Blog Archives

Updated Face . . . Sorry!

1/31/2021

About two weeks ago, William Wildblood replaced the decade-old photo on his blog with another, more current image of himself. William had the following to say about his decision to update:

You might ask why I include a photograph of myself at all. The reason is similar to why I use my real name online. I think people reading the blog should know who they are dealing with, and a person's face does say something about that person. This seems particularly appropriate at the present time when faces and the vital human element they represent are being increasingly banned from public view.

I fully agree with this sentiment, though I also have an ulterior motive for featuring my face online - the secret hope of landing a lucrative modeling contract! (If you're an agent, have your people call my people, and we'll make something happen.)

Pertaining to what William says above, I'm not at all sure what my face says about me. As far as I can tell, only God, my mother, and my wife appear willing to tolerate my mug for any extended length of time.

In all honestly, the only reason didn't update my old photo up for nearly a decade was because it at least offered something alluring to look at - the lovely lake in the background!

Nevertheless, taking a cue from William, I have decided to update my online photo as well. My wife snapped this one of me on a train last week. Unlike my previous photo, this one contains no enchanting background -- just me on a train.

I apologize in advance.

Note added: Bookslinger has suggested that my wife used a filter when she took the photo of me on the train. Turns out he was right; so, in the interest of authenticity, I had my wife take another photo of me sans filtering and put that on that sidebar instead. It seems my wife tolerates my natural face much less than I had originally assumed!

The first photo is from the autumn of 2012, while the second is from last week - winter, 2021.

Thankfully, the passing years have not put a dent in my brilliant smile or the naturally cheerful expression I project into the world.

Further note added: Bruce Charlton kindly pointed out that the photo I used to replace my "beauty queen" photo was rather "chilling" and "hard-eyed". In response to this, I've changed the photo on the sidebar - yet again - with something a little more warm and fuzzy. Thankfully, Bookslinger appears to approve of this most recent change as well. So, that's that! Those interested in seeing my "bad cop" look are invited to have a look in the Contact section of this site.

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It Wasn't Arrows

1/30/2021

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Saint Sebastian - Andrea Mantegna - c. 1470

Most paintings of Saint Sebastian (256 - 288) depict him tied to a tree, post, or pillar, his body punctured by arrows. This of course leads to the logical assumption that Sebastian's martyrdom involved being shot to death by archers at the order of the Roman emperor Diocletian (244 - 311).

Sebastian did indeed suffer through the imperial Roman equivalent of a firing squad, but according to traditional belief he survived the ordeal. His actual martyrdom occurred at a later date when he reportedly accosted Diocletian in Rome. Though taken aback by Sebastian's unexpected appearance, the Roman emperor quickly ordered his men to cudgel Sebastian to death.

So cudgels, not arrows, led to St. Sebastian's martyrdom; but I can understand why artists generally found the shot full of arrows image of St. Sebastian far more powerful than the actual clubbed to death image of his martyrdom.

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How The Great Reset May Devolve Into The Great Re-Gret; Or, Behold The Great Re-Greta

1/29/2021

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Bruce Charlton left an insightful comment on one of the Great Reset pieces I posted earlier this week.

I think of it as one group of elderly and failing genuinely Ahrimanic technocrats who 'believe in' the omni-surveillance/ micro-control world; and a younger emerging faction of energetic Sorathic destroyers - who hate everybody (including the Ahrimanics, and each other) and desire to provoke fear and despair, riots and war; smash the economy and the environment - and cause mass starvation and (real, deadly) plagues.

To which I responded:

That's an excellent observation! You can certainly see this in St. Greta! Her scathing admonishments of the Davos Crew might not be disingenuous at all. They could very well be authentic. She could really mean it, which suggests the Davos Crew that survives into the next decade are in for a rather rude awakening when the Greta generation begins to take over (provided this even lasts a decade)!

The Davos Crew and the core of the Establishment are certainly Ahrimanic technocrats. As Dr. Charlton notes above, they aim to enslave the world via omni-surveillance and micro-control. Our current reality - incoherent restrictions and a massive loss of personal freedoms under the pretext of defending human health from a deadly virus - provides tangible proof of the Ahrimanics strategic approach.

As has been frequently noted, Ahrimanics generally utilize the problem-reaction-solution formula to achieve their overarching goals of mass enslavement. The solutions they offer inevitably involve the expansion of bureaucratic control and the stripping of personal freedoms, but rarely, if ever, do much to address the underlying problem the expanded bureaucratic oppression and loss of freedom was meant to alleviate.

