Zoí kai Thánatos
Saturday, May 6th, 2023.
I was writing regularly on a number of different forums before and during the lockdowns.
My wife and I had refused to take the jabs. For me, it meant that my university studies were halted, and I was barred from most employment.
I’m a retired Veteran, and I have a small pension and some benefits from Veterans Affairs Canada, which kept my wife and I going.
But near the end of 2021, even my pension and benefits were being threatened with getting cut off and withheld if I continued to refuse the benefits of the experimental serum which the Government of Canada was attempting to make mandatory.
I was 49 years old. My wife was 40. And both of us were facing a future where we might have to take whatever we could pack into the truck, and drive as deep into the mountains as we could. Either to face the remaining years of our lives in exile, or to find a place to make a brave last stand.
Am I being over dramatic? No. The situation had reached a point where fleeing into the forests was quickly becoming the only option left, for me, my wife and … our baby.
At the beginning of 2021 we received the news that our prayers were answered, and we would be gifted with a daughter.
The pregnancy was very difficult for my wife, and made us every bit more determined to find a way to keep her safe and away from those who would otherwise be too happy to harm or kill us all.
You can imagine how we felt, trying to make plans to evacuate with a newborn baby, a wife who would be recovering from a caesarean section birth, and winter descending on the Great Northern Plains.
The threat to my family and the threat of departure into exile in the remote wilderness has not actually passed. But for now it is not imminent.
But what I wrote the night before my daughter’s birth is still relevant.
Today, a founder of the World Economic Forum and wealthy shareholder of several global pharmaceutical companies has been crowned a king.
For the sake of the day, and for a word of warning, I am presenting that article again.
God help us all.
Jesus Christ is King. Fiat.
***
Originally Published 25 October 2021
In a few hours from now, my wife and I will get up early, and begin a special journey together that each of us has hoped for, prayed and prepared for all of our lives.
We live nearby to the physical destination -- the hospital where we will welcome our baby girl into the world. Three little souls before her live in heaven now with our Most Beloved King, but this little daughter of God will join us tomorrow and start her life with us on the Long Journey of the Human race.
We have spent every moment and spare thought to preparing our home for her, ever since we first had news of her, and now, as I write this, in every room around me there is something that includes what she will need, and what she will be.
We have a little room made into a nursery, filled with all her little things. There is a highchair ready for her meals when she’s ready to dine at table. A cradle, fresh and clean, waits beside our bed.
In front of me, there’s a vase with roses in it that I gave my wife for our anniversary just a few days ago, and beside it, a statue of the Holy Family and our little Christmas Nativity.
Both my wife and I have led lives full of experiences with danger, darkness, and death. Both of us, even before we got married, faced evil in our lives, in the world around us and fought it as best as we could. We didn’t come away unscarred.
No, those past battles left marks and scars, visible and invisible.
But we made it through, alive, sane, and still believing in and putting into practice the truth of our Faith. We married and now support each other in the never-ending conflicts the fallen world and the evil that rules it is always throwing at people. We keep pursuing the Truth, wherever He leads us.
That pursuit has led us into a state of being that has less and less of the fallen world’s standard requirements of white lies, emotional immaturity, hypocrisy and selfishness, and more of the Real World’s requirements of humility, calm, charity, and resolve. We find ourselves seeing what’s going on around us with a clarity that faces the world, its illusions and its evil without fear.
My wife is 40, and I am going to be 49 in a few more weeks. It may raise a few eyebrows indeed that we even considered having a child at all so “late” in our lives. What will happen to our savings? How will we be prepared for our old age?
I will let my wife answer for her very capable self. If you should ever be bold enough to ask her though, you should be warned: you better ask NICELY, or you’re going to find out the literal reason why truth is often symbolized with a sword.
I will answer for myself. I lived a life that at times had so many ways to die, both fast and agonizingly slow, that I really did not believe I would live to see my 35th birthday. By the age of 32, I had lost so many friends, not only to war, but to depression, drug abuse and suicide that it seemed like my own chances of living a long life was slim at best.
I had a gift, though, from older soldiers: they taught me how to live my faith.
No -- not just practice it, or “keep” it in the sense of refusing to let go of what I was taught no matter what the world threw at me, or despite how many bodies piled up. That kind of “keeping” faith is what fanatics do, and it doesn’t work. Fanaticism is about doubt and lack of faith, not living and practicing it.
Living your faith is about taking what Jesus and His Church teaches you, looking straight at the world, horror and all, and looking for ways and means to truly apply what He taught.
After my 35th birthday passed, and another, and another, I realized that, while the world had not apparently slowed down or stopped in its many attempts at killing me, I wasn’t dying, and it wasn’t because of my wonderful good luck, or some lack of effort, effectiveness or skill on the part of the world’s numerous killers or ways to die.
Like the older Catholic soldiers told me, I will die when God says I die.
It’s not the devil’s decision, nor is it within the world’s power.
God made me, and He gave me my life. He will number the beats of my heart, and the breaths I will take.
He alone will decide when the life He made will end. I am His son. He is my Father.
How would anyone ever know how long I will live? Only God knows. And when He decides I've been here long enough, and if His Second Coming didn't arrive by then, I will die.
If that happens when I'm 104? Or tomorrow? Can you really plan anything for old age, like the retirement ads claim?
My plan is to leave it to God to decide what's best, and trust Him to make the best decision. He's always been more trustworthy than the retirement planners and bankers, don’t you agree?
Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?
You don’t have to be scared of living, but you will be if you keep being afraid of dying like the world's worshippers do.
If the natural and the supernatural life God gives us really is a gift, as Jesus said it was and as the Church has taught for two millennia, then you have to live like you believe it is true.
Go hide in a hole if you want to. You won’t live one instant longer.
***
My daughter will arrive sometime tomorrow at exactly the right time.
My wife and I are exactly the right age and level of experience.
It was meant to be this way, in this time.
Every day of my life is a gift.
Every moment that He is in me, and I am in Him, is more wonderful than breathing, and worth more than all the treasures of the earth.
Every day from here on in, there will be a little person who has a part of me in her, and He is in us both, and we are in Him.
There is no place for Thanatos in this family of God, that He has made just for Himself, Sarah, Aurora May and I.
We did not pass through fire, water, dangers and doubt only to fall into darkness and shadow.
I will most likely not be writing much for the foreseeable future. I will be back at it later, after the busy beginnings of life settle in and time permits.
Thank you all for your support, and your interest in my strange little blog.
You don’t have to live the way they tell you to.
May the Good God Bless you all, and keep you safe.
Post-script, October 28th, 2021:
Aurora May Whittaker arrived into the world at 12:34pm, October 25th, 2021. Her mum and dad are very, very happy.
And she is perfect.