O > Recent Status Updates

“But the Soviet fighters were watching. They would patrol the drizzling sky, circling like hawks above the field. Every day twelve or fifteen of our Junkers, shot down after a few minutes of flight, would fall down in flames amid the screams of the wounded, who were being grilled alive.”

“First of January, five o'clock in the morning.
Everywhere in the world, people were drinking; women were laughing; and the faces of drunken men bore the stigmata of vices that burdened them. And in the day slowly rising over the white steppe, a broken youngster was going to die because he had believed in something great, because an ideal pure and strong had brought him to sacrifice.”

“For a long time the fog continued to clasp the sinuous valleys. Dense and milky, it spread from one to another, as clean as the water of a rosary of lakes. Over this white sheet the mountains rose like gold and rust colored islands. From the depths of the lakes of fog, new islets would emerge, ever lower peaks rising forth in their turn, like legendary worlds engulfed long ago by deep waters.”

One of the best accounts of the war I’ve ever read. Barbaric yet poetic. Goes from describing how Soviet peasants were so hungry they’d eat the disease ridden bodies of German horses after they were shot, to waking up beside the Donets river with a crystal blue sky sparkling above.

“Decorated in gaudy designs, each brigade with its own insignia, vermilion-tipped paddles moving in rhythm to the chansons of Old France, here was a pageant such as the New World had never known and will never see again.”

“It is hard to imagine Christianity succeeding in any other environment than that which resulted from the conquests of Alexander..”

Much to think about in this book considering collectivism vs individualism, soteriology, life-affirming vs life denying religions.

“Christianity tends to flourish in heterogeneous societies in which there are high levels of anomie, or social destabilization”

By far the best front lines account of the ACW I’ve ever read

“Come what may, if there was to be a clash or battle, if knights were going to join in combat, nothing would stop him from being at the front!”

“None of this is meant to suggest for a moment that Marshal lacks intelligence: he clearly has outstanding skills as a fighting knight and, later, a mastery of military planning. But a sophisticated politician he is not. A modern psychologist might even be inclined to see autistic traits.”

He’s literally me 💯

“All the same, an officer should never be parted from his men in the moment of danger on any account whatever. Danger is the supreme moment of his career, his chance to show his manhood at its best. Honour and gallantry make him the master of the hour. What is more sublime than to face death at the head of a hundred men?
Such a one will never find obedience fail him, for courage runs through the ranks like wine.”

Delves into historical criticism in a very approachable way, moving into “essential” tier. For example, midwits like Richard Dawkins will propose the “evolution theory”, that the divinity of Christ is rejected in Mark before appearing later in John. This is nonsense and Fr. De Young does an excellent job of destroying those myths.

Done with the first 5 chapters, somewhat insightful into Tsarist Russian’s lives especially in the twilight of feudalism and serfdom (eventually evolving into Kulaks). Pretty interesting. Several of my friends told me this book “broke them” or “made them weep”, it was the primary reason for conversion to Orthodoxy for another. Not quite seeing it yet.

Bishop Barron is the undisputed modern champion of Catholic outreach. A walking theological repository who is also responsible for the Word on Fire Bible, one of the nicest I’ve ever held. This book is exactly what I needed in contending with some of the tougher passages in the OT

An essential primer on the Orthodox Faith. I consider St. John of Damascus to be the “Aquinas of the East” if such a thing were possible. Excellent conversation on such issues as energy/essence dichotomy, divine simplicity, and other necessary Christological issues. Christendom owes him many thanks in combatting Nestorianism, Arianism, and Monothelitism.

An intellectual titan and polymath.

This book kind of sucks. While Thoreau writes in a relatable, simple way, the themes here are not too complex and can be found downstream of any crunchy granola Instagram page.

Not the “veneration of nature” classic I was looking for, I’ll probably hit 100 pages before shelving it.

This book is awesome. It’s essentially a choose your own adventure set in a hypothetical WW3 between a near peer and the United States. You take the role of a recently commissioned Second Lieutenant, expected to make life or death decisions with little real world experience.

If you’ve ever wanted to imagine making decisions about who’s children go home in a casket inside a conflict zone, give it a read.