There is a reason why third base coaches exist to let you know if it’s a good idea to take that extra base. If he puts up a stop sign with two outs in the last of the 9th when you represent the tying run listen to him.
If you are counting on $1000+ from a relative as a wedding gift, it’s a bad idea to inform them that they are not welcome at your wedding because you would be frightened by their presence because they vote conservative and not invite them on those grounds.
Not only will for forfeit that thousand dollar payday, but you will forfeit any future paydays that might have come up.
Reality doesn’t care if something is proven in court or not. Reality IS. If you base reality on court decisions or the lack thereof you will find yourself played for a fool.
Hi. I’m Zilla and I need to talk to you about mental health
The mental health big pharma industrial complex in the United States of America is, and has always been, an abomination. You could be a nice normal person just trying to live your life and maybe you have a bad day and say something in hyperbole that you don’t really mean but you said it to the wrong person and now they are coming for you. You have no rights at this point. You can go peacefully or you can resist (I always fight) but you WILL be taken from your home whether you like it or not. The restraints are painful and you do not yet know what dank hole you are being taken to, you just want the pain and humiliation to stop. No you can not have your clothes, your shoes, your meds, your wheelchair nor any other assistive device because some clown thinks you will use it as a weapon (while you are handcuffed, hog tied, or strapped to a gurney). No wallet for you! No house keys, either. If you live alone maybe they lock the house. Your pets are on their own. You will be taken against your will and spend several hours under psyche hold at a facility until they get around to seeing you. It can take days and nobody on the outside will know where you are. Maybe they will feed you. The techs try but they are seriously underfunded and overworked. Eventually the psychiatrist will see you and decide your fate. You will either be turned loose or get admitted and spend the next two weeks of your life locked up against your will. They will try to pump you full of drugs. Most patients do not know or cannot articulate that they have the right of refusal for most meds under certain conditions. Some of the medications are experimental and dangerous. I was harmed by them. It happened. Such is the way of things here but it need not be so. A different way is needed!
Saint Dymphna is the patron Saint of people who suffer from nervous and mental disorders. My grandmother introduced her to me when I was little because I think she always knew that I was different and she also knew that my young life was filled with violence and chaos in my family and in my neighborhood; my grandmother knew I needed something powerful to get me through the worst this life would throw at me – my grandmother was highly intuitive and struggled with issues as well. She was a wonderful teacher and I appreciate her and miss her more the older I get. But I digress…
Dymphna was a young Irish princess born to a pagan king and a devout Christian mother. She was beautiful, smart, and beloved by all. Like many young girls at the time, she loved the Lord above all things and pledged her chastity to Jesus. Dymphna had what would seem a charmed life until her mother died. Dymphna’s father went insane with grief. The story gets very dark from there…
So unhinged was Dymphna’s father, Damon, that the King’s counselors suggested he remarry. Though he was still grieving for his wife, he agreed to remarry if a woman as beautiful as she could be found.
Damon sent messengers throughout his town and other lands to find woman of noble birth who resembled his wife and would be willing to marry him, but when none could be found, his evil advisors whispered sinful suggestions to marry his own daughter. So twisted were Damon’s thoughts that he recognized only his wife when he looked upon Dymphna, and so he consented to the arrangement.
When she heard of her father’s misguided plot, Dymphna fled her castle with her confessor, a priest named Gerebran, two trusted servants, and the king’s fool. The group sailed toward what is now called Belgium, and hid in the town of Geel.
Though it becomes uncertain what exactly happened next, the best-known version claims the group settled in Geel, where Dymphna built a hospital for the poor and sick, but in using her wealth, her father was able to discover her location.
When Damon found his daughter was in Belgium, he traveled to Geel and captured them. He ordered the priest’s head to be separated from his body and attempted to convince Dymphna to return to Ireland and marry him.
When Dymphna refused, Damon became enraged and drew his sword. He struck Dymphna’s head from her shoulders and left her there. When she died, Dymphna was only fifteen-years-old. After her father left Geel, the residents collected both Dymphna and Gerebran’s remains and laid them to rest in a cave.
In defense of her purity, Dymphna received the crown of martyrdom around the year 620 and became known as the “Lily of Éire. In 1349, a church honoring St. Dymphna was built in Geel, and by 1480, so many pilgrims were arriving in need of treatment for mental ills, that the church was expanded. The expanded sanctuary was eventually overflowing again, leaving the townspeople to accept them into their homes, which began a tradition of care for the mentally ill that continues to this day.
Unfortunately, in the 15th century, the original St. Dymphna Church in Geel burned to the ground, and the magnificent Church of St. Dymphna was erected and consecrated in 1532, where it still stands above the location her body was originally buried.
