The Warrior Priest

29/02/2024

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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22/02/2024

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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21/02/2024

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 ⚔️✝️💪

17/02/2024

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

15/02/2024

... 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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14/02/2024

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

10/02/2024

09/02/2024

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! 🌳⚔️✝️

08/02/2024

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.

08/02/2024

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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08/02/2024

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

06/02/2024

How to Approach BJJ after 50, by 🤙

05/02/2024

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.

01/02/2024

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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01/02/2024

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

29/01/2024

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