Lent 2026 - Wandering In the Desert

 

"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil.  After fasting for forty days and forty nights, he hungered. And the Tempter came to try him."

Mark 4:1-2

It is a passage so familiar, the 'temptation in the desert', that we hear it, but we may not really think about it, and its implications.

'Then Jesus was led, by the Spirit, into the wilderness.'

So our Lord was tempted, by the devil himself of course, but with the seeming complicity of God the Holy Spirit, who led Him into it.

This also recalls another passage so familiar that we also do not think of its implications.

'And lead us not into temptation...'

Doesn't it seem odd and out of place that God would lead His own people into harm's way?  Isn't temptation a very negative thing that we are told to avoid at all costs?

Temptation is certainly not something we should seek out, given the risks in taking that proposition as our own choice.  But if we think instead of temptation as a 'trial' or a preparation for our calling, as in the case of our Lord whose time in the wilderness preceded his public ministry, it is something that can strengthen us, make us stronger in our faith through that trial, that testing, in the practical applications of what we believe.

If the words we have received are at all accurate, it is not intended that spiritually we remain an untested bunch of cream puffs, riding to heaven on feather beds, with God attending to all our needs, compelled to serve us by the words with which we claim HIS obedience.

Like an athlete, we must train for the contests, but it is in the contest itself that we do most of our learning and growing and extending ourselves to the limits.   Such exercises are always marked by pain, in the muscles, and in the core of our being.

To varying degrees we are preparing and are called upon to be God's hands, and feet, and the living manifestation of His word here on earth, in a life long journey through the peaks and valleys of both good and evil, success and failure.  We are 'the Church militant' here and only later, one would hope, triumphant at long last.

Or as J. H. Newman put it:

"Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come.  He can turn all things to our eternal good.  Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy."

There will be a minor stock index option expiration on Friday.

The Dollar rallied back up to the top of the 97 handle.

VIX rose.

Gold and silver bounced back a bit.

Bitcoin continues to dredge what the punters hope will be a new trading channel.

Further declines from here could accelerate the risk of a cascading decline.  At 50 Bitcoin is on the ropes.

Keep an eye on the geopolitical situation.  The Trump administration negotiating style is like watching a three card monte game.   They are generally transactional trying to look good, rather than to achieve anything fair, stable, and substantial.  It's an amateur hour run by self-dealing shysters. 

Now might be a good time to top up your gas and heating oil, and add to your stores of some of the essentials.  A shock to global trade may be in the works. 

And I would not completely rule out a fairly dramatic false flag, in the spirit of the Hannibal Directive, from he-who-must-not-be-named to provoke the US into stronger measures with Iran.  

Corruption of data and the basic elements of the economy are embedded now. 

It is going to be a painful correction back to the mean.

There are no markets now, only dictates and manipulations.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Deep Things of God

 

"If you choose you can keep the commandments,
     to be faithful is a matter of choice.
He has placed fire and water before you;
     stretch out your hand and choose.
Before each of us stand life and death,
     and whichever you choose will be given."

Sirach 15:15-17 

"The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him.  It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love.  The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love."

Dorothy Day, The Mystical Body of Christ, The Catholic Worker, April 1964

"And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Micah 6:8

"The seed that He has planted in our hearts can be suffocated by the worries of the world, or seduced by wealth into lawlessness, choked by false complexity.  Learn to love your neighbor, rich and poor, high and low, worthy and unworthy, with a perfect, selfless love.  For the word of God is love.  And then you may proceed."

Jesse, Suffocated by Worries, Seduced by Wealth, 17 February 2022

"What God prepares for those who love him,
this God reveals to us through the Spirit.
For the Spirit searches everything, even the deep things of God."

1 Corinthians 2:9-10

 

Stocks had another big risk on - risk off day.

The eternal wash and rinse of the manipulation of risk.

The Dollar spiked and fell back.

Gold and silver were slammed.

It's the Chinese New Year and their markets are quiet, so this was expected.

VIX popped and flopped.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.

The pricing of a risk of a military action between the US at the behest of Israel with Iran is not yet in the equity markets.

Today is Mardi Gras.  Laissez les bons temps rouler.

And tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

It seems like every year I say, 'I can't believe its already Ash Wednesday!'

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Epstein and the Rise of a New 'Master Race'

 

"There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success."

John Emerich Dalberg Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History, 1906

“People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages.  They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.”

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, 1956

"Until this moment I did not fully appreciate the moral vacuum at the core of these elitists.  They created a wreckage of devices that led us to the edge of an economic precipice.  Now they attempt to justify the results by defining the poor as those who, by their nature, prefer cheap and shoddy goods and a lower standard of life.  They are by choice separate but equal to the wealthy, who genetically require the finer things in life. The famous rebuke of 'at long last, have you no decency', to those who thrive from conflict and injustice, and who will say or do almost anything in their pursuit of the will to power, must surely again apply."

