the acorn

 Robert Royal, best known as a commenter in EWTN's Papal Posse, on the Catholic Thing discusses the idea that everything is falling apart, and the worry that many Catholic have right now that the anti Pope faction will take over the church at the next conclave and make the church into an NGO to serve the NWO/Reset of the puppet masters and destroy the holiness aspect of the church, morphing it into activism as the reason to be.

 note: I am an ex missionary and support this activism, but it ignores that people serve God in the mundane duties of their daily lives and that all of us, even those who work in the trenches need the nourishment of God's grace.

By making the church into a mere NGO to do good stuff results in a church that starves the soul by removing the sacraments and idea of holiness that give us the strength to do this work in the face of seeing hardships and tragedies every day

It is like removing sex out of marriage: Yes, marriage needs work and cooperation, but without the spark of love, it is a barren thing without roots. 

This futurechurch was (ironically) foretold in Brian Moore's TV film Catholics where the liberation theology priest has orders to shut down a small monastery celebrating the Latin mass.

Wikipedia summary. Hmm... sounds like what Francis was tiptoeing and letting his minions do but not quite destroying the church. But lots of believing Catholics worry that the next Pope will not be so timid...

But then Royal reminds us:

Because freedom with fidelity, justice tempered by mercy, and above all truth may seem to have perished under the cold snows of sin and evil, but they never die. They’re at worst in hibernation until circumstances and our efforts enable them to put forth green shoots and produce their proper fruits once again.

If we truly believe that the Lord of Creation is also the Lord of History – a sacred history that the world does not acknowledge but has, nevertheless changed everything – then the current crisis takes on a different appearance....*(it is) the spirit of hope we must maintain in the coming days – a supreme confidence in the seed beneath the snow – and let Divine Providence take care of the rest.

this reminded me of this scene that was not included in the final cut of the Hobbit: and ironically is not in Tolkien but is pure Peter Jackson: That the acorn carried by Bilbo is a sign of hope for the future.

but it is, of course, an example of Tolkien's theme of hope: not the hope of short term success, but the hope that in the long run good will prevail. As this Tolkienology essay insists:

Estel... is hope without evidence. It’s rooted not in optimism, but in trust—trust in the goodness that is deeper than the shadow. 

Estel says, even if everything fails, I still believe there is meaning. I still choose to walk....

Estel does not mean “I know it will get better.” It means: I will walk anyway. Even here. Even now. Even in the ruins.

This is not about ignoring the darkness. It’s about refusing to let it define you.

the making of the LOTR

The irony? An unknown director did it. (Unknown except to geeks who loved Braindead). And no big stars. But they worked with folk who knew the story, and had a lot of input from the fans.

hmm... there is a lesson from this for those who took famous franchises and made them fail by hiring people more interested in the propaganda of the day instead of the reasons people liked them in the first place.

music of the stars

I was just reading Brian Sibley's blog. Today he has a great interview with Barry Humphries who played the Great Goblin in the Hobbit film.

and in the next blogpost he comments on hearing music while visiting Santiago de Compostela

its multiplicity of multi-directional pipes filled the vast building with glorious sounds, I was reminded of Thomas Carlyle who wrote: 

 "Listen, and for organ music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning Stars sing together."

that part about the morning stars singing together is from Job chapter38.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

 

Rings of Power: part one: What's going on?

 the cinematography of ROP is beautiful. This is important, since I often criticize the visual choices of films. 

But who wrote the script? That was my problem.

Galadrial as warrior? Fine. Taking the place of Finrod, her brother who was killed. Fine.  But you know, she isn't very nice. Well, officers don't have to be nice, but they do have to have common sense, and a toughness that enables them to survive the stresses of combat. And this includes attention to logistics and the welfare of your men, which Galadriel doesn't seem to have. (the mutiny of her men in the face of starving and freezing to death suggest she needs to go to Officer Training school).

War is not a one person fight.

So where is Feanor? And the other brothers? Or the men who helped defend the elven kingdoms against Morgoth and company? 

Toward the end of episode one, the elves were allowed to go back to elvenhome... But what about their allies? In Tolkien's legendarium, the men that helped them in the fight also were given a safe haven island, i.e. Numenor. Was this mentioned or did I miss it?

When the elves were told they could go back to elvenhome, they went on a ship... standing up in the boat. Uh, what if the sundering seas got choppy? And Galadriel changes her mind and jumps into the water? What was that about? She's now a marathon swimmer?

The hobbits were nice, and one almost wishes that the script writer would have framed the story as being told by a surviving hobbit...  

I am leaving out the woke stuff: because the woke stuff is the least problem of part one.

