The Earth-Riddle

We all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out. Every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key; with every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

- G.K. Chesterton

A Prayer

O fountain of Light, you are the Light and the origin of Light,
Listen with favour in your mercy to our prayers.
O Light, as we flee from the darkness of our sins,
Rescue us, whose bountiful and holy power first created us,
Whose justice condemned us and whose devotion has redeemed us:
Be in all things merciful, just and almighty.

May the power of faith so arouse us,
That the glory of hope may be kindled for the future:
May love infuse our longing for ages without end.
Be the kindly ruler of our life
That we may have time for work and rest;
And as each succeeds the other may we be refreshed.

Kindle us and make us vessels worthy of spiritual light.

~Alcuin of York, Counsellor of Charlemagne

The Logic of Love

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. (John 1:1)

It is the same Word, or Logic, that spoke the world into being in Genesis 1.

The same Logic, or Testimony, is one that he ordained in Jacob as a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children (Psalm 78:5), and again, (Psalm 119:88), Quicken me after thy lovingkindness; so shall I keep the testimony of thy mouth.

It is the same Testimony, or Witness, spoken of in John 3:33, He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true.

The Witness, or Truth, of which Jesus said: Ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning. (John 15:27)

That Truth, or Faith, that is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). And in John 17, when that Logos, that Word, speaks: Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. And again: For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.

That Faith, or Knowledge, for which the Apostle Paul said: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:13)

That Knowledge, or Love, which is God: for he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love (1 John 4:8).

And that Love, for which the Apostle Paul said: We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak. (2 Corinthians 4:13)

And that love, that knowledge, that faith, that truth, that witness, that testimony, that logic, that word…they are actions. Our obedience declares these truths. We love Jesus because He first loved us. We seek to know Him so that we might understand the power of His grace. We faithe in Jesus because He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We bear testimony of that which we have witnessed: the Truth of what He has done in our lives, the lives of those around us, and the lives of those past, revealed to us by that Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete. We do not believe blindly. We do not take 'leaps of faith'. We believe because of the Logic of His ways and of His words, for His ways and His words are the life and light of men (John 1:4).

O Sacred Head Now Wounded

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
How art thou pale with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!
How doth Thy visage languish that once was bright as morn!

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.*

In the days of the Middle Ages, the word 'pity' did not mean the milky, soft emotion that it does now. It came from the word 'piety', and meant a divine compassion shot through with strength and truth, inspired by the Father of all Piety. May we pray that on this day, a day of such gravity for the future of our nation, the Almighty may look on our prayers with his 'pity without end', and renew our nation.

*From 'O Sacred Head Now Wounded' by Bernard of Clairvaux

The Man Moses, Part 2

Moses, the conqueror of Ethiopia, the prince of Egypt, the shepherd of Midian, led his father-in-law Jethro's flock into the wilderness, until he came to the mountain of Elohim. There, in the midst of a bush, he saw the God who is a consuming fire. But this consuming fire did not devour the bush. Elohim spoke from the miracle. He declared that the ground on which Moses stood was holy, thus foreshadowing the almighty wonders that were to happen there in the future. He declared Himself an everlasting God, living through the generations. He declared Himself the great I AM: YHWH. He declared that Moses would be the savior of the Israelites, and, when Moses protests that he is not worthy of the task, Yahweh declares that it is through the miraculous power of the presence of Yahweh in the staff in his hand that he will be believed by the Israelites and will escape Pharaoh.

Thus begins the Exodus. Moses journeys to Egypt, where Pharaoh meets him with breath-taking arrogance and we first see the fickle foolishness of the Israelite people. But the staff of God, in the hand of Aaron, Moses' mouthpiece, proclaims the wonder of the Wonder-Worker. Every time but one that a miracle is performed, Yahweh commands that the staff be used to execute it, culminating in the parting of the Sea of Reeds, where Yahweh is present in a pillar of cloud and fire. Thus is born the model from which the traditional portrayal of every wizard from Merlin to Gandalf has been taken.

The Israelites walked dry through the Reed Sea, while the entire army of Pharaoh was drowned in pursuit. They walked through the wilderness, making their way by the guidance of their God back to the holy mountain that began the Exodus, Mount Sinai. It was here, as Yahweh prophesied at the burning bush, that Elohim showed Himself to His people. Yahweh told Moses that He would descend on the third day of the Israelites' stay at the Mountain of God, and, in preparation, the whole people were consecrated and purified. On the morning of the third day, thunder and lightning rent the heavens, a thick cloud enveloped the mountain, and a stentorian trumpet blast shook the air. The Israelites trembled. Moses led the people out of the camp to stand at the foot of the mountain where they would meet Yahweh. Smoke, like the smoke that billows from a furnace, swarmed over the mountain, which shook violently as the trumpet call grew louder and louder. Moses spoke and the Voice answered him, calling him to the top of the mountain. He stayed there, fasting and worshipping before Yahweh for forty days, the same number of days that the Savior of the world would fast and worship before Elohim in the desert. He prostrated himself before the throne of Yahweh, and Yahweh imparted to Moses the Holy Covenant.

