Dear Bunglehorn,

Apropos this Easter Sunday, on the day the Son of Man arose from three days rest, a day of celebration in the Enemy’s camp, let us reflect for a moment on rest and unrest. Rest is leisure, peace, solitude, quiet. It is a time man unwinds, chills out and recharges his batteries. How important is rest to a man’s soul? Sleep deprivation is an interrogation tactic; will disrupting his rest help us in our battle?

Let’s begin by looking at the nature of physical motion observed by Sir Isaac Newton. What can physical laws reveal in a battle for spirituality?

We see both a prediction of objects at rest and a prediction of objects in motion. They maintain their state unless something redirects them. How can we be an “unbalancing force?”

How can we redirect the culture toward us? Fight harder? Appeal to the masses?

What actions might we take to force someone our way? From what position should we act?

The Mind & Body Connection

Many psychologists have accepted a connection between the human mind and the human body. The human person is described as having psychosomatic unity (psyche mind and soma body) or a connection between the body and the mind. The common doctor of the Enemy’s Church, Thomas Aquinas, taught this nature with Biblical support, as have countless others, including Pope John Paul II (The Acting Person, Ch. 5). Both are interconnected, so when the mind is ill, the body may become ill. Psychological studies show a correlation between pessimism and physical illness. Bringing the mind and body into harmony has been a goal of ancient pagans, early Christians, Buddhists and new age mystics alike. The holistic understanding may be difficult to quantify, yet the idea has virtually universal acceptance.

We see the reverse affect as well. Notice how a humble man manipulates his body according to the humility & servility of his mind during worship. He bows his head, closes his eyes, bows his torso inward to clasp his hands in prayer. He genuflects, he kneels, even prostrates himself on the ground, submitting himself completely to his Lord. He makes the Sign of the Cross over his head and heart. He’s positioning his body in hopes of positioning his mind. If it isn’t for our incessant distractions, his mind and body might effortlessly and naturally align.

It should then follow that harming the body will harm the mind. I don’t mean forms of corporal mortification and fasting that discipline the mind and build longing in the spirit. I mean the over-stimulation of the senses, the deprivation of peace, quiet and solitude. We all know what happens to a person that doesn’t rest well. An ongoing lack of physical rest hurts both the body and mind. A damaged psyche opens doors for you and I.

The Speed of Modern Life

Extra-curricular activities are healthy for the mind and the body. But as with any good thing, there is an excess. Consider the busyness of today’s family. Our work is easier when a soccer mom fills her week shooing her chicks between baseball, basketball, softball, football, karate, gymnastics and piano and dancing lessons. Both parents commute further and work longer for the bigger house and better schools and big box shopping in exurbia. Is it any wonder church attendance is down?

Ever since the Industrial Age, humans have found reasons to work and play deep into the night. The invention of a Third Shift, aptly called the Graveyard, expanded the engine of commerce. From this, retail, service and entertainment businesses kept their doors open all night. First were the diners and lonely motel clerks in cities and along the new Interstate Highway System that connected people near and far. Then came the “convenience” stores followed by home improvement stores, grocery chains and mega-low-marts that didn’t particularly need to be open all night. The best MBA minds realized these stores incurred constant costs. They are inhabited throughout the night with stock clerks and the building mortgage isn’t cut in half just because the store is closed at night. Why limit revenue generation to daytime? The all-night convenience store isn’t immoral persay, but its convenience allows people to easily put off rest. One can easily make a midnight run for beer or bread or milk.

What does it do to a human’s mind when it’s body is always on the go? With no balance, these activities, or their collective lifestyle, can become a kind of religion in themselves. Such a full calendar leaves no time for reflection. It may even allow pesky problems to fester. Without proper rest, the body and spirit become weak and disoriented. If we can diorient men from the Enemy, they’ll enter a state of sin. Therefore, for us to win their rest eternal, whenever possible, we ought to invoke a state of unrest.

