The weekly Hugh Demon, Full Steam Head. Alright, back from a 10 day vacation. It's pretty good getting back from the swing of things, getting back at the office, getting a guard under control. And now I'm doing some podcasting.
That's created with the latest Trump atrocity in his words about Baltimore. And being somewhat vacationed, I had to get the notification file where it was going. I'm just still kind of exhausted. I should start reading some of the tweets he put out there in the commentary.
And it was like, he didn't say anything racist at all. He rarely put out that Baltimore is a hellhole. And everyone knows it is. I'm just done that people are saying he's racist.
One guy said, it doesn't matter. They didn't mention anything about blacks. The fact that he said something bad about a black community, that's what makes him the equivalent of a trans man. And I'm just like, no, it doesn't.
I mean, I think about how startling that comment is. Basically saying if you say anything negative about an area where blacks are predominant, that makes you a racist. It's like, wow. I mean, people have been making fun of each right for years in Cleveland.
And those are pre-diving black neighborhoods or black cities. You know, the fact matter is, black cities have the most problems. It's true that it's a racism, you contribute to anything you want. I mean, but that is a fundamental fact.
Let me actually pull up what I thought was just a great quote here. What one politician said, quote, residents of Baltimore's poorest boroughs have life spans shorter than people living under dictatorships in North Korea. That is a disgrace. That's Bernie Sanders.
We're ready for president who said that about Baltimore. No one accused him of racism. It's just absolutely stunning. Further stats here, among the 30 largest American cities, Baltimore is the highest crime rate.
And it's close second to Detroit for highest rate of violent crime. When it comes to murder, Baltimore is number one. So highest crime rate, second and violent crime rate, highest in murder rate has 50 homicides per 100,000 people. That puts it there with Jamaica, Venezuela, and El Salvador.
It's just it's just starting to think that what Trump said was racist in any way, shape or form. So it's actually kind of fun to come back, come back from vacation, jump in the news a little bit, have something I can sink my teeth into, so to speak. And you want a fun movie that really sucks. Check out CBGB.
It's a movie came out like five, 10 years ago. It's about the New York nightclub CBGBs. Which I didn't know about CBGBs. I knew it was like the epicenter of the punk movie in the 1970s, but I didn't know how many details.
And this movie, I get the impression kind of chronicles it fairly well. I say the movie's terrible just because it doesn't really hang together. Just basically he has this guy who's really kind of a loser, but he's kind of determined what he wants to do. And he marches to his own drummer, doesn't take any crap off anyone.
And he launches strongly from all this punk movement in the 1970s. And I really enjoyed the movie, but I can't really recommend it because it really was kind of bad. CBGB, by the way, stands for country bluegrass and blues. That's why he was going to play there, but that wasn't quite taken off.
Fascinating that he started this nightclub in the Bowery in the 1970s. Now, pretty much all the Manhattan's been gentrified, even some of the worst parts of Harlem have been gentrified. Back in the 1970s, that wasn't the case. I mean, Times Square was a shuffle.
It was awful. Harlem was violent as hell with the heroin trade. South Manhattan had a place like the Bowery, which no sane person went there. So this guy was able to rent this piece of crap bar.
He's able to rent it for a dirt cheap. And he started this nightclub and started putting on these punk acts. And I really took off. But it's stunning the number of bands that either got their start there or really propelled their careers there.
I mean, the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, the police. That's amazing. This movie fairly accurately chronicles it. I enjoyed it enough whenever I see a movie I like.
I start looking up Wikipedia or I start watching YouTube videos on it. And I checked out some YouTube documentaries or rather some documentaries I found on YouTube about the punk movement in the 1970s. And this movie actually seems fairly factually, fairly on point, not a whole lot of embellishments. So if you want to check out this, what really was kind of a disgusting movie.
I mean, the punkers, they were real. I mean, if you love authenticity, these guys are authentic. And they're going down to the ball read to prove it. And they say it was just an awful, awful place.
Just there's like literally an excrement on the floor. People throwing up in the back alley. This, it was just a really, just a nasty place. But you could go there and you could find Lou Reed, Deborah Harry, all sorts of these icons of the punk movement in 1970s hanging out.