Many miracles have been proven to take place at her shrine in the church erected in her honor, and her remains were placed in a silver reliquary in the church. Some of her remains can also be found at the Shrine to Saint Dymphna in the United States.
The priest who had helped Dymphna was also sainted, and his remains were moved to Xanten, Germany.
The United States National Shrine of Saint Dymphna is at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Massillon, Ohio and St. Dymphna’s Special School can be found in ballina, County Mayo, Republic of Ireland.
Saint Dymphna is the patroness of those suffering nervous and mental afflictions as well as victims of incest.
Traditionally, Saint Dymphna is often portrayed with a crown on her head, dressed in royal robes, and holding a sword. In modern art, Saint Dymphna is shown holding the sword, which symbolizes her martyrdom, quite awkwardly. She is also often shown holding a lamp, while some holy cards feature her wearing green and white, holding a book and white lilies.
Prayer: Hear us, O God, Our Saviour, as we honor St. Dymphna, patron of those afflicted with mental and emotional illness. Help us to be inspired by her example and comforted by her merciful help. Amen.
For CENTURIES, the local community of Geel, Belgium, where Saint Dymphna was martyred, has exemplified what it means to provide compassionate and HELPFUL care to troubled people. It is my fervent prayer that more community efforts be put forward similar to what they do in Geel for our troubled and vulnerable people HERE, and Soon! Amen. I also long to make a pilgrimage to Geel for the help I think I truly need and I would also like to visit the National Shrine in Massillon, Ohio, God willing.
What happens in Geel is astonishing.
It is an approach to psychiatric care that has gone on in Geel (pronounced “hail”) since as early as the 13th century, archives show. The locals began building a church to St. Dymphna, the patron saint of mental illness, in the mid-1300s and pilgrims flocked to Geel. They lived in the local farmers’ homesteads, where they worked the land alongside their new families.
Both the tradition and the church still stand.
By the end of the 19th century, nearly 2,000 boarders lived among the Geelians, as the locals call themselves. Today the town of 41,000 in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, has 120 boarders in local homes.
That has made Geel both something of a model for a particular paradigm of psychiatric care and an outlier, often regarded over the centuries with suspicion (including by The New York Times, which, in a headlinefrom March 23, 1891, called Geel “a colony where lunatics live with peasants” that had been “productive of misery and evil results”).
Those suspicions only grew as Geel’s approach crushed up against the rising medical field of psychiatry. In more recent times, however, the town has come up for reconsideration as an emblem of a humane alternative to the neglect or institutionalization of those with mental illness found in other places.
“There has always been controversy about how ‘disturbed’ or ‘eccentric’ people should be treated,” wrote Oliver Sacks, the renowned neurologist, in 2007, in his foreword to the book “Geel Revisited,” an examination of 19 boarders over the course of decades.
“Should they be treated as ill, possibly dangerous, confined in institutions?” wrote Dr. Sacks, who died in 2015. “Or is there a chance that a more human and social approach, trying to reintegrate them into family and community life, a life of love and work, will succeed as well?”
For Dr. Sacks, who had visited Geel, the answer was to accept mental illness as individuality, rather than a stigmatizing disability.
Geel proves, Dr. Sacks concluded, that “even those who could seem to be incurably afflicted can, potentially, live full, dignified, loved and secure lives.”
I would dearly love to see such efforts attempted in the United States and elsewhere. I do what I can with my little street/psyche ward ministry along with a few very kind and trustworthy friends but I’m messed up too and also living in extreme poverty so I am a little bit limited in what I can do versus what I want to do.
I have a thing I call #TheGoodening and I declare it a Revolution based on love, compassion, dignity, and kindness.
I know plenty of locked up people who could do just fine if they were simply treated like the free human beings that God created us to be.
Sometimes all a troubled person needs is a little bit of kindness, respect, and dignity. Amazing things can happen when punishment ends and treating the troubled as sick instead of criminal begins. #CrazyLivesMatter and who is who to judge whether a person is a simple misfit or a very troubled person. Something needs to change.
I pray I may be part of that change, God willing. I long to see less misery and more compassion among our own people.
Thank you for listening and reading. Please always pray for the truly vulnerable people and help out when you can. Peace be with you. I love you. God bless you.
The death of the maker of the Titanic Sub and those who traveled with them is not unremarkable as those with wealth have been taking large risks for centuries but when I heard that in interviews he had stated he rejected hiring experienced submariners because he didn’t want a bunch of 50 year old white guys all I could think of was General John Sedgwick saying about rebel snipers with new rifles with telescopic sights: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” just before being shot by one.
The primary difference being that Sedgwick lived long enough after he was hit to appreciate the irony of his word, reports now coming out state there was an implosion and all those aboard died instantly.
