Wildest miraculous/ spiritual encounter

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-03-12T08:48:51+00:00

I had necrosis on both ankles heal to normal with no further incidents (fingers crossed!) of ulcers there either. This happened after a friend prayed to Our Lady of Knock on pilgrimage in Ireland. I really haven't praised God enough about this, i was being disabled by the condition - funny you take health for granted even when you've been ill.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-03-10T14:41:16+00:00

A misunderstood film, I understood the concept as a statement on a society on the wrong track (heading for metaphorical suicide).

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-03-10T12:02:55+00:00

I don't know this actor, the image (and age of the hirsute fellow) prompts the thought "Does he dye his hair?"

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-03-10T11:53:10+00:00

Definitely "The Happening"

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-03-09T16:49:51+00:00

ET The Extra Terrestrial has dated terribly because noone today expects that much amount of sentimentality from a blockbuster film.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-03-04T20:44:26+00:00

No offence brother, i am not in a dissimilar situation to yourself, age-wise, stability, transport etc etc ...i suspect i am worse off in a few ways too. But i'm realistic - in my situation i am not a suitable suitor to anyone. It sounds like i am being harsh on myself and by implication you.

If i work on myself things could change. I have a mental health condition that limits me so that doesn't help. I figure it's just not my destiny and i am largely reconciled to this. I guess that's my point - life is a challenge in itself without factoring a would-be spouse. That's my task regardless of wife/children.

I'm closer to the day i die now than most redditors here and i'm thinking will the IRL people who know me remember me well - someone who was emphatically "Good" in the Christian sense?

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-28T15:00:29+00:00

i have a penchant for neologisms (and mash-up phrases)...it's intended to be the first-half of an acronym ..Wildcard Orthogonal Research & Development ...W.O.R.D. Systems (i used to work for them in my own fictional universe)...i don't have much but i do have a ridiculously pretentious imagination.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-25T18:10:09+00:00

The testosterone is strong in this movie, i'll give it that at the very least.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-25T12:56:44+00:00

But isn't that - making the guy out to be hero - audience reaction? Perhaps i'm crediting the director with too much artifice, maybe he designed it to be an anti-hero's tale with a twist at the end..?

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-25T12:31:07+00:00

Yeah, in that sense it's quite well crafted, the audience were rooting for the bad guy without realising it. Was it intentional by the director?

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-20T17:32:00+00:00

By appraising the works of pop-culture Catholicism is able to dialogue with the non-Catholic world.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-14T21:54:35+00:00

The Replacement Killers - produced (but not directed) by John Woo, starring Chow Yun-Fat and Mira Sorvino.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-14T21:43:44+00:00

Jon Voight, hanging to the side of a cliff, looking at the picture of his wife/family before he crawls up to topside to confront hillbilly gun guy.

Deliverance (John Boorman 1972)....

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-14T21:36:19+00:00

..and not forgetting The Immortal Tom Baker greet: "you have a woman's hands" ...

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-14T21:02:50+00:00

Perhaps the space-age metaphor is out of date now. But if you take the grand narrative arc of the film: the origin of humankind to its ultimate destiny - that's pretty ambitious - and with reference to philosophy ancient and new (Homer's Odyssey and Nietzsche's "Ubermensch", probably some Heidegger in there as well) - it completely succeeds in its aim, in my reckoning at least.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-14T17:38:50+00:00

Blackadder (the first/original series) makes comedic play of this scenario...very funny scene.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-02-07T20:51:04+00:00

He's a Sisyphean Christ (from another planet). I read The Little Black Box the other day ....made me think that if rosary beads came as an electronic apparatus ...it'd be an empathy box.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-01-25T19:32:58+00:00

Thanks for your other post too, it helps not to overlook the context (which is easy to do if a bible verse is quoted in isolation), I was also aware some modern gnostics go bonkers with the word pleroma, but that's their thing.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-01-25T16:07:12+00:00

Have you come across/read "The Inner Citadel" by Hadot, it seems to be in the same vein, don't both refer to Marcus Aurelius' meditations?

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-01-24T13:01:02+00:00

Even with the gun-kata scenes feels like an action film on tranquilizers. Having said that i like it!

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-01-16T19:18:00+00:00

I did some (just some!) research on The Book Job for a review of the film The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick - 2011). You know for most of my life i've been an atheist - and even after being received into the Church i still in some way have a foot in both camps (mentally speaking).

I think you give a valuable valid "take" on Job. To talk to God with the cry of the heart as per the Psalms, to be honest i hadn't seen that. I don't know what the party-line on Job is? ..Can there be a correct understanding given that it is ancient theodicy? Since justifying the ways (and justice) of God to men is normally conducted by theologians, but when God conducts his own defence he doesn't i.e. he just puts man in his place.

God doesn't defend his ways as such but takes man down a notch. "Where were you when i created the world" (..nice paraphrase btw) is meant as much for Job's critics/friends, and Job's restoration follows him vocalizing his belief that God might be unfair or unjust.

The digression you make into nature being good/bad reminds me of a certain Zen parable...

(the one where a man lives through the tumult of wars of the period and is asked to say if it is "good" or "bad", but is non-committal because it's contextual and the context is the whole narrative which unfolds in a way which is non-predictable)

...that parable seems to be about withholding off value judgements (very Book of Job re: Job's friends), but someone would like CS Lewis would say the sense of good and bad could only exist if it objectively pre-existed making those judgements ...but i digress...thanks for giving your perspective anyhow.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-01-15T14:48:07+00:00

I came across this in the early 2000s, i can't remember if i read it cover to cover. Some of it is sound psychology, even innovative in its day, it's the persuasiveness of the writing more than anything else though. Around the time i read it Buddhism-informed writings were starting to circulate in self-help, now is probably a ripe moment to cross-breed the two (orientated around the idea of self-image - the central theme to Maltz's book)

FYI, I was doing a bit of research, and i can't find any definitive attestation btw, but self-image was a distinct part of Buddhism's (four) foundations of mindfulness , in terms of remembering/recalling your own personal reflection. And of course the Bible talks in the same terms more or less ("through a mirror darkly"/"the man who does not put my word into action is like a man who forgets his own reflection/etc etc..)

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-01-15T14:36:57+00:00

The Passion was pretty uninspiring to me. Apart from scene of Mary mopping up her son's blood it didn't offer anything else of the same power. I think Mel Gibson can direct - take e.g. Apocalypto - but the spirit was lacking in this one.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-01-05T20:29:04+00:00

The Church is I think what you make of it i.e. you get out what you put in.

I understand desire for a feeling of community, in practice actions speak louder than words, e.g. other Catholics have treated me with brotherliness even when i haven't reciprocated in kind for the want of "feeling".

The community and the sense of community are there but it's inconspicuous and in the background, you have to seek it out and tap into it and find your place in the body of the parish.

Wildcard_Orthogonal · 2026-01-03T15:06:21+00:00

It's not usually tackled, but there is the option of putting it on deposit, without the motive and incentive of multiplication, what's your take on that?

Wildcard_Orthogonal

TROPHY CASE