No more USA?

A Russian analyst predicts the USA will soon split up into regions.

Unimaginable only weeks ago, could the profligate ways and bankruptcies of our federal, state governments, plus banks, auto companies, homeowners, etc. etc. etc. bring this result?

Is this why there is no mention of the USA in Bible prophecy? Must read

A thoughtful quote

Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

If parapsychological or extraterrestrial phenomena were genuine, or even merely plausible, one ought to devote oneself to them entirely, wasting not a single moment. I cannot understand how one could waste even a second on other matters. But this also holds for science. If science is what it is, and truth is what it claims to be, they are worthy of a radical passion. Now, nothing like this actually happens. Not only the masses, but scientists themselves only devote themselves to it half-heartedly. We only feel a relative passion, a casual commitment for truth, the same as we feel for irrational phenomena. Only the suspense of science can rouse a sudden interest, but that is the passion for suspense. It is aroused today by the fact that even scientists acknowledge there are no final answers in science.

Pastor takes note of the 'fog of Christianity'

Read

Auto writer sees 'end of the world' (as we know it, at least) in 2009

One man's view. Calls one new modeal an "adequate way to drive to hell." What do you think? Comments, please.

Thomas Merton on vision, end point of the Christian faith

If it were a matter of choosing between “contemplation” and “eschatology,” there is no question that I am, and would always be, committed entirely to the latter. Here in the hermitage, returning necessarily to beginnings, I know where my beginning was: having the Name and Godhead of Christ preached in Corpus Christi Church. I heard and believed. I believe that he has called me freely, out of pure mercy, to His love and salvation and that at the end (to which all is directed by Him) I shall see Him after I have put off my body in death and have risen together with Him. That at the last day “all flesh shall truly see the salvation of God.” What this means is that my faith is an eschatological faith, not merely a means of penetrating the mystery of the divine presence and resting in Him now. Yet because my faith is eschatological, it is also contemplative, for I am even now in the Kingdom and I can even now “see” something of the glory of the kingdom and praise Him who is King. I would be foolish then if I lived blindly, putting all “seeing” off until some imagined fulfillment (for my present seeing is the beginning of a real and unimaginable fulfillment!). Thus contemplation and eschatology are one in Christian faith and in surrender to Christ. They complete each other and intensify each other. It is by contemplation and love that I can best prepare myself for the eschatological Vision – and best help the Church and all men to journey toward it.

The union of contemplation and eschatology is clear in the gift of the Holy Spirit. In Him we are awakened to know the Father, because in Him we are refashioned in the likeness of the Son. It is in this likeness that the Spirit will bring us at last to the clear vision of the invisible Father in the Son's glory, which will also be our glory. Meanwhile, it is the Spirit who awakens in our heart the faith and hope in which we cry for the eschatological fulfillment and vision. In this hope there is already a beginning, a "promise" of fulfillment. This is our contemplation: the realization and "experience" of the life-giving Spirit in Whom the Father is present to us through the Son, our way, truth, and life. The realization that we are on our way, that because we are on our way we are in that Truth, which is the end and by which we are already fully and eternally alive. Contemplation is the loving sense of this life and this presence and this eternity.


Thomas Merton
Best selling author, Catholic monk, hermit
Journal entry, December 22, 1964
From The Intimate Merton: his life from his journals

The next ten years, 2008 to 2018, what does the future hold?

Here is a most thought-provoking article from Jack Kelley. It is highly speculative, but at the same time, mind-expanding. What do you think of it?

Nothing new under the sun

The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. --Cicero, 55 BC