“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?”
“The oligarchs who ran the country – and the world – had no principals, no morals, and no Code of Honor. Their indentured servants, the politicians, pretended to have them, but their skills were, just like those of the prostitute who tells her john he just gave her the best orgasm, to appear to have a moral purpose just beyond their self-enrichment. That much was enough to get them through the next election.
And every dollar they [the people] saved was worth less with every financial crisis, while the government just printed more money to preserve the stock markets, the financial status of the elites, and the banks who served them.”
Kenneth Eade, An Evil Trade
Stocks had another ranging day, and ended with small losses.
The Dollar moved sideways.
Gold was hit hard today, and to a lesser extent silver.
The miners were hammered.
Must be a stock option expiration this Friday.
And China is on holiday for their lunar New Year this week.
"If I speak in the tongues of angels and of men, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I can prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not selfish, it is not easily angered or resentful. It is not glad of injustice, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
But where there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there is speaking in tongues, it will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when what is perfect comes, the temporary will be set aside.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."
1 Corinthians 13
"The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, 'Little children, love one another.'
The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, 'Teacher, why do you always say this?' He replied with a line worthy of John: 'Because it is the Lord's commandment, and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.'"
Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, 4th century
"God beholds you. He calls you by your name. He sees you and understands you as He made you. He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses. He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow. He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations. He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit. He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms.
He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears. He looks tenderly upon you. He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing. You do not love yourself better than He loves you. You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards."
John Henry Newman
"Holiness consists simply in doing God's will, and being just what God wants us to be. Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them. Without love deeds, even the greatest, count as nothing. Our Lord's love shines forth as much in the simplest of souls as it does in the most highly gifted, as long as there is no refusal of His grace."
Thérèse Martin de Lisieux
"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the
image of God. Thereafter, any attack, even on the least of men, is an
attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in His own Person
restored the image of God in all. Through our relationship with the
Incarnation we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are
delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of
sin, and recover our familiarity with all mankind."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"And we have come to know and to trust the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them."
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
George Orwell
"They have treated the suffering of my people carelessly, saying, ‘all is well’ when there is no safety. They act shamefully, they commit terrible offenses; and yet they are not ashamed, and do not even know how to blush. They shall be found among those who are fallen."
Jeremiah 6:14-15
"The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness."
Thomas Merton
"The rich man replied, ‘If someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’ But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Luke 16:30-31
"A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, that we are not going to be judged.”
Czeslaw Milosz, The Discreet Charm of Nihilism
"Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the punishment prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no hospitality, naked and you gave me nothing to wear, ill and in prison, and you did not care about me.’”
Matthew 25:31-46
"The only real tragedy, in the end, is not to have be among the saints."
Léon Bloy, La Femme pauvre
It was a risk-on day today ahead of the three day weekend with the markets closed on Monday for the federal holiday of Washington's Birthday, also popularly known as Presidents' Day.
Stocks went out near all time highs.
The VIX dropped to a recent low.
Gold and the miners were hit, although they managed to gain much of that back by the close.
Today was the Lunar New Year, a widely celebrated holiday in Asia.
And like the slightly more significant Golden Week holiday in China in October, it is an opportunity for Western Bankers and Wall Street to take potshots at the metals while the big buyers of physical are on holiday.
The Impeachment Part Deux slumbers on
With the valuations of stocks at current level, the odds of a 'market break' from about now until April have become elevated.
A stimulus package may diminish, but not eliminate, that possiblity.
"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers, with approving smiles. Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty.
Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself, without grace."
Simone Weil
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
"The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.
The silence under the terror was only the consequence. The coldness of the societal monad, the isolated competitor, was the precondition, as indifference to the fate of others, for the fact that only very few people reacted."
Theodor Adorno, Education After Auschwitz
Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison
Gold and silver were hit by a bear raid today.
Stocks managed to hold to even or gain a little.
The Dollar moved sideways.
The most astonishing thing is that it is almost never too late to ask God for forgiveness and mercy.
There are only three things that are required.
Repentance. Repentance. Repentance.
But that requires a recognition and admission of fault, and the will to humble our unworthy selves and accept His mercy, and go and sin no more.
And this is why the proud and unrepentant harden their hearts, and firmly close the door to their own personal hells, which they themselves have fashioned, locked from the inside.
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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