Making hobbits black (not all of them, just some of them)? No problem (the Harfoots did have darker skin than the othet hobbit tribes). But there are other forms of prejudice you know, and the Irish Times was annoyed at the dumb Irish cliches:

for Irish viewers the $1 billion series evokes less welcome memories. It features a race of simpleton proto-hobbits, rosy of cheek, slathered in muck, wearing twigs in their hair and speaking in stage-Irish accents that make the cast of Wild Mountain Thyme sound like Daniel Day-Lewis. 

Tolkien was famous for his attention to detail, and one of the reasons that the Jackson films worked was that Jackson retold the story without too many distortions, and allowed fan input to pressure him into keeping close to the story. In contrast, Amazon didn't ask for fan input until a few months ago.

as a result, they lacked feedback that would have helped them clarify the holes in the plot, and maybe even notice how the time and energy trying to be woke actually distracted from their real problem: Telling the story to make it enjoyable.

All of this is about part one: One does hope the plots improve in later episodes.

Earendil the morning star

Traditionally, the one who discovers a star can name it.

So why did astronomers name this huge star that dates to the dawning of the universe "Earendil"

Back in March 2022, the Hubble Space Telescope team announced the observation of the furthest ever star detected. That star, nicknamed Earendel, was detected from light that look 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, when the universe was only 7 percent of its current age.

 This ancient star breaks the record of the previous most-distant star by several billion years. The discovery of Earendel was made using data collected by Hubble's RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey) program, led by astronomer Dan Coe from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). The paper on the find was published in Nature.

The star gives a view of the very early universe, when the stars were generated from the early matter of the big bang: a star from the morning of the universe.

More here at SkyAndTelescope.

EARENDEL: AN EARLY STAR Based on Earendel’s brightness, the group estimates that it’s massive, containing the equivalent of tens or even hundreds of solar masses, with few elements other than hydrogen and helium. Given the age of the universe it resides in, Earendel is not likely to be one of the very first stars, known as Population III, but at its great mass, it’s nevertheless an early fuser of new heavy elements.

“Knowing that massive stars were present that early on in the universe is an important confirmation of what many of us have predicted and in fact used as assumptions in the work with old Milky Way stars,” says Anna Frebel (MIT), who was not involved in the study. For Frebel, who studies ancient nearby stars for clues to stellar evolution in the infant universe, the discovery is a fantastic find. “Early massive stars must have produced the first elements and driven chemical evolution, so having observations at hand that support this notion is wonderful.”

Earendil, as Tolkien fans know, is an important character in the Simarilion.... but originally the word Earendil was an ancient name for the morning star, and the word Earendil in an Anglo Saxo Poem Crist was the original inspiration for Tolkien's mythology. 

TolkienGateway:

While Eärendil is a Quenya name inside the legendarium, Tolkien created the name based on Anglo-Saxon éarendel. He says that he was struck by the "great beauty" of the name as early as 1913, which he perceived as "entirely coherent with the normal style of A-S, but euphonic to a peculiar degree in that pleasing but not 'delectable' language."...

The Old Norse together with the Anglo-Saxon evidence point to an astronomical myth, the name referring to a star, or a group of stars, and the Anglo-Saxon in particular points to the Morning Star as the herald of the rising Sun (in Crist christianized to refer to John the Baptist). Tolkien was particularly inspired by the lines in Christ, which became the title of his first poem about Eärendel:

éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended

"Hail Earendel, brightest of angels / sent over Middle-earth to men."

Amazon's Tolkien series: Maybe it will be good?

I've seen a lot of snide stuff on the internet worrying that Amazon will make their Tolkien backstory "woke" and R rated.

So Amazon reached out to the experts in the Tolkien community to counter this.

TheOneRingNet report here:

Several Ph.Ds, published authors, Tolkientubers and TikTokers have shared their first impressions of completed footage from Prime Video’s massive new Lord of the Rings TV series – The Rings of Power. 

read their entire report for more details and links and tweets and videos from many of the best known leaders of the Tolkien fan community. 

and most of the reviews seem to be positive.

and even the Tolkien professor enjoyed it: and  at the meeting learned how to use tictok.

Heh. I feel sympathetic: I don't do tiktok either, nor have I done group meetings like my relatives do all the time for business or school classes.

here is another postive report from a newer podcaster nerdoftherings:

I'm not sure I will be able to watch this, since although we have netflix, we haven't signed up for Amazon prime yet... 

and of course because the copyright law here in the Philippines is weak, many streaming services won't let us see their stuff (I canceled a K drama streaming service because they wouldn't let me watch my favorite K Dramas.... luckily I can download them with lots of ads and occassional virus infections from a Chinese site instead, or by using VPN for the youtube ones that won't let us watch them here).