This was the first face-to-face encounter between Moses and Jehovah, and was to be the beginning of a relationship that would be the closest and most present of any human's interaction with the Creator until Elohim's Son entered the world. As the Israelites journeyed to the promised land, Yahweh would lead them in the pillar of cloud-fire, only appearing in his earthly form to Moses, whose face was so resplendent with the glory of God when he left his presence that he was forced to wear a veil when he was not in the Tabernacle of Meeting, so that the Israelites would not see the glory fade away from his face. Moses would even be allowed to see Yahweh in undisguised form, though the actual Face of Elohim was barred to him for his own safety's sake.

After forty years of wandering in the desert, barred from the promised land for a life-span by the stupidity of the Israelite people, having been offered the patriarch-ship of the future races of the world and having refused the offer, having tasted the living bread of Yahweh, having brought water from the rock, having seen Jehovah in the full glory of His image, this man, Moses, came to his last days. The most humble man on the face of the earth, right before he was destined to die, was brought to Mount Nebo where Yahweh showed him all the land that the chosen people were to acquire, the promised land, flowing with milk and honey. The Bible says that Moses was one-hundred-and-twenty-years-old, and yet his eyes were not dimmed and his vigor was un-impaired. Yahweh's strength had been given him. He died there in Moab, as Yahweh had chosen, and Jehovah, the God of the Heavens, buried him in a secret place.

'And there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the HaShem knew face to face.' Deuteronomy 34:10

The Man Moses: Part 1

Israel dwelt in Egypt. God blessed His people, making them fruitful in number. Their God was El Shaddai, the God whose Kingdom is the little child.

They were a prized nation, for Joseph, one of the greatest commanders in Egypt, was at their head. But a Pharaoh rose up who knew not Joseph, who knew not the covenant, who knew not that El Shaddai who blesses, and he grew afraid of the strong, numerous nation. He ordered genocide. All male Hebrew children up to two years of age, must be drowned in the Nile. This genocide would be repeated hundreds of years later, when Herod ordered merciless child-slaughter in order to kill the Christ.

But Israel's savior would survive genocide, just as the Savior of all humanity would. In the depths of Goshen, the Israelites' primary region of habitation, lived a man named Amram. His wife, Jochebed, had three children, Miriam, Aaron, and Jekuthiel, a new-born baby. She was a courageous woman. She was a mother. She hid her precious baby boy for three months, and, when she knew she could no longer succeed in hiding him, put him in a basket and trusted to that El Shaddai who gave her this precious child to save him from destruction.

Her little girl Miriam watched the chosen child as it wound its way through the busy, infested Nile, closer and closer to the royal palace. She heard Pharaoh's daughter and her handmaidens washing in the Nile, heard their gasps of surprise as the basket floats into view, saw the princess of Egypt take pity on the child. The Princess Thermuthis knew it was a Hebrew child, a child of not only slaves, but shepherds, an occupation scorned by her people––a nation so degraded in Egypt that the mass slaughter of the Hebrews' children could be executed without a qualm. Yet she loves the child as her own. According to the Midrash, when Moses returns to Egypt as the wielder of the miracles of YHWH, she will be exiled and scorned for being his surrogate mother, and will leave Egypt with him in the great Exodus. Her name will be changed to Bithiah, meaning 'Daughter of Yah', and she will take the Judahite Mered as her husband. Click here to read the Biblical mention of Bithiah.

Miriam seized the opportunity, when this princess was observing the baby with tender interest, to suggest a Hebrew nurse for the child. The princess probably guessed what has taken place, and acquiesced willingly. She took pity on the Hebrew mother. Thus Moses is nursed by his own mother, and, through the strong bonding that takes place, becomes sealed in the Hebrew culture.

Once he was weaned, however, the princess adopted him as her own son, calling him Moshe, which is similar to the Hebrew word 'mashah', meaning 'to draw out' and the Egyptian word for 'child'. Moses, attached through his most formative years of childhood to his Hebraism, will now be raised as a royal Egyptian, with all the privileges and education of a prince of Egypt.

According to Josephus, Moses grew to become the foremost commander of the armies of Egypt. He had great military acumen, though he was slow of speech. One of the most famous stories about his life as a general is in the histories of Josephus, when he led the Egyptians against the Ethiopians who were invading the country. According to the histories, while he was besieging Tharbis, one of the cities of Ethiopia, an Ethiopian princess fell in love with him and wanted to marry him. He agreed to do so if she would deliver the city into his power. She did so, and Moses married her. Click here to read the Bible's account of Moses' Ethiopian wife.

