Grow Your Own Cancer Fighter

Rather than simply growing grass in our yards per the wishes of Monsanto and other Big Ag and Big Pharma corporations, there are many better options.  One of them is to grow cancer-fighting herbs, like feverfew:

An herb discussed below caused a big upset a few years back when researchers realized it could be more successful at killing cancerous cells than an expensive chemo drug. Since that discovery, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has fast-tracked the plant compounds to be used in pharmaceutical meds. Want to know how to get yours from the natural source without paying Big Pharma for their patents? Read on.

Feverfew (tanacetum parthenium), also known as wild chamomile, is no small herb. Its properties are so powerful it has been shown to outperform anti-leukemia chemo drugs. The active ingredient in feverfew, which is responsible for much of its healing power, is known as Parthenolide.

Until recently, feverfew was used by herbalists primarily as a treatment for migraine headaches and nausea, but it turns out that the extent of its true healing powers were being overlooked.

 . . .

Source:  Christina Sarich, ‘Feverfew Plant Compound Beats Cancer and Chemo’, Natural Society, http://naturalsociety.com/feverfew-parthenolide-cancer-chemo-patent/, posted 1 Nov. 2014, accessed 9 Jan. 2015

Christian Town Layout

From the dangers of Agenda 21

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21

to the more humane visions of the Congress for the New Urbanism

http://www.cnu.org/

and Philip Bess

http://www.thursdayassociates.net/

town planning is getting a fair amount of attention.  Father Andrew Phillips, however, in his 2003 essay ‘Sacral Town-Planning’ gave us some of the best touchstones for beginning any new town development.  Here is some of what he had to say.

Introduction

Modern cities are planned not around churches, shrines and crosses, but around temples of commerce, shopping shrines and the car-idol. It was not always so. Contemporary society has descended a long way from the aisles and galleries of churches with squares for religious processions, to the 'new, improved' aisles and mercantile galleries of today with their automobile processions. For there was once such a thing as Orthodox, i.e. Christian, town-planning. What was it?

The Sacred City In Orthodox Russia

The greatest expert on Orthodox town-planning in Russia was undoubtedly the late historian and theologian Fr Lev Lebedev (1939-1997). In a sequence of well-written articles, first published in the 1970's and 1980's in samizdat and smuggled to the West, he described how the plans of all the great mediæval cities, for example, Moscow, Kiev, Novgorod, Arkhangelsk, Sergiev Posad, are all sacred designs in theology. They embody the circle of God's completeness, the triangle of the Holy Trinity, the centrality of the Cross, and the outline of the Heavenly Jerusalem which St John the Divine describes at the end of the Book of Revelation. Thus, in Moscow, the church of St John the Divine is outside the city walls, for he bears witness to the City. Inside the walls, the Kremlin, or stronghold, contains churches dedicated to the Mother of God, the Archangel Michael and the Twelve Apostles - Heaven and Earth meet. Outside it, 'Red Square', actually meaning 'Beautiful Square', was in fact a giant open-air church. Its altar was the well-known church of the Protecting Veil (usually miscalled St Basil's church)1. Thus the whole city-centre was a sacred ecclesial space, its altar a church-building. Russian city walls usually had twelve gates, again to correspond to the description in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 21, 21). In this way the home-cities of Orthodox Russians were images of the Heavenly Jerusalem, images of the world to come in the here and now, Heaven on Earth.

 . . . in the early, i.e. Orthodox, West, the same sort of town-planning operated, for example in Gaul, northern Italy and England [as in Russia--W. G.]. After all, when so many Bishops, Kings, Queens, together with the mass of common people, devoted themselves to the Church, how could their Faith not be reflected in the cities and towns of the new Orthodox world in which they lived? Let us look at examples of town-planning from Orthodox England to illustrate our point.