The blueprints the Ahrmanics have crafted for their Great Reset Agenda are little more than a massive problem-reaction-solution ploys. The Ahrimanics claim the birdemic has revealed massive systemic problems in the forms of climate change, anti-racism, and equity/equality, all of which require urgent and comprehensive solutions if the planet and its people are to have any sort of "sustainable" future. Though they pretend otherwise, the Ahrimanics are not sincerely invested in the problems they promulgate. For Establishment technocrats, the problems themselves are merely means to an end - and the end is always increased power and control. In this sense, they are not "true believers" in the causes they claim to support.

Unlike the Ahrmanics, the Sorathics within and on the periphery of the Establishment are "true believers." More specifically, they genuinely believe the problems the Ahrimanics braodcast to the world are real, and they are eager to do whatever it takes to end terrible blights like climate change, anti-racism, and equity/equality. The Sorathics may not have been Sorathics when they joined forces with the Ahrimanics, but began slipping toward Sorathic impulses once they realized the Ahrimanics were not true believers like them.

These impulses and tendencies are clearly observable in Greta Thunberg, the young environmental activist the Establishment recruited three years ago to help publicize the climate change "problem". Even as a child, Greta was wary of the Ahrimanics and constantly lambasted them during her publicity appearances around the world. Greta is now a young woman, and her rhetoric has become even more heated. Conversely, the Ahrimanics do not take Greta's vitriol and bitterness seriously. For them, her scathing remarks and ominous declarations amount to nothing more than great PR. On the flip side, the bitterness and resentment Ms. Thunberg harbors against her Ahrimanic handlers becomes ever more clear, as is apparent in her most recent remarks at the Davos Agenda 2021 summit (excerpts edited by me):

We understand that the world is very complex and that change doesn’t happen overnight. But you’ve now had more than three decades of bla bla bla. How many more do you need? Because when it comes to facing the climate and ecological emergency, the world is still in a state of complete denial.

The justice for the most affected people in the most affected areas is being systematically denied.Even though we welcome every single climate initiative, the proposals being presented and discussed today are very far from being enough. And the time for “small steps in the right direction” is long gone. If we are to have at least a small chance of avoiding the worst consequences of the climate and ecological crisis, this needs to change.

Because you still say one thing, and then do the complete opposite. You speak of saving nature, while locking in policies of further destruction for decades to come.

When I encountered Greta's fiery rhetoric in the past, I assumed it was mostly disingenuous, but now I wonder. I imagine the Establishment has enlisted and recruited many Greta Thunbergs over the years - young, energetic true believers who sincerely think the Establishment will help them solve hot button issues like climate change, anti-racism, and equity/equality. Imagine the disappointment when the true believers realize their handlers and masters have no vested interest in solving the issues at all.

I believe they will sound a lot like Greta Thunberg does now. So what might all those betrayed Greta Thunbergs do? Those tens of thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of true believers the Ahrimanics have recruited over the years. All those activists, agitators, administrators, recruiters, programmers, marketers, publicists, educators, lawyers, lobbyists, and all the rest?

During the French Revoluton, Jacques Mallet du Pan famously observed that "like Saturn, the revolution devours its own children."

The Ahrimanics are currently promoting the Great Reset Agenda as a revolution of sorts. Unbeknownst to them, it may become the first in which its children end up devouring the revolution.

In other words, the Ahrimanics may one day come to view their Great Reset with great regret.

Note added: As always, the spiritual implications of all of the above take precedence over temporal considerations.

Further note added: I encourage you to watch Ms. Thunberg's most recent message. In my opinion, the Sorathic impulse within her is as clear as day. Imagine what might happen if someone like her manages to gain access to significant power.

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The Misguided Yearning For A Vengeful God: Part I

1/28/2021

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Over the past six months I've become aware of a faint but consistent comment trend developing across an assortment of blogs. For lack of a better description, I'll refer to this trend as "the misguided yearning for a vengeful God." The impetus behind the trend is quite simple and somewhat understandable.

As far as I can tell, it stems from the recognition that evil has marinated the world; that everything appears to be submerged in evil and has soaked up its dark brine; that if something doesn't change, if something doesn't happen, the world will reach a saturation point and drown.

Recognizing the current pervasiveness of evil stimulates a yearning for justice; a yearning to see those opposed to God and Creation receive their due punishment in this life. Likewise, it is a simple longing to see the good guys "win"; to see Truth, Beauty, and Goodness triumph; to see evil get what it deserves. At a more basic level, it is a yearning to witness the power of God rise up and vanquish all opposition and set things right.