His warrior career came to an end when, one day on visiting his mother-people, he saw a Hebrew slave being maltreated and was so incensed that he murdered the Egyptian overseer and buried the corpse in the sand. The affair was talked about among the Hebrew slaves, and Moses, on hearing from a higher source that it was known in the royal household, and that Pharaoh would most likely execute him for it, escaped across the Sinai Peninsula, a gigantic stretch of barren, desert country that only the strongest could survive in.

Coming to Midian, he stopped to drink at the Midianite well, and, while he was there, saw a group of seven shepherdess sisters being driven away from the water by some rowdy shepherds. Moses, seeing the violence taking place, had enough fighting strategy inherent in his bones to save the shepherdesses from the whole group of shepherds and their flocks, and then enough strength remaining to draw the water needed for the sheep of the seven sisters. The girls' father, a priest of Midian, was so grateful for the service and so awed at what Moses had done that he adopted him as his son, made him superintendent of his flocks, and gave him his daughter Zipporah in marriage.

It was forty years later, while shepherding his father's flocks, that Moses saw the first glimpse of the fire of the God whom he would see face to face in the coming years.

The Tabernacle of the Godhead

O worship Yahweh in the beauty of holiness: tremble before him, all the earth.

- Psalms 96:9

Incense lies heavy in the atmosphere. It swirls through your senses, tickling the nose, tasting the mouth, touching the eyes. It smells sweet, dark, rich.

You open your eyes. The gold glints in the shadows, making your irises sparkle with the glory of its wealth. The mercy seat stands in the womb of the temple, before your eyes, borne by majestic creatures whose colossal wings span out and above in dazzling grandeur, arching over the throne of God. The faces of the creatures are turned to one another. Fire burns in their eyes. They perch upon the Ark. Majesty reigns. Intense spiritual presence wrestles around the gleaming gold overlay. The sweet smell of acacia wood hangs faintly in the atmosphere. To touch is death, for the Cloud Fire prevails sovereign on the throne, above the stone tablets of His Law, the Law that brings life and light. The Law that frees.

You tear yourself away from the throne where visits the God who is Love. You fold back the thick curtain of finely woven linen, richly colored violet-purple, red-purple, embroidered with the great winged creatures who guard the Ark of the Testimony. You leave the Holy of Holies, the Qodesh-Qodesh, and enter the Holy Place.

A gleam in the dusk catches your eye. The glimmer of gold, the scent of acacia wood. You come round the curtain and see, sparkling against the rich tone of the maroon drapery, the table of offering. Beautifully moulded, crowned with bowls and goblets and jars and platters of pure, fair ore. The loaves, baked of fine wheaten flour, crushed-olive oil, and ground incense grace the gold plate.

Opposite the table a shimmering lamp-stand sheds forth light upon the magical surroundings. You marvel in the beauty of the golden form, beaten forth in the loveliness of calyxes and petals, branches crowned in almond blossoms, red-flamed lamps standing in the cups. Light shining in the Temple of the Light of the world.

You become aware of the sun filtering through the opening of the Holy Place, filtering through the screen of fine, twisted linen, tinted blue and purple and scarlet, wrought with skilled needlework. The heavy, soft cloth hangs upon five strong pillars of acacia wood, overlain with gold, socketed with brass. You walk through the doorway, and out into the court.

Splendid color surrounds you. Violet, crimson, and azure draping create the boundaries of the court. The finely twined linen garlands columns of gold, poles of silver, hooks of bronze. A golden lamp, burning continually with pure pounded olive oil, flickers purple shadows on the richly stained curtains. The red light is attended from dusk to dawn by the sons of Abarone, before Yahweh, as an endless edict for all ages of Israel.

Your attention is brought to the middle of the court where stands the altar, by the bleat of animals being lead toward the mizbeach. Built of hollow acacia wood, crowned with four bronze horns at each corner, complemented by bronze pans for carrying away the fatty ashes, bronze shovels, bronze sprinkling basins, bronze hooks, bronze fire pans. The flame from the lamp mirrors in the metal.

You see Abarone and his four sons surrounding the altar. Awe strikes you at the splendor of their raiment in the light of the sun, the fire of the lamp. Robes and embroidered tunics adorn them, giving dignity and magnificence to their strong, tall frames, the color glistening in their brown eyes. A turban crowns each regal head, covering their brown locks. A flower of pure gold, engraved with the words Qodesh Yahweh is attached to a violet-purple cord, which hangs from the winding cloths of the turban. The clothes are made of dyed linen to match the curtains surrounding them, hemmed with pomegranates and golden bells which tinkle at all times, so the sweet sound foreruns their entrance into the Holy of Holies. Below their thick, long beards rest the ephod and the breastplate, spun of violet linen, swung with gold chains of rosettes and purple cords. Two cornelians, engraved with the twelve names of the Princes of Israel, hang in gold settings upon the straps of the ephod. The crimson-violet linen is set with twelve rare stones to represent the names of the Tribes, glinting with all the colors of the rainbow that surrounds the heavenly throne of God.