At the same time, Joey Ramone, all those guys. So I think if you want to check out a cool movie that I really enjoyed, check out CBGBs. I think it's on Netflix or Amazon Prime right now. All right, let's jump in and do some lighting segments.
They came out from Mitch or not, but there's a new tonic out there called the ZVIA, which I think is a brand name of all sorts of other soft drinks. But this thing is ZVIA tonic water. It's a zero calories. It's made out of stevia.
But here I was like, oh my gosh, this is going to be gentonic, which is already the lowest calorie drink you can find as a general rule. And that's going to be like a really low calorie because this is a zero calorie with ZVIA. And it's not very good. And I was disappointed too.
I was ready to just jump all over this to ZVIA and zero calories. And no artificial sweetener, by the way. That's just so cool about it. I mean, yeah, you can probably find a tonic.
That's also a super low sore as part of me in it, which I just don't like drinking that stuff. I have an acquaintance one time. He drops it like 60 pounds. Well, of course, like nine months.
And someone asked him how I did it. And he goes, oh, I gave it a diet coke. Two story. He says drinking six diet cokes a day.
He gave it up and then he dropped like 60 pounds. Anyway, I saw as well as dope with the ZVIA, made with the natural sweetener, Stevia. And it just isn't very good. From this vacation, goodness gracious, I put on a lot of them, at least five pounds.
I had dropped 23 pounds since Christmas, pretty stoked. But I put on probably five to seven pounds, so it was 10 days. A lot of jet. And I had some zebra with me.
I switched over to that. I wanted to start realizing how much weight I was putting on. So it's definitely passable. And if you really need to lose weight or whatever, yeah, I get the ZVIA.
Do the tonic. Put on a lot of line. That helps. Put on a lot of line.
And I think I think I think I think you're like it. Kind of last day of vacation. I go to put on a pair of shorts and I can't get them on. And I'm just bumming.
It's like, oh, man, how much freaking weight am I putting on? I'm getting close to get these on. And I realize that we're going to put Max's pants in my pile. Slice 30 waist.
I had to deal jumping up and down. I almost fell over trying to get them on. One other drink is pretty cool. But this is made of super moles.
I can't really doors it. My son, Jack, turned me on to bang. B-A-N-G. 300 milligrams of caffeine.
I was so freaked out by drinking this. I got a can about a vacation. 16, 16 ounce can for two bucks. I actually measured out in this big shot glass.
It was like a four ounce. Four ounce like a little wine sample tasting glass. That's why I drank it four ounces at a time. What's the idea of 300 milligrams of caffeine at once?
It's kind of freaking me out. So I drink it over the course two days. Four ounces at a time. That's actually really good.
Okay, so I'm almost through my third read. That's a doubt-a-daging. And I think I've met you for a long, for many, many years. Just a lot of this.
I won't say been in love with this book. That's not true because I really, really like it. I put a side kind of forget about it and go back to it. But I won't do it.
I read one chapter a day. It takes like two or three minutes to read a chapter. I think it's like 100 chapters long. I'm not going to chapter 80 something.
Highly recommended. But more importantly, I highly, highly recommend you get the correct translation. As I'm getting into this down in Buddhism type studies, I find it more more more crucial to get the correct translation of things. This translation I'm reading right now, I just bought it.
Best translation yet. It's written by John Wu. John Wu was the friend of Thomas Merton. He was a Chinese convert to Catholicism back in the 40s and 1950s.
He was a U of M grad, which is cool for me and being a U of M grad. I definitely recommend his translation of the doubt-a-daging. It's excellent. There's so much word play you can do with translation.
It's really kind of stunning. I was comparing some of his passages to other translations. And then the translations just completely left me cold. Like they messed up on the most important things.
I'd also say anything, by the way, with some translations of Saint John of the Cross. You want the translation by a guy named Rodriguez. I've read other translations of this stuff. And it sounds, I don't know.
I don't like the way this is going to sound. But almost like the zen side of Saint John of the Cross's loss and the other translations of this translation by Rodriguez, because it's all right there, so I would recommend that. Can someone help me understand why I hate the tinny sound of cellphone noise? How did it go north?
