The Warrior Priest

After his death, the people waited for a prophet like Moses to appear because Moses had told them to watch.

“Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers.” Moses had said, “To him, you will listen.”

And so, the invitation is in front of you too, to hear him. “Come,” Jesus says, “and follow me. Come and learn how to live. Come with me, and I will heal your heart. Follow me, and I will make you human again.”

Many before you have accepted the invitation. There is Paul, the persecutor, who saw Jesus on the throne of God and was blinded by the revelation. There is Polycarp, whose blood put out the fire. There is Irenaeus, who stood like a lighthouse on the edge of a stormy sea, and the waves were perversions of the Gospel of Jesus, and yet he did not yield. There is George, the red-crossed knight, who offered up his head to an emperor rather than renounce his faith. There is Ephraim the Syrian, John the Golden Mouth, and the Venerable Bede. They are your ancestors. They are your family. They have passed the Good News of Jesus from door to door, from generation to generation, like small buckets of sacred treasure. Now, at last, it comes to you, and it is time for your hearts to expand with the inexhaustible joy of God’s love; the love of him who leads you through the Sea of Death onto the welcoming shores of Paradise.

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The gods came down. Slinking, slithering, prowling, whispering, they sought out earthly kings. And so, Pharaoh Merneptah heard a voice in the dark and the voice said his name. He woke, and there was Ptah with a plan. The old kings of Uruk also were tutored. Ayala had the fish creature, Adapa, for an advisor. Alaglar had Uanduga from the sea. In his time, Hammurabi met Shammash, and from that god recovered the knowledge the flood had destroyed. The trend never stopped. Descartes saw lights in his tent, and a creature gave him his method. Oppenheimer set off his bomb, and Krishna spoke, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” These had a plan: to rule and remake humanity. The ruling was easily done. The remaking was harder. Harder, but not impossible.

The enemy has always worked to remake humanity in its image, an image of ancient jealousy and ravenous pride.

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Beginning March 1st…

I will not longer be posting to this account.

All my podcast episodes, blog posts, book updates, musings and memes will be at: &

Thank You ⚔️✝️💪

When no one needs a Muay Thai or Jiu Jitsu teacher on Friday night…

... we must start in the most difficult place: in the beginning. We have to start where the story is not broken or befouled, when wild waves cooled sun-soaked shores and the choruses of birds carried over ebony cliffs, who knows how far.

It was a wild world, all welter and waste. Unrestrained rivers carved crooked lines across sprawling green plains. The earth birthed bejeweled fruit, and untended forests clawed in vain at the roots of mountains. And God loved it, because he created it.

That is just a small part of the story of the Beresh*t, the “beginning” as the Hebrews call it. It is an old story, the first story told by God, and God is very old, and he is not always easy to understand. But, old things are often hard to understand.

For this reason, old stories are abandoned, because they allude us. New stories take their place, stories that are not so wild, or weird, or hard to hear. In general, the more remote a story is, and the more work we must do to understand it, the more likely it is that it will suffer mishandling.

And almost every witch, sorcerer, scientist, and pseudo-philosopher has some interest in mishandling this story. It is not hard to see why. In the beginning, you see the end. If you want to control how the story concludes, you attack it at the very start. - Donavon L Riley. Homily on Creation

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Smiling in spite of a long day of meetings with the neurology team and neurosurgeon. Still no definitive answers about what’s to be done about his brain cysts (Arachnoid cysts) and chronic migraines, so more tests next week.

Thank you for your prayers and support; we greatly appreciate them. The last two years have been trying: one son with a brain tumor, one son with brain cysts, and my gut issues that have had me in and out of the hospital and consulting doctors since September of last year.

“God has not forgotten the man to whom he sends suffering and trials, but in this way is proving his closeness to him.” — St. John Chrysostom

Never thought the day would come when The Silmarillion excited me, and I would use it to help develop a Lenten series — a mythic telling of a story that stretches from creation to the raising of Jesus — but, here I sit with it doing exactly that! 🌳⚔️✝️

The term “Giants in the Earth,” comes from a novel by author, Ole Edvart Rölvaag, which deals with Norwegian pioneers on the Great Plains in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is, in a sense, a story of all the American pioneers who went before them into the west, and is a part of the story of the conquest of the continent.

