Remembrances for December – 2022

 

Dear friends, if you have time, please pray for these members of the Southern family on the day they reposed.  Many thanks.

But one may ask:  ‘What good does it do to pray for the departed?’  An answer is offered here:  https://orthochristian.com/130608.html

Along with prayers and hymns for the departed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6je5axPodI

3 December

William Grant Still, born in Mississippi, raised in Arkansas, and a well-respected musical composer.

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/william-grant-still-1775/

6 December

Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, he had the difficult task of leading the South during the War, and was unjustly tortured by his Yankee captors for two years after the ordeal had ended.  Interestingly, his death occurred on the feast day of one of the Church’s most beloved saints, Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker (the same St Nicholas associated with the Christmas season).  There have been a number of times when St Nicholas has miraculously interceded on behalf of those wrongfully accused; perhaps we will find in the Eternal Day that there was some connection between St Nicholas and Pres Davis during his imprisonment.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/clyde-wilson-library/a-sacrifice-for-his-people-the-imprisonment-of-jefferson-davis/

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2019/12/06/103484-saint-nicholas-the-wonderworker-archbishop-of-myra-in-lycia

10 Dec.

Gov Francisco Hector, an active governor of Spanish Louisiana (1791-7), some of whose more far-seeing plans went unfulfilled because of geopolitical events outside his control.

https://64parishes.org/entry/francisco-luis-hector-baron-de-carondelet

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hector-baron-de-Carondelet

12 Dec.

Andrew Lytle of Tennessee, one of the great men of the South of any age.

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/andrew-nelson-lytle/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86282498/andrew-nelson-lytle

14 Dec.

General George Washington, probably Virginia’s and Dixie’s most famous son.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/washington-vs-lincoln/

15 Dec.

Maggie Lena Walker, an enterprising black business woman whose talents allowed her to found, among other things, the St Luke Penny Savings Bank and build it up into an organization with 1,500 branches.

https://www.biography.com/scholar/maggie-lena-walker

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9104631/maggie-lena-walker

17 Dec.

John Stewart, a free black man from Virginia who became a great preacher amongst the Wyandott Indians in Ohio.

https://www.bu.edu/missiology/missionary-biography/r-s/stewart-john-1786-1823/

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/stewart-john-1786-1823/

https://www.wyandot.org/stew1.htm

https://www.wyandotte-nation.org/culture/history/published/missionary-pioneer/

18 Dec.

Antoine Dubuclet, one of the most successful free black plantation owners in Louisiana and the whole South.  He would later serve as Louisiana’s State Treasurer.

http://www.frenchcreoles.com/CreoleCulture/famouscreoles/johnaudubon/johnaudubondubuclet.html

19 Dec.

Thomas Holley Chivers of Georgia, a talented poet, a doctor, and an acquaintance of Poe.

https://allpoetry.com/Thomas-Holley-Chivers

24 Dec.

Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Moon, the self-sacrificing Virginia missionary to China.

http://cgbcbelton.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/lottie-moon1.pdf

http://bpnews.net/53987/chinese-government-designates-lottie-moons-church-as-historical-site

Also, to celebrate some of the saints of December from the South’s Christian inheritance of various lands, follow these links on over:

https://southernorthodox.org/orthodox-saints-for-dixie-december/

https://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2019/12/happy-feast-for-saints-of-december.html

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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!

Offsite Post: ‘Why Keep Fighting for Dixie?’

 

The pressures to conform to the woke religion are enormous and widespread.  Institutions small and large, public and private – from school boards to the US Army; from Major League Baseball to US ambassadors – are attempting to force men, women, and children to accept un-Christian, unhistorical, untruthful ideologies about the sexes, about equality, about the climate, etc.

The South continues to be a target of the revolutionary reformers, a people whose culture must be demonized and destroyed in order for ‘progress’ to come nigh unto them and touch them with its precious hands.

It would surely be easier for faithful Southerners to simply give in to the pressures bearing down upon them, more sensible to accept our place in the technocratic order as sources of experimentation, exploitation, data, and revenue for the Pfizers, Amazons, and BlackRocks of the world.

