Is this True?

Order is better than disorder.
Order within the Overorder is better that order without.
He who is able to order is better than he who can't.
And he who comprehends the functional relationship of his order and the Overorder, that man, he is a saint.


"Think about it, then pop off." John Barry

I Apologize

I am a loyal American citizen. I have served in our country's military. I like hot dogs and fireworks with the usual middle-aged verve of the chunkier portions of my generation. I put my hand over my heart at the appropriate occasions. So, on this day, this Fourth of July, I pass on one other aspect of acute, if Cassandra-like, mental precision.

We were wrong.
George the III was right and was the Lord's anointed.

So in the spirit of a Democrat Congress apologizing for the perfidy of others, I apologize to Her Majesty, Elizabeth the II for my country's sins.

I am perhaps alone in the metaphoric rending of garment. Mayhap it be only I for whom the potato salad turns to ashes upon consumption. But it is also I alone who will stand with eyes narrowed as the Great Unwashed gyrates through their patriotic fit.

I am loyal to America as she is, as I live in her. So it is of now I celebrate America thankful for the order and protection she provides.
Celebrate her founding? Pshaw!
I am big on King Solomon. Not so big on the adultery and murder that brought his mom and dad together.

Society for Classical Learning Conference

I been gone, just me, alone.
Gone away to San Antone.
"But, baby, baby," I moanin' phone,
"It's hot as sin. I'm comin' home."

Parents: A Five Ton Dumb Truck Filled with Ten Pound Sacks of Stupid

If all men seek peace, all men will notice those that have it. He who has it, Peace not merely placidity, has it for cause. Does he know the cause and did he craft, design, submit to, or recognize that cause? Could he communicate it to the curious among the rest of man? The rest all want that which he has and he both understands and can convey what brought his peace to be. The rest will learn from him and will follow in his Way.
Peace will be caused by an applied order and the quality and nature of the Peace will be the quality and nature of the order.
Peace with God means you have ordered, reconciled, ceased to rebel in your life before God. Domestic peace means the home (its schedule, furniture, cleanliness, etc) is in order. Relational peace means that your nearest and dearest have ordered their expression of relational emotion.
In whatever kind of peace men seek they will consider very seriously that kind of order that the peaceful example of such recommends.

In other words...
Your children, O Christian parent, want a Peace and have ample time to perceive it in you. If you have it, Peace not merely placidity, do you know why and can you communicate that why? If they want to be like you (does anyone want to be like you?), they will want to know and they will follow.


(As an aside: they don't want denominational/orthodox peace first and foremost so don't base the home order on catechizing. They need to see you satisfied by the Love of God, obedient by grace not Law, loving your neighbor as yourself, living by reason not passion).


But more than likely...
If you are not at peace, you are either boring (placid without cause) or a collection of chaotic moments. Who (since all men want peace) wishes to follow either example? In the dull they can't spot any cause which is transferable other than a commitment to abject soullessness run through a word generator of Christian terms and trends. In the chaotic parent, they, the children already have what you have, thank you very much. You live by impulse and passion and so do they. If you want them to "turn out" ought you not "turn out" first? Who would wish to believe that which you claim to believe when you cannot show that it caused any peace in you?

You are dull and thankfully can't blame Jesus or you are "swayed by various impulse" none of which produce peace or an understanding of the ordered life.

This is the answer to every parental concern.
When your "Jesus" didn't fix you, why would your children hope in Him.

The Lieutenants at Big Haus

At the Big Haus we have had tenants for almost thirty years. Our ministry has been to introduce them to the Christian mind on any subject that came up. These tenants got only an ad hoc experience but it seemed to bear fruit for the Kingdom of Heaven. This multi-decade commitment convinced us we might know what we were doing and it encouraged us to shape the ministry more consciously. This last year we added the role of a Big Haus lieutenancy. Our supporters endowed two rooms which we can offer to people, (rent free but they pay for food), who come to go through a structured program covering the most influential things that have shaped our own thought. This last year Andrew Knecht spent two semesters here and Travis Schnider one semester. I've asked them to write up a general impression. This post is what Andrew provided and Travis' will be posted when it arrives.

