My Spirit Animal Doesn't…

My Spirit Animal Doesn't...
My Spirit Animal Doesn’t…

My spirit animal doesn’t exist! Oh wait! Maybe I was wrong about that. 😆 It’s looks like there’s a spirit animal for everyone, even bloody-handed, old grognards like me. 😉

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The Pope Hammer

The Pope Hammer
The Pope Hammer

And, introducing the Pope Hammer! 😆 Yes, this is a real thing that the Catholic Church came up with long ago. Whenever a sitting Pope died, it was the solemn duty of the Cardinal Camerlengo to “gently” strike him upon his head three times while calling out his Baptismal Name aka his given or first name. If he didn’t respond – after being struck in the head by a hammer up to three times – he was declared truly and really dead and the process for selecting his successor was begun.

So… Sometime “fairly” soon:

BAM! Jorge? BAM! Jorge? BAM Jorge?

Yeah, I’m guessing that Pope Francis aka Jorge Mario Bergoglio isn’t going to get merely a set of love taps when he’s presumed dead. Being both the first Jesuit Pope and the First non-European one doesn’t bode to well for him in that respect, given the nature of the Church. 😉

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NY Now Composting People

NY Now Composting People
NY Now Composting People

‘Tis odd but true; New York, thanks to actions by the state’s legislature and NY’s Governor, Kathy Hochul – most likely as a sop to the climatards and/or due to getting kickbacks from Recompose – has legalized the composting of human remains, euphemized as natural organic reduction, terramation, and/or recomposition. This makes New York the 6th Democrat-controlled state, following Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, and California, to allow the controversial practice.

To my mind and irrespective of the reasons Democrats had for putting for and then passing this into law, in so long as it is a truly voluntary choice – i.e., the Dems don’t “regulate” and tax burials and cremations to the point that they’re no longer valid choices for most people – I not only don’t mind this, I like it. I have a normal American man’s love of family and have always been an avid gardener. Having my composted remains added to my family’s gardens suits me quite, quite well. Christian groups, especially Catholics hold a quite different opinion though, one which makes no historical or Biblical sense to me at all.

This Is About As Biblical As One Can Get

Despite what certain Catholic across the country have proclaimed, composting the remains of a dead person is about as biblical as it gets.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Genesis 3:19 (KJV)

That makes it pretty clear to me, and that is in English. If we move to a closer source, Classical Hebrew, “dust” in Genesis is aphar adamah (dust of the soil), which would be the soil and the soil alone, whereas the beasts were created from the ha’eres (the land as a whole). So, Man was created from the fertile soil and shall eventually, after a life of labor wresting sustenance from that soil, return to it. Amen.

Snarky Sidenote: Yes, to my fellow linguistic enthusiasts! Adam’s name was “Dirt.” 😆

This is the basis for why Talmudic law forbids both cremation and embalming the dead. We are soil and we must be returned to it and become it again.

~*~

As for the Catholics odd-seeming over-veneration of corpses? It creeps me out a bit – relics! 😮 – but it’s their thing andt they’re welcome to it. It is, however, a false argument in this cases. Buried in the ground, buried at sea, cremated, or composted – he 1st three all being allowed by Church doctrine – intrinsically carry with them any veneration or sanctification of a person’s mortal remains. But, nor do they carry and intrinsic profanation of those remains.

Frankly speaking, I find it closer to spirit of Catholic teachings to have a tree growing from one’s composted remains or to have the value left in one’s flesh feeding the garden that helps sustain one’s family than to have one’s meat chemically treated so that it both can’t rot for ages and would poison the ground (adamah) it was “returned” to if the vault it was placed in failed; or one’s ashes consigned to a columbarium and swiftly forgotten; or buried at sea and just as swiftly forgotten and more unreachable.

And hey! Those Catholic clergy and their Church have a lot of properties with a lot of green space. There’s nothing to say that their faithful couldn’t bequeath their no longer needed, composted dead flesh to bring life to them. 😉

~*~

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
A Canticle For Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller (1959)

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But Icarus Laughed

But Icarus Laughed As He Burned And Fell

If you’re my age, near to it, or older than me – though I can’t vouch for the younger sorts – you’ve had some exposure to the tale of Icarus and his father, Daedalus. And, we’ve always had taught to us a cautionary tale against hubris or excessive ambition – essentially a fable of what dire consequences come from not knowing your place and acting above your station or means.

But what then if Icarus laughed as he burned and fell?

Yes, what if Icarus laughed through his pain as he burned and fell? That would change the tenor and the moral of this ancient fable.

There is a bitter triumph in crashing when you should be soaring

And isn’t there such a bitter triumph? To fly in the face of greater powers; to force them to recognize your existence; to feel their wrath upon your flesh, knowing that those powers can wrack and ruin your flesh, end your body’s life, but cannot quell your soul. That is triumph, albeit a bitter one. That is a death well-earned and rarely equaled.

There is a certain beauty in setting the world on fire
and watching from the centre of the flames

And yes! I’m honest enough to admit – indeed, to proclaim – that there is a certain beauty in destruction and that the best and greatest view of it if from the epicenter of the flames.

Icarus Laughed As He Burned
Then Let Us Burn Together

So not what Ovid’s work was meant to teach, but truer to the spirit of Man. What greater and more terrible beauty can there be than scream out our spite till the flames melt our lungs and burn out our voices? What more awesome beauty is there for any of to see than world burning around us until it melts the eyes from our faces?

It is hard to deny the beauty and majesty of not just refusing to go quietly into the long night; not just raging raging against its coming – but laughing as we bring the light of our pyre into it.

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Now That's Risky

Now That's Risky
Now That’s Risky

Forget smoking while pumping gas, think about trying to charge your electric car in the rain! Now that’s risky! 😆 Zzzzzaaaaaap!

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