Many unfortunately have faltered under the psychological, economic, etc., weight placed upon them.  But for those who have not, it is imperative that they remain unreconstructed, that they resist no matter the cost, that their fidelity to Dixie never waver.  The story of Queen Ketevan of Georgia (+1624) illustrates why this is crucial.

The country of Georgia has suffered many devastating invasions over her long history as a Christian people (her baptism came in the 4^th century).  One particularly destructive incursion came early in the 17^th century at the hands of Muslims under Shah Abbas I of Persia.  Desiring to extend his rule over the Georgian people, he launched a brutal assault:

With fire and the sword the godless ruler plundered all of Georgia. The royal palace was razed, churches and monasteries were destroyed, and entire villages were abandoned. By order of the shah, more than three hundred thousand Georgians were exiled to Persia, and their homes were occupied by Turkic tribes from Central Asia. Hunger and violence reigned over Georgia.

This is reminiscent of what many parts of Dixie suffered from Lincoln’s Army and from ‘Reconstruction’.  But Queen Ketevan did not despair despite these woeful circumstances, and neither should Dixie’s faithful sons and daughters as new battles rage within her between the woke and those who quite happily remain unwoke:

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/why-keep-fighting-for-dixie.

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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!

‘The Eyes of St Foi’

 

In her younger days,

The faith of France

Was much like yours,

St Foi, fiery,

Unmovable,

Heeding neither

Flattery nor threats.

 

But the holiness

Of Gaul no longer

Freely flows.  Now

It has contracted,

And lies restricted

Within church walls

And reliquaries,

Like yours, in Conques.

 

Without its brightness,

Darkness has engulfed

The sweet French land,

With cruel despair

Also creeping in.

 

And yet, like still

Responds to like.

If even a tiny sigh

Of love for God

And His dear-worthy Saints

Escapes the shriveled

Hearts of Frenchmen,

Then the solid walls

That hide God’s Grace

Will grow transparent,

And Light and hope

Will shine upon their

Darkened faces, and give

Strength to their falt’ring feet.

 

What will you see, then,

From the piercing eyes

Of your gilded shrine?

Women and men,

Elders and children,

Whose deeds of faith

And humility

Will outshine those

Of Olivier, Roland,

And Charlemagne

To the ages of ages.

***

To read about St Foi of Conques and her unique reliquary, please visit this page:

https://southernorthodox.org/orthodox-saints-for-dixie-october/

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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!

Offsite Post: ‘Who Is Our American Giorgia Meloni?’

 

Italy is set to have a new Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and she is a conservative firebrand if ever there were one.  Enjoy a taste of one of her typical speeches:

Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death, no to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people…

Why are conservatives/revivalists in the States lacking leaders like her and Hungary’s Viktor Orban?  Why are we afflicted with vacuities like Rep. McCarthy and betrayers like Sen. Cassidy who will only offer stale, vague, focus-grouped slogans every election cycle, and then do little to implement them when actually in power?

The GOP’s ‘Commitment to America’ document is a perfect example of this.  Daniel Horowitz gives it its proper condemnation:

There is no recognition whatsoever that this is the Fourth Reich, the economic collapse is not by accident, and that we have suffered through the greatest tyranny and civilization destruction of all time. That is to say, the biggest omission from this document is COVID fascism. It’s as if the past two and a half years never occurred. There was no throwaway line even nodding toward banning all mandates, much less reviewing the genocide of gain-of-function research, dangerous vaccines, ending the PREP Act and immunity for pharma, and making sure this can never happen again. There was no recognition that the inflation is a result of the policies from COVID, which the GOP collaborated with. There is also no acknowledgement that the energy crisis is not just about inflation, but about building on the COVID lockdowns and social control to impose an equivalent scenario with energy and food.

The problem seems to have something to do with an oversized focus on the individual here in the U.S.  Individual freedom has become such an obsession that we have forgotten about our corresponding duties to the communities we are a part of.

For the strong individual to exist, the corresponding institutions and communities and traditions that put restraints on the individual’s will must become weak – family, Church, trade guild or union, neighborhood, respect for past generations, concern for those generations not yet born, etc.  The exception is government.  It must grow very mighty indeed to help free the individual from the authority of ancient customs and institutions.  Bruce Frohnen explains a little of how this has unfolded in the U.S.:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2022/09/garlington-who-is-our-american-giorgia-meloni/.

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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!