Blog Archives

New World Island's Weekly Audio Recaps

12/20/2022

David at New World Island has been an energetic and assiduous supporter of Romantic Christian blogs over the years continues to demonstrate his energy and assiduousness by offering weekly audio recaps of selected posts from the little circle of blogs with which I am an honored to be affiliated.

Don't have time to read? Missed some posts? Want to revisit a post in another format? David's audio recordings may just be your thing.

Most recent recording below; link to New World Island's YouTube channel on the blog roll.

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And Now There Are Ten

12/19/2022

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Regular readers may recall that I purchased twelve young hens back in May. The hens began laying eggs in the middle of a heatwave in August. Unfortunately, one of the twelve hens succumbed to the heatwave, leaving me with eleven sturdy, productive ladies. These remaining eleven have abundantly and consistently supplied my family with eggs ever since, averaging about ten eggs a day since the end of September.

When I first announced the arrival of the “ladies”, many readers warned me about predators. Though we have foxes and birds of prey in the area, these rarely pose any serious threat to backyard chickens where I live, provided the shelter to which the hens retire in the evenings is secure.

The biggest threat to hens here comes from martens, which can gain access to a coop if they are provided with even a sliver of an opening to get through. In this regard, my brick henhouse has passed the test. Not a single marten has managed to slip through its defenses.

Thankfully, martens are primarily nocturnal creatures. Chickens, on the other hand, are diurnal. Thus, martens and chickens rarely occupy the same space at the same time. This knowledge and experience made me confident enough to open up the chicken run and allow the ladies to spend the days freely grazing in the back portion of my property. I had never experienced any problems with predators, at least not in the daytime. Nevertheless, my predator-free streak as a keeper of hens recently came to a tragic end.

Two days ago, my family and I joined a small group of fellow villagers and visited the Christmas market in the nearby city of Győr. We left an hour before sunset and would not be home until well after nightfall. Knowing this, I asked my next-door neighbor – who also keeps chickens – to lock up the henhouse shortly after sunset in my absence. We got home from the trip sometime after nine. Seeing the henhouse door closed and the opening to the run barricaded, I assumed all was well with the hens and retired for the evening.

While feeding the ladies in the morning, I counted only ten hens inside. I recounted several times, but the number always stopped at ten. With a sinking heart, I went out into the yard hoping to find the eleventh lady perched safely somewhere. It didn’t take me long to find her.

She was in the frosty grass near the back fence nestled amid her torn-out feathers, the back of her head and neck bitten to the bone, her wide-open abdomen spilling its glaciated entrails onto the frozen earth. All signs pointed to marten predation. My neighbor had failed to notice her out in the yard when he locked up the coop for the night. An opportunistic marten took care of the rest.

I disposed of the carcass before I let the other hens out for the day. The incident gnawed away at me all day. That night, I loaded my trusty marten trap with sardines and placed it in the exact place I had found the dead hen. I knew my chances of trapping the marten were slim. I also knew my chances of catching a hedgehog or other curious and hungry nocturnal animal was high. All the same, I figured it was worth a shot.

I checked the trap twice, at midnight and four in the morning. At midnight the trap was still empty; by four in the morning, I had succeeded in trapping a neighbor’s cat. I considered the possibility that the cat may have been the chicken killer, but I quickly dismissed the notion. I had seen that cat around the chickens; it had never bothered them. I opened the trap door to set the cat free. The wretched thing was so stiff from cold and shock that I had to shake it out of the trap.

I won’t bother putting the trap out again, but I do hope no further misfortunes visit my ten remaining hens.

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The Development of Consciousness as God's Divine Plan

12/17/2022

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I’ve written about Nikolai Berdyaev quite a bit on this blog. This does not entail that Berdyaev’s metaphysics is my metaphysics. Though our assumptions overlap in most of the “core” areas, mine differ from Berdyaev’s on some key points.

