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Possible Developments in the Effort to Halt Christian Persecution in the Middle East

11/2/2019

The following is an excerpt from a Hungary Today article. I don't know what to make of it as of yet, but it appears to be a positive development in an ongoing tragedy the West has utterly ignored. The meeting described below took place this past Wednesday:

The aiding of Middle Eastern Christian communities is set to be a key topic during Wednesday’s talks between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Péter Szijjártó said at the opening of a conference of Middle Eastern Christian church leaders organised ahead of the high-level Hungarian-Russian summit.

The church leaders will also be meeting with Orbán and Putin, he said, adding that their talks could open the door to new projects in the Middle East.

The minister said there was a “consensus” in international political discourse that “the persecution of Christians is the last acceptable form of discrimination”. Szijjártó slammed what he called the international community’s refusal to address the issue of Christian persecution as “extreme hypocrisy”. He said the international community had a duty to take action for the protection of Christian communities.

Funny how only "illiberal, anti-democratic, and authoritarian" leaders like Orbán and Putin express any interest in stopping Christian persecution. The rest of the article is available here for those interested.

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Revisions Are Going Slowly, But Well

11/2/2019

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I have spent the last two weeks revising my only published novel, and I am happy to report that the revisions are going well, albeit slowly. I have reimagined far more parts of the narrative and have deleted many more scenes than I initially anticipated, particularly from the middle and middle-third portions of the novel, which helps explain why the rewriting is not going as quickly as I originally envisioned.

Thankfully, I do not feel the need to do alter much in the first part of the story, which, in my humble opinion, is rather good and reads well. The first seventy pages of the novel have always been my favorite and remain so today. My ultimate goal is to extend the quality and readability of the first seventy pages to the rest of the novel over the next month or two. Here's hoping I find success doing that.

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All Saints Day in Hungary

11/1/2019

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Though it is beginning to crop up here and there - mostly as an excuse for a party at nightclubs and discos in the bigger cities - Halloween, or All Hallow's Eve, is not a traditional celebration in Hungary. All Saints Day, on the other hand, is. The first of November is a national holiday of remembrance and Hungarians use the occasion to visit the graves of relatives and loved ones across the country. It is the biggest travel day in Hungary, comparable to Thanksgiving in the United States. The larger cemeteries in urban areas are so busy they have to be manned by traffic cops, but even smaller cemeteries in little villages like the one I call home have the power to draw several hundred visitors on this day.

Most people visit after sunset and place candles and lanterns on the graves. After a few hours, the entire cemetery glows in what I can only describe as a sacred light. It truly is a sight to see. My family and I did not travel to visit graves this year. Instead, we went to the local cemetery and put several lit lanterns beneath the crucifix near the funeral chapel, one for each branch of our extended families. We then visited the graves of a recently deceased neighbor and the man who built the house in which we now live. A steady stream of people came and went during the time we spent at the village cemetery. At one point, I counted at least a hundred, which is remarkable considering the population of our village is a mere six hundred. I imagine nearly a thousand people visited the village cemetery over the course of the entire evening.

The remembrances slip into All Souls Day. The candles and lanterns continue to glow long after the last visitor has left; sometimes they burn for as along as a week. The cemeteries possess a solemn sort of beauty in early November. There is something about those candles and lanterns glowing in the dark - so reverential and dignified, and yes, even holy.

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On The Light or On The Reft?

11/1/2019

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The so-called political spectrum is one of the main reasons I care less and less about politics these days. Take a look at the spectrum. It is a system designed to define and categorize various political positions as they relate to or differ from each other, and it is most often presented visually as four squares separated by two intersecting lines, though I have also seen it depicted as a simple line divided up into various supposedly independent political ranges, measures, and dimensions. Some political spectrums even contain cute cartoon characters like donkeys and elephants.

How the political spectrum is depicted and what it supposedly represents is largely irrelevant because at the most fundamental level there is no real "range" in politics. Put another way, there is really only one side or one square or one cute little cartoon character in Western politics, and that side or square or cute cartoon character is Leftism. The only thing the West's political spectrum succeeds in classifying is how far 'to the left' the political party or grouping in question happens to be.

All politics in the West is Leftism because all politics in the West is completely, firmly, and purely rooted in materialism. As such, most Western political groupings, parties, and movements are explicitly on the Left of the political spectrum while those who claim to be 'on the Right' are actually 'on the Light' or 'on the Reft.'

There is no Right because without the acknowledgement of the power of the divine there can be no Right - only Light or Reft.

Note: In this case, the term 'Light' does not refer to luminance, but rather to something comical and frivolous.

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