Andrew Knecht

The Big Haus offered a wonderful opportunity to me this past year. The Lieutenancy program offered through the Big Haus Society blessed me in many facets of my life. Mr. Evan Wilson's reading curriculum covered a wide area of topics from which to choose any number of discussion points, from education to metaphysical beings, the purpose and place for humor to a life in the Holy Spirit, from the dilemmas of espionage to what women and men really want. Each author provided aspects to better understand the Big Haus way of life, one of peace and understanding. Discussions both formally with Evan and around the house generally encouraged honing of my ideas and development of my philosophy. And although I was provided with Evan's theories on each subject, self-assurance and truth-seeking were the goal in all talks. The lifestyle of the Big Haus propagates love, honor and hospitality.

Through the Big Haus Lieutenancy, seeing and understanding how and why Evan and Leslie Wilson live as they do, I am seeking more fervently a life in tune with God's Word and Truth. I gained tools and ideas to catapult my thought to deeper and more practical areas. I enjoyed great authors and found others to read in the future. I ate like a king and praised God for the hospitality I and others enjoyed. I thank God for giving me the circumstance to grow and mature.

"A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh, but passion makes the bones rot."

Proverbs 14:30

The Oracle again:

We have just started a young lady named Kensington Baines on the program and we have one other open spot for a person whose interests match what we provide.

If you know anyone who might be interested in such, check us out here.

An application is here.

If you would like to share in supporting this work, our contacts are available at this link.

I am the Soul of Passion

I Peter 1:14-16 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."

Passions. This is what moves you, gives you cause for the various effects you encounter when you are stupid. Yep, that's it folks. If you don't have a reason or habit for doing something (and reasons can be assessed and habits trained) you will use your passion for doing something. Then your life become "Stupid on Parade." The removal of ignorance is a great antidote for passionate foolishness. Have you ever wondered why, with all your religious protestations, you still sin like a fraternity brother? Try thinking about your life rather than waiting for Jesus to show up like a buxom blond.

Don't get me wrong. I am a fan of passion, at least those that involve the desires of the flesh and the eyes. Why seem I to be bashing them? I am not. I am entering your life today to suggest that you reposition passion. Heretofore you have used it as a cause. It has gotten you into sin, folly and dumb decisions. Occasionally it is positive, but trust me, that was only accidental. I would suggest that you place passion as "effect" rather than "cause", the punctuation of the sensible sentence of your life, thought, and wise/holy choices. Let wisdom and holiness take a wife for you "not in the passion of lust like the heathen who do not know God." Enjoy this well selected wife passionately. Let good sex be an effect of a good choice and good ideas. Pursuing your fleshy passions as a cause gets you a few nights of steam and a subsequent life of hell. Make up your mind first. A mind made up is examinable. Talking to the drunken ramblings of the passionately driven is not beneficial for they cannot understand. Their "cause" is passion and their life reflects that especial teenage brilliance. So many lives are proudly run this way that many ministries succumb to this method of life decisions and try to replace passions that cause sin with an uninformed "passion for Jesus." Such people and ministries are especially susceptible to false teachers.

II Timothy 3:6-7 For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

The desires of the Spirit are in this way different from the desires of the flesh. Our possession of the Spirit rests on a response, belief, and conclusion regarding a Truth. This is an informed position on the Nature of Things. Wisely based passions, those existent as effects of truth, do function as future causes but they have been guided. They serve and harmonize with the truth that bred them. A wisely selected, passionately enjoyed wife (versus a passionately selected, wisely regretted one) does find her husband more enjoyably bound to the the marriage. When passion is an effect of a thoughtful good it can become a cause of good.

I Peter 1:13 says, "Therefore gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. "

Boo-Yah!

Thanks to Molly Worthen, (correspondent to the stars and Edmund Burke monarchist) me and my faithful pipe have attained to a brief appearance in the Evangelical stratosphere.

My natural "soft spoken"ness precludes me vaunting myself in any kind of triumphal way but of course, you, my faithful vassals, can fill in the blank.

The Evantine Order for the Very Calm Life: Rule Five

Mammon, unclaimed by any responsibility perceived by thy wife, shall be found in sufficient quantities in thy wallet upon entering a book selling establishment.