That aside, I believe there is one thing Berdyaev is undeniably right about – the spiritual imperative to overcome the slavery of alienation, cut-offed-ness, objectification, and exteriorization that occurred when man ejected his innate spiritual nature into the external world.

Berdyaev understands that man is an intrinsically spiritual being. He also understands that man’s awareness of this spiritual intrinsicality has faded to the point of disappearing altogether. Restoration is required – man has to once again become fully aware of himself as a free and spiritual being.

Unlike traditionally-minded Christian thinkers, Berdyaev believes in the development/evolution of consciousness. Moreover, he believes that the development/evolution of consciousness is part of God’s divine plan.

Consequently, he keenly apprehends that Christianity is vital. At the same time, he rejects reversions to earlier modes of Christianity because they cannot and will not restore man’s awareness of himself as a free and spiritual being and allow for the further development of consciousness.

According to Berdyaev, restoring spiritual awareness in our current mode of consciousness requires freedom and overcoming metaphysical slavery. What is metaphysical slavery? Berdyaev defines it as man subjugating himself through his self-chosen enslavement to the objectified world and his own externalizations: the various idols he has created and comprehends as “reality”.

What are these idols? For Berdyaev, they encompass nearly everything, including God. Though man’s spiritual nature connects to God, man is prone to make God a source of slavery when He is viewed as an impersonal object and force. Man can only free himself from his propensity to objectify God when he comes to know and understand God as a subject and a person, as love and freedom rather than as domination and determination.

Objectification occurs when symbols replace basic realities. In this sense, an objectified God is merely a symbol of God, not God Himself. Instead of attempting to form a subject-subject relationship with God, one that would reveal the spiritual reality of both man and God, man ends up forming an objectified relationship with a symbol that conceals or obscures the spiritual reality of both God and man.

The same process is then transferred to the rest of man’s enslaving idols: nature, society, nation, civilization, economy, collectivism, individualism (Berdyaev regards this as a primarily biological category and reserves the spiritual category for personality), authority, sex, art, and history.

These basic spiritual realities in mortal life are only real when man’s relationship with them stems from his intrinsicality as a free and spiritual being. Otherwise, they exist as objectified symbols or forces of necessity that encroach upon and weaken man’s freedom and spirituality.

Though he stresses the importance of subjectivity, Berdyaev warns against the dangers of isolated subjectivity. For Berdyaev, the spiritual meaning of the world boiled down to subjects establishing relationships, not subjects atomizing. In Slavery and Freedom, he notes:

“the slavery of a man may be the result alike of his being exclusively engulfed by his own ego and concentrated upon his own condition without taking note of the world and other people; and of his being ejected into the external, into the objectivity of the world and other people, and losing consciousness of his own ego . . . . Engulfed entirely by his own ego the subject is a slave, just as the subject which is wholly ejected into an object is a slave.”

Within that same book, Berdyaev asserts that the first step in overcoming objectification and alienation involves first withdrawing into the spiritual depths and re-discovering God and the authentic self, which Berdyaev refers to as “personality”. The second step involves re-creating the world through the light of this new, authentic spiritual freedom, primarily by establishing free and loving relationships with other subjective beings:

Freedom presupposes the existence of truth, of meaning, of God. Truth and meaning liberate, and liberation leads to truth and meaning. Freedom must also be love, and love must be free.

Berdyaev’s final assessment on restoring man’s awareness of himself as a free and spiritual being involves the union of freedom, truth, and love – a union epitomized by Christ.

To sum up, Berdyaev believes the development/evolution of consciousness to be a vital part of God’s divine plan.

Hence, he identifies man’s alienation from his own intrinsic freedom, spiritual nature, and God as a process through which man could overcome alienation and return to God with a heightened and deepened understanding of himself as a free and spiritual being.

But this process requires overcoming the enslaving forces of the idols man has erected in the place of reality and enlivening them through his authentic self – his personality – in relationships with other beings enlivened by the Holy Spirit.

