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The Right Thing For The Wrong Reason

3/16/2020

After I finished teaching what will likely end up being my last in-class lesson for the semester, I happened to bump into a familiar colleague - an economic history professor for whom I have completed some proofreading work in the past. Like most of the profs at my university, his research focuses primarily on climate change. Also like most of the profs at my university, it's hard to tell if he really believes the stuff he writes about or if he's only engages in the climate research out of necessity or expediency.

You see, nearly all the grant money my university receives from the EU is tied to climate change, which means nearly all the profs and researchers at my institution incorporate climate change into their research in some way. Most do so willingly and enthusiastically. Others make a compromise and let it slowly kill them inside. And the rest - well, it's hard to tell. My economic history colleague fell into this category for me. I never could tell if he was really onboard with the agenda or just playing along for the sake of a career.

He's younger than me, this economic history prof - mid-to-late thirties at most - and in my collaborations with him, I have found him to be a respectful and amicable fellow. We stopped to chat after we met just a short distance from the campus. It didn't take long for the birdemic shutdowns and cancellations to come up. I opined my displeasure with the whole situation, but generally kept my responses open and vague.

"I just don't get it," I told the prof. "I mean, these are extremely drastic measures to take for something like this. The way everyone is responding, you would think the virus is a million times more dangerous than it actually is."

"Yeah, I agree," the prof responded matter-of-factly. "This isn't a dangerous situation at all, yet they've shut down the world. It infuriates me to no end. If they can shut down the world for this stupidity, it means they could have shut down the world much sooner to fight the only real danger we're facing - climate change!"

I pretended to notice something out of the corner of my eye and looked away for a second. I had to. I just couldn't keep looking at him. I just couldn't.

"But they haven't. Not for climate change anyway," he continued sadly. "Their excuse? It would have hurt the economy. But they're more than willing to shut down the economy now! And for what? To save a few thousand people? Climate change is still there! That affects everyone. I hope they remember that once this virus disappears. What they're doing now is right, but it's for all the wrong reasons."

I nodded my head, muttered something about never having thought of that before, and made an excuse to end the conversation. I offered my hand to the prof in parting. He hesitated and looked at my outstretched hand for a second. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was thinking about germs. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally indulged me with a limp handshake. As I turned to leave, I pictured him rummaging through his backpack for hand sanitizer after I was out of his view.

I pondered his words as I turned the corner. "The right thing for the wrong reason."

People have a way of revealing themselves during a crisis. They really do.

Let's face it, many people not only desire totalitarianism - they positively crave it. The whole episode got me thinking about how we really are at 'the point' now.

Our civilization has toppled over the edge. They'll be no return to anything at the collective level. Something has definitely ended - something else has begun.

In my mind, the world is now officially an open-air concentration camp. The only changes we'll notice from here on in is an increasing sense of physical constriction and suffocation as the Establishment tightens the boundaries it has constructed around us through what will likely become a never-ending cascade of crises that can only be ended by doing the 'right' things.

Our only moral imperative in such a world will be to engage in all the 'wrong' things for the right reasons.

And these 'wrong' things will have to be primarily spiritual in nature.

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My Eight-Year-Old Begins Dipping Into Philosophy and Semantics

3/16/2020

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Son: Do you think a cat's meow is a nice sound?
Me: Sure. Most of the time.
Son: Yeah, I think its nice, too, but what if the cat is actually saying something not nice?
Me: What do you mean?
Son: Well, we hear a meow and we think it sounds nice, but maybe when a cat meows, it's actually saying something "Aaaarghhhhh!"

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The Only Distancing That Matters Now is System-Distancing

3/14/2020

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Social-distancing is a term used to describe the measures public health authorities and governments take in order to slow or stop the spread of a highly contagious disease. The term has become quite trendy during our current birdemic, and it has become one of the Establishment's weapons of choice during its swift and blatant imposition of totalitarian control these past few weeks.

Chances are you have been affected by at least one or, in most cases, several of these measures simultaneously in the past week or so. Very few people appear to like, understand, or support the rationale for these drastic actions, yet nearly all have passively accepted social-distancing as something that simply 'must be done'. Some people, many prominent, self-identified Christians among them, are demanding more social-distancing measures be taken.

