The boys groupchat (2025)

Yes we’re halfway into 2025 so it’s time for a new page!

Welcome to the tree house.

23 Comments

  2. Tomorrow is VE Day 80.

    Here is a good video of the VE Day 75 celebrations:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q_G8YYuk2Zk?&t=261

    I’m not British, and many edgelords who peruse this blog may argue that the “wrong” side won the war, but I must say that the RAF “Red Arrows” flying over London accompanied by Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” is pretty epic, especially the part near the end where they fly over Churchill’s statue.

    Reply

    • Have you considered Orthodox Christian? There are many American converts nowadays. You don’t need to have a specific background.
      Look up fr. Andrew Damick. He has a mixed background. I think you will appreciate his podcasts, his love for Tolkien, his humour etc.

      Reply

      • Orthodox would be more attractive if it weren’t for the national club aspect to it.
        I think I’ve probably mentioned this before. Around here, the Orthodox are all [Country X] Orthodox, so Serbian, Russian etc. If not for that, I’d go Orthodox for sure. The Serbian Orthodox near me certainly impressed me during the heavier days of covidworld. It’s hard not to like people with the courage of their convictions.

        But whatever really, just about any brand of Christianity would probably do, with the exception of ‘prosperity Jesus’ kind of stuff.

        Reply

        • I know… They were poor immigrants..
          In Australia I am hoping that they are moving fast to becoming Orthodox Aussies now that they have integrated (they must be 3rd generation by now). Plus, they are doing a great job worshipping in perfect English:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3k0wTCHKCg
          (^ Aussies!)
          You are right that almost any brand of community-centered Christianity will do.
          (And, if possible, combining worship with beauty..)

          Reply

          • “I know… They were poor immigrants..”

            Nearly everyone here is descended from poor immigrants, some of those immigrants are even descended from convicts who used rum for currency and were basically slave labour. Most of us were still pretty poor until relatively recently in history, and those gains are getting wound back now as the world circles the drain and the working class and middle class gets stripped of wealth by the rich. So being a ‘poor immigrant’, or a descendent from same, or being poor, doesn’t make anyone all that different to lots of other people around here by a whole lot.

            But, I get that immigrants like to hang out among their own kind for nostalgia, support, cultural reasons, etc. That’s fine. There are clubs for everyone. But someone who isn’t, say, a Greek (and I think Melbourne has the largest population of Greeks in the one place outside of Greece), might prefer to go to a church/club that relates to their own heritage.

            Plus, it would be weird for someone without their heritage to rock up to an Orthodox church – they don’t look like them, they don’t share their cultural background, so they’d be an outsider and stand out like dogs balls. Still, that’d be preferable to going to a prosperity Jesus venue, unless one happens to be a materialist Amway type, which seems kind of icky, but horses for courses, I guess.

            Catholics, on the other hand, will take anyone.

          • @Wombat
            The Orthodox will also take anyone (look at me here) but they have the wisdom to try to prepare someone lest they get disappointed but some human weaknesses, like the ones you have described.

            There are explanations (maybe not justifications) for those behaviours but I didn’t want to make my comment long and potentially boring.

            So…
            The poor, immigrant, but English-speaking person, or Protestant newcomer, would feel more comfortable in Australia bc they would be part of the dominant culture already. Therefore the integration would be much easier (unlike for the Orthodox).
            The Catholics do have a very robust construction, but it’s more hierarchical, pyramidical, compared to the Orthodox.
            The Orthodox churches on the other hand are sister churches. There is no leading Archbishop like the Pope.
            Also, the Catholics used to have the Latin rite until the 1960s when their faith was more active. The language was also Latin. So they already had a common language.
            The Orthodox never had a “sacred language”. The Greeks had Greek, the Serbs, Russians etc had Slavonic (and now they have more vernacular slavic), the Syrians had Aramean and now Arabic etc.
            When we say “Greek Orthodox”, the term doesn’t exactly imply nationality, but it means Greek rite. The Serbs and the Arab Christians have the Greek rite for example.
            There’s even some Catholics who follow the Greek rite, and they’re called Greek Catholics, or Byzantine Catholics, or similar. They are found mostly in Eastern Europe, and their existence is a product of historical turbulence. Of course, it’s not a fault of these people. It goes many generations back (around the 1400s).
            In general, the differences between Catholics and Orthodox are not insurmountable. The filioque could be a translation error. Allowing the clergy to be married (as in the Orthodox Church) would help the Catholics very much. I don’t know why it’s difficult to be one Church again, but at least we can be friends…

            PS btw, before Nationalism took over, we didn’t care if the other was Albanian, Serb, Greek, Russian etc. We were just Christians…

          • “So…
            The poor, immigrant, but English-speaking person, or Protestant newcomer, would feel more comfortable in Australia bc they would be part of the dominant culture already. Therefore the integration would be much easier (unlike for the Orthodox).”

            The contemporary Catholic church in my parts seems to have immigrants of all descriptions in the one church, with plenty of newcomers, even the priests. Conversely, the contemporary local Serbian Orthodox look like they are all Serbs, they even dress up from time to time in Serb national dress, despite what you say about these terms not implying nationality.

            It seems to me that in general, the various national Orthodox churches around here all have their own national/ethnic identity that they celebrate, and they are comprised of people with that identity. The Catholics don’t seem like that.