The Urim and the Thummim adorn the breastplate over his heart, thus giving Abarone the judgment of Israel to bear, in the presence of Yahweh, forever. In the holy flower upon his brow he carries the shortcomings of the things consecrated by the people of Israel, to make them satisfactory to Elohim. Avarone bears the remembrance of the names of Israel's sons upon his shoulders before Adonai. Avarone supports the chosen people of El Shaddai upon his heart, always. Avarone is the Priest of Jehovah.

You hear the bleats of lambs and goats, the coo of doves and pigeons, echo through the court. You see the white wool and grey skin, the white feathers and the grey, burn upon the altar, sending up a pleasing aroma to the Godhead. Their blood is poured around the altar, their life spilled out for the souls of humanity, so that they might possess Life Eternal. The garments of Abarone and his sons are sprinkled with the blood, anointing oil, incense. They are purified. Israel is purified.

You step outside the court, through the lovely linen drapery, and see God's creation all around you. Green grass. Blue sky. Golden sun. A sweet wind blowing through the trees. You worship Elohim, the God Who Is.

Thine, O Adonai, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine, thine is the kingdom, O Jehovah, and thou art exalted as King above all.

- 1 Chronicles 29:11

The Blessings of Yahweh Sabaoth

It is El Shaddai who blesses you…

blessings of heaven above…

blessings of the deep lying below…

blessings of the breasts and womb…

blessings of the grain…

and flowers…

blessings of the eternal mountains…

bounty of the everlasting hills…

may they descend on Joseph's head, on the crown of the one dedicated from among his brothers.

Genesis 49:25-29

Thoughts on the Euangelios

The incarnation shocked humanity. Never before in the history of religion had divinity shrunk to infancy. The magic of the event terrified the world. The God of the universe who created woman, impregnated a common peasant girl and grew from embryo to infant in the womb that He had molded with His own hands. The girl who carried Yahweh in her belly, who was scoffed and mocked by the world of the time and treated as a sinner and outcast, journeyed to Jerusalem with her faithful husband, and, being refused even by the country inn, was forced to birth the Son of God underground. 'In the riddle of Bethlehem it was heaven that was under the earth,' Chesterton states. The Voice of Elohim became the most vulnerable creature in our world––a new-born baby, crying in the arms of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl, whose tiny arms couldn't reach up to touch the noses of the cattle that He had spoken into existence. Yahweh came to earth, and suddenly the family that God had instituted in the beginning was turned upside down, for the mother and father became the children of their Son, and their son was their Father and Creator. And they called His name Jesus.

Jesus' life was hounded from the beginning. After being anointed by the Magi, confirmed by Anna and Simeon, praised by the angels, and worshipped by the shepherds, Joseph, following the command of God, the father of his adopted child, escaped to Egypt with the precious mother and baby to escape Herod's wrath. The age-old war of the demons against children asserted itself once more in a mad effort to kill the Child, but was thwarted by a simple carpenter's faithfulness to God.

Jesus grew up, and threw off the stagnant and sinful customs of the time. Though He was the most intelligent and promising students in the educational system, and wanted as a disciple by the leading rabbis of the day, He rejected the complacency and legalism of the priests and stayed at home to learn the trade of a simple carpenter until His time came. And then the Son of God asserted Himself.

He gathered the outcasts to Himself. He insulted the leading figures of the day. He ransacked the false religion pervading the Temple. He forgave the sins of people who faithed in His Father. He called Himself the ancestor of Abraham. He healed the sick. He outsmarted the scribes. He was faithful to His Father. He loved purely. He gave freely. He professed to be the Son of God. He spoke words of truth that were shocking to the darkness of that time, and yet conquered the barbarian sinfulness of the time, and have forever resurrected throughout history, and are still living and speaking today. For they are words of universal and timeless truth. The world will try to take some of Him and leave the rest, but He was the Man who encompassed all Truth, all Holiness, all Power, all Righteousness, all Faithfulness, all Love.

There have been many philosophers in the history of this world, but the smarter they were the more they knew that they were not a god. Yet Jesus spoke words of intelligence and verity, and He proclaimed Himself to be God. He was a Man directly distinct from the sophists and philosophers of His time, a Man who had nothing to do with the wild and distorted mythologies and hero-worship of the time. And yet He complemented both sides. He was a philosopher, He was a hero, His life was a Story, but a true one. He vanquished the lies of the World, and rose up as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

His creed spread like wildfire throughout the world, and the only people groups that would have none of Him were the Middle-Eastern Muslims and the Hindus and Buddhists of Asia. And these are the two countries that are living examples of stagnancy. The West has blossomed, grown, died, and resurrected as the Flower of Christendom, but Asia and the Middle-East are too old to die.