As the Scriptures say, "Money answers everything. While most Americans would freely chorus that loads of money would contribute to the Very Calm Life as they imagine it to be, this rule is about the "thing" purchased while remaining guilt free. We mentioned last rule that "pretty and lusty" was not a grant for totalitarian control. Still, in order to keep the pretty one in your marriage free from temptation to be contentious and fretful, we must not spend the children's milk money on books. But books are the point. The residue of a civilization is in these magical things.

Think for a moment on how perfect the needed interface between centuries is solved by the phonetic alphabet (Peace be upon the Phoenicians) , the invention of movable type (Peace be upon Gutenburg), and the sewn signature codex. Computers are a tool to that glorious end but they cannot compete for kingship in the interface. Sure all of this and more is on the Internet, but let's be frank, it isn't yours until you print it out. Then what do you have? A pile of paper, that's what. Your portion, your pillage of the Past is not to be had for keystroke, log in, and laser printer. The selection in your personal library announces the measure of your fief. What did you purchase? What did you want to know and how permanently did you want to have the source of that knowledge at hand to know again? A man or woman is measured to him, herself, and any that enter their library (please tell me you have one) by the collection. Staring down on us are spines declaring information which only years of conversation with the owner of the collection would give you. Do you see Dr. Johnson or Dr. Phil? And it is even more insulting if the second doctor is in hardback (and if they don't know of whom I was speaking regarding the first).

You cannot declare more about yourself and you cannot arrive at that place so declared, without books. Thus it is that the growth and change of your collection must never be hampered by insufficient funds as you stare at the outer door of a used book establishment. Many a wife will measure her best beloved by his checkbook, his knowledge of household appliances, his diligence in career. What those are is a slight momentary read such as a garden thermometer or the weather report for the week. His library, O goodwife, is the climate and the seasonal prospect of the place in which you dwell. Next time you walk into it (having, of course, genuflected at the door), stand a moment in its rich silence, then politely thank them.

The Evantine Order for the Very Calm Life: Rule Four

Varieties of tobacco,
every desired kind of thine and thy friends,
shall plenteously fill thy storehouses,
shaken down and running over.

This is at least as important as the possession of a Good Wife to the advancement of Calm. Kipling famously said, "And a woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke." In that poem (The Betrothed, see poster for sale here) the potential wife is demanding that her future husband choose between her and his cigars. Each Rule of the Very Calm Life is expected by the Abbot to "play well with the others". A wife with Calm providings will not deny you the other providers of Calm. No woman is pretty enough or lusty enough, to deny you butter, bacon, or books. Let her also not be peevish about tobacco. "Pretty and lusty" only can bring part of the Calm to a man. Let the shoemaker stick to his last.

Many years ago, I was (and am now) a smoker of both pipe and cigar. Also many years ago, the ministry in which my Amazing Missus and I engaged (and do now) is that of hospitality. The one was for me in my thinky moments and the other was for the Kingdom of God. And then an epiphany of goodness, pleasure, and the essential growth in Calm Living was given. A close friend of mine, as I visited him in his office, offered me a cigar. It was a very good cigar and it was offered within his office. The two worlds of thinky moments and hospitality became one. This friend, this saint, this "angel-straight-from-God" continued this offering every time I went by to see him. I solemnly affirmed that I would measure hospitality thusly, a "Hail Fellow, Well Met" sort of hospitality and that I might bless others as he did me.

The world of men (and very good women) wears the smell of burning tobacco as a badge of danger, thought, camaraderie, and conversation. Hold this leather chaired bliss out against a nanny-state world that is trying, with all engines running, to drive any semblance of "hearth side" from our allowance and cultural memories. As an aside, dastards like Mayor Bloomberg of NYC have moved to destroy any good thing that gives "enjoyment" higher status than "health" (he has banned trans fats and is working on salt). Men are not "allowed" to even smoke within the four walls for which their hard work has paid. All this is becoming an inhospitable Utopia where long life at any cost becomes the Hell they insist on calling Heaven. But we know, (don't we men?), that nothing can match (no pun intended) the bliss of staggering up from a table of eye-crossing victuals which ran with rivulets of "fat things", waddling into the library and lighting up a combustible dessert that some "man of God" pressed into your chubby hand. Let the welcome matte be laid out for similarly longing comrades. After food and drink, tobacco runs up the score. And when you offer a cigar, make it a good cigar wrapped in the memories of being rolled on the thighs of a large Jamaican woman.