Pundits and laymen the world over are stressing the necessity of social-distancing, but in my humble opinion the only distancing that truly matters in this place and time is System-distancing.

System-distancing involves measures taken to reduce or stop the spread of the evil System within one's own individual being and the hope that such action might help to reduce or stop the spread of the evil System in the greater world.

The extent to which people will be able to distance themselves from the System will depend on individual circumstances and individual outcomes will vary; nevertheless, I believe the effort must be made.

The most significant step any individual can take in this time and place is to sincerely acknowledge, once and for all, that the System, together with Establishment that runs it, is evil - meaning it is anti-God, anti-spiritual, anti-Truth, anti-Beauty, and anti-Goodness.

This simple acknowledgment doesn't seem like much, but it is incredibly significant. At its very core, it is the choice of good over evil; virtue over sin; truth over lies; courage over fear; reality over unreality; salvation over damnation; love over hate; and hope over despair.

Look at this way: The more we distance ourselves from the System, the closer we draw to God and Creation. Thus, this movement away is simultaneously a movement toward.

The Establishment has imposed social-distancing upon almost all of us; let's use the time wisely to distance ourselves from the Establishment and its System and close the distance between ourselves and God.

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What Are The Sources Of Your Thoughts and Motivations - Here, Now?

3/13/2020

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This question should always be at the forefront of our minds, but during times like these - times when the air around us drips with malicious psychological noise and demonic cues reinforced by the instinct to socially conform - it becomes imperative and indispensable.

To reiterate a point I have made countless times on this blog, we live in a world where the default setting is 'war all the time'. By war, I am referring primarily to spiritual war. As a result, everything we experience, either directly or vicariously, contains a spiritual element. These spiritual elements tend to play out in the material world through the attitudes, thoughts, and assumptions that fuel our actions and states of being.

The forces working against us aim to become the primary source of our thoughts and motivations. These forces appeal mainly to base emotions and false selves, and one of their objectives is to deaden our higher senses and stimulate our lower senses.

One trick is to get us to forget the spiritual in favor of the material in the seemingly rational name of well-being and survival. It's a devilish trick because it builds up a false sense of security - a false sense of security that is often only dispelled when the doom one has worked so hard to doggedly avoid becomes inescapable.

The old adage of no atheists on a crashing airplane springs to mind.

Yet doom may not come, nor must it be impending for the trick to work. In fact, the trick is far more effective if doom never really arrives because the smug, false sense of security can be sustained right until the non-doomsday end, thereby diminishing the chances of any sudden acknowledgements of error or sincere cries of repentance.

No, the trick works best if you can be convinced that you are doing the right thing, the prudent thing, the practical thing, the pragmatic thing, the responsible thing, the level-headed thing right up until the very end, whenever that end may be.

Now doing the right thing is always critical, especially during times like these, but we must be able to intuit and confirm, to the best of our ability, that the right thing we choose to do ultimately originates from thoughts and motivations inspired by the right source. If it does, we have nothing to fear. If it doesn't, then there is little chance that the right thing is really right. On the contrary, we can be assured the opposite is true.

Right thoughts and motivations leading to right action can only emerge from the right sources. Action from the wrong sources may seem right, prudent, practical, etc., but they never are, particularly from a spiritual perspective.

A little something to think about if you have recently felt the urge to load up an a year's supply of toilet paper or some other seemingly prudent notion.

What are the sources of these thoughts and motivations?

Are you certain these sources have your best interest at heart? Do they focus on crucial matters of pressing importance?

Or are they literally making an ass out of you?

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Nautical Disaster: The Best "Dream" Song By A Canadian Rock Band

3/13/2020

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I suppose songs dealing with or describing dreams could be a genre all to itself. If it were, I would posit The Tragically Hip's Nautical Disaster as the best "dream" song ever written or, at bare minimum, the best ever written by a Canadian rock band.