But anyway, it does sound like maybe Amazon didn't completely ruin it. 

the Tolkien professor's video is called other minds and hands because Tolkien once envisioned that his mythology would be added to by other minds and hands. 

So although the crusty professor might dislike the Jackson treatment, and hate LOTR online games, in theory he would probably be sympathetic to these additions to his mythology.

Notre Dame update

 

one good report is that the Rose windows survived the damage.

at 29 minutes, they discuss the only French factory that makes replacement glass in the Medieval way.

The south rose window (Stock Photos from Vlad G/Shutterstock)

But I was surprised to find that much of their glass had been replaced over the years.

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related item:

history of British glass at Hawkscroft center.

Around the beginning of the 13th century broadsheet was starting to be made in Sussex by elongating a balloon of blown glass, cutting both ends off and flattening the resulting cylinder on an iron plate.

that glass was poor quality, so often the British imported better quality glass from France. 

 OneManCathedral website discusses the use of stained glass in Gothic cathedrals.

he links to this video of Stained Glass windows in France.

 

....

and no, China did not invent glass, although glass beads were found in ancient China. More HERE.

and trivia: Did Middle Earth use glass windows? 
Well, Tom Bombadil had them, so someone knew how to make glass back then.

Tolkien: The undiscovered Christian

 C.S. Lewis is beloved by many "Christian" intellectuals for his wit and ability to peddle Christian beliefs to the masses. A lot of Protestants who would not touch a statue of Mama Mary with a ten foot pole now consider Lewis a "saint" and he got into Poet's corner for his writings.

Sort of a professional Christian.

I rarely can get thru his theological writings because they are... brittle.  The same could go for his fiction.

Lewis' fictional women are missing something: Perelandra's Eve is stupid, Jane is neurotic and don't get me started on Narnia.

But like most college age students in the 1960s, I got to read Tolkien and loved his books. If Lewis' books are harsh and simplistic, like a Marvel Comic, the Tolkien books remind me of filigree work, or a celtic knot: beautiful when you first look at it, and then even more beautiful as you look again and go into the design. 

That beauty struck me as Catholic, long before I ever heard of the Inklings or found out that Tolkien was Catholic because his world view was that of Catholicism. 

To quote Andrew Greeley:

Catholics live in an enchanted world: a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia are merely hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious sensibility that inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation. The world of the Catholic is haunted by a sense that the objects, events, and persons of daily life are revelations of Grace.

One of the problems with Vatican II is that the literal minded liturgists and theologians tried to destroy these things, which enabled Catholics to see God in every little thing around them, and replaced it with bad translations, bad music, and the idea if what you do is not social work or "helping the poor" you are not a good Catholic. 

Well there goes the idea of St Therese (and Martin Luther) that even a housewife or factory worker could be holy if they did the duties of their daily life as a way to serve God.

Sigh.

But in Tolkien, the idea that people try to do the right thing but sometimes fail or get sidetracked (e.g. Saruman) is there, as is the idea of forgiveness (Galadriel and Boromir). The tale insists that there is a pattern behind what happens, and that small choices are important. (I told my grandson, who was puzzled about the destruction of the ring, that it was God who arranged Gollem to destroy it, rewarding the decisions of Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam, not to kill him when he was defenseless because they pitied him, even though they knew he might harm them later).

However,overt religion is missing from the LOTR because Tokien deliberatly removed any open theology in his work: maybe because as a Catholic working in an anti Catholic and even atheistic culture of Oxford, he decided to follow the example of the Beowulf poet, and make the Christian theme implicit in the story instead of open and preachy.

Anyway,  TeaAtTrianon, herself an author, links to an article discussing if the Catholic church should start the process to declare Tolkien a saint. Not because of his writings, but because of his quiet devotion and love of God that pervaded everything he did. 

Tolkien takes inspiration from the Old English Gospels, in which Jesus himself teaches his disciples (literally “learning knights”) that “ge synd middengeardes leoht,” which directly translates as “you are the light of Middle Earth.” In this way Tolkien embraced a sacramental vision in which the holiness of the Holy Spirit or the Secret Fire, as he puts it, could be seen to illuminate his heroes in their quests and journeys against the forces of Hell.

 But it is in his letters that his faith is more explicit. 

an excerpt) From letter 310 to Camilla Unwin

We ask HOW, perceive patterns and ask WHY, and this implies reasons and motives and a MIND. Only a Mind can have purposes. This introduces the question of a God, a Creator-Designer, a Mind that is partly intelligible to us. This leads to religion and its moral ideas, which are bound up in the bonds we have with others... 