In fact, the modern example of the ancient war between mythology and philosophy are the creeds of Asia. Their worship is why Asia is infirm, stale, and oppressed, whereas the West is equally as historical, but has experienced the resurrection of life that is following Christ. For Christianity is the only religion that is the key which fits the questions of this world. It is Life, and it is like life. It embraces life when Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Fatalism, Optimism, Mythology, and Atheism all refuse to be intellectually honest and choose to strive to negate certain aspects of life in order to hold on to their mistaken ideals. Christianity bridges all these religions because it is a story and it is a true story. It is the freedom that comes from the free-will which is the essence of a story, the truth which is the longing of our intellects, and the divine supremacy of God which satisfies the yearning in our soul to know our Creator.

Islam, too, is a stagnant religion. Islam and Christianity are similar in the fact that they are the only monotheistic religions stemming from Abraham, but in very little else. For where Islam worships a solitary and therefore self-centered and uncharitable god, without even the ability to love because he is lonely, Christianity worships the Triune God. He is the God that is the embodiment of the Family. He is the essence of power, and yet is wholly selfless because the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost are forever loving each other and the world in Sacred Communion.

For just as the mythology and philosophy in Asia is too tolerant to die, and the selfishness and hate of Islam is too bitter to die, Christianity is continually experiencing rebirth. Over and over again, the Faith has been so diluted as to die, but it has always risen again in new power at the pivotal moment. We worship the God who rose from the grave, and who has given us the power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

On the Nature of Faërie

'Western culture as a whole has grown so rationalistic that it is difficult to even get your head around its influence.  If you look back at the time in which the Old Testament (and even the New) was written, the world was seen as a place of mythological forces where everything from disease to wealth and success was seen as a personal statement about one's relationship to God (or the gods).  We in Western Christianity have taken our faith out of its natural context of a spiritual and mystical universe into one of rational science.  The transition is uneasy to say the least.' - Benjamin Wolaver

'My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery.  I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition.  The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales.  They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things.  They are not fantasies; compared with them other things are fantastic.' - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

'The more I think about Scripture, the more "implausible" our cosmic story seems.  Two magic trees, a flooded world, the Promised Land, ten ludicrous plagues, the fire on Sinai, the voice of God, the Holy of Holies, power-wielding prophets, the God Man, twelve apostles for twelve tribes, a global mission, a villainous "Man of Lawlessness", a final battle, a future resurrection.  If you think about it, it seems pretty outrageous…which is why it's so brilliant.' - Benjamin Wolaver

Thoughts on the Euangelios

The incarnation shocked humanity.  Never before in the history of religion had divinity shrunk to infancy.  The magic of the event terrified the world.  The God of the universe who created woman, impregnated a common peasant girl and grew from embryo to infant in the womb that He had molded with His own hands.  The girl who carried Yahweh in her belly, who was scoffed and mocked by the world of the time and treated as a sinner and outcast, journeyed to Jerusalem with her faithful husband, and, being refused even by the country inn, was forced to birth the Son of God underground.  'In the riddle of Bethlehem it was heaven that was under the earth,' Chesterton states.  The Voice of Elohim became the most vulnerable creature in our world––a new-born baby, crying in the arms of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl, whose tiny arms couldn't reach up to touch the noses of the cattle that He had spoken into existence.  Yahweh came to earth, and suddenly the family that God had instituted in the beginning was turned upside down, for the mother and father became the children of their Son, and their son was their Father and Creator.  And they called His name Jesus.

Jesus' life was hounded from the beginning.  After being anointed by the Magi, confirmed by Anna and Simeon, praised by the angels, and worshipped by the shepherds, Joseph, following the command of God, the father of his adopted child, escaped to Egypt with the precious mother and baby to escape Herod's wrath.  The age-old war of the demons against children asserted itself once more in a mad effort to kill the Child, but was thwarted by a simple carpenter's faithfulness to God.  

Jesus grew up, and threw off the stagnant and sinful customs of the time.  Though He was the most intelligent and promising students in the educational system, and wanted as a disciple by the leading rabbis of the day, He rejected the complacency and legalism of the priests and stayed at home to learn the trade of a simple carpenter until His time came.  And then the Son of God asserted Himself.  