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The Final Purpose of the World Story

12/16/2022

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I recently began exploring the works of Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, who is better -- and more mercifully -- known by his pen name, Novalis.

By exploring I mean dipping into and sampling, which is something I tend to do with poetry and philosophy. The initial sampling/dipping phase helps me determine if I should commit to reading and studying the author more thoroughly.

Novalis passed the sampling "test" rather quickly with this short, unnumbered fragment:

Love works magic.
It is the final purpose
of world history,
The Amen of the universe.

Original:

Die Liebe wirkt magisch.
Sie ist der Endzweck
der Weltgeschichte,
das Amen des Universums.

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Yearning for a Given Christian World Instead of Living in Creation

12/15/2022

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I get the sense that the romantic aspect of Romantic Christianity causes much confusion and consternation among co-religionists. For most, the adjective cancels out the noun it modifies.

Other modifiers – Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Orthodox, Traditional, Liberal – are broadly accepted and comprehended as describing words meant to provide further details about Christianity, but the addition of Romantic before Christianity strikes most Christians as incongruous and inconsistent.

Mention romanticism and most people envision something fanciful and unreal, an approach and attitude prone to fantasizing or idealizing. This applies to the romantic approach to Christianity, which involves the active choice to develop consciousness, creatively participate in Creation, and fulfill God’s divine plan. It's enough to make most Christians cry heresy or run for the exits.

The reaction is somewhat understandable considering Romanticism's failure to overcome alienation by vivifying Christianity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Romantic impulse attempted but ultimately fell short and succumbed to materialism. Romanticism has never entirely disappeared, but its faint residue has often been misinterpreted or misapplied.

For conventional Christians, fusing Romanticism with Christianity is the epitome of misinterpretation and misapplication. They insist that the last thing Christianity need is romanticism. After all, it already has its 2000-year tradition, its authority, its scripture, its doctrines, its dogmata, and its churches.

If Christianity needs anything at all, it is faithful and obedient followers of the 2000-year tradition and everything contained within it.

The 2000-year tradition and all it encompasses is undeniably real and true, but are contemporary Christians true to the 2000-year tradition, or are they estranged and alienated from it?

Does their participation in the 2000-year tradition emanate robustly and meaningfully from the internal, or is it mostly a matter of conforming passively to the external?

Put another way, do Christians participate in a Christianity of givenness or a Christianity of creativity?

If Christianity is to have any future, it must become creative once again. If it remains in its current state of givenness, the larger given world will eclipse it.

The only way Christianity can become creative again is to romanticize itself and the world.

Ask Christians what they dream of and most will tell you that they dream of living in a given Christian world. Most are blind to the created world they live in; even blinder to the created world that lives in them.

The first step in this time and place is to look within. The divine calling to overcome the given world and continue God’s Creation is there, waiting to be discovered.

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A Good Connection to My "Don't Fear the Night" Post

12/14/2022

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The Transparent Unicorn -- a reader of this blog and the only kind of unicorn I have seen in my life -- left a link to a short French choral piece called La Nuict Froide et Sombre by the Flemish, late Rennaissance composer Orlando de Lassus. The short piece connects well to a theme I explored in my recent Don't Fear the Night post from a few days ago.

Though I am familiar with some of his contemporaries like Palestrina, de Lassus was unknown to me until now, so thanks to the Transparent Unicorn for putting this composer on my radar, so to speak. Song and lyrics below:

La nuict froide et sombre
Couvrant d'obscure ombre
La terre et les cieux
Aussi doux que miel,
Fait couler du ciel
Le sommeil aux yeux.

Puis le jour luisant
Au labeur duisant
Sa lueur expose,
Et d'un teint divers
Ce grand univers
Tapisse et compose.

The night cold and dark
Covering with gloomy shade
The earth and the skies,
As sweet as honey
Pours from heaven
Slumber upon the eyes.