Yet as the title states, Nautical Disaster is more nightmare vision than dream, and the dreamscape the lyrics paint is both devastating and haunting. Though many debate the actual disaster being recounted in the song, lead singer Gord Downie apparently indicated the song dealt with the doomed German battleship Bismarck. What makes the song so eerie and unforgettable is its transition from dream to the waking world and the seamless metaphorical connection of the disaster nightmare to the end of a relationship.

The song features no chorus and can essentially be read as a prose poem or a short story, one packed with a number of memorable images and similes. Accordingly, the narrative effect remains even without the music.

I had this dream where I relished the fray and the screaming filled my head all day.
It was as though I had been spit here,
Settled in,
Into the pocket of a lighthouse on some rocky socket,
Off the coast of France, dear.

One afternoon,
Four thousand men died in the water here and five hundred more were thrashing madly as parasites might in your blood.
Now I was in a lifeboat designed for ten and ten only,
Anything that systematic would get you hated.
It's not a deal not a test nor a love of something fated.
(Death)
The selection was quick,
The crew was picked and those left in the water were kicked off our pant leg and we headed for home.

Then the dream ends when the phone rings,
You're doing alright he said it's out there most days and nights,
But only a fool would complain.
Anyway Susan, if you like,
Our conversation is as faint as a sound in my memory,
As those fingernails scratching on my hull.

But in my humble opinion, it is still only truly complete with the music.

Note added: Many dispute the Bismarck interpretation of the disaster described, mainly because the number of dead don't match the real event. Others point out the sinking of military vessels during wartime could hardly be classified as 'disasters.' Personally, I don't think a lack of connection to any real sinking makes the song less relevant or powerful. In fact, I prefer a fictitious nautical disaster in the song over any allusion to a real one.

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The Importance of Perspective

3/12/2020

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How will Western people react when the world goes from all gain no pain to, seemingly, all pain no gain?

I asked this question in a post I published a month ago. I never would have thought that it would become so pertinent a mere four weeks later - yet it has.

I'm not sure how the current crisis will play out, but it is becoming rather evident that the world is going to experience a significant amount of pain over the next few weeks or months (at the very least).

So? How will people in the West react to this challenge?

How are you going to react to this challenge?

I'm not sure what others are doing, but I am focusing primarily on keeping the proper perspective.

I don't want to be a scaremonger, but the material world will most certainly recede in the coming weeks and months. I couldn't tell you to what extent, but I'm convinced no one will work their way through this without experiencing some degree of material loss and discomfort. Considering all the cancellations and closures, it has become practically inevitable. Which prompts a second question from that earlier post.

Will Western people be able to withstand economic disruptions, extended periods of unemployment, a possible increase in civic violence, and a meaningful decline in the overall comfort and quality of their material lives in the short term for the promise of something better, greater, and freer in the long-term?

Above all else, we must not lose perspective. Whatever happens over the coming weeks or months or beyond, we simply must not lost perspective.

We must not give into despair. We must not surrender to fear. We must not abandon ourselves to selfishness.

We must remember love. We must show courage. We must be willing to sacrifice if need be.

Will Western people gratefully sacrifice comfort and pleasure and welcome material pain in order to align their societies with Reality for spiritual gain? Or will Western people buckle under the physical disruptions and material deprivations the global elite unleash and, consequently, willingly surrender to the global agenda in an effort to regain the comforts and the pleasures they have lost?

I believe the coming weeks and months will be a period of intense learning for all of us. We have all been enrolled in a crash course - perhaps the most important crash course we could ever take.

We are meant to experience whatever is coming. It is part of our purpose and destiny. As such, good can arise from whatever we confront as long as we maintain the proper perspective.

We will be faced with many choices in the coming weeks and months.

We must pay attention and ensure we make the right ones.

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Attachment And Perspective

3/9/2020

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Christ and the Rich Young Ruler, Heinrich Hofmann, 1889

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Listen All Y'All, It's A Sabotage

3/8/2020

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I've been up to my neck in translation jobs and other work these past few weeks, which means I haven't had much time to really ruminate about the spiralling "non-crisis crisis" or the "crisis that shouldn't be crisis" or whatever you could call the utterly irrational hysteria currently gripping the world.