If you do not believe in a personal God, "What is the purpose of life?" is unaskable and unanswerable, since there is no one to whom to direct the question. ...So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.

 One reason Tolkien is so beloved by environmentalism is that he insists that nature is beautiful; but he insists nature is not a God, but that nature echoes the beauty of God. again from his letter:

To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour. And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. PRAISE THE LORD ... all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.

 Tolkien’s thought on mythology, fairy stories, and the Gospel are also expressed in poem he composed to explain to C. S. Lewis, who had previously struggled with the idea that myths could contain truth, that myths and stories show a fragment of the light of truth, so that we can find in classic pagan authors a glimpse of God.

 

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The Many Facets of Middle Earth

 Renaissance man Brian Sibley had a blog post remembering his work on the 1981 BBC radio version of Lord of the Rings.

and, being the generous man with an interest in the arts, his blog post is not about himself, but about the artist Eric Frazer who did the art work on the cover of the BBC magazine RadioTimes, and how Sibley obtained some of the prints for his collection of graphic art.

The essay includes many example of Frazer's art work both for LOTR and his commercial work.

I am familiar with Sibley's 1981 radio version of LOTR because years ago, when it was re released, I bought the CD set of that radio version.

interesting factoid: The reason that Ian Holmes was cast by Peter Jackson as Bilbo was because he played Frodo in the BBC radio version many years before.

And last year, Mr. Sibley discussed the various interpretations/adaptions of Tolkien's works:

the pc war against Tolkien (Updated essay)

They are trying to "cancel" Tolkien, reports Vox Day, the rabid puppy in the "Sad Puppies" controversy (where PC stories that were poorly written and full of cliches would win over good writers who wrote imaginative stories. This, like the attacks on the video games, was about politics, as one can see on the Wikipedia page, where non PC obeying writers opposing the PC takeover were called "rabid right wing" types).

The Tolkien story takeover is about the rewrite by Amazon, where many fans worry that the Tolkien universe would be destroyed by the PC who would make it more "inclusive" to modern PC tastes while changing plots to mimic the amoral universe of the Game of Thrones, i.e. destroying Tolkien's moral world view which is so hated in today's world where Christianity and even moral paganism of Rome and Greek philosophy is shunned and ridiculed...

Of course, no one wants to admit the aim is to destroy any vestige of western civilization or traditional morality, so the critics will merely cry "Racism"...pretending the orcs are racist because Jackson's main orc in LOTR was played by a local Maori stuntman and looked dark skinned... but the original orcs were not dark skinned in the book, but never mind. 

And elves were blond (except in the book, this only applied to a subgroup of Noldor, but again never mind). And wait til they find that the Dwarves included Jewish influence (looking for a homeland, written before Israel was a nation, but mainly because the language was inspired by Hebrew grammar etc).

And of course, the Northern kingdom of the witch king was evil, the wainriders resembled the Goth barbarians, Gondor was based on Rome and Egypt, and Umbar's pirates were inspired by the Barbary pirate raids that took slaves from southern Europe.

But none of this matters to a culturally and historically illiterate "woke" community who can't figure out why a story based on Anglo Saxon and Norse mythology should not have their preferred minorities to prove virtue.

But of course, the dirty little secret is that it is not "racism" that they are objecting to: the real opposition is really about the moral universe of Tolkien, where good and evil are real and do not depend on the whims of the elite or the intellectual fads of the day:

Eomer said, 'How is a man to judge what to do in such times?' As he has ever judged,' said Aragorn. 'Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one thing among Elves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.

How deep does the cultural work rot go? Well, as Vox points out:  After Christopher Tolkien's death, the Tolkien society is asking for papers to discuss Tolkien's non PC attitude.

We are now calling for papers for the Tolkien Society Summer Seminar...The theme is Tolkien and Diversity...

While interest in the topic of diversity has steadily grown within Tolkien research, it is now receiving more critical attention than ever before.

Spurred by recent interpretations of Tolkien’s creations and the cast list of the upcoming Amazon show The Lord of the Rings, it is crucial we discuss the theme of diversity in relation to Tolkien. How do adaptations of Tolkien’s works (from film and art to music) open a discourse on diversity within Tolkien’s works and his place within modern society?

Italics mine. Translation: Amazon plans to make Tolkien "woke" so we need to discuss this. Or translation: How can we destroy Tolkien's nuances to fit into the "woke" culture of the politically correct?

