The Peaceful Gnome

As I thought, there is a reason land here is so very cheap.  Thorns and rocks.  Yeah, that about sums it up.  :-) Thorns Rocks. Lots of sunshine, of course.  :-) Serenity said "I don't think so Papa." I agree Serenity!  I don't think so. Well, the search goes on... Here is Serenity in the lobby of the Gadsen Hotel :-)

I'm near the border of Mexico in Arizona, currently in the Gadsen Hotel , a Historic and allegedly haunted hotel in Douglas.  Our trip to get here has not gone as planned.  :-)  We had intended to either visit the Grand Canyon or some Indian ruins up near Flagstaff on our second day, but instead we found our selves in the midst of a snow storm, hiking in the snow did not sound very fun so we skipped on to our next spot which was St. Johns where I wanted to look at some property at Sierra Highlands Ranch .  On our way to St. Johns I saw this great rainbow, very pretty. As it turned out the road leading to Sierra Highlands Ranch it is a bit questionable just after rains... especially if you are driving a low to the ground Toyota Corolla. We went about 15 miles on a fairly good mostly graveled road until we got up to the top of the mesa where the 36+ acre plots I wanted to look at were, it was actually quite lovely, lots of trees and great views.  The ro...

For the last few days I've been pondering the ideas of nonviolence as taught by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere.  As a result of this recollection of what I knew once I've been looking online at some websites of the traditional "Peace Churches."  These are the Mennonites, the Brethren and the Quakers, among others.  I looked at them because of my dissatisfaction with the teachings of the more mainstream denominations, especially the two that I have most recently worshiped with, the Lutherans and the Catholics.  These groups use something called " Just War Theory " to identify which wars are "Just" and which ones are not justified.  Supposedly this puts some major restrictions on when nations could go to war and have it be considered OK for a Christian to participate.  The problem with Just War Theory, as far as I am concerned, is that it can be, and has been, used to justify virtually every war ever fought.  Pretty much the only...

So, at long last the bitter election for President of the United Sates is over.  Around this part of the empire the vast majority of people are sorely disappointed by the results, to the point of anger or depression.  I try and let them know that the POTUS doesn't have all that much influence over the things they are upset over, domestic policy is not really that easy for a POTUS to change.  It's only in foreign policy that he can directly impact things in any way, he is the Commander in Chief after all and can rather quickly pull troops out of our wars if he so chooses.  Of course I'm under no illusion that he will do this any more than the last man who occupied that office and promised to get us out of all of our wars of conquest around the world, and he even got the PEACE prize just for saying he'd do it, and yet we are still in every spot we were in then and then some. Peace does not come from governments.  Governments are nothing but violence, it is...

For many years I've been here as "The Angry Gnome."  I suppose for the most part I've lived up to (or down to?) the name.  Recently I have written here very seldom, not being quite sure what to do with a blog these days, most of my Angry Rants went straight to Facebook and I pretty much never bothered with more than a line or two of introduction to material written by someone else.  I will readily admit to having a quick fuse and a pretty angry demeanor, but inside I'm not like that at all!  Really :-) Obviously the name Angry Gnome had a nice ring to it and aligned nicely with the way I tend to present to the world at large.  I am under no illusions about changing the name of my seldom used blog having any real significant impact on my cranky nature... but it certainly couldn't hurt. :-) I'll tell you what has brought this on, it's the recent regrettable election for president we've all had the misfortune to experience for the last year ...

I go around and around... or round and round... I hate Facebook, I love Facebook.  I'm Roman Catholic, I'm not Roman Catholic.  I'm taking public transportation, I'm driving.  I'm vegan, I'm paleo.  I'm going to post all the time on my blog instead of going to Facebook and reposting other people's stuff, what blog? I'm on an endless spiral staircase... I look out on the same scene over and over from different levels but I am not really going anywhere... maybe it's more of an MC Escher sort of staircase... I'm just a little kid... I'm a cranky old man... All at the same time... I'm Russia as described by Churchill... a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma...  I am what Nomad said of Uhura... silly sexist 60's :-) Capt. Kirk : [ of Uhura ] What d'you do to her? Nomad : That unit is defective. Its thinking is chaotic. Absorbing it unsettled me. Spock : That "unit" is a woman. ...

I was hoping that writing about how on edge I've become because of the sensory overload I'm experiencing might help to release some tension... nope.  :-P One thing that it has done is to make me aware of how "on edge" I am right now so that I can at least try to be a bit more calm and relaxed about things... yeah, right. So... mindfulness.  I am jittery and stressed because the world is too loud and too bright and too smelly... and I have not managed to get away to a quiet place for a long time... and it's getting slowly but surely to the point where... where I don't know what.  Mindfulness.  I know what is going on, so I can do something about it right?  Take a deep breath, let go of the stress.  I wish that sort of stuff worked. Visualize peace maybe... ...ah... whatever. Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Repeat. I need to go somewhere very quiet for a day or two, and just lay on the ground looking up at the sky for a few hours a...

