Email Question about Clear Creek Monastery & 3rd Order Oblates. My Thoughts.

Got a cordial email inquiry from a New York man who is at this moment attending with his wife the Idea of a Village Conference out at Clear Creek monastery here in Eastern Oklahoma. 

He reads the blog, and my blog post about that event perked his interest, wanting to pick my brain about the Third Order Oblates of Clear Creek.  So I thought that would make a good Saturday blog post, per his suggestion, to hit two birds with one stone.  Just finished some work, and I'm in need of some good weekend R&R.  Blogging usually does the trick.

Clear Creek.  Third Order.  Oblates.  Laity attached to Clear Creek.  To benefit from their spirituality, if not also to become an associate member of the wider community of Villagers (Abbot Anderson's term he used in his conference talk HERE).  

Okay, here goes.

The devil has struck the shepherd; the sheep are scattered.  We cannot presently trust the person of the Pope, Bishops, and Priests under them.  Generally speaking, ANY of them.  We are the sheep looking up from the rocky, lifeless soil of the "conciliar church," which was once a fruitful pasture of "amber waves of grain"

Patriotic, 4th of July song reference intended. 

We look up to the hilltop where the attentive, sober, serious, and authentically pastoral shepherd once sat.  In his place is a listless, somnolent, disoriented, servile, clericalist who is not consistently leading as Christ commanded in Sacred Scripture, or in a Christ-like way.

Instead, traditional, faithful Catholics, look for alternative sources that run contrary to the norms of Church history.  We look away from the parochial hierarchy to traditionalist societies of priests, and traditional orders of monks and nuns for guidance.  

The traditionalist/conservative religious and priests are, by default, leading by example, at least in their orthodoxy, devotions, and external attachment to ecclesial traditions.  In the case of an Abbot, he pastors not only the members of his monastery, but 3rd Order lay members attached to it.

I personally think it is a good idea for some laity to be 3rd Order lay members of a traditional monastery or other religious institute, including Our Lady of the Annunciation at Clear Creek Abbey in Hulbert, OK, as long as their reasons are balanced.  I would also recommend considering being an Oblate under Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery in Silver City, NM, which, in my opinion, is even more faithful objectively to the Sacred Tradition of the Church.

Or for that matter, perhaps consider being a THIRD ORDER member of the Society of St. Pius X, or a member of the Confraternity of the Fraternity of St. Peter.

But flip the coin to the other side, as I often do on this blog.  The Crisis is everywhere, including trad circles.  I absolutely do not support laity trying to escape the world as if they were monks in the Egyptian deserts of the Early Church, which some are doing who try and set up homesteads in the deep woods around Clear Creek.  

If that is the mindset, then I personally would discourage the person from becoming a lay Benedictine.   Better just to have morning and evening prayers, go to Mass on Sundays, while offering your daily humiliations according to the demands of work in the world of men.

But I'm just one individual with a blog.

Okay, I'm off to the pool for a swim, and then an evening of beer, Netflix, and lap time with my canine buddy Peanut.  Tomorrow a group of us go swimming/picnicking out at Blue Hole Spring oasis.

My next blog post will be patriotic, on the 4th of July.

More Random Thoughts

Every person is an onion.   You really have to peel back the layers before you can even begin to understand them.   Their temperament,  personality,  personal life. 
In short,  we need real personal connections with eachother.   I think the final nail on the coffin of human relations,  replaced by transhumanistic,  existential absurdity,  was the advent of social media and the smartphone. 

Case in point.   I sat in the cafeteria for lunch today where I work.   I made eye contact and said hello to the people around me.   And after eating my lunch, I just sat back and watched the crowded room of people.   Most of the people were spending the majority of the time looking at their smartphone screen.   I don't expect a congress of philosophical discourse,  but every social interaction in the room was at best shallow and artificial. 

My dog Peanut.   Loyal,  obsessively attached to me wherever I go,  giving me deep,  longing looks every day,  locking eyes with me,  conveying genuine love.   Her will is not free,  but she has a will,  and ironically this little mortal animal is more genuine and caring than 95% of Homo sapiens I encounter in the mainstream. 

I remain mystified and detached.  I continue to work hard and progress.   But only the likes of poetry,  music,  whiskey,  and sitting in front of a fire can give clarity and perspective about the wasteland.

Can you relate? 

Some Random Thoughts

It's Saturday evening, and I'm enjoying a whiskey while I sit back in my Okie armchair.   I started a couple different blog posts on subjects I'm interested in of late:  how alcohol can help trads who suffer from fundamentalism overcome that ailment, and the integral importance of a parish in the life of a Catholic.  But those will take some time to ruminate and reflect about.  So I'll just throw out some random thoughts for now.  Various ponderings that have entered my mind as of late.

Nursing homes.  In my opinion, 70 percent or more of bed-ridden residents could be enjoying a relatively active life, moving around, walking, doing some little chores and hobbies, going on field trips, if they had the proper physical therapy, more nurse aides, and better paid to provide more activity for the resident.  I've never heard of such a place.   It seems virtually every nursing home is at best a place to take care of the basic needs of the body--bed mobility, transfers, dressing, grooming, and feeding.  At best, most of the residents are left in a stupor pretending to play Bingo.   It's a shame, and something needs to be done about this culture of death for our old, sick loved ones.

Blue Spring swimming hole.  Bar none, the most idyllic, refreshing place to go swimming in eastern Oklahoma.  A large spring.  Very cold water. And nice, shaded picnic spots.  If you're in Tulsa, head east on 412, take the Locust Grove exit, go north through that town to Salina, take a right at the first stop sign, and drive through the hills a few miles until you get there.  It's an oasis, and we're thinking maybe to go tomorrow after Mass.

