Catching Up

 After a busy weekend, here I am, back at the blogging machine.  Funny; I literally crashed last night at 8 -- just laid down and woke up at 3, then went back to bed until 7:45 today (this explains why I am up now).  Missed the World Series game, important news events, everything.  Oi.  I guess it was good to get some rest, even if I give it back now.  I have been tired, mainly due to poor quality sleep.  Also, my weight is back to 193; low blood sugars at night and a day of gym-skip will do that to you!  Still, some food discipline and more exercise later in the week should help.

Went to Church today; mind you, not Mass, though I should have -- it was NOT a Holy Day of Obligation, so I didn't attend, but there were several boxes of food in the vestibule, as well as four bags of hangers for clothing (which we don't really need now), so I decided I would just go and get them.  Polish Mass was still going on when I arrived; there were quite a few cars in the lot and plenty of people inside, far more than any English ceremony.  I was most impressed.

https://www.mischiefsoffaction.com/post/party-cares-unpopular

Interesting, to which I might add that nowadays, a lot of the time, people also do not want to be primaried, which does not help the matter.

https://www.pragcap.com/is-hyperinflation-coming/

I think this is largely correct -- no hyperinflation, but rising prices are here for a while. Mind you, the issue is that for so long, prices have been fairly stable; people are conditioned to the price of some things being somewhat the same for months and years at a time.  Now, of course, they keep rising and rising (when wages do not, at least for the salaried), and people are...concerned.   Not that a spot of inflation is that bad to the debtors of the country (and many in the US are) but for a lot of people what you see is... more and more to be spent on basics and less for the other things. Meh.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/evangelical-trump-christians-politics/620469/

As I commented on Facebook...isn't this what Protestants do?  I mean, Luther didn't like Church teachings, so he left.  Ditto for Calvin.  Henry VIII wanted to remarry, so he left.  John Wesley left the CofE...the list can go on (Shakers, Quakers, Baptists, Salvation Army, etc.).  I am not sure that the author's worry is valid; ok it is for the established Protestant/Evangelical denominations, but many of them started out as branches of another, so...

Similarly, the idea that politics cannot cause a schism in the pews is also...historically wrong?  Again, the Reformation was eventually settled politically through the notion of "His the region, his the religion" (at least in the states of the HRE) and elsewhere in Europe; France remained a largely Catholic nation, England a Protestant one.  In this country it is also a fact; the Baptists and the Methodists splintered over slavery, and more recently, the Methodists and the Episcopalians have splintered over gay marriage...while that may have been a doctrinal decision, it is also one of politics.  But schism it was.  I guess I don't see a huge issue with this; some will sort back to the old denominations, others will find a home in the new.  That's life in the Protestant big tent, and if the pastors aren't solving it, someone else will...