Father Steve

@teachrobotslove I think many are faux honest, just being provocative. I think you are more. Thanks for what you say and do. Living not by lies is our only hope. What other solace do we have but truth? I'm glad you aspire to truth. Very encouraging.

@SHSilverthorne I really appreciate that. I have not always been so honest. Yet it feels like the thing I should pursue above everything else. The closer I get, the sharper I get. Like a dull blade coming back to life.

Maybe you're not depraved, some sick little pervert. Maybe you don't have a "humiliation/degradation" fetish. Maybe you just have a vulnerability fetish, the deep desire to be exposed and open to love, but you've forgotten that, because in a way putting your heart in your hands for love to take is more frightening than being whipped or pissed on or shocked with a dog collar. Yet you can't deny the truth of your desire. So it comes to you in broken flashes, in little rays of light that break through the cracks of the mud you've covered yourself in. Even in the darkest places of your mind you still want to know what it'd be like to be naked in front of ultimate love, cherished so deeply that even kneeling becomes power, broken open so you can be put back together again; stronger, radiant, a new and lovely design.

@MichelleRempel Monitoring the situation.

This is the Heritage Minute that was deleted from YouTube by people who want to erase Sir John A. Macdonald from our history. Let’s make sure as many people as possible see this. Make this go viral.

Love thy neighbour as yourself. Leviticus 19:18 In the millennia from Moses at Sinai to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, this is the seed of modern democracy. From our home to your home, Merry Christmas and Chag Hanukkah Sameach!

@Sean_Speer I hear you, but hasn't it also dulled our ability and desire to seek meaning? Look at the normie aspirations once assumed in bourgeois life. Marriage and childrearing are in rapid decline. We're increasingly unable/unwilling to embark on these boring ways of meaning creation.

“I wonder how much of this is a realization of Fukuyama's prediction that one of the downsides of liberal democratic capitalism is that it can be boring for some people. Which is to say, as Irving Kristol wrote, there's only two cheers for capitalism, and liberal democratic capitalism more broadly, because while it’s really efficient at organizing our economy, it doesn't answer so-called “first things.” It doesn't give people transcendence. It's why, by the way, it's historically been susceptible to challenge from totalizing ideologies like communism, which didn't merely offer an economic structure, but a broader anthropology and understanding of the world. You do get the sense that the New Right is responding to that same impulse—there's a sense that there's something lacking about liberal democratic capitalism and what I would characterize as “bourgeois society”, a society that mostly privatizes conceptions of the good life and human flourishing and all the rest. I would say a couple of things about that. First of all, they shouldn't underestimate what an accomplishment bourgeois society is. I know ILS is a big fan of Deirdre McCloskey, who’s persuasively made the case that the rise of bourgeois society and bourgeois virtues may be among the greatest intellectual developments in human history—they’re the reason we have rid ourselves of subsistence living and violence and all the rest. But there's something else. I think there’s almost a disdain for ordinary Canadians who aren't in search of this kind of meta-narrative, this heroic story about themselves and their society. My parents in Thunder Bay don't know all the intricacies of the constitutional monarchy or some of the other issues that animate figures on the New Right. But they find meaning in their sons having better lives than they did. They find meaning in the photos and videos we send them of their grandchildren. They find meaning in volunteering in their community or in their church. And yet you almost get the sense that some on the New Right think that my parents' life is boring and bland because they don't, on the face of it, have this deeper sense of meaning in meta-narratives about the history of the country or different institutions or whatever. I think part of that is these particularly young people, at a stage in their life where they’re in search of that meaning, maybe they haven't started families or found other sources of metaphysical meaning and purpose or whatever, and they're turning to politics. But the problem with that it doesn't just become a source of meaning and purpose for them, they then want to impose that source of meaning on the rest of us. I would say that it's underestimating one of the geniuses of liberalism, which is it has created the material conditions for people to seek out that meaning and purpose themselves. And I think it reflects, in a way, a kind of youthful exuberance, but also a kind of youthful ignorance.”

Were the Bondi beach terrorists at the ‘Gas the Jews’ protest in Sydney two days after October 7th? Our online investigators believe that Naveed Akram and his father Sajid Akram may have been present at the ‘Gas the Jews’ protest in Sydney on 9th October 2023. (At the time, Australian police claimed, despite witness statements to the contrary, that people were in fact chanting ‘Where’s the Jews’, as if that somehow made it better.) We have made this assessment with medium confidence, but here is the source video and you can make up your own mind. If it is true, it would represent some of the clearest evidence yet – to those, such as police chiefs across the West, who seem to be the among the last to grasp it – that there is a direct line between the hate marches and demonstrations and the murder of Jews. The authorities across the West should have clamped down on the incitement years ago. It is too late for the dead, and, if they do not finally act, it will soon be too late for the West as well.

@teachrobotslove Read a good interview just today on the risk of love and how refusing it is also a risk. Risk is a non-negotiable human reality, so don't let it stop you from pursuing what you believe in. x.com/freyaindiaa/st…

The concept of being a stay at home mom frightens people, because you are putting your faith and security in a man. And he is not an institution or an organization or a concept - he is just a man - with all his flaws, and inconsistencies, and strange temperaments. You become vulnerable to a human who may love you one day, but not the next, no matter how much he seems fiercely devoted to you. This exposes how uncertain life can be. Yet all of life is like this. At any moment the things that supported and trusted you could be eroded, without your consent or understanding. Your job. Your house. Your government. Your health. Your life. Sometimes it doesn't matter how carefully you plan. You could be a disaster away from losing everything you ever cared about, so that all that is left is stand in the ashes of what was precious to you, and you can do nothing but weep at the sight of the capricious whim of reality. To be a stay at home mom means that you are risking something. But you are always risking something, because you decided to play the game, and sometimes playing the game means that you lose. You can lose so catastrophically, so monumentally, that it erodes your hope forever. Yet sometimes, you can win too. In little and big ways, in unexpected ways, in ways you don't feel like you deserve, a little winking light of luck. And wouldn't it be great, to win? Wouldn't it be amazing to get everything you want, and more? To become happy in ways you never dreamed possible? To win. That'd really be something. To win.