A penfriend recently referred to it as a "shamdemic", which I find both clever and fitting. Call it what you will, something definitely appears to be brewing - something that will likely translate into some fairly seismic long-term shifts in our world.

Last week, for example, I was rather amused to find my local grocery store had all but run out of flour, rice, and other dry goods. Yesterday I was in a furniture store with my family purchasing a couch (we haven't had one since we bought our house four years ago). As I was paying for the couch, I noticed a little sign informing customers that some furniture items have been suspended due to supply chain problems originating in China.

This did not leave a deep impression on me as I stood at the counter, but after I arrived home I got to thinking about the economic implications of that little sign I had seen. The current global financial and economic system strikes me as sophisticated and complex, yet fragile and delicate. Everything depends on everything else. There appears to be very little margin for error. A small, seemingly insignificant problem could easily ripple across the whole network - become amplified and magnified. Set of a chain reaction. Topple dominos.

So sophisticated and complex. Yet so fragile and delicate.

And the powers that be seem quite intent on bringing it down. Now. I couldn't tell you to what degree or for what duration, but the way the hysteria is spinning out of control indicates that this might be the start of something big.

And over what? Over something that, in my uneducated opinion, should not even be making the news.

Yet there it is.

I am no economist, but I know enough about the voodoo our current witchdoctors have concocted to know that most of what accounts for the global economy is built on ravenous consumption fueled by Himalayan heaps of debt. I know enough about personal finance to understand that the average Westerner is one or two missed paychecks away from catastrophe. I know enough about business to comprehend that with the exception of small, family-run enterprises, no corporation on the planet will ever use its vast profits to help itself sail over stormy seas.

And against this backdrop, they have decided to terrorize and slowly shutdown the world. The consumption economy begins hemorrhaging the second consumers slow down. And consumers are being slowed down. By what? By something that shouldn't have even made the news. They are sabotaging the System they so painstakingly designed and profited from. The question is, to what end?

On one hand, I am making attempts to see the possible positive side of these rather baffling developments, but its hard to see a positive side when such blatant sabotage is clearly at play.

The purposive pursuit to end something usually indicates a desire to start something new. I feel no kinship for or affiliation to our current System. It is clearly an obstacle. A barrier. It needs to be dismantled and sent to the scrap yard in order for something better to emerge. But the dismantling I am seeing now will unlikely lead to anything better. More likely, it will lead to something worse.

And that is a possibility we must consider. A possibility I must consider, and will consider, the moment I get these translations done because I simply refuse to be swept up in this stupid tsunami engulfing the globe.

In the meantime, I am keeping my eyes open to every possibility, but I don't waste any time worrying or despairing about it.

Let them sabotage their System - but don't let them sabotage you.

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The EU's Apparent 180 On Mass Migration

3/7/2020

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I frankly don't know what to make of the EU's apparent change of will regarding its external borders, but it seems to want no part of Turkey's attempt to flood the continent with migrants. The sudden shift in the EU's rhetoric concerning mass migration and external borders is so extreme it verges on schizophrenic.

I'm sure the coming weeks and months will reveal much. In the meantime, I would welcome any thoughts on the issue.

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Since The World Appears To Be Ending

3/6/2020

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I thought a little ray of sunshine from Chet Baker might in order . . .

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Ebb and Flow

3/5/2020

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We like to believe our mortal lives our linear - a simple straight line beginning with birth and ending with death. I suppose this is true, at least as far as time is concerned. A steady march forward, all to the beat of a silent, invisible metronome.

Yet within this linear framework our lives are anything but straight lines. I imagine most lines are jagged, marked with the fluctuations of sharp upturns and downturns. Some lines inevitably curl and circle back or get caught in feedback loops where everything just keeps going round and round. Others level off for a stretch and run parallel with the straight track time keeps. I am sure some lines reach a certain point and just stop - frozen in a past that seems like a never-ending present while time continues its relentless beeline into the future regardless.

So time is linear and it measures our lives, but our lives are anything but linear. Trace the horizontal and you'll see certain patterns emerge. One mine is ebb and flow - a coming and going. A firm forward movement followed by a slow, steady withdrawal.

