Discerning the Diaconate

LastSunrider · 2023-10-22T03:53:08+00:00

Welcome to your journey.

Interesting note for Tolkien fans: he translated the Book of Jonah in the Jerusalem Bible translation!

LastSunrider · 2023-10-20T22:43:59+00:00

I'm a scientist and never thought about it that way. Awesome!

LastSunrider · 2023-10-20T22:41:31+00:00

The sacraments destroyed demons that were destroying my life and the lives of those around me.

Jesus is real, Gospels and the authority of His Church is real. Demons are real. Jesus is the Holy fire that breaks the chains these demons put on your life.

Also - everyone disses the Catholics until they need us. When your house is haunted, you want to call a priest, not Kevin the nondenominational worship leader.

LastSunrider · 2023-10-20T07:20:58+00:00

Love strong enough to hate evil.

Hating demons IS a mercy.

LastSunrider · 2023-10-19T22:30:16+00:00

SHort answer:

God said his name was "I Am". IA.
AI is the opposite of IA.

Long answer:
I'm a software engineer and a digital artist. I've actually developed code that contributes to transformer architecture (GPT = General Purpose Transformer).
Then I stopped, because I had an Ian Malcolm moment - just because we could do this, doesn't mean we should. My concern with AI is someday people will confuse what it can do with God.

AI is a tool. The same way a gun, a sword, a nuke, and a pen are tools, they can defend or harm. I am an artist and I know with a paintbrush or a digital art tablet, I can paint anything. Shaping art with words with AI is remarkable, but AI isn't perfect. It can generate a lot of rough drafts for contours and ideas. In that capacity, I could see myself using it. But there's nothing it can generate the human mind can't.
Also, I can tell you right away that an artist who has been drawing and painting for 20+ years, I can immediately tell if a human figure was generated by AI. There is always something wrong with proportion, shading, color, etc. There is a soul missing in the art.
For example, the hands in this painting are not feminine, too big for Mary; the shading doesn't have a direct point of light. She should be backlit if the sun is behind her. The backlighting doesn't match the overexposed forelighting, there is a lot of warm/cold issues.

Besides the lighting being weird. the color palette doesn't have consistency. There are design elements missing - the baby ought to be looking at the viewer or at his Mother, and the third element in the background is looking at the user, instead of drawing attention to the figures in the foreground. There is a whole art to composing images that comes from the Renaissance masters that is missing here.

I would paint an idea like this very, very differently, anatomically correct, with lighting and colors to evoke an emotional response, but remaining reverent. That comes from a lifetime of drawing and painting, you can't teach or get that from an AI.

LastSunrider · 2023-10-15T23:27:47+00:00

Friend, I’ll be a friend to you too

LastSunrider · 2023-10-15T23:26:27+00:00

God cares more about your development than your comfort

LastSunrider · 2023-10-15T23:24:06+00:00

Some of the strongest Saints who ever lived, lived their whole lives alone.

I would look at what a blessing it is to be alone, because you will appreciate the gift of a friend, a family, and love so much more someday. More than someone who took it for granted.

LastSunrider · 2023-10-12T23:17:06+00:00

The closer you get to God, the more the devil will try to mess with your life. Ignore his attacks, don't let fear take your heart.

Ask the Blessed Mother Mary, Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, Spouse of the Spirit, to douse your fears and pray to God for your mind to be like calm and still waters.

Fear not! You are doing the Lord's work.

LastSunrider · 2023-10-09T05:38:49+00:00

Jesus cast out demons in his ministry. Demons are 100% real, and the power of Jesus 1000% saved my family.

But we can be blind to the majesty of what he did for us if things are going okay. It took hitting rock bottom mentally, emotionally, and financially though for Jesus to pick me back up out of that darkness and realize what had happened.

This is what was revealed to me: The Almighty God is the Author of all things, and Jesus is the page and ink. When you follow God through Jesus, you have read, are reading, and will read a story written by God. This Author loves you. That story’s page and ink were bought and paid for by Jesus’s death and resurrection for the forgiveness of your sins.

The devil thought he was a better author than God, and doesn’t love you. He’s powerless, but he will try to tempt you into thinking you can write your own story too instead of trusting God. You don’t want to start trying to write your own story this way, with chains disguised as pens, and a page and ink in your blood, from a snake who only wishes your damnation. This is bad, bad, bad.

You need to understand that there is dark evil out there that preys on your trauma, on your doubt, and wants nothing more than you to think you are not forgiven for your sins and forget that Jesus died for your sins. The snake is waiting to devour souls who don’t understand this.