Biblical Basis for Rest

The Enemy calls on man to rest their minds and their bodies. His Bible offers many examples of the power of rest. Amid his fear and despair for the Israelites, Elija went into the desert and rested his body for 40 days and 40 nights (1 Kings 19:1). At the behest of an angel while he slept, he nurtured his body with food and water, for strength and clarity. (Ever notice how angels, the Enemy’s messengers, tended to visit their subjects at rest, in their dreams?) So too did Jesus rest for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness only to be tempted by our Holy Father below (Mat 4:1).

And of course there is the Enemy’s commandment to keep the Sabbath sacred (Exodus 20:8-11 & Deuteronomy 5:12-15). Man is called to put aside worldly matters and to give praise to the Enemy, just as the Enemy rested on the 7th day of creation
Genesis 2:2-3.

Unfortunately, some of the Church’s scholars have noted this divine wisdom. Pope John Paul II reinforces the need to keep the Sabbath in his Apostolic Letter, Dies Domini:

The alternation between work and rest, built into human nature, is willed by God himself, as appears in the creation story in the book of Genesis (cf. 2:2-3; Ex 20:8-11): rest is something “sacred,” because it is man’s way of withdrawing from the sometimes excessively demanding cycle of earthly tasks in order to renew his awareness that everything is the work of God. There is a risk that the prodigious power over creation that God gives to man can lead him to forget that God is the Creator upon whom everything depends. It is all the more urgent to recognize this dependence in our own time, when science and technology have so incredibly increased the power which man exercises through his work.
Pope John Paul II
Dies Dominis (#65)

By their own admission, rest connects man with the Enemy. This alone is reason to disrupt it! Consider what others in the Enemy’s camp say about the cycle of work and rest…

“The urgency of important and complex missions in the service of the Church” should be harmonized with “solitude” and “quiet.”
Pope Benedict I

 

Guard against the dangers of excessive activity. Too many concerns can lead to hardness of heart, as well as suffering of the spirit and loss of intelligence.
Pope Benedict XVI quoting St. Bernard

The Meaning of Time

The Enemy’s Bible and Church scholars touch on another secret. Cycles of rest and unrest reveal a meaning of Time. Rest on the Sabbath, the Resurrection celebrated principally through the Eucharist, resets a person’s clock so to speak. People wind down, accept closure and prepare for a new beginning. “In Christ’s Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man’s eternal rest in God,” (CCC#2175). The same can be said about the cycles of feast and fasting, celebrations of the Enemy’s work and gifts of the “Holy Spirit.” In these cycles, man gathers a sense of the everlasting. You can read more of the Enemy’s field manual on the primacy of prayer and contemplation.

With a better understanding of the Enemy’s intention behind the cycles of work and rest, a preparation of eternal rest in Him, be mindful of ways you can promote unrest within your patient.

Warmest Regards,
Wigglebrick

Dear Bunglehorn,

I enjoyed your little story about your patient’s consternation while drinking coffee at Starbucks. Seems he got one of the more provacative cups imprinted with random quips by “notable” figures in their The Way I See It series (#230):

Heaven is totally overrated. It seems boring. Clouds, listening to people play the harp. It should be somewhere you can’t wait to go, like a luxury hotel. Maybe blue skies and soft music were enough to keep people in line in the 17th century, but Heaven has to step it up a bit. They’re basically getting by because they only have to be better than Hell.
Joel Stein, LA Times

We can expect your patient’s indigination, but how can you capitalize? He feels offended, but he’s not sure why. Therein lies your opportunity. Use his befuddled reaction to suggest that he’s simply overreacting. Obviously, the writer is just having a little fun. Can’t Christians laugh at themselves? And what’s he going to do? Boycott Starbucks? No. He’ll drop the matter, ignore the offense, no harm, no foul.

If you can do this, you’ve scored a major point. You’re helping your patient blur the line between friendly parody and spiteful mockery of his faith. In due time, he’ll become desensitized to these kind of pop shots we fire behind the blinds of culture. Your objective is to render him incapable of discerning between healthy jest and hurtful joust.