As I mentioned above, this yearning for a vengeful God is somewhat understandable. After all, Christians are currently mired in an intense spiritual war where the forces of evil appear to be advancing with great speed and precision. In the grips of such intense spiritual warfare, some Christians have begun to question the utility of the forgiving, redeemer Son and have begun to explore the potential utility of the unforgiving, vengeful Father.

Though comprehensible to a certain extent, I consider any longing for the intervention of a vengeful Old Testament God - the same God who drowned the wicked in the Flood and reigned fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah - to be a grave misstep for any Christian, and in a subsequent series of posts I hope to outline some of the reasons why any Christian longing for a vindictive God is misplaced and misguided.

The impulse behind the yearning for God to intervene in the world as an avenging force can be directly connected to the metaphysical confusion plaguing contemporary Christian consciousness. The possible explanations for the yearning can be boiled down to the following:

an incomplete understanding of the development of Christian consciousness
the perceived weakness of Christ's mission as it pertains to evil
a misinterpretation of Christian motivation concerning salvation and creativity
an acute awareness of convergence in most forms of institutionalized Christianity
a yearning for religious passivity rather than religious activity

Over the next week or so, I will work to elaborate upon these possible explanations in the hope that it might inspire Christians who yearn for an avenging God to reconsider or, at the very least, reflect upon their position.

In today's post, I will examine how the yearning for a vengeful God is misguided from the perspective of Christian consciousness.

One thinker who is particularly interested in religious consciousness is Nikolai Berdyaev. In his writings he divides the development of Christian consciousness into three stages, which I have outlined in some detail in an earlier post:

Berdyaev defines the three epochs of Christian consciousness as Old Testament law, New Testament redemption, and religious creativeness. According to Berdyaev, the religious epoch of Old Testament law was marked by obedience and the sin of disobedience. New Testament redemption saved Man from sin, revealed his god-like nature to him, and offered him the reality of everlasting life. The third epoch, religious creativeness – which Berdyaev defines as “a transition into another sphere of being” – has yet to begin.

Berdyaev values the first two religious epochs and insists upon their necessity in the development of human consciousness. In essence, he considers them stages on the spiritual road. Old Testament law is the moral realm of ‘thou shall’ and ‘thou shall not.’ The commandments come from above and Man’s chief occupation is obedience and adherence to the law. New Testament redemption is the realm of salvation whereby the moral element is mystically transfigured and love and grace shine forth. Man’s innate divinity is also revealed to him in this epoch.

Berdyaev notes that both of these religious epochs essentially “come from above.” The moral element is not as predominant in New Testament redemption as it is in Old Testament law, but the moral still apparently predominates over the aesthetic and perceptive. In other words, salvation or perdition is connected to Man’s moral perfection, but not with his aesthetic or perceptive perfection.

Berdyaev considers this to be a “tormenting problem to Christian consciousness.” If religious life is complete with redemption from sin, then higher creativity being is both unattainable and undesirable. Atonement for sin becomes the only meaningful focus, which reduces New Testament redemption to the level of Old Testament law. Life is diminished back to the imperative of perfect obedience. Berdyaev insists there is only one way out: “the religious acceptance of the truth that the religious meaning of life and being is not wholly a matter of redemption from sin, that life and being have positive, creative purposes.”

For obvious reasons, the contemporary materialistic, atheistic, and anti-Christian consciousness that possesses many in the West and elsewhere cannot be included in Berdyaev's epoch framework, but in terms of contemporary Christian consciousness, Berdyaev posits that it stalled out at New Testament redemption and has since slipped back slightly and has fused with Old Testament law.

More specifically, current Christian consciousness remains fixated on the belief that Christianity exclusively "comes from above" and that its sole end is salvation. Instead of recognizing that salvation represents but one aspect of what Christ offered man and that the further development of consciousness must "come from within", Christians have spent the last two centuries looking to the heavens for some kind of external revelation.

According to Berdyaev, Christ's gift of redemption did far more than merely offer man freedom from, it also opened the possibility of freedom for. Put another way, in addition to salvation, redemption offers the potential for a consciousness shift through which man could free up his energy and focus his efforts on his own latent, divine creativity and, eventually, actively begin to co-create with God.