Okies.   The love-hate dichotomy I have for this place has lately been pressing on my frontal cortex.  Hillbilly-speak and idiotic drivers on the Tulsa freeway haven't irritated me lately.  It's been the complete lack of humility and civility that often accompanies ignorant and backward behavior.   I can tolerate ignorance, but when you combine it with overt, cantankerous pride, it is like trying to cover up gasoline smell on your gym uniform with cologne (a 9th grade memory).  It makes the foul smell even more strange and offensive.  Okies.  Technically, geographically, I am one of them.

R&R Whiskey.  $12 a bottle.  Not bad for a decent Canadian whiskey. Wishing you could have one with me tonight.

Cheers.

Midweek Observations from the Heartland

Thank God for AC.   Last summer was the lowest circle of purgatory driving around Tulsa without it;  this summer is heaven in comparison.   Our new car puts out arctic-like air.  Deo gracias.

The city of Tulsa is like a wild sea of idiocy.   I won't call my fellow Tulsans idiots,  but the daily life is simply,  plainly,  truth be told,  idiotic.  Case in point,  traffic.   1 out of 5 drivers makes driving across town an exercise in high level defensive driving and the local circumstance to develop heroic levels of the virtue of patience,  and the cardinal virtues that bind together all the particular virtues. 

Looking for an easier, more pleasant road to heaven, that guarantees your own Catholic world of justice and moral order?  Then I suppose you could try living in the deep woods near Clear Creek, which is very tempting. 

But Providence has placed us in the thick of idiocy,  incivility,  narcissism as the status quo,  and substandard practices almost everywhere in the market place. 
I shake my head at God once in a while,  with due reverence,  at the absurdity of living in today's world,  cursed everywhere, not only in the world of work, but in our own home,  social circles,  and churches (including trad). 

Is what it is, this life God gave us to work out.  Onward and upward. 

PS.   If you're initials are DB,  please email me at JosephOstermeir@gmail.com.

Your phone # is no longer in use. 

Why is It? Thoughts on Society and Anthony Bourdaine's Suicide

My Saturday morning moment of pause to reflect on society,  friendship,  and the suicide of Anthony Bourdain.  

Why is It? 

Why is it modern man so superficially judges one another?  Based on attractiveness, fitness,  and socio-economic status?   It has always been so,  but never before in such global, epidemic proportions.   When Victorian,  19th Century,  British elite picked eachother to pieces about who was most fit to marry or invite to their banquet,  they now look humble and unprejudiced compared to contemporary Westerners.   If Jane Austen were alive today,  she could make a killing writing satire about modern social cliques, or she may find today's insanity beyond words.

For me,  I never much fitted into social cliques here in Oklahoma.  Providence placed me in the awkward position of being a religiously conservative and traditionalist Catholic,  in terms of religion and culture,  a white European/European-American masculine man,  an idealist and introvert by temperament, and of a lower economic background.  Just about every personal trait contemporary culture hates as an enemy of progress.  Imagine being in those categories,  surrounded, in your work place no less, by at-heart pagan liberals,  evangelical Protestants in background and disposition,  and almost the most uneducated people in the US (Oklahoma is 48th in the nation for education).   If you're reading this,  odds are you can relate.

Why is It? 

Why is it sincere, authentic, sustained,  and virtuous friendship,  in all its varieties and forms, is today practically dead and obsolete?   Poets have always waxed and waned about how good friendship is precious when you find it,  but I'm as certain real,  natural,  genuine friendship today is as uncommon as it was once common just a few decades ago.

For me,  I was far more fortunate having good,  loyal,  sustained friendships throughout my formative years,  than in adulthood.   And in my observation,  that seems to hold true for many men.   When CS Lewis wrote about the modern problem of friendship in particular for modern men,  in his book The Four Loves,  it seemed even more a prognostication of the de-evolution of modern friendship now, than a diagnosis for his own time.

And, Why is It? 

Why is it Anthony Bourdain, internationally renowned food critic, two days ago hung himself to death in a Paris hotel room?
And likewise,  why is the media response to eulogize a man who just murdered himself?   Who was an unashamed, professed hedonist and drug addict?

CNN painted him as an object of admiration, and his suicide as incidental to the fact he is now gone.  Meanwhile,  the Netflix TV show,  "13 Reasons Why," which critics say is actually encouraging suicide,  remains at the top of their list of most viewed shows.

I have Netflix,  and I've appreciated Bourdaine's food shows, but his marriage,  family,  friendships,  wealth,  and status in the end was not enough for him.

My impression is that suicide in all its forms and reasons is becoming increasingly a politically correct topic, because modern man is finding fewer reasons to value human life.   Before, we had to tolerate a suicide, and provide a normal,  public burial full of eulogy.   But now, my sense is we are being pressured to ACCEPT self-termination of one's life as moral.  I expect that euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide will eventually become a universal,  constitutional right.

May Anthony rest in peace,  and may God have mercy on his soul. 


Conclusion:

Despite the sun still being in the sky,  and electrical lighting,  we live in a Dark Age.  The Christian social order,  and even the most basic natural law,  common sensical level of human society has been inverted,  destroyed,  thrown away,  and incinerated,  but replaced with an artificial,  materialist, godless,  collectivism, the momentum of which is leading to more world war, totalitarianism,  and desolation.

We have only one hope.   If you follow this blog,  you have discovered what this "one hope" is. 

Pax vobiscum,  and have a restful weekend.  Thus ends my Saturday morning musing.

Long week. Resting. Thankful.