Make no mistake, this innocuous event is hurtful. The author reveals his animosity, not in his hyperbolic opening “Heaven is totally overrated,” but deeper in his statment about the fantasy of Heaven keeping people in line 400 years ago. First of all, this is in goosestep with reasoning that religion is merely a means of population control. It is atheistic at its core and will garner serious agreement among modern agnostics, anarchists and nihilists gurgling in the leftist fringe (I have to laugh, they’ve renamed themselves “Progressives,” but they are nothing of the sort!). The idea that religious dogma is a marketing ploy is just a contemporary twist. Moreover, the implication that their pre-Enlightenment ancestors were easily placated by blue skies and soft music ultimately insults their own lineage. If you look closely, you’ll notice a violation of the Enemy’s 4th Commandment, “Honor your parents.” Bonus point!

More seriously, this writer’s comments can be summed in a single word: juvenile. He betrays his ignorance by fostering our silly myths. His understanding of Heaven and Hell is no more refined than a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Seriously, is it so difficult to attribute his words as the laughable ranting of an apathetic know-it-all teenager? No! That’s exactly how Starbucks can rationally publish this nonsense without fear of Christian, Jewish or Muslim retribution! The corporate powers-that-be contend they are simply “sparking conversation In the tradition of coffee houses everywhere.”

Yet when is an empty commentary the catalyst for thought-provoking discussion? Without the the underlying trickery I’m exposing for you now, how can one adequately respond to blustering? This doesn’t incite question and reason. It doesn’t consider fact, history or tradition. It’s plainly a puerile attack! It’s nothing more than a 3 a.m. adolescent dorm-room discussion between bong hits.

Ahh, the psuedo philosopher’s eagerness to validate any idea (or more accurately his unwillingness to disregard retarded thought) spawns such frivolous conversation. And that leads us back to your patient’s course of action: ignore the sour feeling in his gut and accept that he’s over-thinking the entire matter. Meanwhile, Starbucks dutifully claims legal shelter in the weak disclaimer on the cup, “This is the author’s opinion, not necessarily that of Starbucks.” Of course the company selects which opinions they wish to distribute, so let’s give them credit due for aiding and abetting us.

Warmest Regards,
Wigglebrick

My Dear Bunglehorn,

I had to laugh at your patient’s friend who is dismayed at his fiancé’s request for a different wedding ring. His grandmother’s ring, a family heirloom no less, is just a bit smallish, a bit too old fashioned, just not the right ring for her. What a testimony to materialism’s grip!

Isn’t that the trend these days? We see it every time we pass the jewelry store in the mall. Women fawning over the engagement rings, the next one oh so much prettier than the last. The men, shifting from toe to heel, feeling the pressure of a “gift” they cannot afford.

It used to be different. Men would drop casual hints like “What do you think of so and so’s ring? How about that pear-cut diamond and that setting?” They’d subtly open a very general conversation about what each of them likes about anything, but with the actual intention of cherrypicking her preferences on an engagement ring, if she had any at all. Like his hunter-gatherer ancestors, he’d patiently stalk his prey acutely aware of its tracks left behind.

Armed with this deeper appreciation of his quarry, men would hunker over a diamond and analyze the 4Cs like they were looking at the engine of a used automobile. Women primarily focused on the size (Carat) or the shape of the diamond (Cut), but a man’s brain geared for engineering investigates further. They’d learn the mundane ratings behind the Color and Clarity, then devise a plan for capturing the perfect prize with his meager resources (in this case, his pocketbook). With hours of research and cunning espionage, he’d select the perfect ring for his bride-to-be. As anticipation would build, he’d enjoy the mere fantasy of giving his bride such a beautiful gift as a sign of their permanent, precious, sacred bond.

Thankfully, for the sake of being practical, we’ve been able to cut through the fun and romance to make sure she gets what she wants. Why be coy? This is love, right?