He gathered the outcasts to Himself.  He insulted the leading figures of the day.  He ransacked the false religion pervading the Temple.  He forgave the sins of people who faithed in His Father.  He called Himself the ancestor of Abraham.  He healed the sick.  He outsmarted the scribes.  He was faithful to His Father.  He loved purely.  He gave freely.  He professed to be the Son of God.  He spoke words of truth that were shocking to the darkness of that time, and yet conquered the barbarian sinfulness of the time, and have forever resurrected throughout history, and are still living and speaking today.  For they are words of universal and timeless truth.  The world will try to take some of Him and leave the rest, but He was the Man who encompassed all Truth, all Holiness, all Power, all Righteousness, all Faithfulness, all Love.  

There have been many philosophers in the history of this world, but the smarter they were the more they knew that they were not a god.  Yet Jesus spoke words of intelligence and verity, and He proclaimed Himself to be God.  He was a Man directly distinct from the sophists and philosophers of His time, a Man who had nothing to do with the wild and distorted mythologies and hero-worship of the time.  And yet He complemented both sides.  He was a philosopher, He was a hero, His life was a Story, but a true one.  He vanquished the lies of the World, and rose up as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

His creed spread like wildfire throughout the world, and the only people groups that would have none of Him were the Middle-Eastern Muslims and the Hindus and Buddhists of Asia.  And these are the two countries that are living examples of stagnancy.  The West has blossomed, grown, died, and resurrected as the Flower of Christendom, but Asia and the Middle-East are too old to die.

In fact, the modern example of the ancient war between mythology and philosophy are the creeds of Asia.  Their worship is why Asia is infirm, stale, and oppressed, whereas the West is equally as historical, but has experienced the resurrection of life that is following Christ.  For Christianity is the only religion that is the key which fits the questions of this world.  It is Life, and it is like life.  It embraces life when Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Fatalism, Optimism, Mythology, and Atheism all refuse to be intellectually honest and choose to strive to negate certain aspects of life in order to hold on to their mistaken ideals.  Christianity bridges all these religions because it is a story and it is a true story.  It is the freedom that comes from the free-will which is the essence of a story, the truth which is the longing of our intellects, and the divine supremacy of God which satisfies the yearning in our soul to know our Creator.

Islam, too, is a stagnant religion.  Islam and Christianity are similar in the fact that they are the only monotheistic religions stemming from Abraham, but in very little else.  For where Islam worships a solitary and therefore self-centered and uncharitable god, without even the ability to love because he is lonely, Christianity worships the Triune God.  He is the God that is the embodiment of the Family.  He is the essence of power, and yet is wholly selfless because the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost are forever loving each other and the world in Sacred Communion.

For just as the mythology and philosophy in Asia is too tolerant to die, and the selfishness and hate of Islam is too bitter to die, Christianity is continually experiencing rebirth.  Over and over again, the Faith has been so diluted as to die, but it has always risen again in new power at the pivotal moment.  We worship the God who rose from the grave, and who has given us the power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

On Faërie and the Everlasting Man

A Faery Song

Buttercups in the sunshine look like little cups of gold

Perhaps the Faeries come to drink the raindrops that they hold.

The daisies with their golden hearts fringed all about with white,

Are little plates for Faerie fold to sup from every night.

Soft moss a downy pillow makes, and green leaves spread a tent,

Where Faerie fold may rest and sleep until their night is spent.

The bluebird sings a lullaby, the firefly gives a light,

The twinkling stars are candles bright, Sleep, Faeries all, Good Night.

Elizabeth T. Dillingham

On reading the Tolkien essay, 'On Fairy-Stories', I gleaned many interesting facts about the history, etymology, and ideals of fantasy.  I'd like to share them with you, so here are my notes.

To begin, the whole lore of fairy-stories is misnomered, as the very term 'fairies' originated from a mistranslation that should have been 'of Faërie'.  The people of Faërie are really called elves and fays.  These personages were also joined by dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons, and then mortal men who had been offered the Silver Bough of enchantment.

As fairies are strange to the lore of Faërie, so are the little Thumbelinas generally depicted in modern Disney movies.  Elves, historically, were tall and angelic-like creatures––much in the style of the Lord of the Rings and King Arthur's Court––until England and France, with their obsession of refinement, effeminance, humor, and shallowness, turned them into the absurd, annoying, little people with impish faces and leering expressions. 

As the very term 'fairy' is mis-used, so is the term 'fairy-tale'.  What most people call a fairy tale usually isn't a fairy tale at all.  They are generally either traveller's tales of awe-full and often satirical happenings and adventures, or they are merely stories of the dream-world.  Tolkien says, 'If a waking writer tells you that his tale is only a thing imagined in his sleep, he cheats deliberately the primal desire at the heart of Faërie: the realization, independent of the conceiving mind, of imagined wonder.'  Of course, they can still be good stories, like Alice in Wonderland, but they are not of Faërie.

