The Eighth Sermon to the Dead

I was talking with a dear friend of mine, and we were discussing how memory and place were tied together. He has a hard time leaving places, and memories for him are ingrained in those places. Happy times in his life are reawakened by visiting those places. For me, places are cool, but they don't have nearly the meaning for me that they do for him. I've moved almost every year since I was 18. I have a list somewhere of all my addresses, so I won't forget. People, on the other hand, echo through my life over and over and over. Thursday, I encountered a piece of information I wanted to pass along to my ex, LS. I see that a band she likes is coming to down, and wanted to point her in that direction. And I had to stop. LS has decided not to have me in her life anymore. It's fair, I told her I didn't want to date or live with her anymore, so she decided no contact was best. It hurts, as I generally have fairly good relationships with exes, after a while. But I broke it...

I've been sitting here, looking at a blank page, wondering what to write about Boston. A lot has been said, and I'm sure a lot more will be said. There are stories of heroism, kindness, and generosity. There are stories about a panicked reaction to nationality. There's theories of false flags, and foreign intervention, and domestic unrest, of malevolence and insanity. There are people who's hearts and prayers go out to the victims. We know results, but we don't know causes. Nobody knows yet. I take that back. One person, at least, knows. The individual or individuals that set the bombs. The rest of us may not know for some time. And uncertainty makes us crazy. The idea that there's something we don't or can't know makes us proceed based on incomplete information, on hearsay, on prejudices or hunches or principles. And we want to do something. We want to blame someone (if not the actual perpetrator, then our favorite enemies: terrorists, the g...

We have just begun our celebration of the Easter Season. Easter Sunday and the First Sunday after Easter have both passed. The light has descended into the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. And the Light returns, bringing the knowledge, the Gnosis, the Logos, that death has no sting, that hell hath no fury, that we are eternal and connected and that nothing can separate us from our God if we could only turn our eyes away from bright, distracting Abraxsas. As Johannites, we affirm that every being contains a Divine spark, a Sacred Flame, within them. We also affirm that Gnosis is the self-knowledge of that spark. Because this is the Easter season, we have been made abundantly aware of this spark. During the Homily at Mass on Sunday, we did a meditation on the Light. We watched the Sacred Flame on the altar, and we imagined, we felt, we reached for, that Divine Spark in our own hearts. We joined it to the light on the altar, to the light of the Divine in heave...

It's no secret that I like to read. When I take a break from the occult and deep scriptural texts, I like to read a lots of weird fiction. I'd like to recommend some books I've recently read in the fiction category. A Throne of Bones : The Pontiff is dead, a new one needs to be chosen, and a great deal of disruption comes to the empire of Amorr.  This is a great epic fantasy book, and I recommend it highly. The Wardog's Coin : Set in the same world as A Throne of Bones, these two short stories cover the world of a mercenary, and the effects of calling a whole race 'demonspawn'. Tiger by the Tail : This is the sixth book in the Paladin of Shadows series, and it was a wonderful continuation of the series. Mike Harmon is a former SEAL who's lucked into a feudal arrangement with a set of military geniuses. It's a fun read. The first book in the series is Ghost . Terms of Enlistment:  The future is grim. The North American Confederation has built huge ...