I'm going to talk about that here in a minute. It's right on Lake Michigan. It has a big porch that overlooks the lake. But that's like all it is.
I mean, you have that porch, and then you have a big fam room kitchen area. So it's basically one great big room, but the porch is divided by door walls. So you can pull them shut. In the morning when I'm out there, I'd hear my family, you know, Marie and the kids talking to the kitchen, the family room.
They could be in a porch with me. They wouldn't bother me. They're talking to me. Obviously, it's a big distraction.
But that's in bother me. Yeah, there's a little bit. I started listening to their conversation. But again, it didn't bother me.
But goodness gracious, one of my kids started listening to a podcast on their speaker, on their phone. It's just like I went up, I just drove me up the wall right away. I wasn't angry, but it's just like, I just found it really, really great. It kind of reminded me of a baby's cries.
Someone told me that she was a psychology major in college. And she said some textbooks she was reading. They said that nature makes the baby's cries so freaking annoying. So they have to be picked up.
That's the way we're programmed by natures that maybe doesn't die of starvation or neglect. They get the baby really, really freaking annoying cries. You just can't ignore it. And someone's like, that way with the cell phone.
Listen to people talking on cell phone, whatever, that that tiny noise just breaks the hell out of me. Again, it doesn't make me angry as much. It's like, I can't listen to anymore. But anyway, as an insight on that, I'm all ears.
So I'll pee in the Michigan. No, we've been, my friends have went to Alpina since I was born. My grandfather bought the place back in 1946 with a bunch of money in major in World War II because of tooled die-makers and munitions factories in Detroit. My parents, honeymoon there.
And again, we go up every year. This year we got the 10 days, which is great. I think my record is 11 days at any one time. With this, I did 10 days.
That includes the travel days. So it's maybe eight full days. Nicious, wonderful. So far up north.
The water's pretty cold. Although it can be easily warmer times. But it's so far up north. I remember my son's fiance.
She was up there and a jet ski came by. And by the way, not a lot of jet skis, those things are freaking menaces of the waterways. It's like skateboarders in downtown areas. But a jet skier came by and she's like, what do he wants?
That's what you can tell she's kind of an essay. Hey, do you realize? I said, you kind of startled the city of Jessica. She was like, yeah, I said, because you've been here for three hours and there hasn't been a single person or boat or jet ski or anything combined that has three hours.
That's how isolated it is. There's cottages all around us. Maybe we have like an acre, acre in a quarter, maybe a beachfront. And but there are cottages on either side of us and sometimes our neighbors are there, real nice people.
But there's just not a lot of traffic down the beach itself. There's not a lot of two and fro, so to speak. Never friendies it. It was like Michigan a lot.
It was like, where you're on like Michigan, you're constantly seeing people come and go on and seeing boats, whatever. But that's that's not what they call the sunrise side on the east side. Not nearly as popular as like Michigan side. I will say this though, the reason Lake Huron side is not as populated as it's just not as pretty as Lake Michigan.
Lake Michigan can be breathtaking with its views, its vistas, whatever you call it. The Lake Huron side is pretty flat. You might call it bland all it's not. I mean, it's a great lake.
It's like an ocean type view. Interesting thing about Alpina that very people realize, it is the hometown of the Godfather of American libertarianism, Elder Janak. Elder Janak, I'm pretty sure identified Alpina as his hometown. He was there for I think, I don't know, pretty much all his youth.
Alpina back in the late 1800s was a happening city. Now it's to say like 10 or 12,000. I think it was a city of 10 to 15,000, I think maybe back in the 1880s, 1890s, which made a pretty big city back by those time periods. That's how what Janak was from.
My brother-law, just by coincidence, was an Alpina now. He lives literally. I got, not even half block. He lives like on the other side of Trinity, particularly in church, which was Albert J.
Knox Church. I think his dad was a minister there. Alpina's not taking advantage of this. Like look at this, Albert J.
Knox is the man for libertarian thinkers. His book, Memoirs of a superfluous man, is excellent. One of the few books I've read twice. Highly recommended by the way, it's a fun book.
Knox was a superb prose stylist. So I mean, you're going to see some first-rate writing. Granted, it was about, it's about 100 years old at this point, not quite about 80 years old. So the prose is a little bit outdated, but still in very, very easy read.