And, just as the terms of Faërie are wronged, so are the lore of Faërie degraded in the eyes of our society because of the encroaching shallowness that has pervaded the arts of the imagination in history.  Ever since the rise of Calvinism and Puritanism, adults have become too cynical to enjoy Faërie.  As the adults rejected the beautiful reminiscing of Eden found in Faërie. the only remembering of it was found in ignorant Irish nursery maids telling it to children.  Yet children love to copy their elders, and followed in their parents' footsteps, until the tradition of the tales of Faërie had been degraded until the only relic left were silly, shallow movie and story characters that would earn the contempt of anyone.  For this reason, Tolkien hated when stories were dramatized or made into movies and plays because it trumped the personal imagination of the reader.  He believed that imagining things was one of the most important parts of experiencing a book.

We have forgotten that elements of the truths of Faërie can be found in the Old Testament.  Anyone can read the King James Bible and see many references to unicorns, dragons, griffins, and other animals that were believed in until the people of the last three hundred years decided they were smarter than antiquity.  One reads of blessings, curses, miracles and powerful words, magic trees, spiritual laws, universal truths and the strength and glory of the God of Love.

Every sort of culture going back to the very earliest historical records had their own mythologies and beliefs about Faërie.  It rose to its highest peak with the mythology of the Romans, and then went on a demise as people began to scoff creativity and embraced the ideals of the philosophers of the time.  This belief system, however, failed them as well, since their sophistries merely went in circles and when taken to their conclusions negated life itself.  In the end, they all turned to atheism.  Atheism was the last shock––the last shot of adrenaline for their wearied minds.

Then Jesus was born, and in his enigmatic, wonderful, and heroic life He melded the two together.  He was the second Adam, and He proclaimed the truth that sets us free.  It was not the truths of fatalism, that explains everything good and beautiful in life away, or the giddy fantasy of mythology, which negates the more serious issues of life, but He showed how both the material and the spiritual are one.  He blazed a path that had never been blazed before––His words were shocking to His listeners, and yet everlasting––His life was a Story, a Word, a Logos, that brought a sword to sunder the demon-worship of the time.  He died and rose again, and arose to the Father, and His legacy has never died out.  Where mythology, stoicism, and sophism are all too old to die, as in the ideologies of Asia, Christianity has been a constant resurrection of the fire that purges away the chaff from the wheat.  It has revealed, and is forever revealing, the real Truth of Elohim, the God-Head, which is the Trinity of three distinct Beings in love and unity with each other.  It is the Family that, though blinding in its very splendor, shines its truth-bearing light on the world, and fills our hearts with the soul of son-ship.  We too, may become children in the Family.

Notes on 'The Everlasting Man'

'The great Asiatic symbol of a serpent with its tail in its mouth is really a very perfect image of a certain idea of unity and recurrence that does indeed belong to he Eastern philosophies and religions.  It really is a curve that in one sense includes everything, and in another sense comes to nothing.  In that sense it does confess, or rather boast, that all argument is an argument in  a circle.  And though the figure is but a symbol, we can see how sound is the symbolic sense that produces it, the parallel symbol of the Wheel of Buddha generally called the Swastika.  The cross is a thing at right angles pointing boldly in opposite directions; but the Swastika is the same thing in the very act of returning to the recurrent curve.  That crooked cross is in fact a cross turning into a wheel.  Before we dismiss even these symbols as if they were arbitrary symbols, we must remember how intense was the imaginative instinct that produced them or selected them both in the east and the west.  The cross has something more than a historical memory; it does convey, almost as by a mathematical diagram, the truth about the real point at issue; the idea of a conflict stretching outwards into eternity.  It is true, and even tautological, to say that the cross is the crux of the whole matter.' - G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

The greatest of the evidence against evolution is the fact that animals are not creative.  We have never seen a monkey draw a Mona Lisa, or ants build statues of their gods, or birds write operas to sing, or horses worship a god, or bears bury their mothers and write poetry in remembrance of their cuddliness.  In fact, the reason why they call evolution prehistoric is because it is not in history, and therefore no where in reality except the warped minds of their dreamy and materialistic creators.  What we do see is intelligence from the very beginning, creativity, worship, perseverance, and morale.  There were two great religions in the beginning.  There was the Fall, there was the slow turning away from god, until man had given themselves up to the senses and created mythology and diabolism and sophism, and then there was Abraham's story––Abraham, the only man who turned away from the popular trends to follow the one and only true God.

Mythology was never really taken seriously by the Greeks.  They felt the need for worship, the presence of the spiritual realm, and opened up their imaginations and welcomed every god that they heard about, even offering up altars to any god they had missed.  That is why the philosophers and priests were always at odds––the philosophers embracing reason and rejecting 'romance'.  That's why the Israelites kept embracing all the gods they heard about, and Yahweh was extremely different from the world culture, since He insisted on being the Holy One.  It was not till Christianity came that the world learned that reason and spirituality are fused.

