Brian Paterson

Husband, Dad, Grandad, Director at AIM Moldova (@MoldovaAim). Blessed beyond words and grateful to God for His amazing grace.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

Watch to the end - will light up your whole day!

[𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀 @Old_But_Gold50s]

A prodigy violinist and a professional opera singer join together for a spontaneous concert at a restaurant in Paris, France (Le Rouge et le Verre, Rue de Turin).

- Summer from 4 Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi
- Carmen Opera (Habanera aria) by Georges Bizet

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

@marklevinshow Every word true.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

Well I appreciate the no personal attack. Neither of us needs that stuff. To your point, I might have said it more clearly. I meant that whether that’s true or not, and I suppose any restriction on supply might impact prices, the Ukrainians still have the right to defend themselves. Disrupting Russia’s refineries is one way to slow down its war machine and therefore slow down attacks on Ukraine and save the lives of their citizens. Why on earth wouldn’t they want to do that? In the same situation, we sure would.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

I’m an American and a supporter of President Trump. I have been from the moment he came down that escalator in New York City and announced his candidacy. From the beginning, I’ve watched him take abuse and wicked assaults on his character and on his person that would never have been launched against anyone else. His courage in the face of those relentless onslaughts, which would have downed literally anyone else in politics, has been breathtaking and inspiring. He’s the only candidate whose opponents’ derangement drove up my support for him with every new excess. I don’t typically give to political campaigns, but I gave to Donald Trump – when the Democrats went more nuts, I sent more money.
I support President Trump on securing our border. I stand with the President on Israel, and in his opposition to the vile antisemitism sweeping through our politics and our culture. I applaud the President’s defense of the rights of the unborn. In those and so many other ways, I am unashamed in my support of President Donald Trump, and I’m MAGA to the core. Love me or hate me, that’s where I stand.
I’ve not liked everything the President has said, and as a Christian, there have been times I wish he had spoken and acted differently. But he was elected to be my president, not my pastor, and if the alternative is the Democrats and their unholy crusade to unmake America, well, I’ll stick with Trump.
Not to get carried away with my own importance – politically, I’m no one – but if the President were to lose someone like me, I’m not sure who he can keep. I say that because tonight, as I lay in bed unable to sleep here in Moldova, just an hour’s drive or so from the Ukrainian border, I am appalled at the action my President has taken on the importation of Russian diesel. Putting money in Putin’s pocket so he can attack and murder more Ukrainian civilians in their beds, just hours from my own, is wrong, Mr. President. It’s a political calculation ahead of the midterms, and it’s a callous, heartless one that I pray you rethink quickly.
I come to Moldova a lot, and America has done so much to help this small but beautiful nation. Its people deserve our support and our prayers. If Ukraine falls, so will Moldova; that’s just a fact. A policy that betrays them and lionizes Putin isn’t just wrongheaded. It is an evil policy, and it will get innocent men, women and children killed. Worse still, at least one senior administration official has pointed the finger at Ukraine. UN Ambassador Mike Waltz went on Fox and pointed to Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries as a reason diesel prices are high. True enough, but so what? It’s one of the few ways Ukraine can hit back at the nation that invaded it. If America were fighting this war, we’d flatten every refinery we could reach.
Putin is a bully. Putin is a thug. He’s the one who started this war, and no amount of equivocation or fatuous guff about who provoked whom can justify his tyranny and murderous campaign of terror in this region. Putin is the only reason this war continues, and the very one who could end it with a word. That’s not on President Zelensky, or the Ukrainian people, or the people of every nation in this part of the world living under threat from this fiend. This war, and the death, mayhem and suffering it is causing, is entirely of Putin’s making – period.
I have prayed for President Trump for years, and I will absolutely continue to do so. I’m sure he will never read this, but if he needs to know, I love him, I pray for him, and I ask God to guide him in what is the hardest job in the world. That’s exactly what makes this so painful: this policy comes from a president I love. He is wrong on this issue, and it’s a fatal error that I pray he remedies at the earliest opportunity. I pray God blesses President Trump, and I pray God blesses America. But I sincerely believe that the policies being pursued toward Ukraine right now are not something God can bless.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

@DYLZAK Yes they were. And that's tragic. And I think Ukraine attacking refineries is one way they can try to disrupt Russia's war effort and keep more of their people alive. You know, the people who were invaded.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

@DYLZAK Buying Russia's diesel funds the war and gets people killed. That's what I care about. But I agree about elections. Russia is skilled at undermining elections in this part of the world (I've seen that first hand in Moldova), but let's protect them and let's have them.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

I supported him for reasons I still hold, and I won't pretend otherwise. But I'm sitting in Moldova, next door to the war. Watching drones cross into the country where we care for kids makes it impossible to stay quiet when US policy helps Russia pay for it. There are things I haven't liked before, but this is literally life and death. It's fair to say I haven't used X much to speak on other serious issues, and maybe I should have. I'll think about that, though I have other priorities in what I write about. Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

