Presumption, Illusions & Reality

Apparently, the Obama – “they better not bring my wife into it” – Campaign has decided that it’s okay to go after spouses, now – translate that: just John McCain’s spouse. Confederate Yankee notes some out-and-out lying at the Washington Post.

I’m sure the reporter just doesn’t know how to um…investigate stuff, like that blogger does.

Well, who has time to check facts when there is a victory party to plan or winnings to be collected ‘way before the fact.

The Obama team is sending the media marching band out to the field before the game is won (H/T Bookworm):

The press seems very distracted. They barely notice the 200,000 shenanigans in Ohio, or the sordid little scandal down Florida-way, which – two years ago – gave great offense when the congressional seat involved an (R) instead of a (D).

We’re still 20 days out from the election. I’m watching the press, and reading these overanxious twits who are so eager to get going on their agenda (it’s been (mostly)delayed, after all, these 8 years) that they want to make an end-run around the constitution, and begin governing on November 5, and I’m thinking, “they always overplay their hands…”

Democrats routinely overplay their hands. Of course, they’ve got the press at their backs like a mighty wind. They feel unstoppable. (Shrug) maybe they are. But it all feels like an illusion to me, like any second the whole thing is going to dissolve and reveal something else.

Just a feeling. Could be wrong. I reminded my kids last night, though, that Carter was presumed to be the shoo-in in 1980 until three days before the election, that nothing is “over” yet.

The Obama camp knows this. They know it’s not over. They know he hasn’t closed the deal – it’s one of the reasons they’re ‘acting as if” it is over. The “act as if” philosophy has been part of the campaign since its inception. It’s an old self-help trick: “Act as if you’re already president, and people will begin to believe it; you will begin to believe it.” “Act as if you’ve already won, and people will believe it; you will believe it.” You make a thing happen by believing it already has.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Let’s keep watching. There are master illusionists all over the place, and they’re all trying to misdirect your attention and keep you unfocused. I have no idea who is going to win this thing in 20 days, or 40 days. Neither does anyone else. Not really.

A friend of mine, noting the Buckley endorsement of Obama on the slimmest of notions, said, “there is a strange undertow of events, lately.” Yes. Things are so strange because there is disorientation – and this disorientation is because the supernatural is in play – it’s been in play for a long time, of course, but the painless coup is almost complete and there is almost an anticipatory frenzy on the side of the presumptive victors. Mistakes get made in a frenzy.

The Mad Hatter is fasting and praying for discernment, for the nation, for her own vote. I am doing this also – have been doing it since October 1. We have had a bit of fun on this blog, with the fasting, and with people tempting me with pie recipes, but what I have not written about this regimen is that these 16 days have brought such a sense of interior peace that I almost cannot describe it.

Grounding myself in prayer, examining every odd yearning (and not just for food) and choosing to surrender that yearning rather than gratify it has had an empowering effect, and a clarifying one.

What I am reminded, repeatedly, is that time is a construct – that everything is happening simultaneously. Right now, I am writing at my computer. Right now, I am voting at my local school. Right now, Christ is dying on a cross. Right now, He is making a covenant and receiving a kiss. Right now, Napoleon is heading to Waterloo. Right now, George Washington is facing defeat for the umpteenth time. Right now, I am being needlessly cruel to someone. Right now I am being born. Right now I am 78 years old and grousing that my kids never visit me. Right now, Obama has won the election. Right now John McCain has won the election.

This is why prayer has power. In the quantum world, where everything is occurring all at once, prayer changes things. Sacrifice changes things. Wisdom knows this – it is why every religious tradition, Eastern or Western, encourages prayer and sacrifice – because this is how you pierce illusions.

Last week Pope Benedict XVI said: ”He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand”…money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God’s words are a solid reality”.

Yes. Everything is happening, all at once. What appears to be solid and three-dimensional would does not even exist between its busy atoms. That which the world regards as most ephemeral, and least grasp-able, is actually the solid platform upon which all illusions spin.

About a year ago, out of the blue – a friend of mine – a social studies teacher who is politically “interested” but not active, and who does not go to church – said to me: “I get the feeling that George W. Bush is going to be the last American president of “old” America, and Benedict is going to be the last pope of the “old” Catholic church.” She had a sense of things cresting, of a cusp being reached.

Right now, a typesetter is laying down the words Dewey Wins! Right now, Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democrat nominee. Right now, George Washington is refusing a crown. Right now, Barack Obama is training ACORN workers. Right now, Margaret Sanger is preaching eugenics. Right now, a Pole is made Pope. Right now, Nero is watching Rome burn. Right now, Peter, that city’s first Bishop, is being crucified and turned upside down.

Right now, in prayer and in fasting, one may penetrate the illusions of the world and, touching eternity, impact them.

Obama may win this election. Obama may lose this election. McCain may win this election. McCain may lose this election. No matter what happens, we are entering a new era, and I believe everyone knows it. With the prayer and fasting, I am “in training” making myself ready for whatever comes, because whatever comes is going to be very different; it will jar us from all of our complacencies.

So, yes, I feel very peaceful right now, and my prayer and fasting continues. I hope you’ll consider joining me in this training, in whatever measure you may. And yeah, I’ll do a Vespers podcast, later.

Vanderleun sends over a link to what could almost be called a bookend to these thoughts.

The extraordinary instability in the world cannot long endure — and I fear we are ill-prepared in the extreme for the abyss which will follow. We have raised generations to believe they are entitled to ease, wealth, and prosperity; we have taught them through our easy divorces and casual shack-ups that commitment only lasts as long as it feels good, and that love is all about sex; we have failed to provide any framework of character, morality, integrity, and perseverance upon which to rest when all we have taken for granted — the wealth, the comfort, the false security, the easy irresponsibility — crumbles to the ground.

And just think, all of it brought down in a mere 50-or-so years. Don’t miss it.

Also curiously related: Zombietime on the Left’s big blunder

Meanwhile, Spiritual Things Matter lives up to its name.