The past few years have been flow years, but I can feel the advance has lost all of its momentum. The edge of the wave has stopped and is now suspended; waiting for some force to propel it farther. But the force that pushed the wave this far has dissipated while the opposite force beckoning the wave to return has rapidly gathered strength.

I expect that over the next year or so, my life-line will appear to be moving backwards - in the direction opposite to and away from time. It sounds counterproductive, and sometimes it feels counterproductive, but it is anything but.

Although ebbs resemble retreats, they are actually times of renewal and regeneration - a slow and steady gathering of the energy needed to initiate the next flow.

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More Than A Thousand Psychologists or Theologians Ever Could

3/4/2020

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My father's wife was diagnosed with lung cancer shortly after my wife and I moved back to Canada from New York City in 2011. My wife's pregnancy inspired the move home. Neither of us could envisage raising a child in the Big Apple, and we both wanted to be closer to family when the child was born.

My father and his wife - my parents divorced when I was eighteen and my father eventually remarried a decade later - graciously allowed us to stay with them until we found work and could establish a place of our own. Though living at home again after so many years felt somewhat strange, I must confess that it was nice to be among family after nearly a decade away. In essence, we were happy to be home, and the anticipated arrival of my son filled the summer days with sweetness and joy.

Like most diagnoses, the diagnosis my father's wife received during that summer came as a shock. Dismay and sorrow quickly tainted the sweetness and joy. My father's wife battled against the disease with all the strength and optimism she could summon. My father, for his part, channeled the bulk of his time and energy into supporting her in every way he could. Whenever the four of us were together, we all spoke encouragingly and optimistically about chances and odds, but when we retired for the night, the hushed and somber whispers of reality filled our rooms.

My son was born a few weeks before Christmas and his arrival brought some cheer to an otherwise cheerless season. The arrival of new life briefly eclipsed the shadow of gradual death. For a few short weeks we were granted a reprieve, but it didn't last. Rather than provide improvement, the treatments my father's wife endured only served to exacerbate the cancer in her lungs. Some time in the New Year it began to spread through her body like spilled black ink. Her condition worsened in the most heartbreaking and unoriginal manner possible - gradually, then suddenly.

And through it all my father was there beside her. It pains me to consider how agonizing it must have been for him to watch the person he loved fade and wither before his eyes. At how excruciating it must have been to know he could do nothing more than provide comfort. At how harrowing it must have been to feel powerlessness to the point of pain.

Not that he spoke of these things much. True, he confided in me every now and then and sometimes hinted at the torment that was silently tearing him apart, but he never showed it. He remained steadfast and indefatigable, even during her last days at home during which he had to physically carry her every time she needed to leave the bed.

On a few occasions, I wondered how I would cope under similar circumstances, but merely attempting to imagine my own wife in the same situation proved too difficult. I assured myself that I would act as solidly as my father was acting, but I timidly doubted that my well of strength ran as deep as his.

How easy it would be to succumb to weakness; to resentment; to despair. How easy it would be to reach for the bottle, or pills, or something worse. How easy it would be to lash out - to shake an impotent Learean fist of rage at the stormy skies. How easy it would be to take a bad situation and make it worse. Yes, it would be all too easy. I imagine the temptation to give in would be perpetual.

Yet my father never gave in.

My father received little in the way of formal academic education. Nonetheless, he is a clever and resourceful man. He had trained to be a chef when he was a young man, but eventually taught himself to build houses. He rarely goes to church and barely ever mentions God, yet he is firmly rooted in something that extends beyond the material. My father possesses little formal knowledge of psychology or theology, but his attitude and actions during those ten months demonstrated that he knew more about the human mind and spirit than a thousand psychologists or theologians ever could.

My father would probably have a difficult time articulating the theory of why he never gave in during those ten months, but his weakness in theory is overshadowed by his strength in practice. He just intuitively and innately understood the art of not giving in. Put another way, during those ten months, he never talked the talk. He never uttered a word about picking up suffering and bearing it. Not a breath about being a good person - one who refuses to worsen suffering. Regardless, when the time came, he proved he could walk the walk. He picked up his suffering; he bore it; he remained a good person; he did not intensify the suffering.

