Tag: Blithe Spirit

The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times

Eat less, know more — of God

Where your stomach is, there your chance for influx of wisdom:

Many of us think of fasting as a spiritual duty to God, depriving ourselves of food and drink for a period of time in order to prove our love for Him.

While long-suffering is a part of being human and certainly a part of being Christian, fasting should not be included when we think about “suffering for Christ.

”On the contrary, fasting is less about what we’re giving up and much more about what we’re making room for. When we fast, we exchange what we need to survive for what we need to live—more of God. Here are five spiritual benefits to fasting:

Source: 5 Spiritual Benefits of Fasting

I was wrong about Donald Trump: Camille Paglia on the GOP front-runner’s refreshing candor (and his impetuousness, too) – Salon.com

In the middle of her about-face statement, Paglia nails the Trump Attraction:

. . . Trump’s fearless candor and brash energy feel like a great gust of fresh air, sweeping the tedious clichés and constant guilt-tripping of political correctness out to sea.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, whose every word and policy statement on the campaign trail are spoon-fed to her by a giant paid staff and army of shadowy advisors, Trump is his own man, with a steely “damn the torpedoes” attitude.

He has a swaggering retro machismo that will give hives to the Steinem cabal.  He lives large, with the urban flash and bling of a Frank Sinatra.  But Trump is a workaholic who doesn’t drink and who has an interesting penchant for sophisticated, strong-willed European women.

As for a debasement of the presidency by Trump’s slanging matches about penis size, that sorry process was initiated by a Democrat, Bill Clinton, who chatted about his underwear on TV, let Hollywood pals jump up and down on the bed in the Lincoln Bedroom, and played lewd cigar games with an intern in the White House offices.

Read the whole thing: I was wrong about Donald Trump: Camille Paglia on the GOP front-runner’s refreshing candor (and his impetuousness, too) – Salon.com

Dutch find ten Syrian war crime suspects among Muslim migrants

They slipped by, did they not?

Dutch authorities identified about 30 war crimes suspects, a third of them Syrians, among the 59,000 people who applied for asylum last year, the immigration minister said on Monday.

Among them ten Syrians, who said

the Syrians could not be sent home because international treaties prohibit forced repatriation to a country where there is ongoing conflict….

Stuck with them.

Source: Dutch find ten Syrian war crime suspects among Muslim migrants

Newspaper People don’t get it

Being inveterate laudatores temporis acti as they are, literally “praisers of times past,” or longing for the good old days.

You have to wonder: Are daily newspaper people ever struck by the fact that a movie about what they do is so much more popular than they are?

Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s movie about The Boston Globe’s 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative series on child molestation among Catholic clergy, was two things. It was a really great movie, and it was a delicious opportunity for self-back-patting by old ink-stained wretches.

Like myself.I watched. I patted. But since the Oscar ceremony, it has taken me a month or more to figure out why the discussion of the movie within my craft inevitably leaves me so sad and lonely. Oh, now I remember. It’s not the movie. It’s the craft.

Read the rest here: The Last People to Understand Spotlight Are Newspaper People | Dallas Observer