 Trying to make my way in the world – Dealing with daily cares, Inundated with news From faraway lands – I become scattered, forgetful. ‘Who am I?’ I ask. And the question repeats itself. Under the hot summer sun In Sorghum Corner, I remember. Beneath the shade trees, Beside the placid water of the pond, Eating a plate of slaw and watermelon, I remember. With cousins big and small, A baby with pretty pink cheeks, A bigger one keeping the power grid up, I remember. In my sweaty t-shirt, A passing resemblance Of Pa-Paw’s button-up As he barbequed the chicken On the charcoal grill, I remember: I am part of the Walton clan, And every part of me, From the salty tears in my eyes As I dwell on all these things To the salt on my back, Rejoices in that. And through the mystical love, In God, that ties us All together, I take you all Home with me, in my heart, A quieting consolation, Like a mother singing Softly to her child, Until I greet you all again.
2 Comments
 Piles of bloody, dying bodies – Women, men, little babies – Pierced by bullets, Ripped apart by exploding bombs. Such an exquisite sight; Such delicate beauty. To touch that warm blood, To feel it between my fingers, To taste it on my tongue – The delight is . . . Inexpressible: I am in ecstasy! Gliding through the astral plane With the beings of light That have visited me and taught me While in my vile, disgusting flesh. I am special, they tell me, I am chosen. I will recreate the world In my own image, And none can hinder me. I am invincible, Unstoppable, Indispensable. My truth is deceit, My light is darkness, My love is hatred. My closest friends I make my enemies. I am the only blessing Upon the face of the earth. I am an American.  Many times I have longed to cultivate the earth, To dig the rows and plant the seed, and watch them Grow and grow. But Christ our God bid me take another task, To make the furrows in my mind, and place in them Idea-seeds, fertilizing them with reading and asceticism Till they beget the fruit of a written work – an essay, story, poem. And though meagre, like sheaves of wheat grown during drought, I offer them to those who will accept them, to the Glory of God.  Profusive in its growth, and rambunctious, Tumbling down in tangles From the tops of the trees, Leaves dyed with the deep green of spring – Deep, like one sees in the sky at night – Flowers of soft yellow and purest white, Crowning oak and elm With cornets of silver and gold And covering the forest floor with a carpet For the Lord to walk upon When He comes in the cool of the evening, Scenting the breeze with sweet incense, Nectar like honey for the tongue hiding within, Adornment of the spring in Dixie, Generous gift to the Southern folk From the Hands of the Gardener Who fashioned the First Paradise of Eden, And, in these later times, The lesser garden of the South.  Appomattox – A day of sadness for the South, A day of rejoicing for her enemies. I was greeted today (9 April 2025) by an article at the Abbeville Institute’s blog on the ongoing eradication of Southern culture and history at the Viriginia Military Institute. This is a refrain that has grown all too familiar to traditional Southerners over the years. Yet cultural genocide is not something Dixie bears alone. Other Western countries are facing similar situations. Spain’s Christian monuments in particular are being targeted by corrupt Leftists:
But just as the lamentations of both rise together, so too can both peoples rise to overcome the barbarians by the inspiration of their shared ancestors – for Spanish blood has for centuries flowed through the veins of the Southern people. In particular, King Pelagius (Pelayo) of the Kingdom of Asturias in Spain offers an abundance of fiery hope. On the Feast Day of the Spanish Icon of the Mother of God (8 April), we find the following recounted:
That brilliant victory occurred at the Battle of Covadonga. Like the victories of the outmanned South in her battles with the Yankees, it is wonderful to read:
From the determination of one man – one man blessed by the Mother of God – a little, insignificant looking band of men was able to begin the long process of reversing the Muslims’ rout of the Christians of Spain. The faithful God-loving, ancestor-honoring peoples of Spain and the South must take heart from this. So often it is in the midst of the most terrible darkness that the light finally comes to drive away the gloom. Because of this, many are tempted to despair, to give up the fight. But they must not. The priest-monk Fr Seraphim Aldea of the Orthodox Monastery of All Celtic Saints on the Scottish islands of Mull and Iona speaks to this in an e-mail message on the subject of Lent and Holy Week (dated 7 April 2025),
O Christ God –
Find a way to save us, Dixie, Spain, and all the West, And all the peoples of this world.  Predictive programming is a technique the anti-Christian power structure uses to condition the masses to accept changes that those twisted people want to introduce into the world. It is often used by them in Hollywood TV and film productions. Star Trek is a frightfully good illustration: AI computer assistants and computer tablet reading devices were featured in this series decades ago, to give only a couple of examples from the long-running series. We have recently watched Back to the Future Part II, which features predictions about the year 2015 (the movie was released in 1989), and found the same process at work. There are hints of things to come, like the use of biometric data (to open locks on doors) and a completely man-controlled ‘weather service’ (likened in the movie to the regularity of the postal service); both biometrics and geoengineering are becoming more accepted