Not even after it was all over and he was left alone with a cruel and undeserved void that penetrated the very essence of his being.

Unlike my father, I received a formal academic education, but in those ten months following the diagnosis of his wife's cancer, my father taught me more about the human mind and spirit than a thousand psychologists or theologians ever could.

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First Day of Spring

3/4/2020

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Is officially still a little more than two weeks away, but here in Hungary the temperatures have turned mild and the trees have begun budding. These first signs of spring coaxed a musical memory from the deep recesses of my mind - a strange little tune called "First Day of Spring" by a strange little, and practically unknown, Canadian band, the Gandharvas.

I have never really been obsessed with popular music, but I suppose I was somewhat lucky to have been a teenager/young adult during the late eighties and nineties when grunge and alternative rock bands were all the rage. I say lucky because the bulk of grunge and alternative rock at least resembled music, unlike the prefabricated, cookie-cutter, synthesized pop pablum permeating the popular music scene today. Grunge and alternative bands played their own instruments and wrote their own songs, which is more than can be said for many current chart-toppers.

On top of that, much of the work produced in the grunge and alternative genre of the late-eighties and nineties was quite creative and, occasionally, original. Wholesome? Not always? Uplifting? Rarely. Harmful? Perhaps. But at least it was creative. Sometimes it was even sincere.

In any event, The Gandharvas were a Canadian alternative band from London, Ontario who, like most Canadian bands, did not achieve notable success or fame beyond the borders of their vast country. I don't know much about them. Nor am I particularly interested in finding out much about them. As far as I know, they disbanded in 2000 after the grunge/alternative scene began to wane. Nevertheless, they did write some interesting songs, with First Day of Spring being chief among them.

The song is essentially a soft melodic build-up ending in a crashing cacophony crescendo - sort of like a wave building up before crashing on the shore. For reasons I can't explain, I've always liked the song. I am rather fond of the video and its awakening imagery as well. Appropriately enough, the song usually bubbles to the surface of my memory toward the end of winter, when I give it a couple of plays before I allow it to recede back into my memory for another year.

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A Brief Review of Remember the Creator by William Wildblood

3/2/2020

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Reviewing a book like William Wildblood's Remember The Creator is no easy task. The difficulty does not stem from any mixed feelings or perceived flaws in the book. On the contrary, Wildblood's work left nothing but positive impressions in my mind; and the clean, elegant writing style rendered even the most complex of spiritual and religious subjects comprehensible and engaging.

To begin with, Wildblood possesses the exceptional ability to tackle sophisticated topics in a simple manner. And he achieves this without sacrificing profound insights. This in itself makes Remember the Creator a rare and refreshing book.

In addition, Wildblood's focus on truth is steeped in wisdom and sincerity. You will not find any convoluted logic or weak argumentation here. Nor will you encounter esoteric waffle nestled in confusing rhetorical flourishes that require a degree in theology to unravel. What you will find instead is a measured, yet earnest and astute appeal to the senses, reason, and faith. Wildblood motivates the reader to think widely and deeply about a range of religious and spiritual issues without alienating or distancing the reader in any way.

If I were forced to reduce my thoughts about Remember The Creator to a single phrase, I would, rather enthusiastically, affix the stale and unoriginal "must read" moniker to the book. Remember The Creator really is a "must read" for the simple reason that it tackles the ultimate problem of our time and place - the problem of a world that has forgotten God. Within the context of this bleak and barren landscape, Wildblood's firm, determined, and convincing reminder to remember the creator arrives like a much-needed rain blessing our scorched and parched soil.

Remember The Creator is a solid book and, as paradoxical as it sounds, it is this solidity that makes the book so difficult to review. This difficulty is due, in part, to the nature of the book itself - that is, it is a volume of essays. Each essay is a polished gem that easily stands on its own, but they are most effective when taken together and treated as a whole. As a whole, the book addresses and develops an overarching theme - one that is both crucial and pertinent to our own time and place - remembering the reality of God.

