it belongs.
This is how to purify an institution.
Occasion arises where a new institution is indicated and should be created. These are few and inconstant, but they occur occasionally. When they do, their necessity trends to be widely apparent. Upon that circumstance, someone(s) steps forward to inspire creation of the needed institution. Lend a hand.
That said, I wish to mention a recently created institution that is not indicated, not necessary, and is in fact derived from Communist subversive activity inside the USA and elsewhere.
This is the so-called Mega-Church. These are the obverse of an ecclesial taxonomy long typical of the American South and Southwest, to include Southern California, namely: the petty congregation met around a mini-demagogue or idea man — or woman — having diarrhea of the mouth, for the purpose of gaining comfort from worldly attachments.
The Mega-Church, so-called, meets together around a maxi-demagogue(s) or entertainer and his — sometimes her — spouse for the purpose of gaining comfort from worldly attachments and, more especially, prestige.
Demagogues, small or large, talented or charismatic, are not holy men. They are thieves holding wide the gates of hell, collecting tolls from marks wanting the thrill and privilege of entering proximity to the demagogue. Mega-Churches offer flight from Christianity and civilization. Their ancestor is the Left wing of the Reformation. Their emergence coincides, not surprisingly, with Communists’ march through the churches. I shall leave it at that.
The near-term derivation of both Mega-Church and its obverse, the older but numberless Mini-Church, is instructive and germane to this post.
By the 1930s it was apparent that Euro-American religious institutions, Christian ones foremost because of their dominating numbers, were not going to oppose distortion of their theology, scripture, tradition, and piety by Communists marching through them. Not that they could not but that they would not.
It was a choice driven by desire to avoid conflict with civil authorities and also, if not more so, academic authorities, especially biologists, ethnologists, engineers, and physicists.
Marx, Freud, Darwin, Shaw, Lowell, and Dewey were ascendant or rampant. They were academics, secularists, anti-Christians. At least three of them were Communist/Progressive. Churchmen of intellectual depth and moral courage were in short supply, for several reasons.
With the zeal of vandals plundering a foreign heritage, editors, writers, and broadcasters eschewed the few churchmen who could and did dare to stand to the sententious spite of academic secularists, whom Schleiermacher referenced in his phrase Christianity’s cultured despisers.
The stage was set for school to usurp church — who already declined to self-defend — and then for government to usurp school, which is where we are today, with Communist visions penetrating churches, schools, and governments systemically.
Few now realize when words and concepts they bandy and prattle on about are of Communist origin, not of Christian or American origin. Dis-unifying, faction-producing language Communists promote as comm-unication, truth, when in fact it is the opposite of those benefits.
Destruction of meaning is a direct, conscious aim of Communist subversive activities.
Socio-politically, these developments, fueled by their own moral cowardice, put churchmen not only on defense but also at legal jeopardy. Churchmen had nowhere to turn because they were either of low intelligence and courage to begin with, or, they supported and tolerated secularization of the churches, promulgation of avidyamaya, as knowledge (Harvey Cox).
That, in turn, swept away the foundation of the parish-based ecclesial polity, the organization of Christians into congregations sorted by geographic sectors and buildings thereon administered by clerical or lay-clerical executives and legislatures and their advisory committees.
Churchmen created the forms of representative government. Now those forms, in their secularized iterations, threatened and in fact nullified the utility of parish/geography-based ecclesial polity.
When supra-geographical government puts a socio-financial safety net under its citizens, what need is there for alms collect by a religious institution for distribution to the needy? Who, exactly, ARE the needy? Fat people leaving food banks with armloads of groceries?
Churchmen already had acceded to Communist soteriological visions, all utopian (Greek: u + topos = no place). Now with their good-deed-doing co-opted by minions of government — often at their own urging — churchmen have nothing left to do, no raison d’être, seemingly. And assuredly no ample means of filling the larder.
If you don’t work, you don’t eat, said Saint Paul. Why support clergy whose loyalty to their congregants’ spiritual welfare is skin deep but whose zeal for Communist visions deemed Christian teachings consumes them? Parish clergy put themselves and their ecclesial polity out of business by acceding to the onslaught of Communists’ subversive activities.
I have lived this phenomenology. I grew up, trained, and practiced being an adult clergyman with it as my sitz-im-leben. My father, a clergyman, never even wanted to face the fact, and wanted me not to face it. I disappointed him, deeply.
Churchmen should become fathers and raise a family and consider that discharge of their sacerdotal responsibility. All this distills to that. Want to build up the church? Produce and raise children. And hey boys, you can’t do that being queer.
What is the cultus? What about The Liturgy? Easy. Cultivate your wife’s reception. There is the Cup and Bread. Be fruitful and multiply. That is the Work of Worship. That sacerdotal Duty is God, your God. Priesthood of all believers indeed. Pleasantly so.
This phenomenology Bonhoeffer was among the earliest, and certainly the earliest intelligence of note, to recognize and face fairly. With respect to the churches, he called the landscape (topos) Religionless Christianity (Religionsloses Christentum).
He experimented with forms of Christian practice (piety, spirituality) and preaching not based on the parish church system, which had been created for another time and had been, in his time, co-opted or downright persecuted by secular authority, in his case, Fascists.
Today in USA, the geography-based parish church system sits long since co-opted by secular authority. Its spiritual value is residual at best, not energetic. The system has entered a time of persecution of the parish church system by secular authority and of Christians ipso facto by secular and religious authorities.
Religion Parks is a recent idea addressing this phenomenology geographically and by way of keeping peace between adherents of major — measured by number of adherents — religions.
Bonhoeffer asked himself and his close friends, What now, what next, for ecclesial structure? Himmler executed him before he discovered the complete answer. He got bits of the answer. Completely or at least sufficiently answering the question he left to successors, and to God. Us.
The answer, sufficient if not complete, is the family — husband, wife, children — the primal structure of existence, who make the whole perishing thing work and happily.
The family is the indicated and necessary ecclesial polity, the one persisting ecclesial institution. It is monastic. There are the churches in institutionibus. De-industrialized, de-tyrannized, de-secularized, de-conflicted, de-centralized.
We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
There are as many churches as there are families and as many religions as there are minds.
Parents are the clergy, children are the congregation. Want a more numerous congregation? Produce more children. It is easy, and one is fairly built and born to do it.
Joel D. Harrison: The Most Important Thing You Need To Know About Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Theology
By his devoted service to his mother and father, Dharmavyadha won eternal fame. Through consistent adherence to truth, Rama and Harischandra made themselves immortal. By means of right conduct, mere men rose to the position of great sages (maha-purushas). Buddha desisted from harm to living beings. He spoke of nonviolence (ahimsa) as “the highest morality (paramo dharmah)”. So he was revered as a world teacher. The mind is the foremost of the three inner instruments in man (thri-karanas). We must protect the mind so that attachment, passion, and excitement do not enter. These extremes are natural to the mind. The waves that rise in fury in it are the six inner foes of man: lust, anger, greed, attachment, pride, and envy. The first two bring the remaining four in their trail. To release ourselves from the first two and thus proceed on the spiritual path, we have to practise spiritual discipline. We learn these practices through spiritual learning (vidya).
Sathya Sai Baba – Vidya Vahini, Chapter 7 / Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Update 1: Henry R. Nau: What Trump Gets Right About U.S. Foreign Policy