The dirty little secret is that, unlike the "PC" culture, Tolkien's world is actually diverse. Tolkien's world includes the themes of how different races (elves, dwarves, and men, not to mention the sub groups of these races, i.e. Noldar and Silvan Elves, Dwarves from Moria and from the Blue Mountains, and of course, the different cultures of men: Gondor (Rome) vs LakeTown (rural Gemanic villages built on lakes) vs Rohan (Anglo Saxon culture plus horses of the Goths).

All of these different cultures act and think differently from each other, and have different ways of acting. Those of us who have actually lived in different cultures are aware of this, but in today's world, who dares to say such things?

In contrast to Tolkien's world, the "woke" culture that pretends it loves diversity is busy canceling anyone who doesn't go along with their way of thinking.

MORE HERE

more HERE.

So the not only will the new series be "woke", but it will echo the amoral universe of the Game of Thrones.

Tolkien's stories are set in a moral universe, not the atheistic nihulism of George Martin.

And THAT is why he has been hated by elite opinion makers for the last 70 years.

A Balrog named Fred

 Michael Martinez has a long essay on balrogs, and if Aragorn and Boromir could have helped Gandalf fight Fred the Balrog on the bridge in Kazadum.

LINK

the essay is a long discussion of what is a Balrog, and how the concept of Balrog changed in the 50 years when Tolkien was writing his tales.

But essentially a Balrog is a fallen angel of the Maiar class who has taken a bodily presence in Middle Earth. And it is doubtful that human heroes, even one with elven/maiar ancestors like Aragorn, could have stood out long against Fred the Balrog of Moria.

Fred? Yes, that's what the fans named him  sort of a jest, in the same way that the Great White Shark in Jaws was named Bruce. (or in the modern world, Hitler was Herr Shickelgruber and Xi is Winnie the Pooh).

Because laughing at the devil really really makes him mad, 

and the warrior of legends of east and west jest as they fight evil, knowing that they will probably be defeated or at best win a battle that will only be a temporary victory in the long defeat of history.

But they chose to fight nevertheless...

Tolkien's theme of the long defeat is a variation of the Northern myths, where even the gods know that at the end of time, the Giants will destroy Asgard and the world, but they will oppose the evil anyway, joined with the warriors of Valhalla. 

But one difference between Tolkien's world view and the world view of the Northern myths: in his worldview there is hope that good will conquer in the end. 

Tolkien had two words for hope: One was the same as our idea (short term hope that things will go well). But the other term he uses is Estel: This is the long view of history, the hope that assures us that in the end God wins: that after the death on Good Friday comes the resurrection. And after Armageddon comes the New Jerusalem at world's end:

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Christopher Tolkien has died

He is best known for his editing of his father's works (Some were released as stand alone books, but the History of Middle Earth series  has a lot of his commentary about his father's writings).

If you read the book "Letters of JRR Tolkien", you know that his father sent copies of the on going writing to him when he was in South Africa learning to fly a plan for the Royal Air Force during WWII...

what you many not know is that he was also an "Inkling".

He was perhaps the closest to his father: because his father was married, he often did his tutor sessions at home. As a boy, Christopher had rheumatic fever and was placed on bedrest at home for months, and became close to his father during that time.


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the Joker: Evil in film vs reality

AICN has EKM's essay on the way various actors portrayed the Joker. and another review of the movie HERE.

it sounds like the movie is trying to explain why the Joker turned crazy, due to being abused etc. and then there is the fact he is mentally ill.

I'm not into superheros, and even less into the Batman series, but for those of you who are, it sounds like an interesting albeit noir movie. 

the reason I am not into superheroes or movies with fake bad guys is that evil itself is bad enough, and the real fight against evil is the "jihad" against the evil inside our own hearts. 

Where does God come into this? By providing the courage to fight evil. And by being at our side (or inside our head) when we get discouraged.

like the 1970's, all the young have decided to fix the world: Instead of being "anti war" (which led to the Cambodian holocaust and the hundreds of thousands of boat people, which these same types never took responsibility for), the modern SJW are pushing global warming, without being aware that to Asia, it means letting your people stay in poverty. I mean, here when the price of petroleum products goes up or down one peso, it is headlines: Because it affects people at many levels of their lives, (from transportation to one's job, to the cost of food since growing food and transporting it to Manila relies on gasoline/diesel powered equipment, to not being able to afford LPG gas to cook the food)

demonstrating against "evil" is so ego gratifying, and lets you project your inner conflicts to someone else.

But only Jordan Peterson bothers to tell young people that they have to start with "cleaning their room" before they decide to become social activists to change the world.

the review actually mentions this in the movie the Joker: he mentions the garbage on the streets: is this about the 1970s, when NYcity was a dirty hellhole, or about 2019 San Francisco?