Fair question. Zelensky isn't my point. My point is that Ukrainian families are defending their homes against an invasion. I'm writing from Moldova, where Russian drones have crashed into this country and where the teens we care for lie awake afraid of what comes next. Helping Russia fund that war is the part I can't square.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

@cuppajojojo I will. Thank you for sending.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

@PMcjam1234 Thank you for your kind reply. Many are not so kind, so this was refreshing and appreciated. I did invite people to disagree and I welcome that, but apparently the preferred approach is to just cuss, fume and denigrate. Thank you for not doing that.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

@ReaderPhx @edstetzer Thanks for the reply. I really can’t get past that Putin could stop
This war anytime he wanted to. He wanted it, and he started it.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

@EngagedCDN Thank you for the reply and the reasonable tone. It does hit home for me, but not commenting on other issues mostly just means I prefer to keep my politics off X - not why I’m here. And I thought a long time about weighing in here, but it was necessary. Thanks again.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

I know it’s asking a lot but any chance we can keep this to the issue and not just default to personal attacks. Disagree at will, but if your reply is profane you’re getting blocked. Maybe this my naivety again but just say what you think not who you hate.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

@ReaderPhx I totally agree that stopping the war is ideal. But to quote a very smart man, @edstetzer, “If Russia stops fighting the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.” Do we expect them to stop defending themselves against an invasion? Who would do that?

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

3. Please pray for Moldova. Pray for our staff, who work around the clock, and for our kids, who've already come through so much. Leaning on Jesus is our only hope when so much is beyond our control. 🙏

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

Thread:
In Moldova this week with our team caring for nearly 40 teens. Yesterday one of our staff shared what this war looks like from here: not on the news, but drones overhead, just over the border from Ukraine.
Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine, CC BY 4.0

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

2. On October 3, five Russian missiles and drones violated Moldova's airspace in just 15 minutes and exploded near populated areas. President Maia Sandu: "Russia's war against Ukraine directly threatens the lives of our citizens." If Ukraine falls, Moldova is next, and that fear is real here.

[Brian Paterson @bhpaterson]

Love this

[𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀 @Old_But_Gold50s]

The transitions between each section are incredibly smooth. It’s so good that I got completely absorbed in this arrangement and almost forgot about the original soundtrack.

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

The Sistine Chapel ceiling is the most important artwork in Western civilization. Not the most beautiful – the most important. And it was painted by quite the character.

Michelangelo didn’t want the commission. He was a sculptor. He said so, repeatedly, to a Pope who did not care. Julius II needed a ceiling painted and had decided Michelangelo would paint it. The Pope was wrong about almost everything – the timeline, the assistants, the right to inspect the work in progress. He was right about one thing: that this was the man. The ceiling is what happened when an unstoppable institution met an immovable genius and neither yielded.

He fired his assistants one by one. Repainted sections over and over. Built his own scaffolding – suspended from the walls, not the floor, so the chapel could remain in use below. Spent four years on his back on it, paint dripping into his eyes, going progressively blind, complaining constantly in letters and poetry. What the ceiling required, the ceiling got.

The system tried to manage the genius. The genius ignored the system – fired the assistants, rebuilt the scaffolding, refused inspection, repainted what wasn’t right. This is the precise opposite of what the current system produces: not the compliant, the credentialed, the adequately average – but the immovable mind that cannot be managed into mediocrity. The Idiocracy selects against exactly this. The Sistine Chapel is what happens when it fails.

The Creation of Adam is not what you think it is. The finger of God touching the finger of Adam — the most reproduced image in Western art — is surrounded by a shape that is anatomically precise: the human brain in cross section. The mantle around God and the figures inside it match the brain’s architecture with a precision that cannot be accidental from a man who dissected corpses illegally to understand the human body. The most sacred image in Western civilization may be Michelangelo’s statement that the divine gift to man is not life. It is the mind. It is Reason. He hid it in plain sight, on the ceiling of the Pope’s chapel, for five hundred years.

The ceiling is not one image. It is a complete philosophical system painted across 500 square meters – nine scenes from Genesis, surrounded by prophets, sibyls, ancestors, and architectural illusions that create a three-dimensional space that doesn’t exist. Every figure anatomically precise, dynamically posed, psychologically present. The scale of the achievement has no precedent and no successor.

The Last Judgment — painted on the altar wall twenty-three years later, when Michelangelo was sixty — is the ceiling’s dark twin. Where the ceiling shows creation and promise, the Last Judgment shows finality. Christ is not the gentle shepherd of medieval iconography – he is a young, muscular figure of terrifying authority. Michelangelo painted himself into it as the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew, hanging in Christ’s presence. The self-portrait of the greatest artist in Western civilization is a hollow, empty skin. He understood, by then, what the work had cost.

The Sistine Chapel is Western civilization’s most complete statement about what human beings are capable of – made by one man, in four years, on his back, under institutional pressure, half-blind, largely alone. It is the permanent answer to the Last Man. The proof that some human beings, given conditions of resistance and refusal and impossible stubbornness, can reach heights that no system produces and no ideology explains. It has been looking down at us for five hundred years. We keep not learning what it is trying to teach.