Then the shining day
Calling to labour
Shows his gleaming ray,
And with motley colour
Bedecks and shapes
This great universe.

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Tradition is Eternal Creativity, Not a Fortress

12/13/2022

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My triple-pecked priest – who locked up the village church in 2020 and then pulled a seven-month disappearing act that would have made Harry Houdini gape in awe – has recently begun reverting to more traditional rituals and modes of worship on Sundays.

For example, after he finally declared it safe for the congregation to remove their masks about a year ago, he stated that he would only distribute the Eucharist on the tongue. The announcement caused considerable consternation and confusion among my fellow churchgoers, most of whom had more or less gotten used to the priest treating them like permanent, irredeemable bio-hazards.

A few months after that, my priest proclaimed that he expected all able-bodied parishioners to kneel before receiving the Eucharist on the tongue. During the mass, he ceremoniously instructed my son and the other altar boys to haul out an old prie-dieu and place it at the foot of the dais before the altar. The parishioners did as they were instructed.

The reversion to more traditional forms during Mass is my priest’s response to the liberal bishops and cardinals in Germany calling for a change in Catholic teaching on homosexuality and women priests. I know this because he informed us of it himself. As far as he is concerned, the Church is on the cusp of yet another schism, and it was his sworn intention to ensure that my little village congregation remains on the right side of Church history.

Though I respect my priest for his stance against the QWERTY agenda, I would respect him much more if he had shown a similar level of doggedness during the birdemic. Unfortunately, when it comes to the Litmus Tests, when you fail one, you pretty much fail them all. And my priest failed the birdemic Litmus Test miserably.

Failed and passed litmus tests aside, my priest’s reaction and subsequent actions against the ominous liberalizing threat seeping in from the West made something eminently clear to me. The more traditional elements within the Church have not sufficiently acknowledged the reality of the evolution of consciousness. Consequently, the only response they can offer against the mature vices, evil, and sins of modern consciousness is to fortress themselves in the past and tradition.

The impetus to barricade behind tradition arises from the belief that past Church teachings form an eternal criterion of truth from which it is impossible to stray without consigning the world and everyone in it to damnation.

Attached is the conviction that the Church, the world, and men are finished. Spiritual authority is external to the person; authority must be recreated to sustain that eternal criterion of truth ensconced in 2000 years of history.

How far will my village priest go to stem the prevailing evil trends? How far back will he reach into those 2000 years? How many rituals will he reintroduce to ensure we all remain on the right side of Church history? Time will tell; unless, of course, another birdemic hits the world. Then I suspect he might close the church doors again in an effort to keep everyone safe.

The tradition my priest is trying to defend is fixed, static, and external. I wonder how things might be different if he viewed tradition as eternal creativity.

What if he understood God as continuously creating and expecting eternal newness?

What if he embraced the notion that Christians must play a role in this eternal newness by answering God’s call to conquer the giveness of the world and enrich divine life through co-creation?

Well, things would probably be quite different indeed.

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Hope To Go on a Walk Like This Soon

12/11/2022

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The temperatures have dropped dramatically here in the northwestern part of Hungary, and it will remain quite cold for the better part of next week. The forecast calls for some light snow. Who knows? Maybe it will accumulate and remain for short while, but chances are it probably won't.

Snow was a big part of winter when I lived in North America, and I loved going for long walks in snowy forests and fields. Large snowfalls are quite rare where I live now. In all honesty, I don't really miss the inconvenience abundant snowfalls inherently bring with them.

Still, it would be wonderful to go on a snowy walk at least once this winter.

Winter Landscape - László Mednyánszky - Date unknown

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Don't Fear the Night

12/10/2022

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The spiritual foundations of the world have been obscured; its temporal forces exhausted. Modern history is ending. The sun is setting; the twilight is already here.

Night will soon fall. After it does, hearkening back upon sunny days of the past will prove fruitless. Night does not beckon us to look outside but within.