The Sacred City in Orthodox England

Most English towns were laid out in a circle or ellipse, symbolising the Unity and Eternity of the Holy Trinity. Within the circle, however, there was a cross which drew together the circumference of the circle around a central preaching cross or high cross. This usually marked where the Gospel had first been preached in the town by monks, who had then proceeded to baptise townsfolk in the nearest river or stream. Such preaching-crosses, usually set high on steps and sometimes very ancient, can be seen in countless villages all over England and even in many Roman-founded cities, for instance, in Canterbury, York and Chester. (Nowadays, it must be said, in many places this high cross is known as a 'market cross', or else has been replaced by a twentieth-century war memorial, which sums up the history of that dark and godless age).

From the high cross, there radiated out streets, north, south, east and west. (Often they retain these same names today - East Street, West Street etc). Many of the towns founded or re-founded by King Alfred the Great illustrate this, notably Wallingford in Oxfordshire or Chichester in Sussex. However, earlier towns like Bristol and Ipswich show the same pattern. Smaller settlements, even villages, are similar, although they have no defensive walls.

Let us look at two examples of cities in England, one Roman, the other post-Roman in origin, to see this sacred topography in reality.

Canterbury

Where better to start this brief survey than in the City of England's Mother-Cathedral?

Originally a Roman town, Canterbury already had elliptical Roman walls encircling the river before its Christianisation. Taking the original Roman roads, but significantly deviating from them, the first English Orthodox used them to make the sign of the cross over the City, thus quartering it. At the centre of the cross there used to stand not a preaching-cross, but All Saints church, thus making clear the sacred nature and goal of Canterbury - to make a land holy. To the south-west of the cross of streets there used to stand St Helen's church, thus bearing witness to the Cross, as still does Holy Cross church to the north-west of the cross of streets. The eastern quarter of Canterbury, facing Jerusalem, is particularly sacred - within it stands Christchurch, the Cathedral of the Saviour, Mother-Church of All England. Here the high altar is raised up, a model of Golgotha, with chapels beneath it mirroring the topography of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The chapel directly underneath the altar is called the chapel of Adam's Skull, just as at Golgotha. Outside the walls, to the north, stood the church of St John the Divine, keeping watch for the Second Coming. Outside the walls also stood the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the cemetery church) and St Martin's, the original Roman church. Also outside the city walls, to the north-west stands guard the church dedicated to St Dunstan, a beloved Archbishop, who was seen as the Protector of the City.

 . . .

Conclusion

As Orthodox Christianity was gradually lost in England, so the art of Orthodox town-planning was also lost. During the 'Renaissance' (i.e. the rebirth of paganism), Western Europe became obsessed with the rational logic of the 'Classics'. 'Enlightened' in the eighteenth century by heathenism, it began planning towns in God-excluding grids or curves. The few churches that were built took the form of heathen temples. This was a reflection of the mechanistic rationalism of the age and an obvious throwback to Roman paganism. Not so much post-Christian as pre-Christian. Not so much progress as regress. The cross gave way to squares, rows and crescents. The Victorian system went even further, building rows of regimented houses for its serfs, together with a scattering of mock-mediæval churches where the working classes could be made obedient with bigoted puritan moralism.

In our own age, having taken the cross away from the city centre and ruined its sacred geography, intruding buildings disproportionate, especially in height, today's cities and their centres are dying, boarded up or vandalised. For, naturally, without the cross, 'the centre cannot hold', to quote T. S. Eliot. The masses have fled to the temples of commerce out of town where they can worship in the aisles of soulless consumerism. Here man, reduced by Darwin and Freud to an animal with mere bodily aspirations and bodily functions, can worship the gods of bread and circuses, just like the pagan Romans. That was the society that people wanted, now they have it. Whether the still-present memory of the Orthodox past can make a difference or not remains to be seen. But many of the witnesses to past values still stand. Let those who have eyes to see, see.

Source:  Orthodox England, Volume 7, Issue 2, posted 1 Dec. 2003, http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/v07i2.htm, accessed 26 Dec. 2014

Wireless Phones and Cancer

The evidence of a link continues to grow:

(NaturalNews) They say there's only two things constant in this life: death and taxes. But a third viable contender might be cancer, which an extensive cohort of scientific research has found is caused by prolonged exposure to radiation from cell phones and their associated communication towers.