Happy Advent.

And Jesus said to him, You lack one thing: Go, close all of your tabs, and you will have treasure in heaven. But his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had a great many open tabs.

@TristinHopper Few today have actually seen what it looks like when you "burn it all down." No vet who saw Hamburg in 1945 would have any doubts on how awful it is.

Rene Levesque was one of several mid-century Canadian leaders who were adamant about keeping politics within normal boundaries. Why? He'd seen the camps, and he'd seen cities in ruins.

I don't think it's an accident that the speed of our national decline corresponds perfectly with the loss of our last Second World War veterans. We've lost a critical knowledge base of what happens when civilization unravels, and prosperity and peace is taken for granted.

I guess defending Hamas, Bin Laden, Maduro & Putin wasn’t enough… …now @TuckerCarlson is shilling for Boko Haram too. Bizarre.

@teachrobotslove Hence Pentecost and the fire descending on the apostles. Not physically consumed like the fire consuming Elijah's sacrifice at his showdown with Baal, but spiritually consumed as a living sacrifice in service to Christ.

It seems an almost insane proposition that the Christian god requires nothing of his followers except faith. "For it is by grace you have been saved." But you shouldn't be fooled, because to have faith means that you must change the entire structure of your reality in order to orient yourself toward it. You don't have to sacrifice pigs and doves. All you have to give up is your entire self.

@cath_cov Endorse

My view on Marian doctrines: Theotokos: Yes Second Eve: Yes New Ark: Yes Perpetual Virginity: reverent veil of silence Immaculate Conception: No, but sanctified Bodily Assumption: No Queen of Heaven: Mother of the King of Heaven Mediatrix of all graces: No Co-Redemptrix: No

An historic day at Wellington Barracks 🇬🇧 — the launch of the @1914_Sikhs Ceremonial Marching Troop, honouring the courage, service, and sacrifice of Sikh soldiers so they are never forgotten. Humbled to serve as the first Troop Captain ⚔️🫡 #Sikh #1914Sikhs #BritishArmy

This much of a moral coward has no business calling himself either a conservative or a Christian. If you can't call out obvious evil and instead deflect and gaslight, what use are you?

@philipaklein May God protect you and bless you. The mainstreaming of antisemitism is the most revolting development of my lifetime. Lord have mercy upon us.

Reading replies to their most anodyne posts, it's possible that Christian conservatives who are standing by Jews at this moment are being subjected to more abuse on this platform than even Jewish commentators. I am deeply grateful and will never forget any of you.

@TheOptimisticC3 @river_is_nice @TheFP Sad, but that's been the calculus I have been applying to elections here for a long time. None offers hope, so I look for those who don't mandate despair.

"Red states may hardly help their citizens, but the upside is that they usually don’t bother them either. New York has bothered me since I got here." - @river_is_nice in @TheFP thefp.com/p/why-i-miss-l…

"Paris seemed on the verge of tears when I went for my promenade around the Right Bank of the city, but then, it always seemed right on the edge of one catastrophe or another in October. I took my umbrella with me, more of a trusted companion than a shield from the storm. My wanderings took me past the Louvre, a tourist trap I try to avoid if I'm not in the mood to people-watch. As a private investigator I normally get paid more than enough to study others that I have little interest in wasting what meager free time I have by continuing my perusal of people. A commotion caught my eye, however, so with unaffected nonchalance I sidled past the obviously disgruntled policemen, hoping to discover the source of the social consternation and offer my services if need be."

@teachrobotslove This is very good. We submit to marriage as we submit to Christ. Reflects the eroticism of the bridal imagery Jesus regularly uses in describing his own compact with his people. Thank you for writing it.

There is a deep, erotic quality to marriage that makes many sexual exploits seem silly and fake. I don't need to climb down into a dungeon with strobe lighting so that some guy who calls himself "master" can tie me to a St. Andrew's Cross. I don't need someone to bend me over their knee and spank me so I can understand what it means to be a servant. I am already a servant to marriage - to an idea that is greater than myself. And once you fully commit to that idea, to the idea that you are going to see your marriage succeed or you're going to burn alive, you'll be able to finally realize how wonderful it is to serve a master that is so demanding. It is richer and more fulfilling than any LARP of power that has come before, because the stakes are real. You realize then that the kinksters who claim to be edgy and unrepressed are actually pantomiming the act of making soul contracts with inevitable truth. It is they who are repressed, and their sexual enjoyment muted, like touching a human body through thick plastic. My master does not punish me with little whips and chains because I am not a brat looking for a little hit of dopamine and he is not a failed tech CEO needing to feel in control of something for once. He is a Great Idea. If you disobey a Great Idea there will be no spankings. He will destroy your entire bloodline. He will take everything away from you, including your ability to feel joy, or reason, or even understand the origin of your failure. The only option then, is to serve, and to do it with the joy of someone who bears full witness to the beauty that they've been given. You have been given marriage. You have been given a sacred task. If you saw the full extant of this gift you'd weep in gratefulness. But the master does not want you to weep. He wants you to serve. Not as a nubile little lazy twink who gets to sink into the splendor of being commanded while rough hands tugs their collar. No. That isn't real. A true servant anticipates their master's needs. Their whole body and mind is oriented toward The Great Idea. They move in silence, with diligence, without need of coaxing, to prepare the room as a splendid place for when it is time to finally go home.