Jesse, Economists Discover 'Separate But Equal', May 20, 2008

"The essential characteristic of a good and healthy ruling elite, however, is that it views itself not as a function of the monarchy or the commonwealth, but as its very meaning and highest justification, and that it therefore accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings, to slaves, to instruments."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886

"People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world.  They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all.

'I have what you have not.  I am what you are not.  I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get.  Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and I am praised, you die and I live; you are nothing and I am something, and I am all the more something because you are nothing.'"

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 1949

"Edge, Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon - was sold to me as a gathering of the world's finest minds. The files reveal it was something far darker: a decades-long project that cloaked eugenics, race science and sexual misconduct in Ivy League respectability.

Edge was overwhelmingly male, for one. It was said to be an intellectual salon, but in the club photos were tech bro billionaires, including Edge members Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Larry Page. And too many members were men now largely renowned for misconduct, professional or personal: Marc D Hauser, Jonah Lehrer, Lawrence Krauss, and Marvin Minsky...

Whatever Edge was supposed to be, it became something sinister. The salon played yenta to billionaire money and alpha-male minds, and together, over decades, they all converged on a master philosophy: they were apex predators ordained by nature to exploit and subjugate others. This creed allowed the Edge set to steer intellectual history into its current fascist dead-end.

Billionaires really like thinkers who see their exploitation of the weak as a good and natural thing. Epstein funnelled as much as $20m a year to academic men who shared his ideology. In exchange, Epstein himself, who could barely read and write, was empowered to hold forth in formal sessions at Harvard, condemning feeding and caring for the poor as if he were making a scholarly argument.

Read the entire article here...

Virginia Heffernan, The Billionaire's Eugenics Project, 13 February 2026

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Quartet For the End of Time

 

"And the angel lifted up his hand to heaven.  And he swore by Him that lives for ever and ever, who created heaven and the earth and the things that are in it, that there should be time no longer."

Revelation 19:5-6

"The historical evidence is overwhelming. Many societies have done well for a while – until powerful people get out of hand.  We had strong institutions for a long time in this country — including effective checks on the power of bankers. In recent decades we abandoned the governance mechanisms that previously served us well.  Global megabanks have obtained excessive and inappropriate power – the power to take a great deal of risk, with cash for their executives on the upside, and huge damage for the rest of us on the downside."

Simon Johnson, Jamie Dimon and the Fall of Nations, May 31,2012

"A credit crisis [and the unwinding of any overleveraged paper asset such as NY-London precious metals - Jesse] arises when many more promises are made than can possibly be kept, and disputes emerge about how and to whom promises will be broken."

Steve Waldman, Credit Crisis for Kindergartners, Interfluidity, March 20, 2008

"Until this moment I did not fully appreciate the moral vacuum at the core of these elitists.  They created a wreckage of devices that led us to the edge of an economic precipice.  Now they attempt to justify the results by defining the poor as those who, by their nature, prefer cheap and shoddy goods and a lower standard of life. They are by choice separate but equal to the wealthy, who genetically require the finer things in life. 

The famous rebuke of 'at long last, have you no decency', to those who thrive from conflict and injustice, and who will say or do almost anything in their pursuit of the will to power, must surely again apply."

Jesse, Economists Discover 'Separate But Equal', May 20, 2008

"He knew folly like the back of his hand,
And was interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, senators burst with laughter,
And little children died in the streets."

W. H. Auden, Epitaph On a Tyrant (edited), 1939


VIX rose at the end of the day.

Stocks did their usual wash and rinse boogie woogie.

Bessent is trying to keep them pumped to please the boss, but the market will play it for a quick buck, but isn't happy with the risk reward at this level.

Their bullish braying is intended to lure the small specs into the market for the handoff.

The Dollar bounced around, but could not take back the 97 handle.

He-who-must-not-be-named is wrecking the US economy, and its position within the world community.

A second carrier group has been dispatched from the Caribbean to the vicinity of Iran.  It will take a week or so to position along with the group already in place.

Trump wants a deal, but the acceptable ask that Benjy wants is something to which no sane government would agree.  He wants them to give up their missiles.   He now knows he cannot defend against them.  But he wants Iran out of the way to give himself a free hand in the region.

The only compelling reason for US to strike is that Washington runs on blackmail and bribes, and the chicken-hawk spirit of the neo-cons these days.  Not oaths, not conscience, but money and power, and the escaping of consequences for their crimes are all that matter to them.

Eventually someone is going to lose something that will be missed.  So they are trying to set up a scapegoat and fall guy, respectively.  These half men have the moral depth of street urchins. And the young shall die as children come of age.

It's an old story, as old as Babylon, and evil as sin.

It is what madman, gripped by the demons of lawlessness, do. 

As a reminder, US markets will be closed on Monday for the Presidents' Day holiday. 

Have a pleasant weekend.