By "plenteously", my friends, I mean so much or many that no note of selfishness will beset you as you open the box before them. Our Lord asks us to make friends for ourselves with unrighteous mammon. If I hand a visitor to my home three dollars, my gift would be soon forgotten. Make it a three dollar cigar and you have bought yourself a friend, for the same small monetary value, yes, but mixed with rare place and priceless company. This is a largesse, the scattering of which makes eternal friends. And nowadays what could be more "unrighteous" than smoking.

Tub Time: Who Do You Think You Are?

Someone asked me the other day, "What is up with the perpetually offended?" I have written of these sorts before but an angle presented itself as I floated on my sea of Archimedean Displacement and Ivory Soap (it floats).
Let us say that someone gossiped about you. In other words, you were a victim of gossip. If you were a person of perpetual offense, you would say that "So-and-So sinned against me." While the phrasing is perhaps valid the meaning is not. So-and-So sinned against God with you as the victim. When you suggest to your own outraged feelings that the sin was against you, you suggest that you had promulgated a law against gossip and S0-and-So had failed to obey your law.

Now we can understand better the white rage with which the offended pose.
These twerps think they are gods.

The Evantine Order for the Very Calm Life: Rule Three

Thou shalt have one lusty member of the weaker sex as thy spouse.

Does this go without saying? I'm just askin'.

For those whose sensitivities have been compromised by the Spirit of the Age (perhaps to the extent that they voted for Obama) this may seem a bit archaic, a bit medieval, the droolings of an unenlightened Idaho hick. Perhaps you are a man who doesn't want or wish for the Very Calm Life. Perhaps your version of life would invite the term "gelding" or perhaps you are just a little light in the loafers.
Perhaps you are offended at the patriarchal presumption this rule seems to take.
(I believe that one ought be a gentleman in the treatment of women and if the delicately nurtured have felt a little off putting occurred with words like "lusty" and "weaker", I completely understand and encourage you to read no further and perhaps leave this blog altogether.)
Perhaps that "Perhaps" was not the complaint of the delicately nurtured.
Perhaps you are a member of the "Sisters of the Fretted and Fevered Brow", the women who are angry at the supposition that they are (as the rule stated) the "weaker sex" but find that they are not strong enough to do anything about it. Bummer. That. has. got. to. sting.

The Evantine Abbey is a monastic order not a nunnery. You can make your own rules for the chicks. Heck, if you wait long enough I might get around to writing some. Number three could be rewritten to say, "Thou shalt have one strong man ("Que es Mas Macho" rating of 7 or higher) to tell you how to vote and stuff."

But to the real need and point, what is this rule not saying?
Marriage does not make the Very Calm Life. In fact the Scriptural Proverb in the running for the most repeated is "Better to dwell in the corner of the roof than under it with a contentious and fretful woman." Many women do not bring Calm along with them.

Points affirmed by the rule: This woman whom thou shalt marry will be the "weaker sex" referential to you. An Achilles can marry an Amazon but a Casper MilkToast had better not. A wife is not here to remake you, protect you, and provide for you. The weakness brings gentleness from the husband, and a more precise and civilized gentility.
The Scriptures say "Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them." Colossians 3:19
and "Likewise you husbands, live considerately with your wives, bestowing honor on the woman as the weaker sex, since you are joint heirs of the grace of life, in order that your prayers may not be hindered." I Peter 3:7
It also provides, as a more jeopardized citizenry in a man's kingdom, a greater need of clear border and better, wiser government.
She is given, in this protection, a realm, a domestic vision and a finite prospect for her efforts and daily contribution. Good things, that men like, get builded there. While a man has a more imperial prospect than his wife, the Calm Life exists most measured in the intimate aspect within the doors of his abode. The details, well builded, produce a calm which, like the smell of baking bread, reach the far corners of his imperial attempts and benefit those efforts. The civilization a good wife provides reaches out to inform the broader world of the benefit of that married couple's kingdom. And those Philistines you know(whose wives work professionally but don't domestically) will look on your archaic, medieval, and hickish life and wonder at, and perhaps damn, the beatific calm.