Therein is our dirty little secret. The desire to make her happy becomes a confusion of priorities. This is but one small example of the beauty of the fairy-tale wedding. It is the ring that matters. It is the dress, the flowers, the food, the music and the shoes that matter. It is not the marriage, the man or the meaning that matter. Popular culture marvels at this kind of couple. The idea of a celebrity marriage is permeating all classes. We’ve all seen the couple that separates or divorces within a year. But hey, they had a great wedding reception!

For the men, it’s a sign of his new life as a “fat dumb hubby.” It begins with his intellectual laziness. Why waste time determining his bride’s likes and dislikes and planning a surprise when it’s so much easier to just ask? It’s also the beginning of his life as a eunich. We’ve set the precedent where the woman calls the shots, he just needs to shut up and cut the check. With luck, we’ve spun a new cycle of shame, self loathing and resentment. Can you think of a better way to start a marriage?

Thanks again. Loved the story.

Warmest Regards,
Wigglebrick

My Dear Bunglehorn,

I’m happy to see that your patient is sympathetic with government and media support for Gardasil (often misspelled Guardasil), the HPV vaccine for girls and women. We’ve been working on this for quite some time and we finally had a break when we flipped the conservative Christian Governor Rick Perry. He issued an executive order to the citizens of Texas to vaccinate girls prior to their entering the 6th grade, coincidentally on the same day a county court ruled the governor had no constitutional authority to issue an executive order on an unrelated case. Nonetheless, Gov. Perry’s order instantly elevated the discussion to a national level.

You might wonder, how have we been winning this debate? By deception, of course! As per usual, since the Garden of Eden, we divert attention away from consequences and emphasize the goodness of man’s dominion over himself. Brilliant! Ours is a delicate craft you know. Let’s have a look at our key arguments.

The Economic Argument

Our Deception
Gov. Perry cites the rising health care costs, especially for the states who pick up the tab for the poor.

If there are diseases in our society that are going to cost us large amounts of money, it just makes good economic sense, not to mention the health and well being of these individuals to have those vaccines available. Gov. Rick Perry

The Truth
If they really want to save money, why not get more bang for the buck? Why not mandate the flu vaccine? The flu costs companies and government millions of dollars annually. 36,000 people a year die of the flu – a sharp rise since the 1970s. A Texas teenager just died of the flu. Politicians who are supposed to steward public funds wisely could get a far greater ROI elsewhere, so why the sudden demand for HPV vaccinations?

Well, follow the Money. Merck & Co., the makers of Gardasil, stand to earn billions of dollars from the $360, 3-dose regiment. While we can surely expect the typical “Ask your doctor…” type TV and magazine ads, the company has bankrolled efforts to pass state laws mandating Gardasil since the FDA approved the drug in June 2006. The company doubled its lobby budget channeled through Women in Government, a nonprofit collective of female state legislators across the United States. Merck has an official presence on the Women in Government Business Council and the group’s members have introduced many of the state bills mandating Gardasil.

Gov. Rick Perry has several connections to Merck and Women in Government:

• Perry received $6,000 from Merck’s political action committee during his re-election campaign.
• One of Merck’s three lobbyists in Texas is Mike Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff.
• Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, the mother-in-law of Perry’s current chief of staff, is a state director for Women in Government.

The Women’s Health Argument

Our Deception
You care about women, don’t you? This issue is about women’s health!

The Truth
This is not an issue about women & health. It is about parent & child relationships, young girls & their upbringing, women & their choices and politicians & greed. Yet we’ve successfully couched this as a women’s health issue because women are truly suffering.

This is the new era of science. We move immediately past peer review and into the public debate. All we need is the media to support our cause. The Austin American-Statesman has run several articles and opt/ed pieces in support of the legislation. Time magazine featured an article on their website home page “Saying Yes to the HPV Vaccine,” about a mother who rushed her daughter to the doctor for a vaccine to “help prevent cancer.” (Note that it’s written in the first person so the reader can more easily connect with the “I” and “me” language.) The best part are the doctor experts normalizing the vaccine, even to the point they believe parents are “in denial” if they elect not to vaccinate their children.