and widespread around the world. Featured most prominently in the film are flying cars: the year 2015 was portrayed as being full of them. Well, it’s 2025, and they’re ain’t any flyin’ cars around, so we’re a little behind schedule. But the technocratic elite still want to shove as many of us as possible into flying automobiles. The news about their development is starting to trickle out. Orlando, Florida, home of Disney fantasy land, is living up to its reputation, getting ready to build a ‘vertiport’ for flying cars, which the city wants to have ready by 2028. Alef Aeronautics, which publicly ties itself to Back to the Future Part II and its flying car (predictive programming – mission accomplished!), is taking pre-orders for their own version, but it’ll cost you a few hundred thousand dollars (I think I’ll save my stash for eggs, the way prices are going). Mass production of Alef’s Model A has reportedly begun. Dr. Russell Kirk had a special hatred for the standard automobile that we have all been driving since the early 20th century, calling it a ‘mechanical Jacobin,’ since it broke up the long-established patterns of living that had grown up organically across Christendom and the rest of the world. Dixie’s own Andrew Lytle in ‘The Hind Tit,’ his essay in I’ll Take My Stand, was no better inclined towards them. We covered this matter of the motor car and other related things in an essay written about a dozen years ago. Dr. Robert Peters once referred to it as being somewhat ill-tempered. We agree. And we will now be just as ill-tempered in our response to the appearance of flying cars. Conventional automobiles that roll along the ground at least have the virtue of keeping us connected to that same ground to a small degree, however much of a blur it usually is as we whiz over and by it. But flying cars, these flying Jacobins, will disconnect us from it completely, making the earth and its places even more distant and abstract to us, increasing the likelihood that we will be even less hesitant than we are today to tear it to pieces, to deconstruct and reconstruct it, for the sake of some hair-brained, Gnostic, nihilistic scheme of economic development, scientific advancement, or non-sensical entertainment. As Southerners, we must stand against the rising tide of tech. We have witnessed the deadliness of it for generations now – from women and children being mangled in the early factories to hydrogen bombs incinerating Japanese cities to suicides tied to social media. The prophetic English writer Paul Kingsnorth is helpful at this moment. He points out two paths that traditional Southerners (and other like-minded peoples) can take as it regards technology, which he calls ‘cooked asceticism’ and ‘raw asceticism.’ In his own words (from his essay ‘The Neon God’): The Cooked Ascetic
The Raw Ascetic
In that vein, Southrons should resolve to limit our uptake of new technology. No flying cars, no smart phones, no AI, etc., or at least greatly restrict our use of such things. We should do as much as we can to re-establish the agrarian ethos of our forefathers, difficult though it be in our rushed and tech-obsessed age. A story from the life of St Nikephoros of Chios (reposed in 1821), a saint from among the same Greek people Southerners have often praised over the years, shows how beautiful and beneficial the agrarian life is when practiced:
Like the Saint, let us also here at the South be tree lovers, tree planters, soil-builders, animal keepers, and so on, even to the smallest extent, and encourage our children, grandchildren, neighbors, etc., to do the same. Modern technology is turning the world into hell itself. But by practicing Christian agrarianism, we can help return some small slivers of it to the comely and abundant garden God intended for it to be.  Since the end of the War, with the Yankees in the ascendancy, the dominant ideas in the union have been mainly change, innovation, progress, and their near-of-kin. Sultan Donald the Magnificent re-confirmed this in his Inaugural Address in January: ‘And, right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other. There’s no nation like our nation. Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls. Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on Earth. No one comes close. Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness. They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted millions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand. If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve.’ That kind of thinking, in general, a Southerner cannot abide. Some of those accomplishments are noble, and we do not reject all change, of course, but making The New the center of our life, its guiding ideal, has had, and will continue to have, disastrous consequences. Man in such a system becomes rootless and falls into despair, and the creation itself, to quote St Justin Popovich, becomes ‘a slaughterhouse.’ The Kentucky agrarian Wendell Berry offers a longer counterpoint: ‘The paramount doctrine of the economic and technological euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends on innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary, that we should go on and on from one technological innovation to the next, which would cause the economy to “grow” and make everything better and better. This of course implied at every point a hatred of the past, of all things inherited and free. All things superseded in our progress of innovations, whatever their value might have been, were discounted as of no value at all.’ And once again he declaims, ‘As industrial technology advances and enlarges, and in the process assumes greater social, economic, and political force, it carries people away from where they belong by history, culture, deeds, association, and affection.’ Dixie understands that without history, traditions, customs, and the like, life is dull and meaningless. Yet such a normative worldview is attacked relentlessly in the modern United States. Examples to encourage Southrons not to abandon our heritage would be extraordinarily helpful in the midst of this maelstrom. And they do exist, thanks be to God. The first three months of the year feature some of the most beloved saints of the Celtic lands and peoples, to which and to whom the South has deep ties: St Kentigern Mungo, Patron Saint of Glasgow and a chief apostle of Scotland (13 Jan.), St Ita of Kileedy, ‘Foster-Mother of the Irish Saints’ (15 Jan.), St Teilo, a father to the Welsh (9 Feb.), St Patrick, the Enlightener of Ireland (17 March), and so forth. Among their number is also St Oncho (sometimes spelled ‘Onchu’) of Clonmore, Ireland (Feast Day celebrated 8 Feb.; he reposed near the end of the 6th century AD). A short vita of the saint shows his significance for Southerners today: ‘Saint Oncho was an Irish pilgrim, poet, guardian of the Celtic traditions, and a collector of holy relics. While pursuing his search for memorials of the Irish saints he died at Clonmore monastery, then governed by Saint Maidoc, and his body was enshrined there together with the relics he had gathered’ (Celtic and Old English Saints). Like St Oncho, Southerners faithful to our forebears are pilgrims, bards, guardians of Dixie’s traditions, and collectors of precious relics: Pilgrims, for we are not of the Yankee culture that surrounds us; Bards, for the words of some in Dixie are still lit with the apocalyptic fire of the prophets of old, revealing truth and error; Guardians of tradition, for the attacks upon our past have not ceased; and Collectors of relics, for what of our history has survived has been scattered through neglect and through malice and must be gathered again. St Oncho set out with a firm resolution and good intention, and so must Southerners also. In a longer account of St Oncho’s life, we are given the pattern and motivations to imitate: ‘The holy man formed his resolution of visiting each place, throughout our whole island, in which he thought there might be the most remote chance for discovering or procuring relics, of any Irish saints. He had hoped, that such a collection might afterwards serve to increase devotion, and preserve the memory of those pious servants of God, among the people.’ Along the way, we should not be surprised if we are visited by wonders: ‘…having nearly accomplished his original purpose, he came to the flourishing monastery of Clonmore, in Leinster, over which the illustrious Maidoc or Aidus, son to Eugenius of the Leinster family, then presided as abbot. St. Onchu received kind hospitality, and he demanded some memorial from this holy superior. Through humility, however, Maidoc refused such a request; when, it is said, his finger fell to the ground in a miraculous manner. Our saint immediately took it up, and placed it among his other relics.’ If we are diligent in our work, and should the All-Holy Trinity bless it, as we pray He will, we will be crowned with the same success as him: ‘Such purposes he accomplished; for, whatever monastery or cell, he visited, furnished some contribution to the store, he had previously acquired. Not only did he obtain memorials of the dead; but, he received even certain gifts or articles, from pious men, whose reputation for sanctity had been already established, in the Irish Church. All of these precious treasures, Onchu deposited, in the same reliquary.’ St Oncho was buried in the Monastery of Clonmore along with his treasury of holy relics. Clonmore and all of Ireland have been abundantly blessed by his efforts. Anyone willing can still visit the site and receive the Grace of God that is present in abundance because of the presence of so many saints. Will there be sites like Clonmore across the South, housing the treasures of our people? That depends on us. If we want the answer to be Yes, then may this prayer be often in our mouths and in our hearts as we labor to that end:
 The Holy Trinity In the first times Made the waters of the world – Pure and clear, untainted – In the firmament, Upon the earth, Beneath her foundations – Shimmering in sun’s light, Glimmering in moon’s glow, Pulsing through arteries Under the ground – Wholly good in the sight of God. But the first-formed man Stumbled and sinned At the behest of his wife. The waters grew cloudy And darkened, befouled by evil. They became the dwellings of demons. Water was the womb of life, Now the bearer Of calamity – Of flood and hail And deadly disease. The Logos looked With compassion On the works of His hands. In agreement With the Father and Spirit He left the heavenly realm, Born as a Babe To a Virgin Mother. Grown to a Man, He approached The incomparable John, And went down into the water. The Holy Body Of the Only Son, Ablaze with divinity, Annulled the curse, Crushed the monsters, Drove away every defilement. In their place, He left A garment of Light, That adorns all those Who follow Him in Baptism. The Master rises From beneath the river – The sky is torn open! A Voice thunders, A Dove descends, The mystery of the Trinity Revealed to mankind. The waters rejoiced! The little rivers leapt; The great oceans roared. Bitter is now sweet; What brought death, Now gives life. Day is over, Night has come. The turbulent waters Are calm and quiet. The light of stars Rests upon their surface; The Light of Christ Radiates within; While all creation, With joy, softly sings A new song in praise Of her Savior. 
|
