Love Is the Refuge of the Way

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles."

Nor will love be seen coming from the hearts of those who are fallen into wickedness: they are the fruit of hate, deceit, greed, fear, pride, possession, and aggression. And they will not only forsake love by washing their hands of it, they will eventually come to condemn it, and persecute it—  and thereby condemn themselves.

For the people of God love is the touchstone of faith, the way to know if what we believe is with Him, or from something else;  if we are walking with Him, or with something else;  if the one who speaks is speaking for Him, or for something else;  if we are keeping Him in our hearts, or something else; if we love Him, or ourselves, or something else.

Love does not speak with hate or fear or derision, but with the fullness of existence which is joy and mercy.

Love may be ridiculed and trampled, may be counterfeited but never achieved, by that which is in opposition to His creation.

When you are in doubt or confusion about what is true and what is false, look for the light of love. This is the hallmark of the spirit in the world.

And if it is not there, if an act is wrapped in the hardness of pride, disguised even as an elaborate ritual observance and Pharisaical pride, then you will know what it truly is. It is a sin against the spirit.

Love is not easy; it is not a natural state. It seems weak and foolish, and despicable to the fallen and the world.

Love is a disposition of the mind and the heart, a living for oneself in the other, an act of acceptance of grace, not by but through the will. Love is a shield against temptation. It is a predisposition, a habit of acting and looking at things.

The disposition to love becomes easier and more comfortable as we carry that yoke, that restraint on our weaker nature and our harsher emotions. Over time the yoke that restrains our anger and pride becomes lighter, and a light to steady us in life's darker moments.

But it is rarely easy or natural, which makes it the stuff of the brave, of the spiritually and emotionally hardy, and especially of God's knights. The way of the world, of anger and oppression, is the easy path. But it is not the way of the truly human, but of darker things.

So we must remember we are sinners, but reaching out to the eternal, and thereby attempting great things— if but clumsily and with a number denials like the apostle himself.

This is how the people of God may guide themselves and their own actions along the way. If there is no love evident in the words and the heart, then the words and the actions are not of God, but of something else.

Love is not what we do, but how we do what we do. Love is found in the most ordinary things, not in grand gestures and elaborate mannerisms.  It resides in small daily acts of kindness and fellowship, done lovingly and with care, for His sake. It is how we carry our cross, not in front of a cheering crowd, but in the quiet moments, and the little things, while walking with Him.

The hardened heart judges others, while ignoring its own sins, thinking itself good.   Love is mercy, as it shows us our commonality with our fellow humanity as a weak and sinful creature.

We do not need to hate and reject the world, and despise and subdue His creation. Creation is a gift from God, to which we bring our own good use and order in His name. And if we are wise, with our reverent humility and wonder.

We can work with His gifts lovingly, and not abuse them from an excess of greed.  It is not the world itself that is a source of evil, but the willfulness of our hearts, hardened by pride.

Only love is creative and productive. Only love is accepting and uplifting, able to bring all things forward to His plan and make them new. Love consecrates, while sin desecrates and destroys in its lust for possession and the will to power.

Obviously this law of love is applicable to all people, but is of particular attention to those who hearts have been already touched by God's mercy to be merciful and abundant themselves, in a time of spiritual wickedness, and dark powers in high places.

God is the essence of all existence, which is His love. The pity for those who would otherwise be faithful, then, is not to love.

Because of the increase in wickedness, the love of many will grow cold. But those who stand firm to the end will be saved. And the gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations. And then the end will come.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts

Here are the charts updated for the close.

Have a pleasant weekend.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

"Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him."

Groucho Marx

Confronting the Unspeakable

"Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see...

Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God."

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable


“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—  the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders that we are not going to be judged.”

Czesław Miłosz


“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”

John Henry Newman

They house people in deathtraps.   They poison the drinking water.  They financialize and corrupt almost every otherwise beneficial social institution from public education to healthcare. They foment endless wars for the pursuit of their own power and profits.

They have the courts pronounce their soulless piles of money, the corporations, as 'people,' while people themselves are judged to be of little consequence, to be thrown aside as if they were trash.

They catch the unsuspecting  within the jaws of stagnant wages and corporate monopolies, and squeeze until there is nothing left.

This is the return of the anti-human madness.  This is the Unspeakable.

Government ministers ‘congratulated themselves’ for cutting fire regulations
Charles White for Metro.co.uk
Friday 16 Jun 2017

"Conservative ministers were proud of slashing fire regulations, just months ahead of the Grenfell Tower block blaze.

In February this year, ministers posted on a government website details of their ‘anti-red tape’ agenda on new-build properties.

In a separate report fire safety inspections, the Conservatives said, had been reduced for some companies from six hours to just 45 minutes.

The move, titled Cutting Red Tape, was part of the Tory plans to abolish a ‘health and safety’ culture that they claimed was hurting money-making businesses.

Residents in Grenfell Tower block have complained that their homes were not properly fire-safe including lack of sprinklers and alarms.

Former Prime Minister David Cameron promised to abolish the ‘albatross’ of ‘over regulation’.

He said in 2012 that a Conservative government would: ‘Kill off the health and safety culture for good’.

The death toll from the fire in Kensington is expected to rise to almost 100.

More than 2,400 pieces of regulation have been scrapped since Cut Red Tape began...

Read the original article here.

The Trend That Will Shake the Nation

"Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started."

Mary Midgley


"Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that create huge inequalities.

We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal that we continue to sow destruction, pain, and death."

Pope Francis I

It is a very perverse view of life that fundamental necessities like healthcare are being portrayed as a discretionary purchase that people make because they 'like it.'

Oh yes, I am enjoying having Multiple Sclerosis, or cancer, or some other chronic illness because it allows me to go out and spend money I don't have on overpriced drugs protected by government sanctions from corporate monopolies.  And the fact that I am unfortunate is all my fault because I am obviously a life unworthy of life.

And endless war in support of the formation and maintenance of some vast global order that the imperial state controls is a necessity whose enormously extravagant costs must never be questioned.

This attack on the fundamentals of human existence is being supported by propaganda campaigns and corruption of thought and basic decency not all that dissimilar from the same sort of trash that early on formed the basis for those actions that we have rightly condemned as crimes against human life in the past century.

How blinded to the consequences of our actions are we are becoming.

What other basic necessities of life will the anti-humans continue to price out of reach, using their power and influence in order to feed a mania to bring more and more of the public to its knees in service to their debt and desire for basic survival?

Look for the public to start looking farther afield to find alternatives as the Republicans and the Democrats continue to abandon them in their service to Big Money.

The greatest things in Nature start slowly and quietly, but continue to gather force until they overwhelm the works of men.  

This is nemesis, the the inescapable agent of the downfall of an over-reaching arrogance driven by an obsession to be as gods, and have the power of life and death.