Does anyone remember that  NYCity, was pretty well cleaned up by Mayor Giuliani, who was accused back then for being a Nazi for enforcing the laws under the "broken window" theory that chaos/broken windows encourage larger crimes? 

which is why I am so annoyed at "social Justice warriors": they tweet viciously but don't take out the garbage. 

Well, some do: but they aren't members of the "in" group so just ignore them.

Ignoring the needs of ordinary folk to live in a clean and safe environment under the guise of "compassion" is actually a false compassion (sort of like the SJW here who hate Duterte and blame him for every murder, but who ignore the murders by criminal druggies and crooked politicians and kidnap gangs before he took over because it was ordinary folks, not criminals, who lost their lives.)

at the end of the movie Magnificent Seven, the lesson is that the farmers are forever: The heroes come and go like the wind, but the reality is the ordinary people living ordinary lives.

Old Man:
Only the farmers have won. They remain forever. They are like the land itself. You helped rid them of Calvera the way a strong wind helps rid them of locusts. You are like the wind, blowing across the land and... passing on. Vaya con Dios.

both are needed, but if you emphasize only the superheroes, you forget the heroism of ordinary people.

I was talking to my granddaughter last night and again warned her not to go into social work or psychology (she is a mothering type person and thinks this career would be similar to her motherly help of other students); 

I have worked among the poor of the world, both materially poor and (what is worse) the spiritually poor who descend into self destruction and destroying those around them. (think child abuse, substance abuse with child neglect, sexual abuse of children, and the psychic manipulation of children by their narcissistic parents). 

I managed to do this because (as I have been told many times) I lack "sensitivity". But a sensitive person like her would be destroyed by the horrors out there (one reason for the high suicide rate among psychiatrists... and in cops and soldiers is the helplessness in the face of evil).

Many argue they chose atheism not because they don't believe in God but because they are angry at an absent God in the presence of the suffering of children.

EKM has another essay about the lack of the presence of God in modern horror films, mainly discussing the Exorcist  and the Omen.

If the message of THE EXORCIST is that there's Good in the world to counter Evil, it's a rather uneven statement. The Good, it seems, exists in the hearts of those who are willing to die for another, and yet that quality seems strikingly terrestrial. By the end of the film, we see a splintered family that goes their separate ways, unable to face one another after the horrors that have occurred. Two priests are dead. A dear friend of Chris MacNeil is murdered by the latter's own daughter... Anything positive that has transpired has occurred through the direct action of Man rather than Deity.

ah, but that is precisely the point: the Deity sort of works via people who are willing to let him work thru them, so that they are his hands. 

and we pre Vatican II Catholics (and traditional Buddhists, and Jordan Peterson's lectures) are aware that the world is suffering, and it is one's personal quest on what one does when confronted with this fact.

But alas, the Pope is more worried about the rain forest and vague do-goodism than the suffering of children, so it is Jordan Peterson who preaches life is suffering (quoting the Buddha), not the Pope, which says a lot about why there is an impending revolt of the lay folks against the Pope.

as the reviewer noted: this is seen albeit vaguely in the Exorcist, but one wonders if that film is remade if this hint would survive the remake, or be trivialized similar to how the good vs evil in Harry Potter (a nice guy but where does his power come from?) contrasts with the deeper portrayal of ordinary folks fighting evil in Lord of the Rings.

again, as I said, I am not a big fan of superheros or horror film, but it make me wonder how the idea of a deity who cares about good and evil is disappearing from modern horror films. 

Or as EKM wrote:

Both films (i.e. the Exorcist and The Omen) are meant to frighten, and both succeed in doing so. One can't delve too deeply for Faith-affirming (or even Faith-negating) messages in works of popular entertainment.

Nevertheless, our society moves further and further from God as time passes, and it's a fact that becomes apparent while watching movies of this sort. Perhaps the absence of God in these films reflects our absence in Him.

Uh, "the absence of God... reflects our absence in Him": to which all I can say is:
Who do you mean "we" Kemosabe.

This says more about Hollywood and the cultural elite than it does about God, or even about ordinary folks, who know the voice of God is not in the earthquake or fire, but in the small quiet voice of their heart that helps them to notice the small hints that the Lord is there in the midst of their struggles.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King 

Sigh.

The Fountain of Changi

When we spent the weekend in Singapore, we were planning to find a hotel in town, but one of our friends told us to just use the hotel inside the airport. We did, and the room was small but the bed was queensized and soft, and we had a TV and wifi and shower, and free breakfast, and since our return flight home left at midnight, we didn't have to worry about traveling to the airport late at night

But the brand new Changi airport also has a huge mall, so we could eat and shop. All sorts of food in restaurants (even Korean Pizza and a Turkish Mexican restaurant). What did we eat? I had a hamburger: here in the provinces we only have McD and Jolibee, so a thick burger was wonderful.

