Just for tragic fun, for starters . . .
we could talk about the HUGUENOT MARTYRS.
(Though CALVINISM may save your life, it might not facilitate pleasing your wife . . .)
You may cover the stench with a potpourri—
while you gag, as you finger your rosary.
Sacrosanct nourriture…
or decayed pourriture?
(Other patrons might label it Popery.)
Though the tepidly Protestant matron
of a church that is stagnant and state-run
does not care about Luther,
We’ll bother to truth her
with Calvin or Knox as our patron.
Though the Vatican’s bottomless coffers
make some very un-Lutheran offers,
I would rather talk Tetzel
(with beer and a pretzel)
and drink with the rebels and scoffers.
We forget that the birth of the Kirk
was a vicious, un-Catholic work
One recalls Bloody Mary…
and Knox was no faerie.
His doctrine drove Satan berserk.
Many chairmen, deficient in wit
who on flimsy theologies sit
with no justification
hate predestination,
reviling it more than a bit.
Barthelemy (in French: St. Bartholomew)
was unpleasant, as most of the martyrs knew
Roman Catholic correction
or violent deception?
In heaven, they’re getting the overview…
People gag, and then murmur the rosary
seeking solace in incense or potpourri
you must pardon my French
but this damnable stench
smells like nothing so much as like Popery.
♗♗♗♗♗♗♗
October 31st is a night to celebrate – to celebrate Absolute Truth.
It is a night to grasp the sinister magnitude of the predicament fallen humanity is in.
It is also a night to recall one’s childhood with truly sepulchral melancholy and nostalgia.
I have noted, in my years of this earthly pilgrimage, the degeneration of Halloween from what it was in childhood. I recall less commercial pressure to consume. There was more child-friendly fantasy when I was growing up. The culture had not yet begun to harden into a crassly consumerist rigor mortis yet – or maybe I didn’t notice that part of it so much. Am I just idealizing a vanished past? Possibly, yes… but the push to turn Halloween into a cannibalistic slasher-film is a real phenomenon and also a discernible symptom.
I am disgusted with the spectacle of Halloween in the USA. But I hold a grudging respect for what looks like a passing victory for death and the grave every year on the last gasp of October. Which brings me to Reformation Day:
In honor of St. Martin Luther, St. John Calvin and St. John Knox, I proclaim the ongoing triumph of the Reformation. October 31, Reformation Day, is a national day of celebration in Germany, Slovenia, Chile, and Scandinavia – and it should be here as well.
The wages of sin is death (the bitter) but the gift of God is eternal life (the sweet).