I'll start out by linking to this article called "What a meltdown feels like for an autistic person" that was linked from Unstrange Mind on Facebook.  You can read that first if you like, it's pretty good. "It’s never just a sandwich." Lately I've been having more and more difficulty maintaining my emotional equilibrium.  I've found myself having not-quite-meltdowns dozens of times a day, snapping at people, ranting uncontrollably about whatever the new "outrage of the day" is, flipping off drivers on the highway and being rude and obnoxious to everyone around me from work to home and in-between.   So what in the world is going on?   "It’s never just a sandwich."  I'm right on the edge of a full blown embarrassing meltdown.  I can feel it out there lurking on the fringes of my mind, just waiting for the final trigger, the last straw, the one last little drop of water to start the flood the last pebble to begin ...

I’m reading a book based on the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas called “Practical Theology” by Peter Kreeft.   It is set up with 350+ short chapters so I should be able to go through it in about a year reading one chapter a day, usually it’s just one or two pages and doesn’t take long.   Of course sometimes the sitting and pondering what I’ve read takes a while but the actual reading is pretty quick.    Today’s reading was titled “Only Three Kinds of Goods” and went in a direction I would not have expected.   From Thomas Aquinas himself we have “Goodness is rightly divided into the virtuous, the useful, and the pleasant… Goodness is not divided into these three as something univocal to be predicated equally of them all, but as something analogical to be predicated of them according to priority and posteriority.   Hence it is predicated chiefly of the virtuous, then of the pleasant and lastly of the useful. (I,5,6) So, what is virtuous is the highest go...

I've been sick for weeks now.  I'm slowly recovering but I'm still exhausted by mid-afternoon each day and coughing and being dizzy.  This is much of the reason I have not posted here but have been re-posting stuff to Facebook instead, it takes a lot more effort to write and think than it does to grab stuff other people have produced and say "Yeah, this!  Look here!" The recent abominations done by the government against the people, the "clearing" of Hillary and the blatant murder of black men in Baton Rouge and Minnesota, followed by the murder of police in Dallas, have brought out much anger and outrage in the nation, and in me for sure.  I'm not surprised by any of it to tell the truth but I refuse to let pass justifications of the murders committed by the police and so I've deliberately posted provocative and extreme anti-government and anti-police things.  I'm not apologizing for that, I mean every word of it, the government is the ene...

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; 40 and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; 41 and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. Matthew 5:38-42 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE) This is today's gospel reading.  I know many people don't like this part of the teachings of Jesus, they attempt to explain it away and rationalize revenge... but it's really pretty clear what he means here.  It is nice that it lands the day after an act of such hateful evil as the attack in Orlando. 

These last few days have made remaining a-political very difficult.  Any number of stories in the news deserve comment... presidential campaigns have descended to new, previously unimaginable, lows every day.  Insane court decisions... and hate filled terrorist attacks... all of these things have been just begging for comment. These tales all have one thing in common, they all assume governments have the solution to our problems, which is to say, they all assume that the way to solve humanities problems is through violence.  Who becomes president is deciding who will have access to the most deadly pile of terror weapons in the history of mankind.  The courts order blue suited thugs to enforce "laws" with violence.  Then there is the terror attack on the "Gay club" in Florida, pure hate filled violence in the name of a state, ISIS is a state of course, no matter what the competing violent terrorist gangs around the world try to claim, just as legitimate as th...

Since I decided to delete all of the political Facebook people and pages I was following I've been way calmer and happier. My life is now a I'm sure someone will tell me when the election is over who "won".  :-P

So, over the last few days I've been deactivating and reactivating my Facebook account because I was annoyed with all of the political posts and I found myself getting all worked up over them... today I figured out exactly WHO was causing them to be all over my newsfeed... So I've taken corrective action by unliking or unfollowing all of my political sites so I won't be tempted to comment on them, repost them or react to them... THIS is where all that stuff was coming from... :-)  

Yeah,  I turned Facebook back off again.  I can't do the leave it on but don't look at it thing.  So now, no matter who says anything I'm leaving it off! But that's  not what I want to talk about this morning actually.  :-)  I'm unable to attend Mass today because I've come down, quite suddenly yesterday afternoon, with a chest cold, or something like that.  I feel OK but I can't talk, laryngitis big time.  I just don't want to go and pass it on to the people at church. Since I can't go to church I read the readings for Mass and am pondering the deep love Christ has for us all, the compassion he shows, the understanding of our need.  The gospel today is the story of the widow of Nain. Luke 7:11-17 11  Soon afterward [ a ] he went to a city called Na′in, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. 12  As he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his ...

Yeah, I deactivated my account for almost 24 hours, but my daughter yelled at me to put it back up, so I obediently did so because... GRANDKIDS videos and photos! But it I still am not going to actually READ it... much... at all... Maybe I'll only post from here on my blog, except when I post funny cartoons that simply MUST be shared with EVERYONE ... right NOW .  Uh huh.  Yeah, I'll just keep this little bit of blow right here on my desk, but I'm not going to actually USE it.  Sigh.