Berdyaev claims Christians have access to the "freedom from" redemption offers through salvation, but have yet to embrace the "freedom for" that redemption should inspire. In Berdyaev's view, this inability to approach freedom for has caused contemporary Christian consciousness to turn negative. That is not to say that freedom from is unnecessary. On the contrary, salvation remains a prerequisite - it takes precedence over creativity, but it is not a substitute for creativity. Salvation is needed for creativity to begin, but over the past two or three centuries Christians have come to view salvation as the final stage of Christian consciousness rather than as the foundation for a higher, creative impulse.

Contemporary Christian consciousness remains locked in the belief that religious life is complete with redemption from sin and that any higher, creative fullness of Christian life is dangerous, undesirable, unnecessary, and unattainable. This glaciation of Christian consciousness has allowed New Testament redemption consciousness to slip back to the level of Old Testament law. If salvation is the completion of Christian life, then all Christians need to do is focus on religious-moral perfection and repentance.

Berdyaev interprets this as a negative and imperative purpose because it places Christians in a kind of stasis that eventually leads to regression. In this stasis, the potential dynamism inherent in redemption is used up by the safeguarding of salvation, which becomes the primary motivation of Christian life.

Rather than looking within and working toward the potential of a third Christian epoch, Christian consciousness remains locked into the second epoch and becomes disproportionately focused upon the existence of any sin and evil that endangers salvation. Thus, the consciousness of New Testament redemption begins to regress back toward Old Testament law.

Berdyaev does not dispute the vital need for New Testament redemption, but he regards fixation on salvation alone as a narrow, simplified, and limited understanding of Christian religious life. If obedience and sinless life leading to an acceptance of Christ as redeemer represents the ultimate culmination of Christian life, then, Berdyaev argues, there can be no fully satisfactory explanation for the appearance of Christ and His Mission on earth. I suspect the yearning for a vengeful God is directly connected to this unsatisfactory explanation of Christ's mission, which focuses exclusively on only one aspect the mission alone.

A vital point to remember when contemplating Berdyaev's conception of the three epochs is that it traces the development of Christian consciousness and not the development of God. Put another way, Berdyaev's epochs help explain the changes in how people understand and think about God and themselves in relation to God. In essence, God has remained the same; the only thing that has changed over time is how we think about and understand Him and ourselves in relation to Him.

In the epoch of Old Testament law, consciousness could only conceive of God as a stern lawgiver, and the purpose of the law was to make people conscious of sin. The consciousness of sin is a suppressed and frightened consciousness that knows God as an autocratic master, one that demands strict obedience and submission and punishes severely if these are not granted. Furthermore, Old Testament law reveals a consciousness focused primarily on events in the temporal world and God's subsequent actions and reactions to these events.

This is much different from the consciousness of New Testament redemption revealed by Christ who knew God as a loving and forgiving Creator - a personal God with Whom man could form a personal relationship - a relationship exemplified by Jesus Himself. Moreover, New Testament redemption consciousness unveiled the reality of immortal life and the possibility for man to participate in immortal life through the active and conscious choice to believe in Christ and follow Him.

The other aspect of Jesus's mission, the one Christians have yet to fully embrace, not only sets the stage for Berdyaev's third epoch of Christian creativity, but also provides a full and satisfactory explanation of Christ's mission on earth - the revelation that God is not only near us, but that He is a person. That He is in us, and we in Him.

Christians who express a yearning for a vengeful God are inadvertently expressing a desire to return to a shallower form of consciousness - that is, to a less full understanding of the nature of God and themselves. The longing for an avenging God grounds man firmly back into the consciousness of sin and burdens him with the restrictive weight of the purpose of law. The yearning for a vindictive God is a regressive yearning because it works against both aspects of Christ's redemptive mission - to free man from the burden of sin and offer the possibility of life everlasting; and to free man into the potential of divine creativity - the state in which man is called to immediate participation in divine life.

This participation will not come to us from above, but will emerge from within. Any yearning for a vengeful God makes us look above when we really should be looking inside.

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Yo, The Great Reset Be Where It At, Girl!

1/27/2021

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In my post from yesterday I drew attention to the utter tediousness of the Davos Crew and their painfully lackluster attempt to sell their Great Reset Agenda to the general public via a series of unexciting YouTube videos uploaded since the beginning of their annual Davos Agenda meeting.

The Davos Crew must have picked up on my criticism because just today they uploaded a fresh and hip little summary video called "The Davos Daily: Day One". The video is hosted by Canadian-Indian YouTuber and comedienne Lilly Singh who earnestly tries to inject some energized "cool" into the Davos Crew's mind-numbing tedium. The end result is a strained and contrived hodgepodge of drab talking points intermittently peppered with Singh's labored attempts to bring humor and lightheartedness to the whole sorry and stilted affair.