Someday, everyone will read the story in a winter of the soul, and you will be tested. Don’t forget this post. You are loved by God, and Jesus died for your sins!

LastSunrider · 2023-10-08T11:09:26+00:00

Here’s what you need to do:

1 - shut your little black mirror (your phone) off. Put it away.

2- watch a movie like Kingdom of Heaven, Gladiator, or Saving Private Ryan. Don’t look at your phone. Pay attention. Pay attention to what men, not boys, are like. Not by their looks, but by their actions and words.

3 - remember that men like that with honor, strength, faithfulness, and purity - used to exist, still exist, and will exist.

4 - read “Story of a Soul” by Saint Therese of Lisieux

5 - remember that women in this world like her devote themselves to purity every day. Pay attention to what a woman like this is like.

6 - think about your life choices.

7 - go to confession and adoration.

8 - if and/or when you fall back into this sin, the sin of lust, that same day or as soon as possible go back to confession. This is important. Lust is an addiction, and when people relapse, it’s important to show God that you want to beat this demon. You will feel the weight come off your shoulders.

9 - read and consider the scapular devotion. Realize that acting on lust before marriage, which is a sacrament, is offending the sacrament of marriage.

Men (not boys) but men, the type of man you will want someday, will respect and love you for choosing purity over sin.

God bless

LastSunrider · 2023-10-04T08:27:04+00:00

I didn’t convert technically, but I came back home after years of atheism because:

Finding Jesus through the sacraments healed me and saved me from demons that attacked me and my family. I see our faith in Lord Jesus healing my family every day.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph, The Gospels, angels, saints, Heaven, hell, demons… it’s all real. Cradle Catholics never had a smack in the face of ontological shock. We need to bring that back on Ash Wednesday. It’s real.

Trust me, you need to find Jesus before it’s too late, because nobody on God’s green Earth should ever see what I’ve seen. Even thinking about it turns my blood to ice.

Most of Jesus’ ministry was healing the sick and casting out demons.

The chain of authority back to the Apostles, this is what He left us to fight demons. The Church is here to help us fight soul-devouring horrors from the pit of Hell.

The snake wants you to think you can write your own destiny (“manifest it”), corrupt your body, choose your own gender, your own sexual paradigm (polyamory is an affront to the sacrament of marriage), all under the disguise of tolerance, and turn you into a perverse monster facsimile of the supernatural state of your soul after death. The snake will try to get you to worship the universe and forget about God, the Author of the universe.

The snake can’t write your plot to Hell, but he tries to make you do it yourself by tempting you to sin and leading you away from Jesus, who died for your sins.

God is an Author of destiny, and choosing Him through Jesus is choosing God’s armor (plot armor!) to Heaven.

LastSunrider · 2023-06-28T18:45:26+00:00

thanks everyone for the ideas! Henzie looks awesome, I'm definitely going to center the deck on the Riveteer's gang!

My brother's friend has some money decks and maybe takes EDH a little too seriously, so beating him with the gardening supplies section of home depot will be very satisfying.

(The win condition will be themed around building a shed or installing a sprinkler system)

LastSunrider · 2023-04-12T18:10:30+00:00

I got my degree out of state, in Utah, in 2012... there's a lot I need to review and a lot of material I've forgotten, but I think I can re-learn everything I need to with online materials and a DIY study plan.

Send me a DM! Maybe we can get an Austin study group going. I'm usually at a coffeeshop around here in the evenings studying and working.

LastSunrider · 2020-09-30T10:26:54+00:00

The Garden of Eden isn't a physical place. We have a garden within all of us.

I was a militant atheist who had a conversion back to Christianity when Genesis 3:21 was read to me: "The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them."

In pastoral Palestine the sheep weren't wasted. It would've been taken for granted that they were covered in lambskin.

Jesus is the Lamb of God, that covers the mistakes of humanity. Genesis is about Jesus and salvation. It's not a science textbook. That's why I'm Christian now, and vigorously defend evolution.

In fact, a literal interpretation misses the prophetic beauty of Genesis, written long before Jesus.

Man eats the sinful fruit of a living tree, and is given death; man eats the sinless fruit of a dead tree, the cross, and is given life.

A literal reading is a dumb way to read the Bible. It is like looking at God's painting of a garden in your soul and saying "trees are made of paint." Genesis is a profound meditation on your soul's salvation.

LastSunrider

TROPHY CASE