But the airport also has an indoor garden with a fountain coming down from the roof: At night the fountain is lit up with various colours and music.




and there is a "skywalk" where you can walk above the garden on a mesh (No, I didn't try it).

Singapore is full of gardens and beauty.

All of this reminded me of Gondolin, with it's towers and fountains.

"...Then did the throng return within the gates and the wanderers with them, and Tuor saw they were of iron and of great height and strength. Now the streets of Gondolin were paved with stone and wide, kerbed with marble, and fair houses and courts amid gardens of bright flowers were set about the ways, and many towers of great slenderness and beauty builded of white marble and carved most marvellously rose to the heaven. Squares there were lit with fountains and the home of birds that sang amid the branches of their aged trees, but of all these the greatest was that place where stood the king's palace, and the tower thereof was the loftiest in the city, and the fountains that played before the doors shot twenty fathoms and seven in the air and fell in a singing rain of crystal: therein did the sun glitter splendidly by day, and the moon most magically shimmered by night.

yes, I know: it should be reminding me of the hidden city of the Emperor of China, but unlike the forbidden city, most of the city gardens, and the airport, are open to one and all.

My point is that, while it is correct for the Pope and the Green types to lash out against excess and imply we should live a green life in yurts eating bread and water (or here in Asia, rice and tea), that if you stress only simplicity and helping the poor, (which, by the way, has been my life's work) as the way to serve the Lord, you are impoverishing God's reality: because God is not only the Healer and the comforter (and the Father and the priest and the shepherd): he is also the great artist and creator of beauty.

So some people are gifted the vocation as co-creators: God's nature is full of variety and beauty, so too men who are given the vocation of artist, musician, technician, engineer, writer, etc. so they too can create beauty that remind one of the beauty of heaven. As Tolkien wrote:

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

LINK to Roger Scruton video on why beauty matters 

Nice Stories below the fold

Because not everything is politics.

The Prancing Pony Podcast has a discussion with Greg Hildebrandt.

For those of you who are culturally naive, WIKIPEDIA PAGE
and the website of the Brothers Hildebrandt.
Starwars, Tolkien, pinups and Fulton J Sheen....

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GetReligion discusses the Crown Of Thorns rescued from the Notre Dame fire and gives a quick history of relics in the Roman and Orthodox churches.

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Strategy page gives the background:.
Russia, Pakistan, China vie for influence in Central Asia.
China's new silk road vs Russia's rebuilding their empire. What could go wrong?

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Traditionally, do gooders give freebies to poor people, but an alternative is the capitalist idea to spread prosperity one employee at a time.

While Josh worked hard bringing food and health care to the country's rural villages, Alissa was determined to put their foodie expertise to work. The couple opened Heaven, a gourmet restaurant overlooking Kigali, which became an instant success. Remarkably, they found that between helping youth marry their own local ingredients with gourmet recipes (and mix up "the best guacamole in Africa") and teaching them how to help themselves, they created much-needed jobs while showing that genocide's survivors really could work together.

John Bachelor has an interesting discussion of a book about a gourmet restaurant in Rwanda.





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Related item: Environmentalists work with the Rohingye refugees.

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Don't miss it: Space.com has a map of where you can watch the solar eclipse tomorrow.

NASA

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the plastic stuff in the Pacific is more due to lack of garbage collection in Asia than straws from California, and I had written earlier about how "sachets", i.e. the cheap one time use packets that the poor can afford, are part of the problem.

So there is now an experimental program on recycling these sachets.

Over the years, the collected sachets were converted into energy, cement pavers and, recently, through a partnership with the Villar Sipag Foundation, into school chairs that are donated to public schools. This grassroots program based on collective action yielded inspiring results. In 2018 alone, the Company reported that it was able to collect over 310 metric tons of flexible waste thus successfully diverting this from our waterways. Read more: https://business.inquirer.net/267806/surf-unilever-sustainable-living-program-misis-walastik-campaign#ixzz5sNZLuyf9 

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the Last Inkling

the weekly standard has an article on Christopher Tolkien, the last Inkling, who has officially retired at age 94, after editing his father's notes and stories and releasing them for publication in many books, including Unfinished tales of Middle Earth (link link2) , and the History of Middle Earth.

the last of these books was just published, but it was begun during World War I, and of course a shorter version is in the Simarillion.

