Tuesday, August 25, 2026

'Enceladus'

 

Commander John Maury:

Log for John Maury, in command

Of the Starship Timothy Leary.

International Reformed Calendar date

Twenty-one twenty-five point six point 3.

Almost twenty-four hours ago Earth’s Sun,

Without warning, went completely dark.

With so many of Earth’s systems operating

On solar power, the lives of billions

Of people are in mortal danger.

The U.N. Space Command ordered the nearest

Space ship to the Sun to investigate.

The science vessel Timothy Leary,

With Lieutenant-Commander Nathan Boone

As our science officer and engineer,

Lieutenant Julia Graves at the helm,

And myself, responded.  U.N.S.C.

Replied, ordering us to the Sun

Without any delay.  Graves and Boone

Opened a wormhole, we have made the jump,

And now we are making our approach to the Sun.

 

[On the bridge.  Maury and Graves]

 

Graves:

Five minutes until we’re in visual range, Sir.

 

Maury [A concerned grimace across his face]:

Steady as she goes, Lieutenant.

Keep us at maximum speed till then.

 

Graves:

Aye Sir.

 

[A commotion is heard.  Boone enters the bridge from the rear, forcing a squalid, elderly man onto the bridge with him.]

 

Boone:

Commander!  A stowaway!

 

Maury:

Lieutenant, keep her steady.  Boone, who is this?!

 

Boone [With his arms still wrapped tightly around the unknown man]:

Don’t know Sir.  Just found him in one

Of the supply rooms, muttering with his arms

Stretched out.

 

Maury:

                                    Who are you, and what are you doing here?

 

Stowaway [Laughing, carefree]:

I was baptized Mosaker

Though you may call me Little Tater

As I’m not enough to fill a gator!

 

Maury:

Okay, Mosaker.  Why have you decided

To hitch a ride in the back of my ship?

 

Mosaker:

I needed to find a throne.

 

Maury:

                                                You’re a king?

 

Mosaker:

Not a king,

But every man has a need,

At some time, to pee!

Hee, hee, hee!

 

Graves:

Sir, he’s insane!

 

Mosaker:

Yes, yes, no understanding,

But neither am I hiding

Any anatomy by clever tucking-

Jonathan Graves, dead-naming!

 

Maury [With a fatherly, good-natured smile; he is starting to find humor in Mosaker’s behavior]:

An impressive façade, Lieutenant.

We’ll discuss this later, assuming for the moment,

That we live over the deadly peril.

 

Graves [Sheepishly]:

Yes Sir.

 

[Looks at panel]

                        Commander!  We’re in visual range.

 

Maury:

All stop.  Image on screen.

 

[Hordes of black objects are seen circling the Sun, blocking its light.]

 

                                                            Boone . . . what is this?

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/enceladus/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Monday, August 24, 2026

‘A Bad Show on the Nature of God’

 

Misters Harper and McFarland strike again.  A poor woman confused about how one could see God since He is pure Spirit got a rambling, nonsense answer on Exploring the Word on American Family Radio (24 Aug. 2026, last segment of the program, starting about the 46:45 mark).  Mr Harper gave the worst answer of the two, saying the essence of God can be revealed.  That is a flat breach of basic Christian theology:  God’s essence cannot be known to any created being, only to the Three Persons of the Trinity.  Once again, if Protestants like these two would only do the smallest bit of study of biblical commentary by those within the authentic Apostolic lineage such as the Orthodox theologians Basil the Great or Gregory Palamas, they would know that God is both a hidden, unknown Essence and revealed, knowable Energies.  We can see God and be united with Him through His Energies.  What Mr Harper was saying is actually a restatement of an old heresy from the 4th century, Eunomianism.  We quote briefly from Fr John Romanides:

‘Both Orthodox and Arians fully agreed with the inherited tradition that only God knows His own essence. This means that He who knows the divine nature is himself God by nature, Thus, in order to prove that the Logos is a creature, the Arians argued that the Logos does not know the essence of the Father. The Orthodox argued that the Logos does know the essence of the Father and, therefore, is uncreated. The Eunomians threw a monkey wrench into the agreed rules for proving points with their shocking claim that, not only does the Logos know the essence of God, but man also can know this essence. Therefore, the Logos does not have to be uncreated because He knows this essence.

‘Against the Arian and Orthodox position that creatures cannot know the divine uncreated essence, but may know the uncreated energy of God in its multiple manifestations, the Eunomians argued that the divine essence and uncreated energy are identical, so that to know the one is to know the other.

‘Strangely, Augustine adopted the Eunomian positions on these questions. Therefore, when the Franks appeared in the East with these positions they were accused of being Eunomians.’

