Reprise: Resist the Temptation to Fear and Despair

 

This is a reprise from 26 October 2016.  

"Because of the increase in wickedness, the love of many will grow cold."

Matthew 24:12


"Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all."

John Henry Newman

I have noticed that many seem to be discouraged by the current state of things, and the catalyst are elections that seems to offer only the choice between two distasteful alternatives.  I have the opportunity to speak to people from every part of the world each day, and there seems to be a common thread in the discussions.

We have been battered for years now by the repeated crushing of hope, and the impulse to reform, by the powerful moneyed interests of a relative few who seem to honor or uphold nothing but their own greed.  Every region seems to be plagued by some form of this brute selfishness and prideful corruption.

If I am being objective, and not focused only on the present day, I am profoundly grateful that I do not have to face (yet I say with hope) the obstacles that our parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents faced over and over for years.

They personally faced absolutely brutal world wars which slaughtered millions, and many of them were very poor in terrible Depressions where all hope was almost lost.  They faced industrial accidents and exploitation, child labor, enslavement, and powerful repressions by inhumanly sick men and women.

And even now there are those facing things such as that in the world as it is today, and if anything we should be appalled that we do so little or nothing to relieve their distress.  And, may God forgive us, we sometimes stand by while our own people may be inflicting these hardships upon others.

But we are distracted from all this, by feeling sorry for our own disappointments and troubles.

This is not to say that we do not have problems. This year has been so bad for us personally, and for others that I know from Le Cafe,  that at times I wanted to cry out like Job.

But putting our own temptation to wallow in despair aside, one finds they can rise above these things, sometimes with the help of others and sometimes with a slow but steady determination, and make things good where they can, for themselves and most importantly for others.

And that is enough, for it is our lot in this life.  Not to keep an account of all the things that we do not like, that frighten us, that may potentially harm us, that concern us, that could go wrong, that afflict us in our daily lives like 'a thorn in the flesh.'

I know that this seems to be the opium of the distressed, and to be placidly self-content and self-absorbed as 'a folly' of the weak-minded, and an opportunity to feel superior to those who suffer on, to the '99 percent.'  This is as it has always been.

But sometimes God must first break a heart to enter it.  And it is what remains afterwards, when the crisis is passed, that offers us the way to becoming fully human.

And we are then called to stand up and witness to the fully human life, in grace that is given, not cheaply by ourselves, but by our resolve and determination to follow Him in our calling.

Where there is sickness bring healing, where there is despair bring hope, and where there is darkness, light.

Not in some abstract sending out of good thoughts, which is fine for a beginning, but more importantly in tangible acts of kindness and goodness for our families, and friends, and acquaintances, and finally even for those who are undeserving.  There is so much that needs to be done, that we may be tempted to do nothing.  But all we are asked to do is to begin, and do something, even if it is only something little.

Little acts of goodness spread like ripples in a pond.  A candle in the darkness allows others to find and ignite their own—  and then there is light.

"God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—  I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.

I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.

He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me— still He knows what He is about.

We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.

Let us feel what we really are— sinners, but attempting great things.  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.

The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.

Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.”

John Henry Newman

Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.

"But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.

When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one, -- happiness and love."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis, 1905

 

The story behind Quo Vadis.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Beware of Bears - Non-Farm Payrolls Tomorrow

 

"Beneath some burning, unknown gaze
I feel my very wings unpinned,
And give my name to the abyss
Which waits to claim me as its own.”

Charles Baudelaire, Lament of Icarus

"When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."

Friedrich Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse

"And you could say in some respects this 'shadow behind the power' that makes money off war, period, no matter who's the belligerent, makes money off that volatility now, especially with computers that are able to assist them in doing so, like currency manipulation, for example, or just general speculation.  And they don't care about what they're doing to the real economy, because they're raking in the dough."

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell

“How you are fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morning.   How you have been cut down to the ground, You who laid low the nations.  For you said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit on the mount of the most holy on the farthest sides of the north.  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be as God.’

Isaiah 14:12-14

Stocks were lower today on a repricing of risk (again).

The Dollar was sharply higher, along with the VIX, in a risk off move.