Yet even while the world reveled in a wild and lofty worship of the mythological gods, for practical purposes they turned to the lower gods, the demons of the spirit realm.  Their shallow minds, grasping the immensity of the heavenly beings, felt that only the underworld could answer their personal needs, and so they embraced the demons.  They became obsessed with superstitions.  And so we see the dark and diabolical side of the world before Christ––the worship so eerily described in The Lord of the Flies, the sacrificing of children to Moloch and Baal, the mad prostitution with idols and their priests, the cannibalism of different tribes and nations.  But these people were not the savage barbarians as thought today.  They were some of the most progressive and mature societies, and, being tired of the morality of mythology, they turned to the wild orgies of diabolism to experience a new high.

The only bright spot in this world was Rome.  They started as a small nation, who worshiped the gods of the hearth more than the gods of the country, and were very family centric.  Virgil began the chivalry praised today, with his praise of the behavior of piety, patriotism, and the honor of the countryside.  Rome loved the natural.  They started the legends of the Merry Peasant and the china shepherdess, the peace of simplicity and satisfaction in the beauty of the creation of the Creator.  And they grew strong in comparable holiness even as Greece plummeted to the ground, and, being disillusioned with their poetries and philosophies, they turned to worship of each other.  Thus the rise of sodomy and the mad bloodthirstiness that pervaded their society.

But also growing stronger and stronger beside Rome was Carthage, and it was as the forces of Darkness alongside the forces of Light, even in the false light of paganism.  Carthage was a society very much like ours, with their intense materialism and their obsession with Moloch and sacrificing babies to their gods.  It was the capital of the demonic war against children.  Hannibal, with a host of satanic forces leading him on, conquered city after city, and finally conquered Rome.  But Rome, though vanquished physically, were not vanquished spiritually, and they rose up and defeated Hannibal and burned Carthage to the ground, thus destroying Satan's pivotal center of power.  They, likewise beat out upon Corinth, mad with sodomy and orgies, and defeated the evil there.

And so for a while the better in paganism drowned out the dark, until Rome, too, became disillusioned with philosophy, grew too tired and dull for the creativity of imagination in mythology, and were degraded to a state of atheism where joy and gladness were forgotten and the gods were forgotten and the only thing left to produce an emotional high was the worship of sexuality and blood.    Atheism and the lower pleasures were the last shock––the last shot of adrenaline for their wearied minds.

And then Jesus was born.

'The temptation of the philosophers is simplicity rather than subtlety.  They are always attracted by insane simplifications, as men poised above abysses are fascinated by death and nothingness and the empty air.  It needed another kind of philosopher to stand poised upon the pinnacle of the Temple and keep his balance without casting himself down.' - G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Fruits of Memory

Isaiah 35

Let the desert and the dry lands be glad; let the wasteland rejoice and bloom; like the asphodel, let it burst into flower; let it rejoice and sing for joy.  The glory of Lebanon is bestowed on it; the splendour of Carmel and Sharon.  Then they will see the glory of Yahweh, the splendour of our God.  

Strengthen all weary hands, steady all trembling knees, and say to the faint-hearted, 'Be strong! Do not be afraid.  Here is your God; vengeance is coming; divine retribution; he is coming to save you.'  Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed.  Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy.  For water will gush in the desert, and streams in the dry lands.  The parched ground will become a marsh and the thirsty land springs of water.  The lair where the jackals used to live will become plots of reed and papyrus.  

And through it will run a road for them, and a highway, which will be called the Sacred Way.  The unclean will not be allowed to use it.  He will be the one to use this road.  The fool will not stray along it.  No lion will be there, no ferocious beast set foot on it; nothing of the sort be found.  It will be used by the redeemed.  

For those whom Yahweh has ransomed will return.  They will come to Zion shouting for joy, their heads crowned with joy unending.  Rejoicing and gladness will escort them, and sorrow and sighing will take flight.

On the Beginning of the End of Capitalism

Sin is the oracle of the wicked in the depths of his heart;

There is no fear of God before his eyes.

He sees himself with too flattering an eye to detect and detest his guilt;

All he says is malicious and deceitful,

He has turned his back on wisdom.

To get his way he hatches malicious plots even in his bed;

Once set on his evil course no wickedness is too much for him.

Yahweh, your faithful love is in the heavens, 

Your constancy reaches to the clouds,

Your saving justice is like towering mountains,

Your judgments like the mighty deep.

Yahweh, you support both man and beast; 

How precious, God, is your faithful love.

So the children of Adam take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

They feast on the bounty of your house, 

You let them drink from your delicious streams;

In you is the source of life, by your light we see the light.

Maintain your faithful love to those who acknowledge you,

And your saving justice to the honest of heart.

Do not let the foot of the arrogant overtake me

Or wicked hands drive me away.

There they have fallen, the evil-doers, flung down, never to rise again.

-Psalm 36