Which utterance, more broadly, could be understood as pertaining to charlatans in general, I think, especially those who would purport to represent the Church.

The ‘synagogue of Satan’ is not, I should say, a slight against Jews, or an indictment of them, but is a description, according to an utterance of Jesus, from the Book of Revelation, of “those who say they are Jews and are not.”

Of course, this deception will be many-armed, or multi-faceted, and so will not limit itself to a single avenue of attack. Its stated purpose will be to bring all peoples under an umbrella of ‘protection’, or safety, or harmony, but in reality that purpose will be to control humankind and to de-Christianize it, where it has become Christian. Because the deception in question will be wrought by Satan, by way of what the Bible refers to as his ‘synagogue’. And the enemy of Satan, here on earth, is the Church. Or, if you like, the mystical Body of Christ.

I can’t help but think of the Book of Revelation, in connection with this subject. I think of the Bible in general, but of the Book of Revelation in particular. Wherein the deception I’m referring to is expressed in dense symbology.

Though I imagine there will be consequences for not abiding by that agenda, or not recognizing it.

Because it will be used to advance an agenda, even if one cannot say just yet what that agenda will be.

Or, anyway, if not to deride it, then to ignore it, or to privately distrust it.

Which is a deception that has, I think, an air of finality to it, insofar as those who have chosen to perpetuate it will insist on it in such a way that the generations of humans who will be alive for its so-called ‘disclosure’ will, at some point, be obliged to either agree to its actuality or to deride it as a hoax.

One of the things it put me in mind of is the UFO or UAP narrative that, today, certain elements in government, and in the private sector, are working to insinuate into the public consciousness as a reality that involves extraterrestrial or non-human intelligence.

I think I mentioned a month or so ago, in one of these entries, that I’d picked up a science fiction novel called Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke, from the coffee table in A.’s and my apartment, and had started reading it. I’m still reading it, and in fact read some of it today while I stood on a platform in the subway, waiting for a train.

After that I went to midday Mass, over in Manhattan. I wore my windbreaker to get there because it’s been raining all day in a tedious, drizzly way and I had to walk in that rain, to and from the subway, in each direction.

I’m trying to learn how to abstain, even if the things from which I would abstain are not very difficult to abstain from.

Usually I do stir some sugar into my coffee before I drink it, but I’m trying to stop doing that, because it’s a habit I’d prefer not to have, or to persist in.

This morning, for instance, I drank coffee without adding to it any sugar, which doesn’t sound like a big deal, and which isn’t a big deal, even to me, but which I mention because it happened and because I remember it happening, in lieu of remembering much of anything else that happened.

I’m losing interest in these entries, I can feel it, but I’m still trying to show up each day, in front of my laptop, to write about something that has happened, or is going to happen, even if that something seems without significance to me.

I did walk to the airport yesterday, in the afternoon, but my flight was so delayed that I ended up rebooking it for this morning, at 6 a.m., because I wouldn’t have made my connecting flight in Denver had I kept the original itinerary, but instead would’ve had to catch a later one, and I didn’t feel like doing that, even though I probably could have, and so I talked to the woman at the counter, near the gate, and was able to change my ticket, at which point I made my way out through the terminal, and left the airport, and walked home again and slept one more night in A.s and my house out in Cheyenne, though now I am back in New York, writing this entry from the table in the apartment, because travel this morning and afternoon occurred without any difficulties or hiccups, and I arrived here without incident.

The Cheyenne airport isn’t far from A.’s and my house, so I might walk there. To get there you go down some residential blocks, past a cemetery, across a busy road, then along a street that runs beside a park that terminates at the building where you check in and wait for your flight. One time I was in that building and there was no one in there but me. I’d gone there to drop off a car that I’d rented in Denver and had driven up here, one-way. The guy who worked at the rental counter, as the attendant, was outside in the parking lot, smoking. I sat on a chair near a baggage carousel and waited till he returned.

Today, in the afternoon, I’ll be boarding a flight from Cheyenne to Denver, and then a flight from Denver to New York. This will be the first time I’ve departed from the airport in Cheyenne. Usually, when I’m returning to New York, I drive down to Denver in a rented car, and then fly out of the airport there. But on this occasion I discovered that there are flights I’d not been aware of, originating at the airport here, so I’ve decided to change my habit of travel.

El Greco’s real name was Doménikos Theotokópoulos. El Greco was a nickname he was given because he was a Greek who lived most of his life in Spain.

I meant to say, when I was talking about Paul, that whenever I think of him now I picture him as El Greco chose to paint him, because I love El Greco, he is one of my favorite painters, and because also, I suppose, his rendering of that apostle must have matched up somehow with what I’d already imagined the man looked like, before I ever came across El Greco’s works.