It was a part of the American experience for settlers that they either became giants in the earth, building a life and a future for themselves and their families, or they were swallowed by the land and its peoples. Now, when I look at what they built, the term evokes an image of towering wall-stones, remnants of the giants’ tireless work that has stood the test of time. Like an ancient fortification visible only when viewed from a high vantage-point, these “walls” tell tales of those who came before us, their indomitable craftsmanship, and their legacy that, in a mythical way, transcends the ages.

Almost everyone can agree that one of the big differences between us and our ancestors of five hundred years ago is that they lived in an “enchanted” world, and we do not; at the very least, we live in a much less “enchanted” world. We might think of this as our having “lost” a number of beliefs and the practices which they made possible. But more, the enchanted world was one in which these forces could cross a porous boundary and shape our lives, psychic and physical. One of the big differences between us and them is that we live with a much firmer sense of the boundary between self and other. We are “buffered” selves. We have changed. – Charles Taylor, Buffered and Porous Selves

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This Hollow Age

In this hollow age, heedless and lost,
Man, a wanderer, bemoans well-worn paths.
No sacred tether, no steadfast creed,
Rambles the seeker in heedless misery.
Believing in nothing, an open gate,
Entrance to whispers, illusions embraced.
Boundless credulity, like shifting sands,
Clutching at veils, vain and vague.
No divine eye guides his skeptical mind,
No paradise awaits his doubtful heart.
Yet, in his confusion, beliefs sprout wild,
A garden of whims, unrooted and free.
In disbelief’s barm, belligerence foments,
A modern abyss, where nothing is firm.
Man, the believer in endless fictions,
In a disordered world, everything finds belief.

Donavon L Riley

How to Approach BJJ after 50, by 🤙

An ancient Anglo-Saxon maxim is, “A King Must Keep the Realm.” This saying encapsulates a foundational principle of leadership: unwavering guardianship of one’s domain. In Anglo-Saxon culture, the king stood as the quintessential defender of his realm, tasked with preserving its security against all threats. This maxim, then, underscores the solemn duty bestowed upon leaders—to uphold order, protect the sovereignty of their domain, and ensure the prosperity of their subjects.

This is the profound morality of fairy-tales; which, so far from being lawless, go to the root of all law. Instead of finding (like common books of ethics) a rationalistic basis for each Commandment, they find the great mystical basis for all Commandments. We are in this fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world. The vetoes are indeed extraordinary, but then so are the concessions. – G.K. Chesterton, Fairy Tales

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Self-love is a revolution with inherent sterility, a revolt against the world that seeks to confine it within the narrow bounds of individual desires. It’s a yearning for a world molded in one’s own image, a rebellious rejection of the organic constraints and natural rhythms inherent in existence.

The essence of self-love is reductive and so, ultimately, is not a constructive force but a self-dissolution, a pursuit of freedom that paradoxically seeks to escape the very essence of life’s interconnectedness and refusal to acknowledge patterns of reality.

Donavon L Riley

Hear, Heralds of Heaven (based on Psalm 118)

Hear, heralds of heaven, a hymn unfold,
A chant of triumph, a tale of the soul.
In God’s good grace, a refuge revealed,
Rock and Fortress, resolute and whole.

Grim foes surrounded, a sea of despair,
Yet steadfast the Spirit, a Shield to bear.
Battles unbridled, but not unmet,
With trust in the Lord, no foe to regret.

Lift high the gates of righteousness bold,
Into His presence, the pious are called.
This day, a gift from the divine throne,
A sacred assembly, a sanctuary known.

Let praises resound like river’s roar,
For mercy enduring, forevermore.
In the shadows of strife, His Light shall gleam,
In the proclamation of ages, His victory deemed.

Hear, heralds of heaven, the hymn we raise,
A saga of Salvation, sung to the end of days.

