Channeling Fencing Bear at Prayer


Come join Fencing Bear and friends over on Telegram, where the dragons keep their memes—and poetry! We have had quite the opening week! As of this evening, I had 183 subscribers to the channel and 82 members in the chat. Not bad for a bear who didn’t know how to train her Group Guardian bot a week ago!

Mornings I post links to Mass live-streamed from St. John Cantius in Chicago, followed by a stanza from “Dragon Song” for the chat to discuss. (We are on stanza 8; things are heating up as the dragons take wing!) Over the course of the day, I share articles, images, occasional thoughts, Ankerstein builds, stickers, and videos—content you won’t get on my Facebook or Twitter. If I get my courage up, I might even start sharing some of my fiddle tunes. Okay, maybe not—it depends on how much you beg! But Telegram also supports voice and video messages, so you never know!

Links from my channel will guide you elsewhere in Telegram to channels with memes, photos of architecture, political commentators, and of course Milo’s channel. (MEAN GIRLS ONLY!) You can also take side trips to other chats where friends share music videos, recommend books, and talk about cows. It takes a bit of getting used to if you are not familiar with the platform, but once you find your feet—a.k.a. subscribe to enough channels—you will find it hard to leave. (You have been warned! More addictive than Angry Birds! Dragons! Memes!)

Not sure yet whether you want to brave the wilderness that is Telegram? Check out these testimonials for Fencing Bear!
I originally found Milo Yiannopoulos while watching the University of Amherst lecture “The Triggering.” I had watched Steven Crowder and knew of Christina Hoff Summers, but had no idea who Milo was. I was fascinated; he was brilliant and sent one unfortunate individual into apoplexy—and an unfortunate nickname (“Trigglypuff”). I found RFB when I noticed a response Milo wrote to a piece of hers called “Three Cheers for White Men.” I started to stalk her on Facebook and got up the nerve to ask to become friends, or as she put it, to join her salon. This intrigued me, and I soon realized that most of the folks there were scholars or students. I was intimidated at first, but continued to engage folks there and to listen to and read both she and Milo’s things. The posts and conversations were lively, and no one was afraid to express themselves. There was plenty of “give and take.” I began to read articles that were posted and a whole new world opened to people who actually did thoughtful writing on today’s current events. It awakened a part of my brain that I had not used as much since college. So glad both their influences in my life. When Facebook began to censor conservatives and their platforms Rachel moved to Telegram. I have joined her there and it is such an improvement. If you want lively conversations and insightful learning and humor and memes and dragons, this is the place to be. —Quad Doggo
Its insightful and enchanting headmaster Fencing Bear always has that class’s full attention with her interesting and topical takes on religion and life; like a sweet wine or a block of chocolate, she’ll leave you wanting more. —Based Bruce
This chat is the best because RFB will answer any question you could ever have about anything; just ask her anything, and she will be here to answer it.* Come ask her questions. —Matt McNasty
The Dragon Common Room is the sort of place I’ve longed to be a part of. Part school, part monastery, part playground, part storybook, it is a place where I and others are free to enjoy the presence of God and to express that joy in humor, poetry, art, contemplation, all manner of things. I am a part of a true organism. Even when I am silent. For example, it is not atypical to find my heart caught up in the back and forth exchange of others as they wrestle with a bit of poetry, as if they were poetry themselves. Yet, the Dragon Common Room is entirely a creature of the Gospel and of grace, where all these things are the product of simple Christians and genuine seekers, myself included. We have some teachers and highly learned individuals among us, most especially our ‘Mother.’ Nevertheless, they are a source of grace to me, to us. Their knowledge flows from them graciously and contributes to the whole body like milk. I am tremendously excited for the future of this group and can't wait to see where God leads us. May the Lord bless us, always!  —La Elfie Loving Dragons 
If you’re weary of the same old political debates, try something new! Venture into the Dragon Common Room and help analyze a poem, share some music you like, discuss Christianity, Tolkien, art, philosophy or politics. —Arwen “Boomer” Yiannopoulos

*

CHANNEL: https://t.me/fencingbearatprayer

*

CHAT: https://t.me/joinchat/M7EiERbR9gBWUGuN6P6uDg

*

Come, join the dragons! 

Fencing Bear salutes!  

*

For my adventures in Milo’s chat, see The MILO Chronicles: Telegram Diaries (August 2019-present). For more on the Lady’s dragons, see The Lady and the Logos.

*Um... I will answer the ones I can!

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. I look forward to hearing what you think!

F.B.

Popular posts from this blog

Free Speech Fundamentals: Building a Platform

Image
Milo's platform It is without a doubt one of the sillier complaints that protestors at Milo's talks have regularly made when they are trying to shut him up for having conservative political opinions about freedom of speech. For example, at UC Davis, where the protestors effectively shut down Milo's event the night before with their violence , after which the next day one of them demanded of Milo as he was talking to the crowd gathered outside to hear him speak (see video at 4:01 ): "Where's my platform? Where is everyone else's platform?" Milo admonished him: "You had it last night, brother," but of course the young man was not satisfied. He thought that it was Milo's fault that nobody wanted to listen to him. Trigglypuff at UMass Amherst had the same complaint, if imperfectly expressed (see video at 1:26 ): "But this is free speech! If you're so concerned about free speech..."--meaning presumably hers, as she clearly wa
Keep reading

Make the Middle Ages Dark Again

Image
I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and ca
Keep reading

A Poetry Class for the End of the World

Image
  Milo and the Professor are back with a special episode of Friday Night’s All Right,  available on Censored.tv ! With protestors storming the Capitol Building and tempers running high, what better poem to capture the Spiritus Mundi  than “ The Second Coming ” by William Butler Yeats?  Turning and turning in the widening gyre    The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst    Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it    Reel shadows of the
Keep reading

How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

Image
Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in fact, ide
Keep reading

The Lord's Prayer, Thanks Be to Dogs

I've never really liked the Lord's Prayer very much. It seems, I don't know, so spare, not really a prayer at all. Not like the collects that we read in church, nothing like Anselm of Canterbury's far more moving and affective prayers. Prayer should be more meditative, right? Not just a blank asking for bread and forgiveness. And yet, I know that to learn to pray, I need to learn the Lord's Prayer. It is the prayer that Our Lord taught us, after all. There must be something in it. My scholarly inclination at the moment is to start looking for commentaries. Maybe Luther's, but that's in my office on campus and I'm at home now. There's the Catechism of the Catholic Church right behind me on the cabinet that I'm using here at home as my "desk", purportedly for keeping handy the things that I most want or need to read next (like that book I'm supposed to review, you know). But then I still wouldn't be thinking about what
Keep reading