Who Would You Marry?

Two unedited excerpts from two conversations with two girls (one of whom I'm currently seeing, and the other whom friends tried to set me up with) recently:

A) Another reason why i shouldn't marry or have kids. They only serve as irritating accessories that bog down my mobility and freedom of choice.

B) ya kids are the best!!! they are so sincere, they just do what they realy want and tell what they realy think

Newsflash: Italians Want To Be... Italian

Steve Sailor takes on the latest multi-culti boffin outrage:

Wouldn't the whole world be better off if Italy weren't so damn Italian? I mean, what has Italian culture ever contributed to anything? When will the Italians get with the program and adopt the Universal Globoculture? The New York Times wants to know!

More HERE

With Friends Like These...

Today, right after Akathist, Novice Valentina specifically asked me to go to church tomorrow (even though I usually do). Somewhat perplexed, I sent an SMS text message to Edward, seeking his opinion. He replied:

Either you're sacrifice or you've been deemed worthy to join the weapon-smuggling wing of the KGB tomorrow, and Alex* was out confirming appointment at embassy.

* He's almost always in church, but was not present that evening

Ever Wonder Why...

...it matters what you wear to church on Sunday?

After all, it doesn't matter whether you wear slippers or tuxedo - all of this is meaningless externals. God loves you no matter what, right?

Why do little things matter?

via Orwell's Picnic

Elena Paparizou, Pro-Family

Here's a woman who has her priorities right:

I believe that family is the most natural thing, the thing I want in my life. And what is my preference? To not have kids so I can continue my career? One day it will end. I cannot be on stage everyday, like I am now at 25.

Kallipolitou, Giota & Papaioannou, Eleni. "Cover Story: Elena By Night", Celebrity Magazine, May 2007, p. 120.

One wonders if Elena's Greek upbringing has anything to do with it.

Why the West Reveres the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama has effectively been turned into a cartoon good guy. In America and western Europe, where backward anti-modern sentiments are widespread amongst self-loathing sections of the educated and the elite, the Dalai Lama has been embraced as a living, breathing representative of unsullied goodness. Despite the fact that he advertises Apple, guest-edits Vogue and drives a Land Rover, he is held up as evidence that living the simple eastern life is preferable to, in the words of Philip Rawson, westerners' "gradually more pointless pursuit of material satisfactions". Just as earlier generations of disillusioned aristocrats fell in love with a fictional version of Tibet (Shangri-La), so contemporary un-progressives idolise a fictional image of the Dalai Lama.

- Brendan O'Neill, 'Down with the Dalai Lama', guardian.co.uk, Thursday May 29 2008

May 29, 1453

God rings the bells, earth rings the bells, the sky itself is ringing,
The Holy Wisdom, the great church, is ringing out the message,
Four hundred sounding boards sound out, and two and sixty bells,
For every bell there is a priest, for every priest a deacon.
To the left the emperor is singing, to the right the patriarch,
And all the columns tremble with the thunder of the chant.
And as the emperor began the hymns to the Cherubim,
A voice came down to them from the sky, from the archangel’s mouth:

Cease the Cherubic hymn, and let the sacred objects bow;
Priests, take the holy things away, extinguish all the candles:
God’s Will has made our city now into a Turkish city.

But send a message to the West, and let them send three ships:
The first to take the cross, the second to remove the Gospel,
The third, the finest shall rescue for us our holy altar.
Lest it all to those dogs, and they defile it and dishonour it.
The Holy Virgin was distressed, the very icons wept.
Be calm, beloved lady, be calm and do not weep for them.
Though years, though centuries shall pass, they shall be yours again.

Anonymous Song of Lamentation
for the Fall of Constantinople in 1453
Translated by Richard Stoneman

Чем выше любовь, тем ниже поцелуи

A line of a popular Russian song goes, "The less the love, the more the kisses".

I ask those who have experienced being in a relationship: is this true?

Children in Church

From Russian photography blog, Photo Polygon, Elena Devyashina gives us this touching photo-story:

NOTE: The original article was translated, with much help, for the benefit of readers who do not read Russian. I take no credit whatsoever for its content.

Children are children.
Children are children wherever it may be. Children will be children anywhere: be it at school, in the sandbox, hospital or church. They can be jolly or tired, busy with their stuff or listen attentively. They can be everything, yet, they are far more natural than us adults.

Children in church are not an isolated species, succumbed to its own milieu - not at all. They are no different from any normal children we see every now and then, anywhere around us.

10th February 2008
Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, Seversk
Darya in Sunday school

The process of dialogue in Sunday school flows freely and quietly, like a stream, as children busily engage in drawing and reading while listening to the priest. This photo-story, however, is not about Sunday school, but rather simply about children in church.