Protecting my child from cancer outweighs any reluctance to ponder her sexual future. “But some parents are totally in denial,” says my longtime pediatrician, Dr. Marc Wager of New Rochelle, N.Y. It’s his practice to discuss the vaccine when parents bring a daughter for a checkup at 11 or 12. Claudia Wallis, Time Magazine

Fantastic. Even if a parent follows this issue, studies the medical criticism and understands the world of promiscuity in which they live, they are “in denial” if they choose not to vaccinate. Since encouraging a life of virtue is an impossible undertaking, they should have a contingency. The government knows better than the parent. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The Gender Equality Argument

Our Deception
When you support Gardasil, you are supporting women’s rights and equal health treatment.

The Truth
Virtually all contraceptive and STD studies are performed on women, often to their detriment. Early studies of female contraceptives resulted in severe permanent side effects, including death. In this tradition of fixing women (pun intended), Gardasil is not without its side effects either, including pelvic and muscle pain, muscle weakness, severe stomach pain, stiff and swelling joints, severe headaches, dizziness, temporary loss of vision, slurred speech, involuntary contraction of limbs, fever, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The National Vaccine Information Center even issued a warning over Gardasil side effects when some girls lost consciousness during apparent seizures. Gender equality would advocate more research on how to block penile HPV transmission before it becomes an issue for women. As it stands, Gardasil is a defensive posture, not an offensive one (both puns intended).

The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that found male circumcision and a lower number of men’s sexual partners reduced the risk of HPV infection. So ancient common sense follows, if men would get circumcised and keep their zippers zipped, women would have less risk of penile HPV transmission.

The Impact Argument

Our Deception
Gardasil will help prevent cancer.

The Truth
It is true that HPV leads to genetic warts and cervical cancer in some cases. It is also true that Gardasil has been found to help prevent four strands of HPV. Contrary to what Gardasil supporters claim of their opponents, the vaccine is not evil. The primary objection is the sweeping legislation to force the vaccinations as well as the implications of such a law.

The lauded study used to support the vaccine, published in the 2002 New England Journal of Medicine (just a few months after the aforementioned circumcision study, BTW) evaluated only one strand of HPV (type 16) and was conducted on nearly 2400 female subjects aged 16 to 23. There is no information on girls 9-12 years old, the age Merck and it’s partners in government recommend for vaccination. There are no long term studies of the drug’s effectiveness in a large population either. Merck advises girls and women be re-vaccinated every five years. Even then, as the same study shows, Gardasil is not 100% effective of protecting against HPV, let alone the litany of STDs that have skyrocketed following our masterpiece, The Sexual Revolution.

The study raised other questions among peer reviewers:

To better ascertain the comparability of the two study groups, we are interested in knowing the balance of other risk factors for cervical cancer, such as socioeconomic status, seropositivity for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and use of oral contraceptives. In addition, the investigators excluded a substantial high-risk group (those who reported more than five male sex partners).
Letter to the Editor, NEJM

The National Cancer Institute reminds us that 1) abstinence is the best method of avoidance and 2) correlation does not equal causation in Cervical Cancer Prevention

The finding of HPV viral DNA integrated in most cellular genomes of invasive cervical carcinomas supports epidemiologic data linking this agent to cervical cancer; however, direct causation has not been demonstrated.
The National Cancer Institute

Even when the FDA approved Gardasil, it noted the obvious discrepancy between the vaccine being 5 years old versus the 10 to 15 years it takes for abnormal cells to develop. There hasn’t been enough testing to prove Gardasil can prevent cervical cancer, it can only make a prediction based on what is known about cervical cancer and genital HPV.

The study period was not long enough for cervical cancer to develop, the prevention of these cervical precancerous lesions is believed highly likely to result in the prevention of those cancers.Food & Frug Administration

It’s obvious why Merck and some of the politicians in its pocket are rushing to embrace Gardasil, but these studies don’t support sweeping laws requiring such a new and relatively untested vaccine. What’s the rush?