Contrary to what you may have heard in the mainstream news, mobile phones and the antennas that allow them to communicate emit powerful, microwave radio frequencies capable of penetrating our bodies and cells. And constant exposure to these frequencies, according to the science, appears to be one of the leading causes of cancer in the modern age.

 . . .

Extensive research into the connection between cell phone radiation and cancer has linked this ubiquitous modern technology to two main types of brain tumors: gliomas and acoustic neuromas. Information compiled by the ElectricSense.com has confirmed the following findings with regard to cell phones and brain cancer.

1) An independent study commissioned by U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile found that cell phone radiation directly initiates and promotes the formation of cancer: HESE-Project.org.^[PDF]

 . . .

[Several more ensamples follow--W. G.]

Source:  Ethan A. Huff, ‘The Science Is Conclusive: Mobile Phones Cause Cancer’, http://www.naturalnews.com/048112_cell_phone_electromagnetic_radiation_cancer.html, posted 26 Dec. 2014, accessed 2 Jan. 2015

Protecting the South from Her Enemies

When Father Cleopa Ilie (reposed 1998) was abbot of Sihastria Monastery in Romania, he and his monks were, for a time, continually beset by a gang of outlaws.  Seeking help for their situation, he inquired of Bishop Valerian of Neamts.  The Bishop’s answer?  Read the Akathist Hymn to the Protection of the Mother of God once each week and the entire Psalter each day.  This was done by Abbot Cleopa (and continues to this day at the monastery); the outlaws were brought to justice; and Sihastria ‘has spiritually flourished through the intercessions of the Most Pure Theotokos’ (Archimandrite Ioanichie Balan, Shepherd of Souls, St Herman Press, 2007, pgs. 96-7, quote at 97).

Now, if this is what was necessary to deliver Sihastria Monastery from a band of ordinary outlaws, it is at least just as necessary for us in the South to follow this cycle of readings and chantings if we are to be delivered from those who are attacking us - we who are afflicted by social engineers intent on reshaping man and the world to conform to the image of their master, the devil.

Let there be no delay!  According to the abilities of each, read from the Akathist to the Protection of the Mother of God and from the Psalms every day. 

May our merciful and loving God and Savior Jesus Christ grant the South deliverance from our enemies and spiritual rebirth through the prayers of His Most Holy Mother!  Amen!

The Akathist Hymn may be downloaded here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060716022749/http://oholy.net/VeilAkathistPrint.html

(Icon available from this web site: http://www.bostonmonks.com/product_info.php/cPath/27_49/products_id/149)

‘Christ Is Born! Glorify Him!’ - Holy Nativity 2014

A beautiful hymn celebrating our Lord’s coming to the earth in the flesh:

O Bethlehem prepare, Eden is opened up for all; and Ephratha, take heed, make yourselves ready and prepare; the Tree of Life has bloomed forth from the Holy Virgin; and from her holy womb, spiritual Paradise, wherein is found to grow the divine, rescuing Tree, and as we eat thereof we shall all live, and shall not die as did Adam. For Christ is born now to raise the image that had fallen beforehand.

Source:  ‘Apolytikion of the Forefeast of the Nativity of Christ’, Nancy Takis, trans., 2011, http://www.newbyz.org/nativity_christ_forefeast_troparion.pdf, accessed 22 Dec. 2014

And a sermon given by St John of Kronstadt commemorating this wondrous event begins in this way:

The Word became flesh; that is, the Son of God, co-eternal with God the Father and with the Holy Spirit, became human – having become incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. O, wondrous, awesome and salvific mystery! The One Who had no beginning took on a beginning according to humanity; the One without flesh assumed flesh. God became man – without ceasing to be God. The Unapproachable One became approachable to all, in the aspect of an humble servant. Why, and for what reason, was there such condescension [shown] on the part of the Creator toward His transgressing creatures – toward humanity which, through an act of its own will had fallen away from God, its Creator?