His links to his father's literature go back to his childhood:

It is work that has spanned Christopher Tolkien’s life. He started editing at just 5 years of age, catching inconsistencies in the stories his father told at bedtime. When those stories became The Hobbit, Christopher’s father promised him tuppence for every mistake he noticed in the text. A few years later, Christopher was typing up manuscripts and drawing maps of Middle-earth.

the article doesn't mention why: Christopher had developed rheumatic fever and was placed on prolonged bedrest. His father did much of his tutoring work at his home office (supervising students) so kept him company in his spare time.

new Tolkien book is the original story

the Fall of Gondolin is now edited and in print.
he wrote it while recovering from trench fever, after he had been through the Battle of the Somme.

Podcast of the week

the Prancing Pony Podcast has an interview with Tom Shippey.
mp3link

their summary:

 Aug 26, 2018 Season 3 is here, and we begin by welcoming Tom Shippey to The Prancing Pony Podcast! We discuss his classic works The Road to Middle-earth and J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, and the remarkable story of his personal meeting with Professor Tolkien in 1972.

We also talk about his new book Laughing Shall I Die, an exploration of the Viking heroic mindset and their grim (often inappropriate) sense of humor. Plus, the shocking link between Beowulf and a young woman searching for the perfect bowl of porridge.

Read more at http://theprancingponypodcast.libsyn.com/091-laughing-shall-we-die-an-interview-with-tom-shippey#lXx4xH8TEmXuwMu5.99

Feel good art

Dark Roasted Blend has lots of interesting stuff, and here is a list of their "feel good" issues.

this one includes the art work of Ted Nesmith inspired by the Simarillion.

he also links to this website about (fake) self help books, although the way things are going in the world, maybe they aren't so fake:

Stories below the fold

The IG report is too long to read for normal people, but here is a list of a couple of problems that raise eyebrows....

but it doesn't matter what's in the report, because the spin will be this:

11. FBI’s Insulting Response

FBI Director Christopher Wray gave a press conference in front of a compliant press corps where he said, “nothing in this report impugns the integrity of our workforce as a whole or the FBI as an institution.” In fact, the report paints a picture of an FBI with a problematic culture.

It’s not just Comey’s usurpation of authority and failure to comply with practices. Multiple people were involved in his condemned decisions. Others were cited for bad judgement in recusal decisions or failure to adhere to recusals. Political bias was rampant in the team of people who handled both the Clinton and Trump email probes. So were leaks, accepting gifts from reporters, incompetence, and other problems.

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AnnAlthouse notes: Harvard justified discriminating against Asian Americans because they weren't likable enough.

Presumably this meant they were polite.

nytimes link

And in the past, they discriminated against Jewish Americans because they were too "pushy",

(and to explain why women, blacks, and Catholics were discriminated against, place stereotype here).

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DavidReneke: Get out your telescopes (or in our case, our binoculars) and check out Mars.
If you wake up before dawn, you can’t help noticing Mars burning through the morning twilight with a distinctive orange glow....

What’s happening? Earth and Mars are converging for a close encounter–the best one in 15 years. On July 27th, Mars will be at opposition. Oppositions of Mars happen roughly every 2 years, but this one is special. It is a “perihelic opposition.” Mars will be near perihelion, its closest approach to the sun. Perihelic oppositions also bring Mars extra-close to Earth.

dang: We had a "brownout" shortly before dawn today (usually they switch from the older electric lines to the new ones they have been putting up at 4 am so as not to disturb folks)..., so I should have gone out and checked, except it is cloudy right not.

in other space news: A duststorm could damage the Opportunity Rover on Mars. 

Space.com adds:

For fans of "The Martian" novel by Andy Weir, or the film based on that book, the answer may be a disappointment. Storms on Mars aren't quite as dramatic as the book or the film adaptation portray them to be. While Martian winds at the planet's surface can reach up to about 60 mph (about 97 km/h), this is less than half the speed of some hurricane winds here on Earth and probably not strong enough to rip apart or tip any major equipment, NASA officials said in a statement. [Mars Dust Storm 2018: How It Grew & What It Means for Opportunity]

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I hear they are planning a Top Gun remake.

things have changed a bit in 30 years, but hey, who worries about air to air missiles when you have Tom Cruise? (/s)

So if you want to learn how to "dogfight", the Naval Institute blog has an article about it here, and they actually have a photo of that famous Tom Cruise upside down maneuver being done by actual naval aviators.

heh.
I have a son in law who is a Naval Aviator, but since he is too tall to fly jets, he flies helicopters instead.

Which explains why uber-short leading men like Tom Cruise could actually be jet pilots.
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TORN has two articles about the upcoming Amazon series on LOTR. LINK LINK2

hopefully they won't allow political correctness to destroy the series. On the other hand, they do let Jeremy Clarkson to be non PC, so there is hope.