The Good of Society Argument

The Deception
Gardasil Is good for the health and prosperity of the public.

The Truth
Can medicine effectively stem a pandemic rooted in sex outside of marriage? Where is the precedent?

Following the mass distribution of contraception, history has shown a rise in cohabitation, earlier onset of sexual activity, higher incidences of STDs, higher teen pregnancies and a massive upsurge in abortions. Likewise, mandating the HPV vaccine will endow women with a false sense of security, leading them to partake in more risky behavior.

Fortunately, the media is spoon-feeding our propaganda and ignoring those who question the benefits or investigate the intentions of the parties involved. As long as people are willing to engage in abnormal behavior, we will enable drug companies to bring a cure.

With regards to your patient, keep it simple. Convince him that this is about saving women, preventing cancer and helping women’s health for a stronger society. You might even hint that a God is unjust for such hard punishment, especially in the unique cases where people contract HPV outside genital contact. When he hears people declare they’ll raise their daughters with scruples, remind him how even the best intentions can be so naive.

Warmest Regards,
Wigglebrick

My Dear Bunglehorn,

I’m a bit disturbed to hear that your patient is despondent and somber as we approach the season of Lent. This generally isn’t a good sign. I’d be much more pleased had you told me he is filling chipper and keeping himself entertained.

Allow me to respond today, this their Ash Wednesday anew. I know of this “void” that he feels. Caution! It is your job to help him fill that void poste haste! If he is hungry, then he must eat. If he is lonely, then he must pick up the phone. When your patient is hungry and alone, he must fill the void rather than ponder the void for what it is. Unless you act, he’ll naturally begin to ask “Why am I hungry when I have bread to eat? Why do I feel lonely when I am alone?”

He musn’t examine the void, for that risks an encounter with the Enemy. The “Mystical Doctor” of the Enemy’s Church, St. John of the Cross, spoke of this condition:

At the moment of his death Christ was certainly annihilated in his soul, without any consolation or relief, since the Father left him that way in innermost aridity in the lower part. He was thereby compelled to cry out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). This was the most extreme abandonment, sensitivity, that he had suffered in his life. And by it he accomplished the most marvelous work of his whole life, surpassing all the works and deeds and miracles that he had ever performed on earth or in heaven. That is, he brought about the reconciliation and union of the human race with God through grace…

David says of him: Ad nihilum redactus sum et nescivi (Ps 72), that the true spiritual person might understand the mystery of the door and way (which is Christ) leading to union with God, and that he might realize that his union with God and the greatness of the work he accomplishes will be measured by his annihilation for God in the sensory and spiritual parts of his soul. When he is brought to nothing, the highest degree of humility, the spiritual union between his soul and God will be effected. This union is the most noble and sublime sate attainable in this life. The journey, then, does not consist in recreations, experiences, and spiritual feelings, but in the living, sensory, and spiritual exterior and interior death of the cross.St. John of the Cross († 1591)

You see Bunglehorn, the Enemy wants your patient to contemplate his emptiness in order to bring them closer. The Lenten hunger bridges the spiritual self and the bodily self. It connects feeling with the temporal. Just review the E5 Men testimonials about the effects of fasting.

Therefore, you need to hint to your patient that entering this state is unnecessary. Tell him “You’ll starve!” This is especially helpful in the late morning when the lunch hour seems so far away.

When that fails, suggest that he is equipped with the tools to ease his suffering. Has God not made food plentiful for modern men? Why should he ignore the convenience of that vending machine in the hall?

If neither of those tactics convince, plant this little nugget in between his ears: “God loves me, he wouldn’t want me to suffer. Why would he want me to suffer?” This last bit of logic works wonders. It is rare the individual who contemplates how suffering, how dying to one’s self, is an act of love. How easily they forget the the Enemy’s self sacrifice for them. How easily they forget the martyrs like St. John of the Cross who followed Christ’s example. How easily they give up any attempt to be Christlike.

Avoid the void. Eat and be merry. Life is too short!

Warmest Regards,
Wigglebrick