Don't think I skipped lightly over the word "lusty". A man wouldn't, nay shouldn't, marry at all if he has no desire for connubial bliss. But then, this rule is not about His desire but Hers. Having married, the blessing of his underwear being washed and folded is a collateral benefit but not a sufficient reason to pay the folder's medical bills for the foreseeable future. Lustiness in one's wife is the first and necessary signal to a calm man's sense that all is right in his world. She is First Citizen, Grand Vizier, Her Man's Lieutenant in all Things, chief beneficiary of all that he conquers, surveys, and eventually bequeaths. If she does not eagerly reward his urges, hail the conquering hero with some verve, then he has been measured at the closest vantage, by the best beloved, as not impressive enough to receive a woman's central contribution to marriage. It is what a man expects since the act of "one flesh" is the Creation of Eve Reason for leaving father and mother and cleaving. It is encouraged by the Apostle as avoiding and doing without is discouraged. Absence of this urge is sufficient reason to not marry at all. The other services a wife provides are more cheaply had by domestic staff and a passel of good friends.

Let us finish by saying that the Calm ratios are not met if the key and central reason for a man having a wife is met infrequently and disinterestedly. See if a woman has the same "you ought to tolerate this because God won't let you leave" assessment if the husband was "infrequent and disinterested" in fulfilling her expectations for provision in any area (emotionally, spiritually, financially, socially).
Build a life together which protects your wife's construction of a family civilization.
But a sexual buzzkill is no wife worth having.

The Evantine Order for the Very Calm Life: Rule Two

The second is like unto the first.
Breakfast shall greet thee on thy descent
and it shall be of the hearty and hot kind.

What is the point of bacon and a constant supply of it within one's refrigerator if it does not emerge. And by emerge I mean like the superheated mass of Apollo's chariot heralding the day set before your glory seeking eyes. There is a declaration in the sizzle of bacon, hash browns, eggs, biscuits and sausage gravy (with a side of English muffin and marmalade should the wifely unit not have time to conjure the cinnamon rolls last seen in the beatific vision). That declaration is not merely the lusts of someone whose "god is their belly". While the list of foods is inspirational it is not Levitical Law. Those details, if stressed, can spoil the poetry and miss the point of these rules.

One of my communicants suggested that the thickness of the bacon should have been insisted upon in the first rule but I thought that the phrase "thick sliced bacon" bordered on the redundant. I avoid descriptive detail as our point dwells not in even the butter and bacon (peace be upon them) but in the soullessness of those who discount and avoid those glories.

The key words in this rule, that thy heart and eye shall follow (and shall not pity), are "breakfast", "greet", "descent", "hearty", and "hot".
The Very Calm Life is lived where no meals are missed. Hurried schedules betray you.
The Very Calm Life is lived when someone else cares enough or is paid enough to relieve you of fixing your own sustenance.
The Very Calm Life is multistoried. A ranch home is pedestrian.
The Very Calm Life is hearty enough to be wasted. "Is that all there is?", should not be a phrase falling from your lips as the last bits of Pop Tart or cereal disappear past them. And that provider of your morning needs has not just placed a box of Cheerios next to an empty bowl, spoon at the ready. We are not in a primitive society where the cooking art has not visited the mastodon we slew. That mastodon is made into sausage and fried up with three archeopteryx eggs (over medium).
So what do I mean?
Do not hurry, possess retainers, eschew the common, embrace the extra, and taste the art.

Ecclesiastes 5:19-20
Every man also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and find enjoyment in his toil -- this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.

The Evantine Order for the Very Calm Life: Rule One

The Oracle, many years past, needed to describe what things, apart from righteousness and peace with God, conspired, when present, to calm the life on which they smiled. Those easily recognized things in the life of the Oracle, were jotted down and naturally became ten rules and with them the Evantine Order was born. The monks who submit to these regulations are a pious lot and easy to mark out from their fellow man by the wide grin on their countenance. This manuscript was found, marked with the coffee stains of centuries, taped to the wall above the author's computer desk. It is quite possibly the oldest copy of this wisdom in the hands of scholars today. We asked the author if it were and he said. "Yep."

What is the first of these guides to guideless man? This is.

