World Cup Path

______Go USA!!!_______

______________________

Related in some way to Peter Kane's "Wide-Eyed Obedience"

In some ways, I have to admit, I can relate to Peter Kane. (I hope you are prepared for totally deep stuff.)

For one, I have had my “fare” share of traffic violations with this “alternate-side” parking rule that has apparently been in place since November. I, too, eagerly write my check on time in order to meet the 10-day deadline and avoid some pending court date or, heaven forbid, a bigger fine. But traffic violations don’t exactly make me think of Peter Kane, and I hope it doesn’t any of you either.

As some of you may know, I am the assistant coach of the girls Tyburn basketball team, which means I get the girls water and tell them they are great because the real coach yells at them the whole time.

At a recent away game (at a public school), we walked by a teacher’s door that had a sign stating:

"If you have to think about whether it’s right or wrong, it's wrong."

I had just read Peter’s recent post on Americans' lack of “practical wisdom,” so I thought it quite comical in one sense yet tragic in another. This statement presupposes either that we are not able to think well or that thinking is wrong. If we do not know how to think, then we are in no way advised to seek formation here; therefore, I see this as a pure criticism of thought in general and just seeping with satanic undertones.

Without a doubt, culture has lost all sense of true virtue. Prudence, the ability to make good judgments (and thus act accordingly), is perverted, here, into a state of non-thinking, therefore, non-action--the p.c. word being "abstinence".

There’s an article by Chesterton where he says (something about how) Chastity isn’t the mere abstaining of an act; it’s something flaming like Joan of Arc. Virtue, to the modern mind, is abstinence: just [DON’T] do it. Of course, we know it in its traditional definition, “the ACT of DOING good.” In accordance with ol’ Gilbert, I’ll have to make my own claim that prudence isn't the mere absence of thought; it’s something grilling like St. Lawrence.

That said, we lost the game 70-10....long night.

I Sleep A Lot

A Poem I found that I thought you all would enjoy:

I sleep a lot and read St. Thomas Aquinas
Or The Death of God (that's a Protestant book).
To the right the bay as if molten tin,
Beyond the bay, city, beyond the city, ocean,
Beyond the ocean, ocean, till Japan.
To the left dry hills with white grass,
Beyond the hills an irrigated valley where rice is grown,
Beyond the valley, mountains and Ponderosa pines,
Beyond the mountains, desert and sheep.

When I couldn't do without alcohol, I drove myself on alcohol,
When I couldn't do without cigarettes and coffee, I drove myself
On cigarettes and coffee.
I was courageous. Industrious. Nearly a model of virtue.
But that is good for nothing.

I feel a pain.
not here. Even I don't know.
many islands and continents,
words, bazaars, wooden flutes,
Or too much drinking to the mirror, without beauty,
Though one was to be a kind of archangel
Or a Saint George, over there, on St. George Street.
Please, Doctor,
Not here. No,
Maybe it's too
Unpronounced

Please, Medicine Man, I feel a pain.
I always believed in spells and incantations.
Sure, women have only one, Catholic, soul,
But we have two. When you start to dance
You visit remote pueblos in your sleep
And even lands you have never seen.
Put on, I beg you, charms made of feathers,
Now it's time to help one of your own.
I have read many books but I don't believe them.
When it hurts we return to the banks of certain rivers.

I remember those crosses with chiseled suns and moons
And wizards, how they worked during an outbreak of typhus.
Send your second soul beyond the mountains, beyond time.
Tell me what you saw, I will wait.

-Czeslaw Milosz