Musings on Topix by bookworm

Time to check in to out favorite Topix thread, now on page 25. First some commentary on the picture here from bookworm:

After all the sadness and disappointment his natural family has put him through, it's so gratifying to see the sheer, exuberant joy a virile young man brings to his face, even so far away. I guess some people have to travel far to finally find their true place in the world. 

Then bookworm demonstrates that he, too, sadly misunderstands the Benedict Option (like all other sensible people):

I think he's given up on that book. All he's talking about now is what he's calling his Benedict Option. Forming communes and stuff. You have to think the guy who's talking about it will be doing it himself, look pretty odd if he didn't. So sooner or later he'll be starting a Benedict Option commune around here. He's probably just waiting to get his hands on some land. Probably his family's land.

Well, bookworm, Rod Dreher has never worried about "looking pretty odd." Speaking of which, bookworm commentates again on gastronomy:

That sure does look like Rod's trying to make a doody. Or maybe like he has a cramp. Or maybe a gas pain. Hard to tell what that food's really doing to him, but based on that picture I think I'd pass on whatever it is he's eating and ask the waiter for a burger and fries instead. French fries of course.

and then bookworm museth further on the Benedict Option:

I'm not so sure how I feel now about Rod starting up one of these Benedict Option communes in our parish. In a comment one of his people is noodling over how to avoid the IRS by swapping labor, then asks, "If you could be certain that you can get away with it, would it be acceptable for a Benedict Option community to support itself by shoplifting?"

I don't think Rod himself would be doing any such thing, but he couldn't be keeping his eye on all his people all of the time. We could end up with something like a religious band of gypsies or those Irish travelers. They'd all be thinking what they were doing was justified because they were doing Rod's Benedict Option thing, but the lines could get real blurry real fast. 

I don't think bookworm needs to worry about this, and most people here probably agree with me. Dreher has always been about talking and writing about things and not really doing them. Besides, the Benedict Option has always been about what you need to do, NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE, but what he needs to do is to think deeply and intensely about what the Benedict Option really, actually is, or could be, and somehow formulate ideas about something which has no formulas and write a book about something entirely new which he has been talking about for ten years.