Church of St Sergius of Radonezh, Tomsk
The girls, a little tired from a long service, take a seat

Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, Seversk
Palm Sunday

Church of St Sergius of Radonezh, Tomsk
Little sisters





Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, Seversk
Before Holy Communion

Church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, Seversk
Palm Sunday: Darya smiled, posed and presented me with a willow

A Word to Traditionalists

Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox, Father Seraphim Rose warned against excessive awe of ritualism:

Anyone who is attracted merely by glittering censers, incense and beautiful vestments, he, first of all, will fall down before Antichrist.

War of the Babies

Many friends look upon my little fixation with the Kosovo issue the same way they see my other obsessions: with utter bewilderment. Unless one is of Slavic extraction or of the Orthodox faith, one would be apprehensive about confronting the tangled knot of ancient history and warring ethnicities that is the Balkans. And of course, this blogger doesn't make it any easier for the average person when he tries to explain. What, with all the esoteric terms I use and the unheard-of events I reference.

Recently, I was asked how the supposedly weaker Albanians "conquered" the ancient heartland of a people who spent centuries holding off the Turkish incursion into Europe. I know the answer, but I won't say it - you know what happens if I do.

Instead, I will allow Gary Brecher - the War Nerd - to do so. If you are an "average" reader of Memoirs or one of many friends unable to understand me, I implore you now to read on. The War Nerd is nowhere as incomprehensible as many make me out to be.

In this piece, aptly named War of the Babies, he details the Albanian "conquest":

To succeed in the post-1918 world, the world Woodrow Wilson dreamed up where "small nations" have rights even if they can't defend them, you need to use slower, less obviously military methods, like birthrate and immigration. The classic example of this kind of slow conquest is Kosovo. The Serbs could always defeat the Albanians on the battlefield, even when outnumbered, but the Albanians had a huge advantage in the most important military production of all -- babies. According to the BBC, the birthrate of Kosovo Albanians 50 years ago was an amazing 8.5 children per woman.

The Serb/Albanian conflict offers damn near perfect lab conditions to prove my case that birth rate trumps military prowess these days, because the Serbs always beat the Albanians in battle, yet they’ve lost their homeland, Kosovo. Here again, we can blame Woodrow Wilson and his talk about "rights". In places where tribes hate each other, a tribe that outbreeds its rival will become the majority, even if it can’t fight. So, after generations of skulking at home making babies, letting the Serbs do the fighting, the Albanians finally became the majority in Kosovo and therefore the official "good guys", being oppressed by the official "bad guys", the Serbs. At least that’s the way the nave American Wilsonian types like Clinton saw it. So when the Serbs fought back against an Albanian rebellion in Kosovo, and dared to beat the Albanians, Clinton decided to bomb the Serbs into letting go of Kosovo, the ancient heartland of a Christian nation that had spent its blood holding off the Turks for hundreds of years.

The Kosovo Albanians proved that military skill doesn’t matter, because they tried and failed to conquer Kosovo the old-fashioned way: armed rebellion by the Kosovo Liberation Army. It was a wipeout: local Serb militias, a bunch of tired middle-aged part-timers and cops, crushed the KLA. What happened next is a beautiful illustration of the way losers win these days: the Albanians took the bodies of KLA men who’d been killed in battle, stripped all weapons and ammo from them, and showed them to gullible Western reporters as victims of a Serb "massacre". It was a massacre, all right, but only because the KLA couldn’t fight worth a damn. Alive and armed, they were a joke; dead and disarmed, they helped win Kosovo by making their side the "victims", which led directly to U.S. military intervention.

To win the way the Albanians won in Kosovo, you need to make a lot of babies. It’s that simple. And to see how it works, you have to drop the namby-pamby liberal idea that people only have babies out of "love". In lots of places on this planet, baby-making is a form of weapons production.

Peter G. Peterson wrote in his book, Will America Grow Up Before It Grows Old?, "demographics is destiny". No matter what others say to convince you otherwise, one doesn't have to look very far to see that war being fought and lost. With many first world governments seemingly consulting Planned Parenthood on sustaining society, and birth control easily available, many nations face a demographic débâcle unprecedented in world history. Who continues to heed God's first command to our first parents, "Be fruitful and multiply"?

The answer, I'm afraid, is frighteningly obvious.

Lost in Spelling

[21:59:10] Vincenzo says: what does mean God has a plane for you
[21:59:38] e-octopi says: God has an aircraft? :P

On KFC Drink Packets in China...

DaveMintheOffice:
[2:15]
i hope that said products are not made from panda
[2:16]
at first i thought it said "WTF"

Christ is Ascended!

What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?
John 6:62

On high is His body, here below with us is His Spirit. And so we have His token on high, that is His body, which He received from us, and here below we have His Spirit with us. Heaven received the Holy Body, and the earth accepted the Holy Spirit. Christ came and sent the Spirit. He ascended, and with Him our body ascended also.

St John Chrysostom