Thy larder, aptly so named, shall be ever plenished with butter and bacon.

It sounds simple enough. Butter and bacon in the house, at all times, no exceptions. Why? If you can find a better repository of heavenly flavored fat, we will add it to the list.
No, margarine will not do. Margarine is evidence that the lower classes have been given too much money. They will buy a product on symbol alone. Is it vaguely yellow and does it come in a paper wrapped rectilinear form? Does it melt when heated? This is sufficient evidence that it must "taste" the same. It is cheaper. It looks like butter, but in fact is an idol, a graven image of the True which primitive and backward people have not the sophistication of discernment to measure.
This class of humanity thinks that if something bears the symbol of a reportedly good flavored item (say steak, or butter, or coffee) it will report not through the tongue and its taste buds but through the helpful symbol reader. Language becomes the real. These people think that Applebees really is a "neighborhood bar and grill". It has "stuff" up on the wall and handy pictures in the menu to be sure that your symbol reader will read steak when that animal product piece of gristle shows up at your table. Thus, since apple pie is known to be the All American Wonder dessert, the round pie shaped piece of sheet rock and apple sludge that your mother or wife made, is good. If the pie had something claiming to be a crust, the symbolist taster comments on what the symbol demands, flakiness, oh my yes, the flakiness. What passed their lips, tongue and taste buds without pausing for conversation, was oven hardened Play-Dough.

Tasters taste, they do not read their food.
Tasters who have seen Heaven opened in the form of butter and bacon will accept no substitute.
Because fat, well, fat satisfies. And butter and bacon are the Platonic form of fat.
It is a basic food group for those who love life. All lesser forms of fat are moved by sensibility to cost (and the ratio of taste lost to coinage saved is unsustainable) or fear ("I will become fat and die").
The Calm Life does not fear. It welcomes a fat death if you did not become fat on symbols. The Calm Life knows what it is enjoying and the path that enjoyment walked to pleasure. And if there were a hundred dollar difference between butter and margarine, it would just mean that the Calm Life would have to wait until you could afford it.

I Don't Have the Time.

If we are not pantheists (in which all is god) than God is discrete from that which is not God. He knows that which is Himself and that which is not. And given those two realms of that which is (God and not-God), the referent of a point of knowledge which God possesses can be spoken of as being either Actual or Conceptual. That which is Actual has a referent outside of God. It exists and isn't God. That which is Conceptual has a referent inside of God (a mental construct as memory or anticipation would be) and it has no non-God actuality.
When the question of God's foreknowledge (or past-knowledge for that matter) arises, these two categories do as well. Is God outside of Time looking down on Actualities? Or is Time not in question at all because God's knowledge of the future (or the past) is Conceptual? I mention the past, for so many wish to create a special sphere of atemporality in which God might dwell without examining whether or not they are talking nonsense. If God is looking down on Time from an atemporal vantage then those things observed are Actual and existent. Christ is still on the cross (for God) and always was (for God) and will be forevermore. The Trinity can never be fully united for those words of Christ, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" will ring in actual existence for God, forever. Amen? That or the knowledge of God regarding the past is Conceptual (just like your memories) and He "remembers" what was, not sees what was but saw. Maybe, dare I suggest it, that God's knowledge of the Future is equivalently Conceptual? In fact, the Death of Christ on the cross is burdensome for Future thought as well as Past. Why, you ask? The Trinity of God,(atemporal and dealing with Actualities), has been eternally lacking in Triuneness since He has been eternally in a knowledge relationship with everything that is Actual and that Actual, (because Actual) binds and defines the content of truth of the thing known. So the Actual crucified state of Jesus is and was and will be (from our temporal vantage and language) the state of God. And to add insult to the injury of this silly talk of Time, God's relationship with Himself in the Trinity is also known and enjoyed as united for there have been "Times" when the atemporal God looked down on Actual non-separation AND rejoiced in the Tiune presence of the Conceptual knowledge of Himself, fully and truly united. So... Actual separation and Actual non-separation both being true for God in the same "God-moment" regarding the same characters. Looks like you either have to throw out the "Universal Law of Non-Contradiction (A cannot be non-A) or throw out Time.
So...
It is actually a choice between you being able to "know" anything because you have made statements which call laws of Logic into question or you reject a dimension called Time. It was cute when you didn't think about it too much.

