Bravest Thing (He Ever Did)

  Times are tough. I know. Blah blah blah. But they are, and they wear us all down. The expression on everyone's face is a mix of stress, exhaustion, anger, and worry. How I long for simpler, happier times! Like 2019, or something. My wife asked me yesterday, "Do we know anyone who is full of happiness? Where you could go visit them and they pump you up?" This is not a shot at my friends or colleagues. It's not like visiting people is miserable. Far from it. However, we're all struggling, and a true non-superficial visit inevitably reveals real-life hardships.  But my wife continued, "Jude! He's always happy!" Jude is our two-year-old son. As only a two-year-old can, he is a spark of energy, joy, smiles, and craziness. He runs to me in the morning with a big smile. He runs to me when I come home from work and shouts my name. He runs to me when he doesn't want to go to bed at night. He is a non-stop bundle of laughs. Everyday, and I mean everyday,...

  Every Friday at OnePeterFive there is an article by Fr. Z. The article goes through the Mass prayers/readings for the upcoming traditional Mass. I'm finding these articles to be very important for me personally. They have become an anchor for my prayer week. Just a snippet. This past week Fr. Z. brought up a quote by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. I loved it. Here it is: "St. Bernard of Clairvaux (+1153) remarks that God draws us to Heaven, as if against our will, by means of trials ( Sermones de diversis  99). He describes four different sorts of people who get into Heaven: “ alii violenter rapiunt, alii mercantur, alii furuntur, alii ad illud compelluntur …  some seize it by violence, some buy it, some steal it, and others are forced to it.” What does the  Doctor Mellifluus  mean by these negative analogies? Some, Bernard says, are like violent soldiers who sacrifice everything, live austerely with many mortifications to lay siege to Heaven and thereby win entra...

  Take a step back and enjoy this little write up by the Jasper National Park team: "It is caribou rut season! During this time, the bigger the antlers, the better! Antler size allows males to easily size each other up. A smaller male will rarely challenge another bull who is larger, but drama is bound to brew when two males of similar size meet up. When nobody backs down, they will battle it out to see who is strongest. These fights can be intense and incredible to watch. Earning the title of 'dominant bull' is not an easy task. During the rut, a dominant bull spends a LOT of time and energy chasing away younger competitors – these big guys barely have any time to eat or rest. Only the strongest and most determined males can withstand such a challenging task. The ones that succeed have an opportunity to become fathers to the next generation of caribou calves. Something worth fighting for? " There is something raw, terrifying, and simply splendid about nature. I find...

  Hello? Helloooooooo? Anyone there? So it appears that Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp are down. People tell me Twitter has been spotty as well. I'm not sure how trustworthy this article is, but it suggests the outage could be very serious: "Even Facebook’s internal tools and communications platforms are out. 'No one can do any work,'  New York Times  tech reporter Ryan Mac wrote in  a tweet . 'Several people I’ve talked to said this is the equivalent of a ‘snow day’ at the company.' Internet sleuths quickly figured out it was an issue with Facebook’s DNS server, the infrastructure responsible for routing every user to Facebook’s location. Journalist Brian Krebs confirmed that 'the DNS records that tell systems how to find  Facebook.com  or  Instagram.com  got withdrawn this morning from the global routing tables,' in  a tweet . 'Can you imagine working at FB right now, when your email no longer works & all your internal FB-based tool...

  Let me recollect the steps from the past 19 months... Two weeks to flatten the curve. Lockdowns work. Masks work. Vaccines work. Segregation works. All of the above works Where I live, we are at the segregation stage, heading towards an  all of the above  scenario.  For now, the focus is to separate jabbed from unjabbed. The unjabbed get no rights, privileges, and, in many cases, jobs. The jabbed get to go to football games, buy alcohol, and work. They will also, by extension, have to pay for all the upcoming EI claims from the unjabbed. Of course this will not actually stop the spread of COVID (as though it were something we could control by creating policies). So it will morph into an all of the above hybrid as we march past Thanksgiving and into winter. The real question is: what are the next steps? Boosters work... Vaccinating children works... Taking away church works... Taking away children works... Poverty works... Imprisonment works... All of the above wor...