"Disaster will overtake you,
and you won’t be able to charm it away.
Misfortune will descend upon you,
and you won’t be able to buy your way out.
A catastrophe will strike you suddenly,
one for which you are not prepared."
Isaiah 47:11
"With tears in my eyes I tell you now that some may be lost, forever. For their own desires are the god that they worship. They boast with pride about things of which they should be ashamed. They think only about the privileges and glories of this world. But we now belong to heaven."
Phillipians 3:19-20
"Those among the fortunate rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; but they cannot understand destitution. Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare, they will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman’s beautiful throat."
Léon Bloy
Get right. Sit tight.
I would like to say that after all this I have finally seen everything, heard everything, every excess of alternative facts.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”
Maximilian Kolbe
How to Know If We Are Beating Covid-19
Most people lack a natural feel and understanding for the power of exponential growth, and so fall victim to memes that seek to trivialize the effects of this illness and the speed at which it can strike and grow. This differentiates Covid-19 from comparisons with other illnesses.
And because of the speed and incubation period a significant problem is the lack of testing. Forget what claims have been made. Testing capability is woefully inadequate and undersupplied now and will likely be so for some time. This is because of our priorities, mostly financial.
Hopefully that will change. Our infrastructure has for a long time been underfunded and inadequate in any number of areas besides roads and bridges and public transport.
I wonder what it would take for a public health effort, in certain test areas, to do simple blood tests to find out who has already had the illness and may now be effectively immune? This would tell us quite a bit.
Disinformation is always a problem, and not just in undemocratic countries. It is a very serious problem in the US and the UK for the obvious political reasons, and cult-like tendencies in a sizable minority.
There are some bright spots on the internet. There are many that are kitchen table talk and clickbait. And I think you know which ones thrive on fear and hate and clever deception.
We are, because of our willful actions and the mad mythology of our exceptionalism, in God's hands now in so many ways. We will face a reckoning for what we have done and become. We can change it. Because in addition to God's hands, we are in the hands of our own arrogant and risky behaviors.
And to that point something like covid-19 is the perfect storm. The disease does not care what the polls say, what nicknames we give it, how often we downvote or ignore it. It infects, its spreads, it sickens, it kills. Our pride and our greed and our social and political position are without power against it.
Properly speaking, it is not an act of God— it is an act of our willful ignorance.
We will learn. We can change. We can make it better together.
But when? And at what cost?
Need little, want less, love more.
Example of What China Did to Break the Spread of the Disease
This is what the Chinese lockdown looked like. It was 'comprehensive' and authoritarian. I put this forward not as an example, but rather to help to explain those who point to the course of the disease in China as an example for us. And there is little doubt that there was no full disclosure of deaths.
The decline of the illness in China was no natural progress of the disease, or so called 'herd immunity.' I think seeing what was happening in Italy gave some Western leaders a wake-up call.
Certain countries like Japan and South Korea have also had successful efforts to slow down the spread of the disease. They benefit from a culture of 'self-policing' where the public acts as a force for deterrence against harmful behaviors by individuals, as well as experience in battling these viruses through personal measures, such as personal distancing and the wearing of masks.
"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further. A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake. Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it.
It was very difficult to get the gold price under control but we have now succeeded. The US Fed was very active in getting the gold price down. So was the U.K."
Sir Eddie George, Governor Bank of England in conversation with Nicholas J. Morrell, chief executive of Lonmin Plc, 1999
"I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittles and panderers, the creatures of the plutocracy.”
Jack London, The Iron Heel
And they said to him, 'Where will this happen, Lord?' And He said to them, 'Where death is, there will be a gathering of vultures.'”
Luke 17:37
Stocks gave up some of the gains of the last three days.
Traders were reluctant to hold positions into the weekend.
The dollar continued to fall from its recent high. I have included a second Dollar chart that shows its performance over the last six months.
Gold and silver are looking like they want to break higher again.
We have been lost for a long time.
Perhaps we will be able to find our way back again.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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