It was by reason of a supreme, inexpressible mercy toward His creation on the part of the Master, Who could not bear to see the entire race of mankind – which, He, in creating, had endowed with wondrous gifts – enslaved by the devil and thus destined for eternal suffering and torment.

And the Word became flesh!...in order to make us earthly beings into heavenly ones, in order to make sinners into saints; in order to raise us up from corruption into incorruption, from earth to heaven; from enslavement to sin and the devil – into the glorious freedom of children of God; from death – into immortality, in order to make us sons of God and to seat us together with Him upon the Throne as His royal children.

O, boundless compassion of God! O, inexpressible wisdom of God! O, great wonder, astounding not only the human mind, but the angelic [mind] as well!

 . . .

Source:  ‘The Word Became Flesh’, http://www.orthodox.net/nativity/nativity-sjok-2.html, accessed 26 Dec. 2014

Welcoming Winter - 2014

A poem by Dixie’s Scottish cousin Robert Burns.

‘Up in the Morning Early’

Cauld blaws the wind frae east to west,

   The drift is driving sairly;

Sae loud and shrill’s I hear the blast,

   I’m sure it’s winter fairly.

Up in the morning’s no for me,

   Up in the morning early;

When a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,

   I’m sure its winter fairly.

The birds sit chittering in the thorn,

   A’ day they fare but sparely;

And lang’s the night frae e’en to morn,

   I’m sure it’s winter fairly.

Up in the morning’s no for me,

   Up in the morning early;

When a’ the hills are cover’d wi’ snaw,

   I’m sure its winter fairly.

Source:  Scottish Poetry Library, http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/morning-early, accessed 22 Dec. 2014

Technology and the Creation in Southern Life and Thought - Part III

V.  The Way of the Saints

The foregoing are much better approaches to the creation and technology than those of posthumanists and their fellow-travellers, but now we must speak of ‘a more excellent way’ (I Cor. 12:31 KJV), the way of the Saints of the Church, those great works of Christ (John 10:37-8) (St Nikolai Velimirovich, ‘A Hundred Points of Ljubostinja’, Missionary Letters: Part 3, ch. 99, p. 187), who, having purified their souls and bodies of every defilement of sin, bear within themselves the grace of the Holy Spirit in an extraordinary measure, which manifests itself in sundry ways for the healing of man and the world:  curing illnesses, receiving prophecies, casting out demons, restoring an harmonious bond with the animals, and so on. 

The enemies of God try to overcome the effects of sin - disease, injury, death, famine, earthquake, storm, and other catastrophes; and all the enmity between the creation and man - through human and demonic knowledge and the technology that comes of it.  For the Orthodox Church’s saints, these have already been overcome by the grace of God and by their ascetic labors in cooperation with His grace, as we see in particular in some of the lives of the English and Celtic saints, the Holy Fathers and Mothers of the South in flesh and blood and in the faith. 

We see it in St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne’s (‘Holy Island’) miraculously harvesting a great store of barley out of season (St Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, p. 258), in the winds, sea, and storms obeying his words and prayers (St Bede, Life of Saint Cuthbert, pgs. 62-3, 72-3, 89-90), in his healings of the sick (e.g., Life, pgs. 84-6), in the kindness rendered him by the otters who warmed him with their breath and dried him with their fur after he spent the night praying in the cold ocean (pgs. 57-8).

We see it in the obedience of a flock of geese to St Werburga of Hanbury, and in her ability to understand a complaint of theirs (Vladimir Moss, Saints of England’s Golden Age, pgs. 167-8).  We see it in the staff of St Etheldreda, which she had placed in the ground one night during a journey while she slept, bearing leaves and growing into an ash tree (p. 160).  In the help St Chad of Lichfield received from an hart in converting the Prince-Martyrs Wulfade and Rufine to the Christian Faith (pgs. 111-6).  Likewise, St Cainnech (Kenneth) of Aghaboe developed such a loving bond with a stag that he held his Bible in his antlers while St Cainnech read from it (Dmitry Lapa, ‘St Kenneth, Abbot of Aghaboe in Ireland’, Pravoslavie.ru).