I hope Misters Harper and McFarland will pray for me.  They are doing good work by encouraging people to read the Holy Scriptures.  Yet without the guidance of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, they are making errors in their interpretations of the Bible that is harmful to their listeners.  May God help them to stop relying on their own wisdom.

Sources:

https://afr.net/podcasts/exploring-the-word-with-bert-harper-and-alex-mcfarland/2026/august/the-word-and-work-of-jesus-matthew-724-813/

https://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.03.en.franks_romans_feudalism_and_doctrine.03.htm

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Friday, August 21, 2026

‘Death in the Farm Community’

 

We don’t mean those words of the title in an elegiac, metaphorical sense, though there is an element of that in what we will be discussing.  It is in reference rather to a hard, empirical truth, that deaths are rising in farm communities, and specifically a certain kind of death:  from cancer.

News stories about exploding cancer rates in agricultural areas are beginning to pile up.  Here is an excerpt from the latest, reporting on Missouri farming counties:

‘Nestled in Missouri’s Bootheel is the small town of Kennett, the Dunklin County seat. With just over 10,000 residents, it’s a close-knit community where good-natured teasing is a common show of affection.

‘Once a sprawling swampland, it has since been transformed into an expanse of flat, fertile fields where agriculture stands as the backbone of the region’s economy.

‘Kennett’s houses don’t get much taller than one story, and as visitors stroll down the main street, they’re welcomed by a mix of restaurants, boutiques and a cozy hair salon.

‘These buildings are dwarfed in size by a silent, boarded-up hospital, its vacancy a remembrance of what the community has lost.

‘It’s the kind of community where if something tragic happens, everyone finds out.

‘Bobbi Bibbs found this out the hard way. She discovered she had cancer in her colon in December 2023, which then metastasized to her liver, making it a stage four diagnosis.

‘Bibbs isn’t alone. Dunklin County is among the 10 counties with the highest rates of that type of cancer in the state.’

The reason for this is now coming to light, mainly, the heavy use of toxic agricultural chemicals.  The news story continues:

‘In Dunklin County, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of crops — and most of that land is blanketed by pesticides.

‘Estimates suggest that thousands of kilograms of pesticides are sprayed over Missouri cropland each year. In some places, wastewater sludge containing “forever chemicals” — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — is applied on farmland as fertilizer.

‘Multiple scientific studies have explored a connection between pesticide use and cancer, pointing to a silent public health crisis hitting rural communities particularly hard.

‘The University of Missouri, in partnership with Investigate Midwest, conducted a county-by-county analysis of cancer rates and pesticide use, using the most recently available data for pesticides that are repeatedly cited in research as likely to be associated with cancer risk.

‘The six counties with the highest use of these pesticides per square mile are all located in the Bootheel, including Dunklin. Four of those counties are in the top 15 for overall cancer rates in Missouri. All counties with the highest rates of cancer are rural.’

If we cast a wider net and look at all the States, the data appear to confirm that those with the heaviest use of agri-chemical pesticides and herbicides have the highest cancer rates.  Many of them are Southern States.

This is an existential threat to the Southern identity.  Agriculture is one of the most defining marks of Dixie’s culture.  Pecans, rice, corn, black-eyed peas, okra, mayhaws, peaches – the list could go on much further.  Without the fruits of the land, the South would be a much different place.  And if our farmers are too sick to bring forth those fruits, then a central part of Southern culture will die with them.

This is not all by accident.  The giant agribusiness cartels want centralized control of the food supply; monopolies in their hands secure them the largest possible profits.  Independent farmers, on the other hand, using heirloom seeds, non-toxic pest control, and fertilizer from livestock manure and other natural sources, are their death knell.  The goal of the cartels is to make the farmers dependent on them for all their inputs.  Patented, genetically modified crop seeds were a big step to securing monopoly control of agriculture.  Along with the patented plants came all the chemicals like glyphosate/Roundup that were to be used together with them, which had to be bought from the same cartels.

This industrial model of agriculture is largely what is practiced here at the South today, and it is this which has destroyed the traditional family farm, and ruined the health of farming communities and of the wider environment of which they are a part.

But this model is alien to our people.  Dixie’s approach to farming is quite the opposite of it:  It is based on the idea of the independence of the farming family and on increasing the health of people and land and animals.  John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia, wrote some wonderful lines articulating the Southern vision of agriculture in his book Arator (first published in 1814).  Reading only a few passages from his book offers strong inspiration to reject the present model and reacquire the Southern agricultural ethos.  On improving the land, he writes,

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/death-in-the-farm-community.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!