Gold and silver were lower, moving inversely with the dollar.

Tomorrow is the Non-Farm Payrolls report, which may move markets.

I am not so sure where the market is going.

Theories abound, including the Fed pivot and the suppport for markets in anticipation of the mid-term elections.

However, we are clearly in a bear market. 

And we will remain in one until we start to see higher lows and higher highs.

So until then, beware of bears.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Civilisation - Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday

 

“I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta.  On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology.

I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings, by satisfying our own egos.  And I think we should remember that we are all part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature.  All living things are our brothers and sisters."

Kenneth Clark, Civilisation

"Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but was wrong in thinking that we can get them for ourselves, without grace."

Simone Weil

"Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament. He has wished to ‘be himself,’ and to be in himself and for himself, and his wish has been granted.  To admire Satan, then, is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography."

C. S. Lewis

"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 solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about."

Fulton J. Sheen


What is civility? 

Kenneth Clark, would say that civility is to be cultured, aware and appreciative of the higher things in life, and to be a gentleman in the great English tradition,  even as John Henry Newman himself observed, that a gentleman "is one who never inflicts pain."

But as Simone Weil points out so well, that mere humanism as an act of choice, of human will, may not be sufficient to stand up against the great objectifying beasts of our modern age.

What is needed to remain standing against the onslaught of greed and power and vanities and hate is grace.  'Faith alone may make a hero, but love makes a saint.'

And Bonhoeffer makes the final connection, that it is really a matter of respect for God.  

Civility is a respect and love and consideration for each person, not as the world and the market may value them, but with respect for the Lord, who has ennobled the human condition by accepting for himself as almighty God in the incarnation, and further, made love of neighbor an imperative to life as his disciple.

There are no two ways about it.  The words are there and are unequivocal. 

"Master, which is the great commandment in the law?  And Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

The markets were embarrassed by the whopper that the wiseguys promoted yesterday about a Fed pivot, again, under the leadership of the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Especially in light of the stronger than expected jobs increase shown by the payroll company ADP.

And so today they plummeted.

But the Non-Farm Payrolls report is still a day or so away, so there is still some life left in this most recent wash and rinse.

And stocks finished the day mostly unchanged.  For now.

The Dollar rallied and gold and silver retreated a bit.

Show us who you admire and what you serve, and we will know you for what you are. 

For a man cannot serve both God and the world, even if they delude themselves with words like greatness and freedom, and profane ideologies that would make vain and selfish beasts of them, destined in their willful ignorance for everlasting darkness. 

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Prelude to a Wash and Rinse - Payrolls on Friday

 

“Lawlessness has come out of Babylon, that is, from the elders who were to govern the people as judges. They perverted their thinking; they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did not keep in mind just judgments.  How you have grown evil with age.  Now have your past sins come to term, passing unjust sentences, condemning the innocent, and freeing the guilty."

Daniel 13:5,9,52-53


"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects."

R. J. Rummel, Death by Government: A History of Mass Murder and Genocide Since 1900


N’en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce,
En ce monde il n’est point de parfaite sagesse;
Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré tous leurs soîns
Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins.

"In spite of every sage whom Greece can show,
Unerring wisdom never dwelt below;
Folly in all of every age we see,
The only difference lies in the degree."

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, from Mackay's Madness of Crowds


"This is as old as Babylon, and evil as sin. It is the power of the darkness of the world, and of spiritual wickedness in high places. The only difference is that it is not happening in the past, or in a book, or in some vaguely frightening prophecy— it is happening here and now."

Jesse

 

The Reserve Bank of Australia only raised rates 25 bp this morning.

And the sages of Wall Street took this as a sign that Aussie is leading the world and that the Fed will shortly be following their lead.

I took it as a sign that we are approaching another sizable wash and rinse.

It does seem to be a recurrent play of our kleptocracy.

And so the spokesmodels and muppets cheered another glorious stock market rally.

The rally was broad based with the Russell showing some team spirit.

Let's see what happened.

Gold and silver have rebounded sharply at least, after the heavy-handed price suppression into the recent Comex option expiration.

Have a pleasant evening.