The night is deeper, true, but these depths must not be feared. In the depths there is time and space to connect with life, concentrate on the spirit, and work through the internal challenges and joys of existence.

The night is a time for accumulating the faith, energy, strength, and love needed to create a new day. The new day will not simply arrive; it will not be given. It must be created.

Only after this new creation will the night withdraw.

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Pop a Price Cap In Yo "You Know What"

12/9/2022

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Here we are near the end of 2022, and around the world, price caps are all the rage.

People may not know this, but here in Hungary, the government has been capping prices on all sorts of things for at least a year or more. Well, it has no choice. I mean, if Hungarians ever found out how little they earn compared to their EU counterparts, well, I imagine they would be quite dissatisfied. Anyway, price caps. The result? Well, nothing much. Moreover, nothing good.

The Hungarian government began its price-capping spree with a list of essential grocery items, including chicken breast, sugar, flour, and 2.8% milk. Within a blink of an eye, all of the mentioned items suddenly became scarce.

If you were lucky enough to find a grocery store that magically still had some beat-up cartons of 2.8% milk crammed behind the other dairy offerings or a few punctured bags of flour tragically spilling their contents onto the shelves like wounded infantrymen in the trenches, you were quickly informed about the number you were restricted to purchasing.

"Only two kilos of flour per person, I'm afraid."

"Shoppers are restricted to purchasing no more than six liters of milk per day in this store."

And so forth.

After a while, the stores simply stopped stocking the price-capped goods, but they were sure to have abundant amounts of the items that were not price-capped, to which they added all the "losses" the price caps had inflicted upon them. So instead of purchasing 2.8% milk at 50 cents US a liter, Hungarians were forced to pay one dollar for 1.5% milk.

The price caps were so resoundingly successful that they inspired the government to extend them to gasoline, which it capped at about 1.25 US a liter last November. News traveled quickly. The very next day, hordes of Austrian citizens in fuel-deprived cars invaded the country armed with jerrycans, barrels, plastic bottles, and anything else capable of transporting petrol and lay siege to every Hungarian gas station within a hundred kilometers of the border.

A few weeks later, the government solved the problem it had created by declaring that the price cap on petrol was reserved for Hungarian citizens only. All motorists were legally obligated to show their papers before fueling. Hungarian citizens would get the capped price; everyone else, the market price.

The petrol stations responded by enforcing strict 20-liter limits on price-capped gasoline purchases. Anything over 20 liters would be calculated at the market price. After that, it wasn't always easy to find petrol and empty gas stations became an increasingly common sight around the country.

The recently imposed EU price cap on oil from Vodka-land through a spanner in the Hungarian government's stated objectives of "protecting Hungarian families from inflation", and it quietly and unceremoniously scrapped its price cap on gasoline a few days ago. It now costs the average Hungarian about 30% more to fill up the tank. Of course, the price-capped price was also about 15% above the average pre-war against Vodka-land price, but hey, who remembers that?

And what exactly is the EU's price cap on Vodka-land oil meant to accomplish? Bring the Russkies to their knees economically, in the same manner, the EU's other sanctions have?

Yeah, good luck with that.

Price caps are always presented as helpful, alleviating measures, but my experience has taught me that these supposedly benevolent measures bring little to no benefit. On the contrary, they tend to mess things up even more. But that's the whole point, isn't it?

I have come to view price caps and other "benevolent" economic interventions as nothing more than "conditioning" exercises. We simply have to accept that ridiculously high prices, shortages, limits, scarcity and all the rest of it are all par for the course in the West. It's all part of the "can't make omelettes without breaking a few eggs" approach to policy.

If you want to build back better, you have to destroy worse first. And there isn't a price cap in the world that will be able to stop the destruction our "leaders" have unleashed. Moreover, there isn't a price cap in the world that will be able to hide the fact that the destruction has been largely intentional.

Note added: Apologies for all the clichéd expressions in the post, but the subject matter simply demanded them!

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