It's just an autobiography. Highly recommended. He talks about Alpina towards the beginning of it. But the idea that Alpina doesn't try to little blam out of this and be like, hey, this, you know, where the birthplace of American libertarianism, that wouldn't be accurate, but Albert J.
Knox is from Alpina. They all try to capitalize on that. There is right next door to this, one of those old buildings, I don't know how to describe it, but it's one of those triangle buildings where it kind of comes. It's fat in the back and then narrows the front, where a street front, so that street front's come together.
So it's a triangle shape. It's really, really cool. And it's just a deserted building. It looks like it's a decently good shape.
I said, somehow take that over, you know, put one of these lost apartment complexes in the second store, second third storey. There's Michigan grant money, all the places lost. And then put like a museum of American libertarianism on the main floor. And I think that really, totally well, because Alpina's a pretty place to check out.
It's a hot spot for divers, because it's on the thing called Thunder Bay. It's like the fresh water, shipwreck capital of the world. There's a ton of shipwrecks in the Thunder Bay area. And it's like 200 of them.
There's one actually so close. I mean, good swimmer can swim out too and check it out from the shores of Alpina. There's City Park. I'm not a strong swimmer.
I've never done that. I think I'm taking a kickboard out there and checking it out. It's just right there. You see a little balloon.
I want those, you know, buoys, type balloons, attached to it. Just go out there and check it out. And local kids do it all the time. Well, I was at that sound retreat on it.
Somebody in Kentucky came with a couple of, I guess, a couple of resolutions. I hate to even call them that, because I don't know, as one of those things where I was like, well, I can give this a shot. If I can do it, screw it. I can't worry about it.
I guess I call them ideas, things I want to try. You know, one of which was, I'm no longer going to concentrate on trying to avoid falling or making mistakes. That one came to me by an old saying about monk, someone asked me monk, I lay him and asked him, what do you guys do here all day? He was all, we fall and get up.
That got me thinking, I was down by the monitor. I was like, you know, I was like, just, you're in your fifties now. You ain't never going to stop falling. So instead of concentrating on not falling, just concentrate on getting up as fast as you can afterwards.
I don't know why that seems to have had a nice shift in my mental outlook. Not sure why. Maybe it gets rid of the arrogance I have to think I won't fall. It's like, well, get rid of that.
You're going to fall. Doofus even fall and not stop for the past 50 years. But one thing I did, one resolution, so to speak, was to do the hour of power. I really don't like that phrase, but it rhymes.
So I've kind of adapted it as my own. It's actually a rip-off of Fulton Sheen, the new saint, the Catholic church, are going to become a saint shortly. He talked extensively about the importance of spending an hour in prayer every morning, or at least sometime during the day, preferably first thing in the morning. And he did an hour a day in front of the Eucharist, in front of the Blessed Sacrament, which is pretty intense.
He'd be doing that like in a pew, whatever for an hour. I've done that before. In fact, during Lent, I often do that. But it's hard.
I find myself starting to squirm and fidget and stuff like that. But he did it an entire life for an hour, and he said, it's the best thing he ever did. It let him be really, really productive. So I've kind of adapted that.
I took a cue from my spiritual director, like columnist, spiritual advisor. It makes it sound so pretentious. His name is Dr. Finkelstein at the Southwest Michigan Mental Health Clinic.
Just kidding. He said, Eric, I don't care what you do. You'll have 15 minutes. I want you praying every morning.
Performing the morning. It doesn't have to be morning about. I want you to pick a time, a place, and get your butt there every day for 15 minutes. And this went on for quite a while.
He always said, he goes, look, I don't care what you do. I don't care what you do. I don't care for the literature of the hours. I don't care if you're reading the Bible.
I don't care if you're meditating. I don't care. He goes, I don't care. He goes, just put the time in.
As I kind of took that, took that to heart when I was not disseminating. I started trying to apply that. He goes, just put the time in. And I got back from the assembly.
I said, I'm going to spend one hour every day, preferably right first thing in the morning, just putting the time in. And I've, it's been phenomenal. It's been doing it for a month now, and I want to do it. I mean, I love it right away.