And if you are a Calvinist, God help you, but you didn't need Time in the first place. Your benighted definition of God has His foreknowledge resting in the Decree, not foresight and atemporality.

Big Haus Christmas

She did what????

Some like horror films. I do not but some do. These are unlike more positive films such as adventures and comedies where we envy the heroism or the wit of the characters. A horror film has much of its pleasure tied up in the fact that it is "Not You" going through this. There is a comfort in knowing that at any moment, when the terror becomes to much, you can get up to go to the bathroom (if you didn't inadvertently do so already). Gossip gets it perversity in that particular arena.

Our self interest is very pronounced. We are constantly measuring and wishing and working to make our Self the very best, the Nonesuch. We are ever conscious of what could be a failure in us. And here, the side sin of, and the pleasure of gossip is in the telling of failures. But there are many times when the telling of failure is good and godly; this is where it is not. If the telling of failure gets its currency from the fact that it is "not you" than it is gossip. It will never be a failure about you. Notice that it is impossible, self evidently impossible, to gossip about yourself. So if comparing notes over the failure of someone (be it folly or sin or just poor work by a business) that has none of its satisfaction in the "not you" category, then it will not be gossip. The failures considered and discussed, you may or may not take to the failing, and you may or may not share it with others whose interests are somehow invested. (The reason you only tell the invested of the failure is that without being invested, the only point of the information becomes how it was "not them".) You may even rejoice in the fall of the wicked or foolish but if you take no pleasure in it being "not you", you have not gossiped.

Now those of whom the stories of failure are told would like to have a much broader definition then I have given. Of course they would. A sinner, a foolish man, or a poorly handled business would like to control the bad press. They call that which is not, "gossip" to lower the damage by preaching a code that they might guilt their righteousness examiners into buying. These are of The Anointed Never Failing Clan and, although gossip does exist and is a sin, I would not determine its presence by the definitions they may give. I believe that the Obama campaign is and was a member in good standing of this set. If Obama said something socialist, you looked up a definition for socialism and subsequently referred to the president-elect as a socialist, they immediately called you a racist. The basic tack is to broaden definitions so that all that accuse would be instantaneously guilty of something horrifying.

Of course, when any of these failures arise in others, some tale bearing vultures do cluster around the dead to feed on something other than the measurement of evil, folly and error. This is a risk the wise must take for there would be no possibility of wisdom without the examination and measurement of evil, folly and error. Even when a church announces a righteous excommunication, someone in the pew will be feeling the pleasure of gossip. They will pass the information on with sincere tones of righteousness offended but their joy will be in that it was "not me".

The pleasure of gossip can thus be enjoyed all alone without ever telling anyone anything. That the news came to you did not make it gossip (because it could come to you in all innocence) but the song your heart began to sing on the hearing did.

Gossip traditionally is a chain of communication (sometimes vast) with guilt potentially at every step. That you gossip with others who are obviously "not you" does not pose a falsification of my claim. Those we tell are, at least for the current moment, less "not you" than the subject of the gossip. We embrace them with the "news" and an intimacy arises. Notice the feeling of the shared moment. Is there not a camaraderie? In a sense a club is formed called "Let us look together on this calamity of which the chief good is that it is not we" and we go about seeking new members.

I Don't Like to Post Quotes but....

The master of any claim I might have to heterosexuality has a post up here.
Go there and read, weep, point and laugh, or sit in stupefied disbelief.
When you are done, return and read these few quotes from C.S. Lewis' essay Lilies that Fester.
I don't think that I would ever have said this.... but Jason shares a solid insight with St. Clive.


"The loftier the pretensions of the power, the more meddlesome, inhuman, and oppressive it will be. Theocracy is the worst of all possible governments."

"Anything transcendental or spiritual, or even anything very strongly ethical, in its pretensions is dangerous and encourages it to meddle with our private lives."