We see it furthermore in St Colman of Kilmacduagh’s close friendship with a rooster, mouse, and fly (Lapa, ‘St Colman of Kilmacduagh in Ireland, Wonder Worker’, Pravoslavie.ru).  In St Columba of Iona, who foresaw future events (St Adomnán, The Life of St Columba, pgs. 112-52), whose prayers and blessings brought forth water from rock, purified a cursed well, calmed a storm at sea (pgs. 161-3), brought a boy back from the dead (pgs. 179-80), kept the wheels on a chariot despite the linchpins being missing (p. 199), forbad the snakes on Iona to harm man and cattle (pgs 177, 225), conversed with holy angels, and shone at times with the brightness of the uncreated glory of God (pgs. 206-31).

Hundreds of years ago, in the supposed ‘dark ages’ of mankind, Paradise was restored, and Heaven joined the earth (to the extent that these are possible before the general resurrection and our Lord’s coming again) in the lives of numerous saints in the Irish and British Isles.  This they did without much technology or the proud mind of man, but rather through contrary ways:  through almsgiving, humility, love, prayer and fasting, making their abodes in forests, swamps, caves, and in simple stone cells on harsh and forbidding islands, and constant remembrance of God - by which they attained holiness, became pure temples of the Holy Spirit, angel-like men who overcame the passions and surpassed their human nature, and tasted of the life which is to come. 

They are the pinnacle of human achievement, and neither the occult dream of man merged with machine nor any other such devilish monstrosity will be able to surpass the saints in their greatness.

VI.  ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit:  for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5:3 KJV).

Some measure of technology will always be present in the fallen world.  A house, a shirt, a walking stick:  These all come from the mind, will, and hands of man.  So long as we remember our proper end, to seek the Kingdom of Heaven through the difficult labor imposed on us by God after the Fall, no harm will come of our humble use of tools and skills and of the creation of which we are a part.  But when Satanic pride enters our hearts, when we cast aside God’s grace for deification on our own terms, then technology becomes a devouring, destructive beast.

The Orthodox Church calls all the creation to herself for healing, for union with God: 

The history of the world is a history of the Church which is the mystical foundation of the world.  . . .

The world was created from nothing by the sole will of God—this is its origin.  It was created in order to participate in the fullness of the divine life—this is its vocation.  It is called to make this union a reality in liberty, in the free harmony of the created will with the will of God—this is the mystery of the Church inherent in creation.  Throughout all the vicissitudes which followed upon the fall of humanity and the destruction of the first Church—the Church of paradise—the creation preserved the idea of its vocation and with it the idea of the Church, which was at length to be fully realized after Golgotha and after Pentecost, as the Church properly so-called, the indestructible Church of Christ.  From that time on, the created and contingent universe has borne within itself a new body, possessing an uncreated and limitless plenitude which the world cannot contain.  This new body is the Church; the plenitude which it contains is grace, the profusion of the divine energies by which and for which the world was created.  Outside of the Church they act as determining exterior causes, as the constant willing of God by which all being is created and preserved.  It is only in the Church, within the unity of the body of Christ, that they are conferred, given to men by the Holy Spirit; it is in the Church that the energies appear as the grace in which created beings are called to union with God.  The entire universe is called to enter within the Church, to become the Church of Christ, that it may be transformed after the consummation of the ages, into the eternal Kingdom of God.  Created from nothing, the world finds its fulfilment in the Church, where the creation acquires an unshakable foundation in the accomplishment of its vocation (Lossky, Mystical Theology, pgs. 111, 112-3).