I mean, I started doing it. It's kind of funny, actually. The very first day back from the retreat, I had a heck of a time getting down, down to my study. I have a study my basement.
I was filled with all sorts of books, and I set up a corner. First day got back. I set up a little corner with an old desk that I wasn't really using. And cleaned it off and put a chair there and stuff like that.
And so the next day, I actually woke up at my house. I wanted to go down and try this hour out, and I couldn't get down there, forget why. But then throughout the day, boom, boom, boom, people stopped then. Something happened every freaking part of the day.
I could not get down there. I had to do the hour. I had to break it up into like three parts, 20 minutes a year, 25 minutes a year, 15 minutes. That's like, I'm going to get in that.
And I'm not going to fall on my face. The very first day of my resolution to try to do an hour a day. Wait, wait, I've done it really steadily since then. Sometimes on days when I go to mass for an hour, you know, I may just do like maybe a half hour or 45 minutes a month.
I may cut it down a little bit, but I've really found it quite, quite edifying. And I've kind of come up with a couple, this is a couple of pointers for you, because I really would. I've done it for a month now, which goodness knows, makes me no expert. Talk to us in 10 years.
Just tell us where you are. I've done it for a month. Strongly advise it. You have the time, trust me.
It's like the old Buddhist saying, what a monk says. I don't have time to meditate for 30 minutes a day. And the master says then make it an hour. That's that type of thing.
If you put the time in first in the morning, I think you'll find the rest of the opens up. And I have an advertisement theory about why that is, by the way. And I'll get to that a little bit later here. But if you're going to try this, I would urge you to go into it with the goal of what I call focus without purpose.
And that's a little paradoxical. But if you just say, look, I'm going to be focused on something. Purpose. In fact, I think that focus without purpose or be focused on purpose, that might be what I might call the definition of natural prayer.
That is, I have a prayerful disposition. And the focus. And again, I don't care what you're focused on, but the focus. It prevents mere daydreaming.
It prevents you from just kind of sleeping. You're actually falling asleep for what I call wake sleeping. We're kind of just not days in often. Days in often space.
It prevents this laziness doing nothing. Just doodling and prevents that. So you have some sort of focus, not to tell you some things like I focused on. But then without purpose, that's crucial because if you have no purpose, you don't feel stressed.
You don't feel pressure to get anything done. It's like, I'm going to read these 10 pages. So I'm going to write down two pages in my spiritual journal. No, there is no purpose.
There is no goal, but you are focused. And I'd urge you to adapt that mindset. If you're going to try this, just like my spiritual advisor and like many, many, many others who said, yeah, pick a time of the day, preferably in the morning, but if you're not a morning person, maybe you're going to do it in the evening. Pick a place, the same place every day.
If you can't, I got a vacation. I couldn't do that. So I was out on the porch at my family cottage doing it on the shores of Lake Huron, which is really cool as well. But when you're home, you know, this is a gospel injunction.
You know, close your door and go off by yourself. It's not antisocial. It's one freaking hour a day. I would urge you to limit yourself to one hour.
And this might be crucial. Ralph Martin was saying when he was talking about doing the hour, he was, you might find yourself tempted to do more. He was, don't. Just do one hour.
And that's my case. I found myself wanting to stay longer than an hour. I've gotten into it so much that I just like, why do I want to do it? Or I think to myself, I didn't come back, because I have to do another half hour.
You know, maybe an hour, half or two hours. Don't do that. It's like, you know, one hour, jam it on to one hour and get out. And I, and I have not got my mind around why that matters, but it really does.
That's really made a big difference to be knowing that when this hour is over, I'm not coming back to this desk. What I call the praying desk or the reading desk. I'm not going back there. The rest of the day is scot free of any sort of intellectual commitment whatsoever.
That doesn't mean, by the way, that I'm not reading and doing other things. Maybe working on those podcasts or like that. No, I still am. But for that one hour though, excuse me, when that one hour is over though, I'm done.
I feel absolutely no commitment to anything intellectual, spiritual, for the rest of the day. You know, in the question we come here. Why is it so good? You know, why am I fine?
