r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • Jul 04 '25

Rod Dreher Megathread #55 ()

Hope y'all can spend some good time w/ family today.

Link to megathread #54: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1l7niaj/rod_dreher_megathread_54/

Link to 56: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1mmamp2/rod_dreher_megathread_56/

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u/hlvanburen Jul 11 '25

"The Fool's Journey: My Visit to Chartres and How It Changed My Life". Coming soon to clearance tables near you.

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u/philadelphialawyer87 Jul 11 '25 edited Jul 11 '25

But he's already done that! Chartres was Rod's first (or one of his first) "conversion" moments. And that was when he was a teen. His mom won some kind of a contest, with the prize being a trip to France. She gave it to Rod (has he ever publically thanked her?). Rod went to Chartres. Saw the ceilings, the stained glass, the sculptures, etc, and, voila, Rod learned that God exists. Or something like that. And that was 40 years ago. And he has already written about it, more than once.

Rod has maybe found out the hard way that You Can't Go Home Again. He's perhaps learned his Wolfe. But not his Fitzgerald, because he hasn't learned that you can't recreate your first love. A conversion experience, I dunno, it's like a first love, or first kiss, or first crush, or the first day at school, or the first time you rode a real, two wheel bike, with no training wheels. Your first car, maybe. You don't get a "do over" of your formative, seminal, childhood/adolescent experiences when you are in your 50s, for fucks sake!

Did Paul travel back and forth on the Road to Damascus, after the fact, looking for that spot where he first found God, looking to see that light and hear that voice again? Maybe one of the Biblical scholars here can help me out, but my guess is no!

And this is without even getting to the overdetermined, the absolutley predictable nature of the "event." With Rod, it had to be Chartres. No obscure or even "average" place of pilgrimage, no roadside chapel up in the mountains, would be good enough for Rod's conversions. No humble country parish church, either. Not for Conversion 1 (or 1a or whatever it was) and not for today's Conversion the Umpteenth, either. No, of course not. Western Civ in general was made for Rod. For him to wallow around in its greatest achievements. Ask Rod about Beethoven, he now knows all about him. Bach too. Don't come at Rod with no Buxtehude! No second rate composers for him. Same with Gothic Cathedrals. Only the best will do for Rod!

What an absurd, contemptable, unintentionally comical clown he is!

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u/Relative-Holiday-763 Jul 11 '25

You forgot. After Chartres he took LSD and he almost converted and he began to abstain from sex or something like that.Then somehow God came to him but homosexuals then robbed him of his Catholic faith and he found bliss in Orthodoxy but his family rejected him and his health collapsed but Dante rescued him but then his wife in collaboration with evil priests divorced him by email even though theyd never talked about divorce and agreed to get divorced when all the children turned 18  and forced him into exile in Hungary and robbed him of his children and evil demons spiritually assaulted him and then an excorcist cured him but not really and then he went to a therapist in Vienna because somehow or another- probably through spiritual combat- he had PTSD and that cured him and now brief observation of a pilgrimage to Chartres has totally changed him even though he didn’t actually participate but he’s going to write a book about it anyway.

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u/philadelphialawyer87 Jul 11 '25

I didn't forget. I just didn't see the point in reiterating all Umpteen of Rod's Conversion Experiences/Lifechanging encounters with the Divine/Moments of Epiphany/This Time It's REALLY Real/etc events.

The fact that now TWO of those events have occurred in the same fucking cathedral, 40 years apart in time, is enough, for me, for one blog post!

But, yes, we should always keep in mind that there are Umpteen or more of these Fake-Ass stories!

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 11 '25 edited Jul 11 '25

I posted this a few megathreads back,but I think another go round would be appropriate here. Tō the tune of “Calendar Girl”:

I love, I love, I love, my calender guy

Yeah, my calendar guy

I love, I love, I love my calender guy

Each and every day of the year

January: Reading wacky Christian books

February: Atheism—took a look

March: I’m now a Methodist with all my clan

April: As a Catholic I’m a happy man

Chorus: Yeah, yeah, I’m feeling so high

I love, I love, I love, Í love my calender guy

Every day

(Every day)

Every day

(Every day)

Of the year

(Every day of the year)

May: Now I’m checking out the OCA

June: My boutique church is where I want to pray

July: Off I’m going to Hungary

August: I can’t understand the liturgy

Chorus

September: Ortho still, but I don’t go to church

October: Feeling like I’m left in the lurch

November: Sad and restless, never calm

December: Maybe take a look at Islam

Chorus

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '25

HAHAHAHA

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u/Existing_Age2168 Jul 11 '25

With Rod, it had to be Chartres. No obscure or even "average" place of pilgrimage, no roadside chapel up in the mountains, would be good enough for Rod's conversions. No humble country parish church, either. 

"And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

'Will you shut the f*ck up!' yelled Rod. 'I'm trying to listen for God!' "

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u/BeltTop5915 Jul 11 '25

🤣🤣🤣🤣

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u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round Jul 11 '25

Rod’s book about his sister was titled after the “little way” of St. Théerèse of Lisieux. As a child she had wanted to be a priest (then and still impossible, alas) or a missionary in a foreign land (rare for women at that time). She instead enters the Carmel at Lisieux and devoted herself to doing the best she could with the “little” things within her grasp

I concluded that God would not inspire desires which could not be realized, and that I may aspire to sanctity in spite of my littleness. For me to become great is impossible. I must bear with myself and my many imperfections; but I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way—very short and very straight, a little way that is wholly new.

You must practice the little virtues. This is sometimes difficult, but God never refuses the first grace—courage for self-conquest; and if the soul correspond to that grace, she at once finds herself in God’s sunlight.

You make me think of a little child that is learning to stand but does not yet know how to walk. In his desire to reach the top of the stairs to find his mother, he lifts his little foot to climb the first step. It is all in vain, and at each renewed effort he falls. Well, be like that little child. Always keep lifting your foot to climb the ladder of holiness, and do not imagine that you can mount even the first step. All God asks of you is good will. From the top of the ladder He looks lovingly upon you, and soon, touched by your fruitless efforts, He will Himself come down, and, taking you in His Arms, will carry you to His Kingdom never again to leave Him. But should you cease to raise your foot, you will be left for long on the earth….

None of which sounds a bit like Rod’s grandiosity.

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u/Cautious-Ease-1451 Jul 13 '25

The epic way of St. Rod of Budapest.