Part of the book explores the validity and claims of New Age and non-Western spiritual assumptions and approaches. Though Wildblood finds truth in many of these approaches, he respectfully and non-disparagingly concludes that they pale in comparison to the truth Christ offers. In other words, Buddhist and Advaita doctrines contain truth, but Wildblood holds the truth of Christianity as truer.

Of course, Wildblood refers here to real, essential Christianity, not the inadequate, over-wordly, spiritually-faded Christianity most traditional Christian institutions currently promulgate. Our task, Wildblood contends, is to re-establish a personal connection to this essence - the only essence that speaks to both the transcendent and the immanent aspects of our religious consciousness and, conclusively, the full potential of our spiritual development and progress.

In a recent blog post on his Meeting the Masters blog, Wildblood offers the following reflections on his book:

My second book Remember the Creator was an attempt to come to terms with these ideas and demonstrate that Christ is the foundation of truth and that what he taught takes us more deeply into the mind and heart of God than anything else. His life shows us the path to follow if we would fulfil God's will for us. This is not to escape creation for an uncreated absolute of perfect stillness and peace but to transform creation and raise it up, through the medium of our own self, into the light of God. The key to this is an understanding that suffering is not a universal evil from which we need to escape but a means of spiritual redemption through transforming it by self-sacrifice in love. Other spiritual approaches talk of love because they must but it is only through the path laid out by Christ that true spiritual love can be known. Without Christ we might have a generalised sort of compassion but we would not have love.

Several essays in Remember The Creator deal with this "generalised sort of compassion", a phrase that well reflects the confused zeitgeist of our times. In these essays, Wildblood demonstrates and elucidates a keen sensitivity to and understanding of why people choose to forget and reject God; but he minces no words about the wrongness of such attitudes.

He tackles sophistry and fallacy head-on and reveals the errors in both by astutely referring back to basic principles. These basic principles, Wildblood contends, are not only vital, but also utterly undeniable. Forgetting these basic principles or, worse, intentionally rejecting them at the individual and collective level is the root cause of so much of our current malaise - a malaise that can be only be remedied by remembering God, who is the basic principle from which all other principles stem.

What makes Remember The Creator so heartening and uplifting is Wildblood's talent for separating sense from nonsense, and separating sense from lesser sense. In the end, the arguments and explanations he provides do not simply make sense - they are sense. That is, they are firmly rooted in the reality of the Creator and in Creation, immediately accessible to all those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Wildblood concludes his book with the following paragraph:

God the Creator is real. He dwells in the innermost depth of your heart and above the highest heaven. He is your Father and his Being itself. His name is I AM and his nature is love. He sits with you as you read these lines. Remember him.

I like this paragraph; it perfectly encapsulates the basic principle I alluded to above. This basic principle, this fundamental reality, permeates every line of the book in a manner that is both comforting and inspiring.

In reference to the author, Bruce Charlton has noted, "In a better world, William Wildblood would be recognised as a national treasure."

I couldn't agree more.

For me, reading Remember The Creator was akin to having a deep and meaningful conversation with a kindred spirit. I am convinced that other readers will feel the same after picking up this book - regardless of where they are in their spiritual and religious journeys. And for those who have yet to embark on the journey, this book offers a good place to start. Remember The Creator. It's not just a title, but an essential first step of the best journey you can hope to take in this mortal life.

Five stars. Highly recommended.

Please visit William Wildblood's blog for more information about how to acquire Remember the Creator.

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<<Previous

Forward>>

The Right Thing For The Wrong Reason

My Eight-Year-Old Begins Dipping Into Philosophy and Semantics

The Only Distancing That Matters Now is System-Distancing

What Are The Sources Of Your Thoughts and Motivations - Here, Now?

Nautical Disaster: The Best "Dream" Song By A Canadian Rock Band

The Importance of Perspective

More System Is Not The Solution To An Apparently Faltering System

Attachment And Perspective

Listen All Y'All, It's A Sabotage

The EU's Apparent 180 On Mass Migration

Since The World Appears To Be Ending

Ebb and Flow

More Than A Thousand Psychologists or Theologians Ever Could

First Day of Spring

A Brief Review of Remember the Creator by William Wildblood

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