Donavon L Riley

The Way of combat strategy can be likened to the craft of carpentry. Comparing samurai with carpenters is related to the subject of “houses.” We speak of noble houses, warrior houses and the “Four Houses.” We also talk of the collapse or continuation of a house. In the arts we refer to a school or tradition as a house. It is because the label “house” is employed as such that I draw parallels with the carpenter’s Way. The word “carpenter” (dai-ku) is written with the two ideograms meaning “great” and “craft.” The Way of combat strategy is also a “great craft,” which is why I relate it to the carpenter’s endowments. Study the content of these scrolls carefully if you seek to become accomplished in the craft of war. Train assiduously, with the teacher serving as the needle and the student as the thread.

Miyamoto Musashi, Book of Five Rings

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Beware The Shadowed Wyrd

Beware the shadowed wyrd, a stain too deep,
A sin’s grim-sea, where mercy’s vigil sleeps.
Not in the folly of fleeting joy or youthful whim,
But a treacherous road, where virtue’s light grows dim.
‘Tis not the dance of passion’s fleeting play,
But a soul’s rebellion, led astray.
Unforgivable, the deed that scorns the divine,
A shade-shrouded path, where grace is wont to intertwine.

Donavon L Riley

* “Wyrd” is an Old English term that refers to fate or destiny. In the context of ancient Germanic and Anglo-Saxon literature, it embodies the concept of the unfolding and inevitable course of events.

“Never fail to have this attitude of mind, go forward without hurry, learn the essence of things through frequent experiences, taking advantage of every occasion. Fight against all kinds of people and be aware of their mind. Follow a road that is a thousand leagues long one step at a time. Be without haste and be convinced that all these practices are the duty of a bushi. Be victorious today over what you were yesterday; tomorrow be victorious over your clumsiness and then also over your skill. Practice in accordance with what I have written without letting your mind deviate from the way.”

― Miyamoto Musashi, The Complete Book of Five Rings

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In the numerous tomes available to us today, which detail individual leaders’ strategic prowess, Miyamoto Musashi’s “Book of Five Rings” stands as a unique example of martial wisdom. He did not learn from professors in a classroom, then apply their techniques on the battlefield. His wisdom was hard-earned in the school of experience where success meant he lived to fight another day, and failure meant death. So the core of his teachings does not begin with theories about combat, and not with what others have taught or done in this regard, but with himself. As he says: “If you wish to control others, you must first control yourself.”

I’ve been suffering from gut problems since September, and the past two weeks everything went to hell for my gut biome, which is why there was no episode of the podcast this week.

So we have been working to repair it, and have found natural treatments that are working very well. But, I am still not even close to one hundred percent, so my energy and focus is wanting.

But, God-willing, I will be back next week with the first of a mini-series on Musashi.

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.

G.K. Chesterton, A Child of the Snows

“Where you recognize evil, speak out against it, and give no truces to your enemies.” — Havamal

The ‘Havamal’ is an Old Norse poem, which can be traced back to the 13th century. It consists of several smaller poems and its verses are attributed to the Norse god, Odin, which are referred to as the sayings of the High One. It is regarded as one of the most important sources of Old Norse philosophy, from the old age to now.

And so, these words — “Where you recognize evil, speak out against it, and give no truces to your enemies” — are not an artifact from the past but time-tested and well-worn wisdom that pierces through the complexities of contemporary life. In a world where we are constantly challenged to differentiate between virtue and vice, the Havamal offers us a compass—a guide that directs us to confront evil with unyielding speech and action, to stand firm against the adversaries that skulk about in public and lurk in the shadows.

Day two of being sick, so…

Seek support from those who are willing and face challenges boldly… — Donavon L Riley

Hope Guards Us

When the brood-clouds of desolation dare to gray the dappled path, hope lifts its heralding torch, renting the fabric of sorrow’s shroud.

Hope reveals a passage through the gates of doubt and despair and so, through the maze of one’s own heart. It emboldens the weary to press onward, for beyond the grasp of dread’s darkling, a bright dawn awaits them.

Donavon L Riley

One last Christmas present showed up last night; the children pooled their money to buy me The Lord of The Rings - Illustrated by the Author 🎁❤️😍

I got lost in the tall grass of my own thoughts after promising at the front end of the podcast that I wasn’t going to do it! So, I discuss confidence versus overconfidence, finding your passion, and being a life-long student.

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