If we in the South will humble ourselves and enter into the life of the Orthodox Church and begin the journey toward the ‘consummation of the ages’, we will find that harmony with the creation that our agrarian spirit has expressed a longing for in plantation farm, horse and rider, many a poem, story, and essay, and other ways besides: 

The Christ-like personality, led by Christ to the mysteries of the world of God, sees the Logos and the logic of the universe and every creation as coming from the head of the Creator.  When it is mirrored in the mirror of the soul of such a personality, the creation of sickness and of corruption rises into responsible impeccability and beauty.  Within the Christ-like soul is revealed the final mystery of Creation because it sympathizes with and loves Creation.  The loved always reveals his mystery to that one who loves.  The Christ-like personality observes Creation and nature not as wild predators which must cruelly subdue their prey but instead as weak creatures upon which mercy, compassion, and love must be shown.  For the Christ-like personality, Creation is not matter without a soul to which we must behave with cruelty, audacity, and exploitation, but as a priceless mystery of God upon which we must show compassion and mercy through prayer and love.  “Love every creature of God”, says Dostoievski, “and all the creatures together and every crumb.  Love the animals, love the plants, love every creature.  If you love every creature, you will understand once, then without effort you will begin to understand more and more every day,” (Dostoievski, Brothers Karamazov) (St Justin Popovich, Dostoievski, Belgrade, 1940, quoted in Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ, pgs. 206-7).

The complete severing of the creation from God by Protestant and Roman Catholic theologies, based as they are on the metaphysics of Aristotle, St Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, which reject the distinction in God between His energies and His essence, will never bring forth the full fruits of the Southern agrarian vision (see Philip Sherrard, ch. 2, ‘Christian Theology and the Eclipse of Man’, The Rape of Man and Nature, pgs. 42-62).  These theologies will bring either atheism (God is completely unknowable in his transcendent essence) or pantheism (the creation is divine, for it partakes of God’s essence).  Only life in the Orthodox Church, which alone has kept safe the doctrine of God’s nearness and knowability in his uncreated energies (grace) that fill all the creation, and his otherness and unknowability in his essence (Jay Dyer, ‘How the West Became Atheist’, Soul of the East). 

The lives of our Holy Fathers and Mothers testify to this.  As befits us as Southerners, let us be obedient and pious children toward their priceless teachings and ensamples.

Works Cited

Saint Adomnán.  The Life of St Columba.  Sharpe, Richard, trans.  New York, Ny.: Penguin Books, 1995.

Saint Bede.  Ecclesiastical History of the English People.  Sherley-Price, Leo, and R. E. Latham, trans.  New York, Ny.: Penguin Books, 1990 [1955].

--.  Life of Saint Cuthbert in The Age of Bede.  Farmer, D. H., and J. F. Webb, trans.  Farmer, D. H., ed.  New York, Ny.: Penguin Books, 2004 [1965].

Dyer, Jay.  ‘How the West Became Atheist’.  Soul of the East.  13 Sept. 2014.  http://souloftheeast.org/2014/09/13/thomism-deism/  Accessed 9 Dec. 2014.

Lapa, Dmitry.  ‘St Colman of Kilmacduagh in Ireland, Wonder Worker’.  Pravoslavie.ru.  11 Nov. 2014.  http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/75046.htm  Accessed 8 Dec. 2014.

--.  ‘St Kenneth, Abbot of Aghaboe in Ireland’.  Pravoslavie.ru.  24 Oct. 2014.  http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/74549.htm  Accessed 8 Dec. 2014.

Lossky, Vladimir.  The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.  Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, trans.  Crestwood, Ny.: SVS Press, 1976 [1944].

Moss, Vladimir.  Saints of England’s Golden Age: A Collection of the Lives of Holy Men and Women Who Flourished in Orthodox Christian Britain.  Etna, Ca.: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1997.

Popovich, Saint Justin.  Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ.  3^rd ed.  Gerostergios, Asterious, et al., trans.  Belmont, Ma.: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2005.

Sherrard, Philip.  The Rape of Man and Nature: An Enquiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science.  Ipswich, Suffolk: Golgonooza Press, 1991 [1987].

Velimirovich, Saint Nikolai.  ‘A Hundred Points of Ljubostinja’.  Missionary Letters of Saint Nikolai Velimirovich: Part 3, Letters 201 - 300.  A Treasury of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality: Vol. 8.  Baltic, Hieromonk Serafim, ed. and trans.  Grayslake, Il.: New Gracanica Monastery, 2011.

By Walt Garlington