A Very Personal and Haphazard Beginning …

Some day, maybe the story can be told. The whole crazy story … or apparently crazy. For now, suffice it to say that this web project is being started in personally very difficult circumstances. Circumstances where my wife Kim and I hardly have a real home—let alone a home with decent web access.

Nonetheless with the loving help of friends, we are going ahead.

But what this kind of start-up means is a very piecemeal, haphazard, less than ideal approach.

‘Less than ideal’ … This means to say, I did another web project once, for which I prepared meticulously. I contemplated a long time beforehand and what went out was very thought-out.

This time will be far more ABRUPT.

And yet … and yet, despite these very difficult circumstances, in my prayers I cannot help but feel that grace is coming with this weblog, this website, this book I am planning to self-publish …

As chaotic as everything is, there is a feeling that this project will prove more significant than my oh-so-meticulous previous web effort.

In a piecemeal way, then, I hope to clarify soon, what this web effort is about. For now, by way of introduction, let me simply say that this weblog will deal with a number of themes that have become of utmost importance to me in the prayer and contemplation arising from my own life experience, my own individual biography …

And that that individual experience, that biography is one of my once having been a vigorous proponent of New Age spirituality, who by the Grace of God was led to the Catholic faith.

Of course, my life experience is that of many other things as well. For this experience includes also a deepening reverence and wonder for the Catholic Mystery and the traditional faith, which I have become convinced is so often being undermined by the Novus Ordo – the new Mass in the vernacular, “abolishing Latin as the liturgical and sacred language” – to employ a phrase from Valentin Tomberg.

My life experience is also about a deepening horror of the materialism and ruthless capitalism of our times – now coming to a head in ecological catastrophe. And my life experience is also that of decades of thirsting for a culture founded on the Sacred.

Even when I was a New Ager, I was driven by this thirst for a Sacred Culture. I even once published a little New Age magazine under that title – Sacred Culture.

And how many years did it take me to see that a Sacred Culture could not be founded on a New Age spirituality that denied Christ! Denied Christ … whether subtly or not is less important.

Indeed the subtle denials of Christ may be all the more grievous, because they work insidiously …

Here the words of Joseph De Maistre have come to my mind:

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.

And here is also a foretaste of things to come in this weblog, including my respect for so many honest and sincere – beautifully sincere – folk in the New Age movement, who now seem to me robbed of Christ, as I was robbed of Christ.

And I say this as one who undoubtedly perpetrated falsities about Christinanity, without having a clue as to what Christianity was …

My life experience then is one that leads to me look out at the twenty first century with burning questions as to the future of the world and the future of the Faith. And my life experience is also that of a life transformed by the Hermetic and Catholic approach of Valentin Tomberg, without whose liberating writings, I might still be a New Ager.

Then there are the enormously rich gifts from my beloved wife, with the fruits of her own contemplative life. Kim and I both hope that this website will feature some of these fruits directly. But due to certain limitations, she will not be able to contribute directly as much as myself.

Finally, my life experience involves a call to France, to French Catholicism and to the Sacré Coeur which was revealed to the world in Paray le Monial in the second half of the seventeenth century …

All of these things then, will play a part in this weblog to come. For now, I will just note one last thing. Some weeks ago, the inspiration for this project began moving me. But I was travelling through France and it was hard to see how to begin, with very few resources.

Still in my prayer, it seemed right to proceed. I decided to take the first steps by locating a cybercafe in which to work. And I went hunting for one, amidst the dirty backstreets of Perpignan. But before I found it, I came upon a piece of graffiti that I had never seen in my life before.

For I have seen so, so much graffiti in my life, as you almost surely have as well, dear Reader. And nearly all of it was of a banal or obscene nature. Rarely if ever, have I seen images of the Sacred …

But there it was, a red heart. But not just any red heart …

It was a red heart surmounted by a CROSS.

There in dregs of Perpignan, there, someone had emblazoned the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

And I saw it on the very day, I went walking to find a cybercafe for the very purpose of commencing a web project dedicated to the Cor Jesu Sacratissimum.

An auspicious and striking sign, I thought.

More will shortly be posted as to the nature of this web project.. Also as I lay out the pieces, I may well “re-debut” some of my older blog entries, that still seem relevant to the picture to be constructed here, again somewhat haphazardly.

A final note: I have emphasised the difficulties in doing this webproject with something else in mind. It is this: During my previous web effort, I enjoyed very much interacting with the people who left comments at my blog or sent me email. In the present climate, such interaction will be much more difficult. At least for a while. Still I will very much appreciate any comments you care to leave, dear Reader … as well as your patience with me.

Cor Jesu, rex et centrum omnium cordium, miserére nobis.

Foreword for Monarchy by Roger Buck

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