It's so profitable. One thing I think is kind of going to Mass. And here's a, here's a, here's a, a born content chef has my Protestant brother and for years, they always kind of sneer by talking about, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, I'm going to go church, I'm going to get out of the way. And say, guys, horrible Catholics just want to get church out of the way.
It's like, well, yeah, because I have to go on pains and mortal sin. I have to go. And it could take issue with whether that's ridiculous or not. That's fine.
But you got to play with my premises. If you're ever criticized, man, by the way, you have to criticize him on his terms, not yours. So, so you can criticize me for saying, I want to get Mass out of the way on the weekend. It's like, yeah, I'm fine, but yeah, I'll walk a mile on my mental shoes, which is if I don't go, it's on pains and mortal sin.
And whenever there's something you have to do, if you're like, I am, I don't want to say I'm ambitious, but motivated, or I'm a, I'm a doer. You know, I just get things done. Just, and I try to brag. It's always been that way.
Goodness knows, I have a ton of vices and a ton of faults. A laziness ain't one of them. I tend to be a high energy person. I'm grateful for it.
That comes with its own problems. One of which is, if I have to do something, I'm going to do it as soon as I can. You know, my wife's the same way. I mean, she's 51 years old, and she is smoking hot.
She's in extremely good shape. She exercises all the time, but she loves exercising the morning because she wants to get it out of the way. And now if you can go swim in a mile and a quarter, non-stop at a pace, she's a little bit slower now, I guess. But back when she was younger, some people thought she probably must have swam in college.
You know, swam on a scholarship, she was so good at it. But she says she has to get her exercise out in the morning because it's going to weigh over her head the rest of the day. That's kind of like I'm with Mass. Like, I know I got to go.
I want to get out of the way. You know, I always sit there and think, oh, I really got to eat my first meal of the day. It's going to weigh over my head. It's like, no, I'm going to eat no matter what.
That's something that I have to do when I can't resist doing. At some point, well, it's 10 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 2 in the afternoon, I'm going to eat that first meal. I'm going to take that juggernaut dump at some point in the day. That does not weigh over my mind.
I guess I get the point it does to her. I'm going to wait over my mind. I got to change my diet, but that's kind of the way. I don't think it is with the hour of the hour power, the hour in the morning.
It's like, I think it's always kind of weight in my mind. It's like, I'm getting nothing higher done. I hate that term against self-pretentious, it's like, spiritual advisor. But I'm getting nothing, lofty or done.
I think in the back of my mind, it's always kind of hanging there that, you know, I need to be home from work to do this, that or, you know, read this author, do this writing, whatever. And with this hour, it's like, no. And I think that, uh, that little pressure has been back in my mind for 30 years. But now I do that hour.
That pressure to get anything lofty or done the rest of the day is to put, I'm a complete free man. Now, if I do come back, like, I'll come back and I'll, I'll read stuff that's not really spiritual at all. I mean, at all, either like, maybe a classic piece of literature or some secular philosopher or something like that. I might do some writing that's not spiritual.
That's fine. And I don't feel compelled to do that though, because I got the hour in. If I have time to do something that's not hour related, because again, I don't want to go over an hour, I will do it, but it will not be hour related. I see a few other ideas.
If you can try this, first off, put the phone away. I'm not going to harp on it. If you don't understand what an enormous distraction your phone and the computer is, the internet is, if you don't get that yet, I'm sorry, you're a lost cause. I also, I don't even use my Kindle.
And a Kindle, y'all, that doesn't have a whole lot of features on it. It has a crappy, like, Wi-Fi, I can pull up a computer, stuff like that. But most part is just for reading. I don't even use that.
I just use a regular hard book with a very bright light, and that's how I read from. Second, keep a notebook. I keep a notebook in front of me at all times. When I go to write in that notebook, I write slowly.
If there's a quote and a book I like, I write it down in the notebook. Not every quote, usually quotes so that trigger further thoughts in me. That's something I've really never, ever done. My books are often filled with markings in the corner, in the margins, little stars or check marks or underlines.
But I've never done a whole lot of just writing quotes. I think it's because I felt like it was a waste of time. And that's one thing during the hour. There is no purpose.
