not of this world

playing with the new macbook pro videocam…

was talking to furlan the other day, among other things we talked about the gnostics, ancient and modern. he did a funny little rendition of Irenaeus’ (whose feast we celebrate today) reaction to those who ran about peddling their unorthodox doctrines in his day.

‘I was ordained by Polycarp, who was ordained by John, who was laid hands on by Christ Himself. Who are you guys?’

that was actually a bumpersticker i saw on a shady looking van while i was waiting at a light today.
like i’ve written about before, ever increasingly pornography is the big elephant in the modern world’s living room that is causing incalculable unseen damages; sure it demoralizes women, that part of its evil is more familiar to us, but its lasting effect on men will take a much greater toll on society in general, and children in particular than i think most are aware of or want to admit.

that’s why i was so happy to become aware recently of a movement begun by men to deal with this as men, in the best and highest sense of the word, in a truly manly way. i saw a commercial for The Defenders the other night in my hotel room and checked out their website soon after.

i know pornography is having its corrosive and debilitating effect way beyond shady van driving types and bored truckers on lowly stretches of kansas highway (though not to minimize those casualties), to friends and family many of us would never suspect, furthering the isolation.
closest to home i know it from talking to more than one of my guy friends who have in one way or another had its hooks catch them, making them struggle continually against getting reeled back to where, somewhere in their brain and deeply in their soul, they know they don’t want to go but have trouble staying away from. it’s reaching out boldy through more and more mediums, mainstreaming itself here and there and working overtime to hook people at ever younger ages. as the defenders’ website addresses on one of the other pages, wherever pornography’s beginnings in many men’s lives, the endings are increasingly revealing themselves via the news in horrific cumulative outer rings that the initial excitements eventually demand. and though many men may be able to postpone arriving where it leads them, none are free from the slavery, degradation and deceit that weaves its way through the images into their very selves.

manhood is under attack on so many levels in modern society and we need to support such efforts to face this crisis head on, to remind men who they want to be, who they were created to be, and what the stakes really are.

i hope all visitors and friends will join me in supporting the defenders by linking them up prominently, spreading the word and if your a man, joining with their numbers to take your incredibly important stand against the plague epidemic of pornography, both for yourself and your fellow men, as for the women and children who greatly need men to be men. the longer this elephant is ignored the more wounded men we will have, and the world needs them as much if not more than ever, and they need to know they’re not alone.

i know this must seem (it kind of does to me) overly dramatic, but i just really think this is that serious.

st. cyril of alexandria whose feast we celebrate today, pray for us!

When [Adams] and others wrote in the Declaration of Independence about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” what they meant by “happiness” wasn’t longer vacations or more material goods. They were talking about the enlargement of the human experience through the life of the mind and the life of the spirit. And they knew that the system of government they were setting up wouldn’t work if the people weren’t educated. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization,” Jefferson wrote, “it expects what never was and never will be.”

- from David McCullough’s lecture on John Adams, may imprimis

“…a growing coalition of therapists, scientists, and activists disagree and refer to such children—even those as young as three years old—as transgendered, insisting that the child’s new identification shouldn’t be discouraged.”

“Do you know why you’re a special girl?” her mother asks.

“Because… I have a girl brain in a boy body,” Nicole [Nicholas] says, lowering her usual penetrating voice to an almost inaudible sigh.

this confused 5 year old boy is about to become, as supportive sources quoted in this article are encouraging, “the poster child for childhood transexuality” and should, in their opinion, be kept at all costs from any behavioral guidance/therapy that would help Nicholas come to accept and love his male body as truly being an integral part of himself, instead encouraging him to reject and abhor it as a birth defect and obstacle to “who she really is”. one of the activists encouraging this family to encourage the transexual identity of their 5 year old is hopeful that they will allow him to make a documentary of the groundbreaking case. all of this seems profoundly tragic to me. as complicated as the reality may be within a very real gender identity disorder, that parents would give in so early in their son’s life (5 years old!) to an agenda driven comandeering of his future, on behalf of what is being claimed as essential to who he is and for his true happiness - never mind that it is in total contradiction to the perfectly healthy body he was born with - makes me sigh too…

When her mother asks her if she’s happy with the way she looks, she says no.

“Hammer it,” Nicole insists more strongly.