"As the father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments, and abide in his love. These things I have told you, that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down their life for their friends. And you are my friends, if you do as I have commanded you."
John 15:9-14
“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of pride.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
"Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heaven."
John Milton, Paradise Lost
"We live in a world where love itself is condemned. People call it weakness, something to grow out of. Some are saying: 'let each one become as strong as he can, and let the weak perish.' The neo-paganism [of the Nazis] may well cast-off love but, in spite of everything, history teaches us that we shall be the victors over this. Do not yield to hatred. We are here in a dark tunnel, but we have to go on. At the end, an eternal light is shining for us. We shall not forsake love."
Titus Brandsma, Dachau, 26 July 1942
"Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength. But it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."
Léon Bloy
The action today was little more than a wash-and-rinse prelude to the Fed's interest rate meeting and announcement tomorrow.
Watch out for secondary effects from Jay Powell's press conference after the decision announcement.
Stocks dropped and then pulled back to finished just slightly lower.
VIX waffled, finishing nearly unchanged.
Gold and silver did a dip.
The Street squeezed out the Instacart IPO today.
My eye is recovering slowly. I still cannot drive which is inconvenient. But the worst of it is past, and the important bits are all in place and settled down.
Tender mercies.
Have a pleasant evening.