I'm going to write down a quote, I'm going to write down a quote, and I'm going to write down neatly. At least for me, my penmanship's awful. Everything you do in the hour should be slow. Slow, slow, slow, because you only rush because you have a purpose.
You have a goal. There is no purpose. There's no goal to the hour. Therefore, there's no reason to rush.
Everything you do should be slow. I want to say measure, but even measure implies that you're bringing some sort of purpose to the task. Again, there's no task either. Just go slow without a purpose.
When you write down that quote, or whatever, move your hand slow, everything should be slow. Now I would have books should you read. And here I don't know. I mean, you can read in Charlie Brown's Peanuts.
That's clearly not what we're talking about here. Okay. Well, how about Jane Eyre? Can you read Pride and Prejudice, Classic's literature that maybe have a slightly spiritual or higher tilt to it?
Perhaps, probably not though. So what do I read? Well, I'm reading this History of Zebutism by a guy named Mom Heinrich at Demoula and I'm going to talk about that at different time. But again, that's not really a spiritual type of reading.
Although, if you listen to this podcast, you know what I'd believe it is. Reading my check art. So I'm looking at this library books. I'm going to do this.
I'm just reading them off here. I'm reading Hanser's Baum Balthazar, his biography of Maximus the Confessor, who was a saint. But again, this is like philosophical slash theological stuff. I'm really, really jumping into the works of St.
John of the Cross. What I haven't done. I have not touched the Bible. I didn't look a couple of things up.
I've done scarce and no liturgy of the hours. So what I should tell you is what Shuskie's doing, religious type work. Again, work is in very big fat-ass quotes, religious type play during the hour. But it's not hardcore.
You know, for the first couple of weeks, I realized, I'm not praying at all while I'm down here. I'm reading and writing on notes. A lot of notes had to do with drawing ties between Zebutism and Taoism to post-modernism to Catholic spirituality. You can be like, what's just got to stop praying at all.
I asked my spiritual advisor about that. He goes, who cares? He goes, whatever you're called to do during that hour, do it. Yes, get your butt down there.
Put the time in, pick up a book that's reasonably related to the spiritual life. He goes, I'm not going to tell what that is. He goes, you shouldn't put any pressure in yourself. Just pick up a book that works for you at that moment.
And by the way, it's another thing. Every morning is different. I mean, some mornings I get into a book and I'm like, so into it, I'm thinking, well, I'm going to read this book straight through. That that balfa is our book.
I'm actually a confessor. As it points out, I'm just reading this straight through. I was like, well, I'm on page 100. And it's kind of got to be kind of a grind.
And some ones, I don't feel like reading it. So I jump with something else. And that quite fact has been like the most liberating thing. I have a handful of books, half dozen, I'm kind of rotating through them.
I was really making great head away with Aldous Huxley's 1946 classic called The Perennial Philosophy. That's going to be kind of a grind. I've gotten away from that. But it doesn't matter what book you're reading.
Again, I get be careful. I don't think you should be reading The Hobbit. Okay. But if there's a reason or relationship to religious life, I'd go for it.
I'm reading a biography of Jacques Derrida right now. It's excellent, by the way. I've not spent any time reading that during the hour. Derrida is clearly a secular philosopher, although I think he has a lot of religious overtones.
I'm increasingly going to think that. But I'm not right at all during the hour. I might at some point, if I get stretched for time, but right now I'm just working him in other parts of the day. So anyway, there's some hints, some ideas for you, how it's been the hour.
I just hope to find the podcast as it lasts an hour. But give it a shot. I will tell you, I think once you get there, if you put that hour in the morning, I think you're going to find you have plenty of time throughout the day. I never thought I would, but I find that I have plenty of time.
In fact, I feel in some ways that I even have more time. So, I don't need you to try it, do what you can. Don't beat yourself up if you can't. And by the way, my spiritual advisor, I say, it's just two, 15 minutes, maybe do it 20 minutes and 30 minutes.
At the spiritual retreat, I said, how the hell would that only jump in and start with an hour? Best decision I've ever made. I did 15 minutes for years. Never really got anywhere with it.
I jumped into the hour. This one, that was absolutely perfect. All right, that's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed the show.
As always thanks for listening.