RIP
The more I see of what is happening on the national level the more I’m amazed at the country doing its level best to go along with national suicide.
Of course historically this is consistent with republics, but what a difference between reading about such things and living it.
Mind you in a generation with the left spaying their own kids that managed to survive the womb it might be moot as the future still belongs to those who show up.
There’s that Tom Hagen math again.
Yet another futile terrorist attack has taken place in Israel.
As always Israel will survive it and do their level best to go after those who helped out but in the end none of these things are going to bring down the state, nor frankly will Iran’s nuclear dreams as Israel, particularly with Biden in the White House is not going to allow itself to be destroyed to sate those who own him.
For Nearly 80 years the Arabs have dreamt of the destruction of Israel. As a supporter of Israel, I ironically see the obvious way for them to achieve those ends and have done so for a long while but it has never has and likely never will occur to them.
How you ask? That’s a secret I’ll take to my grave.
Attended my Godfather/Uncle’s wake yesterday taking a day off work for the final relative of the generation ahead of me to die. I was sitting praying my rosary as people reached the receiving line and I heard an interesting exchange as a couple greeted My uncle’s son who lead it. They had not seen them for years and marveled at their son and daughter now near 30 and asked:
“Any Grandchildren?”
“No they’re not married.” answered my cousin’s wife.
The friends noted that these days that’s not necessary and while my devout Catholic Uncle’s dead body naturally did not flinch at the exchange in my mind’s eye his soul was fist pumping that his son and daughter in law had brought up their children right.
Finally today I’ll be having lunch with some friends from work who no longer see since I’ve been transferred to another building down the road. It’s important to keep up in person contacts like this in a digital world when possible but I must confess it’s very weird in the sense that of the friends I make the vast majority are young enough to be my children and some young enough to be my grandchildren.
Sometimes this is very hard because I’m very aware of my faults and failings and grateful for the sacrament of confession to be absolved of them but when I’m with these young folks it’s incumbent on me to carry myself in such a was as to set an example rather than in the relaxed way friends can be.
That’s a sentence that is rejected by those who spent a lifetime treating their kids as friends and doing all they can to pretend they will now grow old and die, but I suspect if they worried more about setting a good example our society and republic might not be dying before our eyes.
On a recent visit to Colonial Williamsburg, I had the good fortune to listen to a speech by a Marquis de Lafayette re-enactor. He was good. He was really, really good. After his speech I chatted with him, and he recommended reading the book Lafayette by Harlow Unger. So I grabbed it off Audible and over the past two weeks it has entertained me on my drive to work.
If you need a book to read or listen to, get this one. Unger does a great job of being historically accurate while remaining interesting. He highlights not just the events that happened, but the personal relationships and how they influenced history. While I knew about Lafayette from my time studying the Battle of Yorktown, I did not know about how pivotal his financial contributions to the Revolutionary War were, nor how important he was to opening French markets to America after the war.
But perhaps the most stunning portions of the book relate to the French Revolution. Unger does not mince words describing how Lafayette blundered trying to replicate the liberty and ideas from the American Constitution into France. At multiple times, Lafayette turned down opportunities to lead his country in establishing a constitutional monarchy or a republic, which eventually fell into the hands of terrible men like Robespierre and Danton, whose bloodlust plunged France into terribly bloody revolution that likely killed over 1 million citizens and 2.5 million military in the ensuing wars. Random people were pulled off the street, beheaded and then had their heads displayed on pikes. Unger’s direct quotes from a multitude of direct sources, many of them Americans such as Thomas Jefferson. None mince words describing the horror of mob rule. While Lafayette himself would escape execution, France was never the same again.
The beheading of Robespierre, which “ended” the Reign of Terror in France
The chapters that describe the fall of France’s government were telling in that they had many parallels to modern-day America. The gradual descent into lawlessness, while good men either sat idly by or refused to take action, seems eerily reminiscent of the descent of many large American cities into chaos following BLM-related riots. The takeover of the government by the Jacobins, who seemed to lust only for more blood and power, resembles so many statements from prominent lawmakers, whether its to strike down white women from positions of authority, kill Trump supporters, or call people a threat to democracy. In French Revolution fashion, its even OK for people to display a severed head of a politician. I’m just surprised it wasn’t placed on a pike.
Anyone clamoring for revolution should read about the horrors of the French Revolution, and how multiple missed opportunities for a peaceful removal of the King resulted in massive violence that plunged France into darkness. Anyone who thinks they will run the mob should read about how Robespierre and Danton both faced the very guillotine that they used to execute thousands of their own countrymen. Anyone that thinks we should strive for this style of revolution is a madman.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
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