"There are, as in piety, so in culture, states which, if less culpable, are no less disastrous. In the one we have the “Goody-goody”; the docile youth who has neither revolted against nor risen above the routine pietisms and respectabilities of his home. His conformity has won the approval of his parents, his influential neighbours, and his own conscience. He does not know that he has missed anything and is content. In the other, we have the adaptable youth to whom poetry has always been something” Set” for” evaluation”. Success in this exercise has given him pleasure and let him into the ruling class. He does not know what he has missed, does not know that poetry ever had any other purpose, and is content.
Both types are much to be pitied: but both can sometimes be very nasty. Both may exhibit spiritual pride, but each in its proper form, since the one has succeeded by acquiescence and repression, but the other by repeated victory in competitive performances. To the pride of the one, sly, simpering, and demure, we might apply Mr. Allen’s word” smug” (especially if we let in a little of its older sense). My epithet for the other would, I think, be “swaggering”. It tends in my experience to be raw, truculent, eager to give pain, insatiable in its demands for submission, resentful and suspicious of disagreement. Where the goody-goody slinks and sidles and purrs (and sometimes scratches) like a cat, his opposite number in the ranks of the cultured gobbles like an enraged turkey. And perhaps both types are less curable than the hypocrite proper. A hypocrite might (conceivably) repent and mend; or he might be unmasked and rendered innocuous. But who could bring to repentance, and who can unmask, those who were attempting no deception? who don’t know that they are not the real thing because they don’t know that there ever was a real thing?
Lastly I reach the point where my objections to Theocracy and to Charientocracy are almost identical. “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” The higher the pretensions of our rulers are, the more meddlesome and impertinent their rule is likely to be and the more the thing in whose name they rule will be defiled. The highest things have the most precarious foothold in our nature. By making sanctity or culture a moyen de parvenir [means of arriving, ed.] you help to drive them out of the world. Let our masters leave these two, at least, alone; leave us some region where the spontaneous, the unmarketable, the utterly private, can still exist."

Be Still My Beatin' Heart!

At last!
Big Haus embroidery made available at Federal Bailout Prices!
Check out the Amazing Missus as she models this stylish bit of hauswifery. Think of how your reputation will be benefited, O chefs and chefettes. Others will look upon you (as you slave over the hot stove or grill) and note that you cast the ominous shadow of a thinky sort of cook.

Yes, you can buy one (or twelve) here.
They come in black, red and stone.

Do your part in making Big Haus a haushold name.
(There is also a briefcase for those types who need to carry the various bookish things they also purchased from BigHausLoot.com.)

Futilitarian Thought for the Day

Not only will you age and die but you will age and die for a reason. And when you are older, it becomes easier to sicken and harder to shake. Cancers spring up. Guess you should not have drunk that carcinogenic Kool Aid that all the cool people were drinking. Once you realize the short distance between "cool" and "fool", you can fight it and, bless God, live to die another day of a more benign disease or just the wear and tear of age.

You know, like Great Britain.

Very Superstitious

The superstitious are an odd lot. They have fallen into post hoc ergo propter hoc in extremis and can't get up. For them, all things that precede are potentially causal to any thing that may follow. In fact, the selection of which cause on which they depend is more intensely valued for an absence of any degree on demonstrable causality. The nature of an epistemological truth bearing connection is a mystery to them but that mystery leaves them believing the least supportable.
If an intelligent person is one who can apply the information learned in the way which they were taught to apply it (in other words, a linear way) and an intellect is one who can validly connect information learned in ways not taught (a lateral way) then the superstitious, while they might be intelligent, are faux-intellects. They make unsupportable lateral connections. They claim causes and point to relationships for which there is no epistemological defense.
For the unbeliever in Christianity (who is "without hope or God in the world") and who is ignorant of where truth comes from, there is a desperate need to fill their world with explanatory notes. So superstition becomes a fake metaphysic and a fake intellection.

Within the Faith there is a similar camp ("who base their faith on visions and are puffed up without reason by their sensuous mind"). They are the "rocky ground" on whom the Word of God is sown and whose acceptance of the Gospel lacks root and depth. And just like the superstitious, they cast about for any proffered myth (as replacement filler) with Christian terms to also build a fake metaphysic and fake intellection.
II Timothy 3:6-7 For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

If they ever hold the truth, it is only by accident. It is never because they need the truth but because they need to believe and since they lack the guidance of truth bearing commodities they "listen to anybody" and fill their devotional library with the ridiculous.