            I haven’t been to all the churches around the place, but there are protestant ones that might be more ‘British’ that I wouldn’t feel very comfortable in either. There’s a very nice ‘British’ one that I’ve been inside that’s festooned with ‘oldy worldy’ feeling colonial style ‘dominant culture’ militaria. But on the Orthodox end of things, there’s a Free Serbian Orthodox church with an awesome painted ceiling and murals, including its own militaria, such as a massive scene of a battle between the Turks and the Serbs with thousands of figures and a statue of some warlord or other out the front.

            I have no problem with people gathering with their own and I don’t see that as a weakness, whether that’s a group of people with a shared military or national heritage, or both, and more besides, but it would make me feel like an outsider.

            There is nothing like that going on with the Catholic church I’ve been going to. The church isn’t, for example, decorated with banners from Australian military units and stained-glass panels of soldiers, or with paintings of cavalry charges, or statues of nationalistic heroes from some foreign nation, etc. But it does have plenty of immigrants, and others, of whom I’m sure plenty are poor.

            That nationalistic, ‘identity warrior’ stuff seems out of place to me in a church, but horses for courses. It probably feels nostalgic, welcoming and comforting to those who share that identity.

            Good for them, but I reckon it would make me feel like an outsider, so I go elsewhere.

          • Not that I really know anything about churches.

            I’m new to going to one in person.

            So, I’ve been shopping around for something that fits me.

          • @Wombat
            It sounds a bit sad, to be honest. It makes me sad if we can’t reach out to people of other backgrounds in Australia.
            Also, some other sad things but it’s hard to explain them here.
            In America, on the other hand, they seem to have gone past this stage, and now the Orthodox community, though smaller than others, seems to thrive. They are said to be the only ones who grow, but I don’t know details either. For an American Orthodox priest of an american background, you can check fr Andrew Damick, and the “Ancient Faith” podcasts etc.
            +++
            I have also shopped around to find a parish that fits me, but in Greece it’s different… We have many parishes within walking distance. I ended up in my neighborhood’s. I may come back on this.
            But it’s very interesting that you want to find a real parish! I can’t praise it enough, and I pray you find a good fit!!

  5. There was once a man who lived in a house with a window. It was not his house, not really, but it was where he conducted his work: watching, listening, exposing the hidden filth of the world. Outside, the world burned with brilliance and rot, and in its center stood a billionaire—a grotesque tycoon who had made his fortune through televised humiliation, games that climbed nowhere, stairs that led only to irrelevance.

    He took people’s names. That was his genius. He made them discard their pasts and identities, branding them as his property. And when he was done, he discarded them like props from a finished scene.

    But there was something darker still. Something unspeakable. The man in the house had felt it in the silence between headlines. Then, finally, it broke—scandal. Whispers turned into shouts. The billionaire had ties—of finance, of ideology—to distant regimes: to North Korea, to Iran or Iraq (it changed depending on the dream), shadowy alliances in a propaganda war older than any nation.

    The man turned to the internet, the last confessor. He searched for IQGroyper, but the account was gone. Erased. As if it had never existed.

    At that moment, someone appeared by the window—a low-status white man, speaking through the body of a poised Black professional. His eyes held the weight of two lifetimes. He knew everything: about the billionaire, about the CIA, about the way governments distribute poison and call it medicine. Weed in the 90s. LSD in the 60s. Heroin in the Middle East. They traded in mind-rot.

    They spoke like old friends, as if history lived in their mouths.

    But then the man in the body spoke of something darker: depopulation. “Three billion,” he said. “That’s all they want left. The rest—suffering.”

    The man in the house answered, “A century ago, there was just one billion. Three is still a crowd.”

    “But the suffering,” said the incarnate man. “It would be immense.”

    The city appeared around them—massive, unreal, made of steel and ghosts. People moved like static. The man in the house gestured at the skyline and said, “Civilization doesn’t end suffering. It only makes it convenient.” He spoke of the evil in the world, of the agony carved into every slab of meat, every factory scream. “Modernity is not better. Only more convenient.”

    This disturbed the other man. But he didn’t disagree.

    Then something cracked open. Music rose—not from speakers, but from somewhere truer. A woman’s voice sang, “Look around, look around.” He began to walk and sing, moved by something too vast to contain. The street was a hymn. “Suffering is everywhere,” he sang. “The Buddha was right.”

    A small Buddha statue appeared beside them, smiling with distant compassion. And then—Freya—the goddess herself, or a dog, or both. She was radiant, soft, alive. He dropped to his knees.

    “She is God,” he said with holy certainty. “So am I. So are you. And that’s better than being alone.”

    Freya watched. She did not answer.

    Then came Cerberus—black and immense, more growl than dog. He barked at the incarnate man, not in menace but in warning, as if to say: You are near the gate.

    The man in the house turned to his companion and sang again, quieter now. “Those who leave their bodies know this,” he said. “That all is God. But I am not enlightened. I am afraid. I’ve gotten close. I know it’s possible.”

    The song ended.

    The incarnate man stared at him—rattled, maybe frightened. The houseman lowered his head.

    “Sorry,” he said. “That was… a lot. I don’t know what came over me.”

    The incarnate man left without a word.

    And the man in the house stood there alone, at the window, listening for the music to return.

    Reply

  6. I might be one of the only people on Earth who appreciates the gnostic brilliance of Chris Chan.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Comments should be automatically approved again. People who misbehave will be banned.

Your email address will not be published.


*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.