Here's an example of the heights Singh reaches in the video. After a short clip featuring Dr. Fauci rambling on about how wrong and immoral it is to regard face masks as a political issue rather than a responsibility issue, Singh chimes in with the following: "I completely agree. Wearing a mask is not political; it's responsible. Also, I break out all the time and a mask covers it. It's a win-win!"

The video is obviously aimed at the younger generations, which is not a surprise considering how the Davos Crew endlessly drone on about the crucial need to involve young people in the agenda process. So, will these cool, hip videos work?

Well, they don't seem to be having much of an effect on the teenagers in the Netherlands, some of whom have taken to the streets for some good, old-fashioned civil disobedience to protest the continuing Draconian lockdowns their government continues to impose. Dutch politicians have responded by calling their youth "scum" and "criminal hooligans." I imagine these politicians can't comprehend why the kids aren't at home watching the Davos Daily. After all, that's what all the cool kids are doing.

It only took two days, but I think I'm done with the Davos Crew for a while. There's only so much tedium a man can bear. Back to blogging about interesting matters from here on in.

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The Tediousness of Totalitarian Evil

1/26/2021

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Oscar Wilde once quipped that it was absurd to divide people into good or bad; in his opinion, people were simply charming or tedious.

Unlike Oscar, I don't believe it is absurd to divide people into good or bad. In fact, I believe dividing people into good or bad is a Christian duty. All the same, I do get the larger point of Oscar's witticism. After all, bad people can be charming and, sadly, good people can be unbearably tedious. Wilde himself strikes me as a man of infinite charm, but I'll leave it up to you to decide whether old Oscar's charm veiled good or bad.

Wilde's witticism regarding good and bad bubbled to the surface of my mind shortly after I began watching some of the videos the Davos Crew have put up to support their big 2021 Great Reset Agenda pow-wow which, fittingly enough, is being conducted virtually this year because of the birdemic. The evil emanating from the Davos Crew's videos is too glaring and unmistakable to warrant debate, but what really struck me as I dipped into video after video was how unbearably tedious every single person in those videos proved to be.

And when I say tedious, I mean tedious in the fullest sense of the word. Every single WEF person I watched today was a mind-numbing, uninspiring, flat, dry, plodding bore. In terms of Oscar Wilde's witticism, the Davos Crew has the rather unenviable distinction of being the worst of both worlds - bad and tedious.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting to encounter any alluring, cultured, and debonair Bond villains, but I figured our totalitarian overlords would trot out at least one charming person - at least one alluring, appealing figure who possessed enough of the old cult of personality to make the Great Reset and every other demonic scheme sound tantalizing.

No such luck. Instead of seductive Satanists spinning spellbinding soliloquies, all I found were painfully pathetic politicians and puppets prattling ponderous pedestrian platitudes.

It's difficult to imagine that these unexciting and uninspiring people now rule the world. Then again, considering the spiritual state of our world, perhaps it isn't so unimaginable at all. If anything, the insipid soullessness of our totalitarian overlords is a direct reflection of the insipid soullessness of the world. I guess the old saying is true - you get the leaders you deserve. And by all appearances, we deserve nothing but mundane mendacity and boring banality.

Think about it for a minute - these people are talking about reorganizing and reshaping every aspect of the world for the good of all mankind, yet they come off sounding less inspiring than a twice-divorced, life-weary, middle-aged parking lot attendant reading lines from a phone book.

The purposive evil we see today does not seek to convince or persuade. It no longer feels any need to hide behind charm. It presents itself exactly as it is - as bad and tedious - and by doing so, provides a little foretaste of the kind of soul-destroying hell they are preparing us for.

On the upside, the obvious lifelessness and soullessness of contemporary evil should give us cause for hope - it provides a perfect contrast to the life and soul of God's Creation, which may become more alluring and appealing in the hearts of many as the tedious totalitarian tragedy continues to unfold.

I've included three videos below. The first is attempt to repackage the Great Reset in five hip, colorful minutes (complete with a direct denial of the Great Reset as a global conspiracy), while the second is long-winded and interminable conference call featuring some editor from the Financial Times, a member of Canada's federal government (who claims to have won a national mandate for the Great Reset), and a handful of other Davos apparatchiks. The last video features St. Greta of Thunberg giving the Davos Crew disingenuous hell (sorry, couldn't resist).

I am tempted to say "Enjoy!", but there's no way . . .

Note added: The dislikes to likes ratios for these videos are skewed heavily in favor of the dislikes. The first video below has 4,300 dislikes and 481 likes, which is a nearly 10-1 ratio. Of course, YouTube will likely begin "fixing" these numbers soon, as Wm Jas Tychonievich explains here.

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Wm Jas Tychonievich: Fourth Gospel Blog

1/26/2021

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I've been following William James Tychonievich's interpretations of the Gospel of John for a couple of years now. If memory serves me well, William began his explication of the Fourth Gospel on his "old" From the Narrow Desert blog and has continued them in his current From the Narrow Desert blog.

Inspired by Lazarus Writes, Bruce Charlton's mini-book on the subject (also highly recommended), William's interpretations and commentary on the Gospel of John have been both enlightening and thought-provoking. Fortunately, William has decided to pool all of his John posts onto his new, appropriately-named Fourth Gospel Blog.

I can't recommend it enough.

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2021: It's All About Trust

1/24/2021

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2020 was all about things reaching a point. Over the course of the year, the ever-shrinking gray area separating good and evil disappeared; the fog obscuring right from wrong dissolved; and those with eyes to see and ears to hear were forced to make an unavoidably informed choice regarding the following question:

Which side are you on?

The catalyst driving this year of recognition and acknowledgment was the birdemic; for the simple reason the birdemic was the catalyst through which the Establishment successfully pulled off its stunningly successful global coup in the early spring of 2020. With the massive fraud perpetrated during the recent US presidential election - which resulted in the barbed wire inauguration of a career Establishment figure who emerged from the "election" with the notable distinction of "most votes ever cast for a presidential candidate" - the global authority has cemented its grip on the world.

The US election proved to be a watershed moment for many. Unfortunately, this delayed realization of the global authority now ruling the world has, thus far, amounted to little more than the recognition of a fait accompli - the fix appears to be in, and for the time being, there doesn't seem to be much anyone can do about it.

If 2020 was about the point, then 2021 will be all about trust. To drive this home, the global authority is eager to have all of its "global citizens" forget 2020 and focus instead on a glorious Great Reset future. That's right. Despite everything, the technocratic tyrants that now rule the world are promising brighter days ahead, but securing these brighter days requires trust.

Yes, the global authority is keen to build trust in the world. In fact, they're making trust the central theme of their upcoming Davos Agenda 2021 Week scheduled for January 25-29.

Citing 2021 as "A Crucial Year To Rebuild Trust", the Davos crowd is currently referring to trust as "the glue of a healthy society". Not only is trust a wonderful, fix-all superglue, it is also, fittingly enough, "contagious":

When governments and the market have earned the trust of citizens, that trust tends to spill over to create greater trust in society as a whole, among individuals and groups. Simply put, trust is contagious.

Now is the moment for us to work together in uncommon alliances, across business, philanthropy, government, and civil society, toward achieving our common goal: spreading the most valuable currency for sparking and sustaining broad-based prosperity - trust.

To willingly answer this "crucial" call to trust in 2021 is to willingly answer the call to eternal self-damnation.

Think and act accordingly.

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Fowl is Fair

1/23/2021

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I used to hunt when I lived in Canada, but here in Hungary hunting is generally an over-regulated status symbol hobby reserved for the elite and the well-to-do. For example, bagging a trophy stag sporting a modest five-kilogram trophy costs anywhere from 1000 to 2000 euros.

I never had much interest in trophies. When I hunted, I did it primarily for the benefits it brought to my dining room table. Sadly, the exorbitant costs and frustrating bureaucratic hassles associated with hunting in Hungary precludes the rationale of hunting for food - at least for me. Trophies aside, you are generally not permitted to keep the meat of any large game you bag unless you are willing to pay a hefty sum for it. The same rules do not apply to small game, but once again, the amount of money you have to pay to hunt here do not make bagging small game a very cost effective venture. If you have a hankering for game, you're better off finding a game farm or butcher that sells venison or pheasant and purchasing the meat there.

Though I no longer hunt myself, I am fortunate enough to know a few people that do. Even better, I am fortunate to know a few hunters who gladly share their bounty with me even though I have never asked them to do so. For instance, just this morning a hunter friend of mine showed up at my house unannounced and generously gave me some pheasants and ducks he had bagged the day before.

I am going to pluck and clean the fowl tomorrow morning after church. As I do so, I'll probably spend a fair bit of time thinking about the good that remains in the world - despite everything.

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Evening Song in Budapest

1/22/2021

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I really enjoyed this rendition of Kodály's Evening Song. Perhaps you will, too.

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